Today's sixty seconds polishes off my mini-series. I am the baby of the blood siblings, so we end with my brother Derek. Derek loves me. We all went to an arcade once. We earned tons of tickets; collected them all in one communal pot; divided the spoils at the end. Derek spent his substantial earnings on the cutest little blob of a killer whale I've ever seen and handed it to me. This ball of cuteness now resides on my bed. His name is "Belugs" (in honor of the punk kid taking our tickets who insisted my gift was a Beluga whale. It clearly WAS NOT. Trust me. I know killer whales. Just listen to last week's post). Since I just spoiled that story, I had to go with something else. When I was interviewing my siblings for Sealed, I asked the question, "How do you think our parents' divorce affected each of the siblings?" Each one then commented on what they perceived in the others. This was quite the experience. In his own words, here are some of Derek's thoughts on yours truly. This is Derek's piece because he has always tried to understand my motivations. And he has always worried about remaining close to me. I love him. THE SUNDAY SOUND: June 12, There's Something About Blood, Part Three For those following along in an RSS reader, click through to the original post to hear today's piece.
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Today's sixty seconds of sound is the second part of a mini-series I call There's Something About Blood. You can read about the conception of this series in last week's post. Of all the people in my life, my sister Crys has worked the hardest at remaining close to me (and trust me, at times that has been no easy task). She flew to Boston this past weekend for no other reason but to visit me and I absolutely loved having her around. We even tossed in a trip to New York City. We were there for twelve hours and did Times Square, Central Park, a bit of 5th Avenue, Battery Park, Ground Zero, Wall Street, and the East Village. I'm still not sure how we managed that. Crys has always been the most involved person in my world and has always been infinitely supportive of everything I do. And, unfortunately for her, she is the only person who I am a raging B**** around. Probably because I know she'll still love me. I'm working on that. THE SUNDAY SOUND: June 5, There's Something About Blood, Part Two For those following along in an RSS reader, click through to the original post to hear today's piece. Today's sixty seconds of sound is the first part of a mini-series I call There's Something About Blood. I was thinking about my older siblings and how much they mean to me. They're all in Texas and I miss them every day. And now my sibs all have kids! I see photos of my nieces and nephews and I love them so much I think my heart will burst. This led me to think about the uniquely unifying force of shared blood. No matter how far away my family lives or how much time passes between our visits, I know that as soon as I see their faces... I'll feel at home. This is nothing short of a miracle given that I only lived with my siblings for eight of my almost twenty-eight years on this Earth (yes, I am turning 27 in two weeks!). I find that my siblings' love for me manifests itself most strongly through seemingly insignificant acts. I have all these distinct memories of silly little things that they've done for me that, though admittedly small, taught me to trust in our relationship. So I'm sharing one story per sib, starting with the oldest... my big brother David. THE SUNDAY SOUND: May 29, There's Something About Blood, Part One For those following along in an RSS reader, click through to the original post to hear today's piece. Lately I have felt so apart from everything. I believe (and hope!) I am in a period of growth. I change every day, caring less and less about certain things and more and more about others. Maybe all these feelings of apartness (is that a word?) are simply the manifestation of associated growing pains? No sé. All of my church responsibilities ended early today (due to Stake Conference, my meetings were only two hours instead of three!). This is sensational news for The Sunday Sound series because it means I actually invested real time in composing, recording, and editing a new (artistic! meaningful!) piece. Today's sixty seconds is a sparsely layered acoustic composition that proves for the umpteenth time that I am an emotional creature. Also, I am auditioning a new audio player today from SoundCloud. It looks fancier, but it means my audio is not hosted on my own site. I can't decide if the benefits of being fancy outweigh the benefits of unlimited uploading and a permanent link. In other news, a very happy birthday to my resilient and effervescent sister. THE SUNDAY SOUND: May 22, Splintered For those following along in an RSS reader, click through to the original post to hear today's piece. Finding the time to make a new piece every week has been a struggle lately (I'm not quite sure how I once made a new piece every. single. day.??). At 9:30pm, I still hadn't come up with anything. I realized that if I wanted to go to bed at a normal hour, I could only spend about 30 minutes on this week's piece (which automatically meant it was going to be terrible). To go along with the "where does all my freaking time go??" theme, I gave myself a timed challenge. I would teach myself a new song in 15 minutes and record it twice. Pick the best of the two takes and move on with my life. NO EDITING ALLOWED. I soon realized that my microphone wasn't set up, so I decided to use Photo Booth to access the internal mic on my Macbook. Yikes. You hear that awful buzz? That's the sound of a lazy producer. I promise I haven't given up on life, guys. You'll get a good piece with good sound next week, I swear. Probably. The experiment I chose: The White Stripes - "You've Got Her In Your Pocket" Happy Mother's Day! I adore my mother. I cannot describe my deep affection for her. She is the only person that has physically been around throughout my entire life. She is so proud of everything that I do (even the lamest, most insignificant things) and I love her for it. And now that I'm an adult (almost 27! How?!), I kind of feel like her protector. She's put up with enough crap in her life to not have to deal with d-bags. True story. So, in honor of the day, I secretly recorded my Mother's Day phone call. (I realize this calls into question that whole "protector" thing as well as my ethics as a producer, but let's ignore that for now, shall we?) We spoke for about 10 minutes; the essence of our conversation is captured in today's sixty seconds. My favorite part is her encouragement of robbing the cradle. Thanks, Mama. I'll take that lesson to heart. THE SUNDAY SOUND: May 8, A Conversation with Mama For those following along in an RSS reader, click through to the original post to hear today's piece. My niece Alexa would have been SEVEN on Friday had neuroblastoma not been such a d-bag and taken her when she was only four. So for this week's Sunday Sound, I've gathered a bunch of little kids to sing to her. The videos below accomplished three things: 1) provided audio material for today's sixty seconds. 2) made me even more baby hungry. 3) reminded me to always cut out my own voice when I post cute videos of my future children. Miss you, Lex. Special thanks to our singers: Little boy sings Happy Birthday to his sister 18 month old baby girl singing happy birthday Happy Birthday baby sings happy birthday... Happy Birthday to you Happy Birthday!! Happy birthday to you happy birthday sophia sings happy birthday HAPPY BIRTHDAY Baby Chad singing happy birthday Singing Baby - "Happy Birthday" From a Two Year Old.. Happy Birthday to you Song by our 2 year old The kids singing Happy Birthday to Alexa... THE SUNDAY SOUND: May 1, Happy Birthday, Alexa! For those following along in an RSS reader, click through to the original post to hear today's piece. For the past few weeks, I've been learning the guitar. Ohhhhh, boy howdy. I am terrible. I've actually owned an Ibanez steel-string acoustic for years now. The beautiful thing has been almost exclusively relegated to the lowly status of room décor because I couldn't be bothered to invest the time in it. Isn't that a loser thing to say? No more, my friends. I am now officially on the path to super-stardom (or at least a poorly-attended coffee shop gig). To celebrate my newfound love for guitaring (and because nothing says "Happy Easter" quite like a peaceful rendition of Coolio's Gangta's Paradise), I am sharing a preview of my first single. Enjoy. THE SUNDAY SOUND: April 24, Livin' in a (Folk)er's Paradise For those following along in an RSS reader, click through to the original post to hear today's piece. Most of the folks who read my blog know that I'm a Latter-day Saint. A Mormon. For those of you who don't know what that's all about... well... do I have a piece for you! Mormon culture is hilarious. I love it. We all sing! We all dance! We're all happy! And every once in a while, we put on a show to display our singing. And our dancing. And our happiness. My ward (what we call congregations) had a talent show last night. I was part of a crew of ladies who performed an a cappella version of Mariah Carey's "Always Be My Baby" (arranged by one of my pals in the ward and complete with beat boxing. Right?!). I only got audio of a few performances, but there were a host of fabulous acts (a fashion show! skits about Shakespeare! stupid human tricks!). Tonight's sixty seconds give a nice snapshot of what it is like to be Mormon on a Saturday night. I'm pretty sure you will all want to convert after listening to this. THE SUNDAY SOUND: April 17, Mormons on a Saturday Night For those following along in an RSS reader, click through to the original post to hear today's piece. For the production of Sealed, I had roughly twelve hours of source material. I recorded myself reading old love letters my parents had written, interviewed each of my siblings, interviewed my parents, digitized audio from old cassette tapes, recorded my random musings and narration ideas, etc. The release version of Sealed has a 22-minute running time. That leaves about 698 minutes of recorded material unheard by anyone but me. I love so much about that 698 minutes. Some of the best moments were recorded during a conversation with my siblings. We get passionate about every topic that ever comes up. Not an exaggeration. Some probably find that intense, but I am in love with our tendency. The context of today's sixty seconds: Dad says he'd had doubts all along about marrying Mom. But in reading all his letters and listening to his doting voice on cassette tapes he made for her, I just don't buy it. This spurred a conversation about owning up to doubt. (As a technical aside, I recorded this conversation between the four of us with an AKG 414 microphone set to a bidirectional pickup pattern. I set the mic on a tabletop stand. We sat two on each side. The levels of each of us recorded pretty evenly. I sound much louder in the track but that is only because I AM much louder. C'est la vie.) THE SUNDAY SOUND: April 10, Immortalizing Doubt For those following along in an RSS reader, click through to the original post to hear today's piece. |
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