... you and i both and other random musical and not-so-musical insights ...

nostalgia, amusement and more ...

i really should be sleeping. my 4:45 a.m. wakeup is going to come far too quickly.

but first - some observations need to be made.

i know - what a surprise, eh?

nevertheless. mraz's "you & i both" video made its premiere this evening, for those not in the know ... and i must say that even if i was not already someone who appreciates mraz the musician, this video would have still kept me laughing hysterically the entire time. the fact that i am appreciative of mraz's talent made it all the better.

i can't get over how he can pull some things off - first the bunny slippers and mrazda, now the piggy bank and jailhouse rock. a few minutes of absurdity in the best possible form.

i loved it. he embraces cheesiness and makes it so incredibly deck.

i was also feeling nostalgic this evening. while running some errands in fabulous rutvegas (riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight ...), i came across the electronics/music section and noticed a display for "heavier things." since it had already been determined, laughed at and accepted that despite my frustration with listening to contemporary mayer music (as opposed to his "classical" or "oldie" days of simple singer-songwriterdom), i would eventually cave in and buy the album so i could take a listen, i figured what the hell. it's on sale for ten dollars, why not, right? and since i was looking back fondly on musical days gone by, i also finally bought a copy of howie day's "the madrigals ep" (paul, aren't you proud???).

so i took a listen while driving back to fair haven and thought back on days when count chocula was discussed in a highly philosophized manner, when both of my favorite musicians were well-kept secrets buried deep in the underground of the no-one-listens-to-singer-songwriters-except-random-college-kids scene and when a naive college sophomore walked up to howie day and told him that she really enjoyed "she says" and that it sounded familiar - asking if it had been played recently on any of the local radio stations (this was back in february of 2000, so laugh at the absurdity of such a question).

let me begin with the ep. it only made me more excited for the full-length album. i really enjoyed "you & a promise" and loved the new version of "ghost" - although i must say that i hate how it's been whittled down from the versions i knew and loved from live performance. i haven't watched any of the dvd yet and will not let myself until i finish my preview story - so my howie day visual enjoyment will have to depend on the reliability of high school football and cross country coaches who, up to this point, have been ridiculously difficult to get in touch with.

and as for "heavier things" - i'll say that i certainly prefer it to "room for squares." then again, that's not saying much. there are some good tracks and there are the tracks clearly packaged for release as singles ("bigger than my body," anyone? ugh.). "wheel" is certainly my favorite track, but after hearing it for the first time at SPAC, i knew it would be.

there's one song that makes me realize just how far gone the john i met back in the day is. "new deep," which includes the following:

cause ever since i tried
trying not to find
every little meaning in my life
it's been fine
i've been cool
with my new golden rule

numb is the new deep
done with the old me
and talk is the same cheap it's been

i'm a new man
i wear a new cologne and
you wouldn't know me if your eyes were closed
i know what you'll say
this won't last longer than the rest of the day
but you're wrong this time

numb is the new deep
done with the old me
i'm over the analyzing
tonight

stop trying to figure it out
deep will only bring you down
you know, i used to be the back porch poet with a book of rhymes
always open knowing all the time i'm probably
never gonna find the perfect rhyme
for 'heavier things.'

and that pretty much says it all. i'm a fan of the back porch poet and his book of rhymes.

but beyond that, it's a decent album, i suppose. his appreciation of sting definitely shines through, favorably for the most part. and there are fewer candidates for new-WB-show-theme-song status this time, which is always a bonus.

anyway.

as i drove to rutland this evening, in the last moments of twilight, the moon was rising over the horizon. in my rear view mirror, i could see the molten oranges and golds of the sunset shift upward into rose, blue and pink. ahead of me was the glowing slate blue of the evening sky, the moon larger than i've seen it in 14 years. mars sat above it to the right, the only other astral body visible.

i make reference to 14 years because it brought me instantly back to an evening when i was eight years old, at just about the same time of night. when i think of it, the moment flashes back as vividly as if it occurred the evening before.

i was riding in the backseat of my parents' car, my brother to my right, father ahead of me in the driver's seat, mother in the front passenger steat. we were making the trip from vermont to my grandmother's house and were on the last leg of the trip - coasting down the hill into middleton, just before the turn onto central street (where my first house is still located - only gray instead of the barnyard red of my childhood). when i looked up and ahead, the moon was rising, huge and glowing yellow against the darkening blue sky. while i'm sure the moon in actuality appeared the same size as it did this evening, in my memory, it was half-hidden behind the horizon, taking up the entire width of the road on which we traveled. similar to the size of the moon depicted in "e.t." when the bike flies in front of it.

it felt like the moon was close enough to reach. that is, if i hadn't faced punishment for sticking my hands out of the window.

flashing back to present time, i stared at the moon as i drove, amazed by its size and brightness. by the time i headed back into the car to return to fair haven, glimpses into my rear view revealed that it had risen and grown smaller in appearance - looking much the way it normally does.

a moment lost but also captured.