Today, I realized just how thankful I am for great music. We live in an age unlike any other: we have access to the entire musical output of the world at our fingertips. It's a little sad that so many are constrained to genres or specific artists, when there is so much out there to experience.
I've been listening to Regina Spektor more than usual lately. I'd give anything for a fifteen minute conversation with her, she seems rather delightful. Seeing her in concert with A. was one of the best experiences ever. I've played a little You Am I here and there, but I've been playing them frequently lately, anyway.
Regina's music speaks to the human condition. I believe she'll be remembered in a century, maybe longer. And when I say "the human condition" I mean it in several ways at once, but primarily the same sense we utilize it in literature. Those "Old Verities" that Faulkner spoke of in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, the themes that transcend region, culture, religion, and all else. Themes like love, passion, hate, redemption, sacrifice, folly, joy, beauty, truth, pride, downfall, and all the other things that comprise great literature. Matters of the human heart; the heart in conflict with itself...the only things worth writing about. Or singing about, for that matter.
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