singing real good for free

Sometimes the best things in life are free. You can download this song on iTunes for free today & maybe more days, I don't know. Worth it.

Amos Lee, "Violin" from Mission Bell. 
 
Lately I, I've been heading for a breakdown
Every time I leave my house
It feels just like a shake down
Between street sweepers and pushers or the lawyers
Who may as well be butchers
Between the small timing hustlers who all
seem to feed upon each other

Chorus
Oh God why have you been
hanging out in that old violin
While I’ve been waiting for you
to pull me through

Lately I, every time I try to lie down
My mind just gets away
I can't even close my eyes now
Between the big fish of ambition and the lovers
Using words as ammunition
Between the wood plank I’ve been pacing and this
Impossible dream that I’ve been chasing

Chorus

Waterboarding anyone?

Just in case you want to know exactly what waterboarding is, an intrepid impoverished journalist submits to it for you . . .

Contrapunto, Counterpoint

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Counterpoint:  "The technique of combining two or more melodic lines in such a way that they establish a harmonic relationship while retaining their linear individuality."

Johann Sebastian Bach was the master at counterpoint -- Art of the Fugue, Brandenburg Concerto. You can find melodic lines that retain their linear individuality in Renaissance music, in Gregorian chants, in simple rounds. It is the basis for polyphonic music (see blog on Rustavi choir).

I've always been fascinated/concerned with this idea in a relationship -- how to keep hold of yourself, your individuality, with another person without being either selfish or a drudge but something in between that is whole and happy. 

Maybe you get lucky and find someone who lets you be yourself or you get even luckier and find someone who actually enjoys your essential self. But I think that nothing will work until you are happy, happy, happy with yourself.