The Avett Brothers

Today I went to Jazz Fest to see the Avett Brothers.  First let me impress upon y'all the fact that I moved one of my exams in order to go see them, I have another final tomorrow, and I just don't do those kind of things.  School always comes first for me, but not before the Avett Brothers apparently!  And it was 150% worth it.  

I pushed my way up further than I normally would in the crowd.  As soon as the other band was off the stage I was pushing my way against the crowd with the best of 'em for my spot!  Even  though their lyrics can be the sweetest, most honest and heartfelt things, they have such an awesome energy on the stage!  

This story I'm about to tell, is what will keep me a diehard fan for the rest of my life.  First remember that I named this blog after an Avett Brothers song (which they played, by the way).  After their first song or two someone in the crowd yelled "I love you!" to the band, and Seth Avett responded, "Thanks, we love y'all too!"  He sort of said it as he was turning to the rest of the band before they started to play another song and when the crowd chuckled a little bit he turned back to the mic and said, "No I'm serious.  When someone says they love you, that's something you can't ignore."  

That is the epitome of why I love the Avett Brothers.  This sentiment is at the heart of all their lyrics, and the basic concept of this blog: you can't ignore love.  

(Photos from the Avett Brothers website)

The Smell of Spring

It's been spring in New Orleans for quite a few weeks now, and as much as I love fall, I think this must be my favorite season.   Yes, spring is a feast for the eyes, but it's really the smell of spring that gets me.  I adore stopping along my route to school in the morning to bury my nose in a lovely gardenia, and inhaling the wonderful smell of jasmine as I ride my bike home from the library at night.  There's hardly anything in the world better than the feel of the cool night air with the full moon above and the wonderful smell of flowers.  

As I'm writing this I realize that all too often we don't stop and smell the roses.  Quite literally, I mean.  Most Americans drive to work, and in doing so they miss out on the wonderful sensory pleasures that spring time assaults you with.  We really are less for it.  Living in New Orleans, a city that's so easy to get around without a car, really makes me see how backwards being car dependent really is.  Until you've truly lived where you only need a car to go to the grocery store, it's hard to understand what a burden a car really is and how much you miss out on by being confined to a car.  

Ever since my trip to Europe last summer roses have captivated me.  Everywhere you turned, and especially in Copenhagen and Amsterdam, there seemed to be rose bushes climbing trellises and dripping over fences.  It was absolutely beautiful.  My experience with roses before then was limited to cut roses in a bouquet - still beautiful, but a little cliché.  Now I understand the beauty of rose bushes and I want nothing more than to one day have a garden filled with roses and other plants.  Just around the corner from me, is a wonderful house with a wrap around porch, a giant oak, and a lawn teeming with rose bushes.  In other words, my dream house.  

Decay and Devastation

I saw this picture in the New Orleans Museum of Art, in the photographic exhibit "Residents and Visitors: Twentieth Century Photographs of Louisiana."  I like the photograph, but it was really the photographer's description of it that struck me as such a saddening truth.  

"The figure symbolizes the worship of destruction; the strange and suicidal religion of war, which is one of the most important and sinister trends of modern society." - Clarence John Laughlin

(via tumblr)

In Honor of Something Much Needed

"All men whilst they are awake are in one common world: but each of them, when he is asleep, is in a world of his own."

 -Plutarch


"When we are sleeping we see all gods." - Hakuin Ekaku 

The Healing Power of Music

Someone just sent me this wonderful trailer for The Whole Gritty City, a movie about marching bands in New Orleans.  As y'all already know, I love, love, LOVE marching bands.  Watch the trailer to see what I mean about just how wonderful these marching bands are.  

In my jazz class today our teacher was told us, "to musicians, music is a narcotic,"  just like what the guy in this trailer says:

"You get all these kids to perform, and you get them to sound a certain way.  All of your cares, all of your worries - I don't care if you just had something very tragic in your life - once that band gives you that downbeat, and the music is right, and it's poppin', and its strong - just for that brief two or three minutes - you forget every problem you have, you have no cares in the world."

Warm Rain

This evening it has been raining.  Wonderful, drenching downpours, with shockingly close claps of thunder and the relentless pounding of raindrops on the roof and windows.  And boy, have I missed the rain - that spring- and summer-time warm rain that you can just feel in your bones coming for hours.  It reminded me of this photo, and how amazing it is to swim in the rain.  I can't wait for summer.  

(Dane Peterson via Aubrey Road)

Marching Bands

While some of my friends enjoy being social butterflies during the parades, flitting from one group of friends to the next, all I really want to do is plop myself  down on a ladder and listen to the marching bands.  Well, maybe not a ladder since they're not exactly conducive to dancing, but you get the picture.  I want to be front and center, up close and personal with when the bands come marching by.  I want to get shoved out of the way when the dads scout the perimeters.  I want to be scared that the big kid with the drum might take out my nose if he swings that drumstick just a little bit further.  I want to feel that infectious, brassy music reverberating in my belly.