Have Some More Music

In going to college, I have become my parents.

From my mom: I now keep a plastic bag full of plastic bags. You know, just in case. Also, I've stayed in bed all day because I got my period and didn't feel like doing anything. I have been known to be lethargic, but I have not often been known to stay in my pajamas all day, and even here I usually get out every weekend, even if it's only to hang out by the fountain in the quad and sketch for a bit. That was new for me. Thanks, mom, for showing me the light.

From my dad: I now need music playing at every point of my day if I'm not in class. I didn't used to listen to music when I read. Now I do. I didn't used to used to listen to music on a literal 24/7 basis, and now I feel like something's wrong if there isn't music playing in my room.

It's for this reason, of course, that I've discovered some cool new music while in college. Playing the same album over and over starts to get old if you're playing music literally 24/7.

And because I am my father, I feel an overwhelming need to share awesome music with everyone. Seriously, I can't count the number of times my dad has started talking at the table, like, "So I discovered this new band called [insert band name here] and their stuff is just awesome. So I downloaded the whole album, and our next travel playlist is just going to be that on repeat."

Yeah, I am literally my father.

So, because I can't recommend music to him - I am going to have to accept being constantly late to the party on that one, my father is a music master, and we have almost the same taste in music, with a few exceptions, so he always gets there first - I am recommending music to whoever cares to read my blog.

Probably no one, but whatever.

So, my most recent thing is Nightwish.

Nightwish is a metal band (I'm already losing some people) who play a genre called symphonic metal (and I've lost the rest of you). That pretty much means that their singers sing in a classical, operatic style, and the music behind them is full of electric guitars and kickass drumming. Not something I expected to go together so well, but man, Nightwish has shown me the light.

Nightwish also uses other symphonic elements sometimes - I think I've heard some strings in some of their songs, and they definitely use the piano a fair amount - but really, it's a meeting of classical vocals and not-classical instrumentals, and that's super rad.

The other great thing about Nightwish is that it's been around a long time, and they've had a few different vocalists. Their sound changes with each singer they get, so depending on how operatic you want it, you can go forward or backward in their work. Their first singer was quite operatic, their second singer quite a bit less, and their third is smack dab in the middle. Personally, I can appreciate all three of them, but there are wars about it. I'm not gonna get into it.

I'm just gonna show you the awesome music, how about that?

Let's start with Tarja Turunen.

This is Nemo, by Nightwish. This song took a while to grow on me, mostly because Tarja's voice is so different. Beautiful, hauntingly so, but different. But once you get used to the fact that you're listening to someone who could probably play Christine Daae in Phantom of the Opera (and actually, this band has a cover of the title song of that musical using Tarja) it... it's awesome. I mean, it's a voice that sticks with you, and the song - well, the thing about Nightwish songs is that the lyrics echo through your head for a while after you've heard them.

Oh how I wish/For soothing rain/All I wish is to dream again

Damn.

Onto Anette Olzon!

(This video is actually pitched a key or so down from what it actually is, please look up the video on YouTube because blogger is being stupid and not letting me put it on my blog. Also the video gave me chills when I first watched it, so that's also worth it, but also that was at 5:00 am, so that may have contributed to that).

So, weirdly enough, Anette Olzon seems to be the singer who gets the most crap from fans of the band, which is bizarre to me because I actually love her voice, and this song - Amaranth - is probably my favourite Nightwish song. Immediate love. Immediate "oh." But that's just me.

So, I adore this song. First of all, the lyrics are wonderful: "the tears of snow-white sorrow." "The hiding Amaranth in a land of daybreak." Beautiful. I love it.

But what gets me every time about this song is the harmonies come in when the chorus kicks in. It's one of the first times that I've been listening to something and going "I have no idea where the melody stops and the harmony begins" and that's amazing. It's just entwined into this beautiful dual-voiced poetry. I really love this song. My neighbours are probably getting tired of it.

Also the key change in the last chorus just gets me every time.

But... yeah, the sound's pretty different, right? Still good, but yeah, their sound definitely changed with their singers.

Speaking of which, time for Floor Jansen!

So this is Elan, from their most recent album. This is the first Nightwish song I ever knew, and is one of the most played songs on my iPod. I knew this song long before I got into the Nightwish kick I'm on right now.

Again, the lyrics are wonderful. "Come, drink deep/Let the dam of mind seep/Travel with great elan, dance a jig at the funeral." "Come, taste the wine/Race the blind/They will guide you from the light/Writing noughts 'til the end of time."

And again, that key change. Wonderful. And the flute bit is great.

This is probably my favourite album from Nightwish, because I'm also a huge fan of other songs from that album - including Edema Ruh, Endless Forms Most Beautiful, and Sagan (especially Sagan, please look up Sagan), but more than that, this is probably my favourite singer that Nightwish has had. That's kind of an unpopular opinion - everywhere you go you'll see people mourning Tarja as if she died. She didn't, she just left the band. She has a pretty successful solo career now, as I understand it.

Personally, though, I love Floor Jansen. She has her own style, as seen with the newest Nightwish album - again, please look up Sagan and Endless Forms Most Beautiful, they're awesome - but she does a helluva job pulling off her predecessors' songs too. If you look up Floor Jansen doing Amaranth or Nemo, you'll find live versions of her doing it and she nails it.

Anyway, so that's the band I'm into right now. It's the first time in a while that I've been content to just sit and listen to a band without feeling automatically compelled to sing along - first of all, because I don't have the range, I am a girl who was in the tenor section in choir for my whole life, but mostly, the artistry of their vocals is part of the magic here. You can't cover that up.

I've been listening to other music too, less intense stuff - I Wanna Get Better by The Bleachers was on repeat for about a day and a half, because the lyrics in that song are super good, and I love the upbeat thing it has going on. So that's worth checking out too.

But yeah, I'm in a symphonic metal phase. And you all have my father to thank for it.

On the U.S Election

Yeah, sorry. I'm sure everything you've been looking at has been completely over-saturated with everyone and their mother's thoughts about the election, and I probably don't have anything particularly new to bring to the table. But I do have some thoughts I want to get down somewhere, and here is as good a place as any.

So. Donald Trump, a name which, before last year, I had only ever associated with being obscenely rich and bad reality TV, is now the president elect of the United States. It will surprise no one to know that I am pretty unhappy about this.

And by "pretty unhappy" what I mean is that I happened to be on a ferry home as the election was happening and I was obsessively checking live updates on the Wall Street Journal to see how it was going.

And I was so distraught when Trump won. There were tears in my eyes. I cried a little. Getting off the ferry, getting into my mother's car, greeting her with, "Hello. Trump won." That was not a good night for me.

This is for a plethora of reasons. For one thing, I really really believed in Hillary Clinton. I know that people don't want to like her. I know that, for a lot of people, she represents everything abhorrent about politics. But, if it is possible to be overqualified to be president of the United States, she was. She knew what she was doing. She's intelligent, and she had experience in governing and in world affairs. And, on a shallower note, but nonetheless one that mattered to me, she was the first woman Democratic nominee. I was so looking forward to the U.S having a woman president. In her speech where she accepted the nomination, I cried when she talked about a woman being commander-in-chief because it's such an authoritative title, and one that seems intrinsically masculine, and I was so sure that it was going to be her and I was overwhelmed by the idea. A female commander-in-chief. I didn't know I cared that much, but I was in tears.

It turns out, though, that the American people would rather have the least qualified person imaginable, one who ran his campaign on hatred and general insanity, than a woman. And that's horrifying.

And I've gone through the stages of grief, believe me. Denial happened - while watching the election, even with Trump only a few electoral votes from winning, I was still going, "But Clinton could still win this if she just wins New Hampshire and Pennsylvania" and who knows what else.

Sadness. The crying. That followed denial pretty quickly when it became clear that there was no way Clinton could win.

Anger. I couldn't believe the American people had actually elected the least qualified nominee ever over a woman who had spent her life in politics. I was appalled.

Bargaining, though, I think, is the one most worth talking about. "But Clinton won the popular vote! The electoral college doesn't make sense! It's un-democratic! How is this the system?" All of that. And it's all true, honestly - the electoral college is a bizarre, broken system, and democratically, it would make more sense if Clinton was the president elect based on more people actually wanting her to be the president elect.

But the thing is, all of this is true, but it isn't the point.

Weird things like this, where there's a discrepancy between the electoral college and what the people actually want? That only happens when the race is close.

And in a race against a man who built a campaign on fear-mongering and hatred, it should have never been that close. There should be more than a 1% difference in who wanted Clinton and who wanted Trump. It's appalling to me that Trump wasn't completely obliterated, and I think it's petty and nonconstructive to squabble about that 1% difference and whether or not it's democratic that it happened like that. Yes, the system of the electoral college is a problem, and needs a reboot, but it isn't the problem. The problem is that 47% of the population think it's okay to treat anyone who isn't white as a second class citizen.

Sidenote: obviously there are gendered issues around this too - don't get me wrong, I had my share of tears over the fact that the woman president I'd so hoped for lost to a man who unironically uttered the words "grab her by the pussy" - but the fact is, a majority of white women voted Trump. Clearly, the issues here are predominantly about race.

Trump should have been annihilated in the election. It should have been a landslide. Arguing about that 1% misses the point entirely.

I'm not saying don't be angry about the system. The system is not functional. I'm saying let's not overlook the real issues at work here. Let's not treat the superficial problems of this election. The problems run much deeper. The U.S needs to create an environment of tolerance. I know, not likely to happen with a Trump presidency - already we're seeing a spike in hate crimes in the U.S - but that's the problem that needs solving. That's what got Trump elected, not the electoral college.

Now, I want to be clear. I'm not saying that every person who voted for Trump is a racist and a misogynist. What I'm saying, though, is that it means that a good portion of America lack the empathy for minorities required to realize that white America isn't all of America, and that a Trump presidency isn't likely to be good for all of America. I'm not saying they all actively hate, I'm saying they don't actively care.

That, obviously, needs to change.

But the other thing here is that there needs to be an environment created where people can calmly, respectfully discuss differences in policy and ideology. Trump shouting, "WRONG!" every time Clinton opened her mouth was the exact opposite of doing that, but Clinton didn't win a gold medal in that field either, with her demonizing Republicans every chance she got - calling out the "deplorables" was probably the worst thing she could have done, even if I tended to agree. The reason we were all surprised at Trump's win is because, particularly with this election, people were living in an echo chamber. There needs to be an effort to outstretch tolerance and understanding between the right and left.

I know it can be difficult - I, for one, would not want to have a political discussion with a Trump supporter. But I truly believe that it's the only way to even begin to resolve the profound division between the right and left in the U.S. There needs to be effort on both sides.

In the meantime, what about the last stage of grief? Acceptance?

Yeah. I don't think it's necessary. Don't accept what Trump stands for. Bigotry and hate-mongering shouldn't be normalized.

The flip-side of that, though, is that the left can't become threatening. You can't hate-monger in the opposite direction. That doesn't solve anything. Don't accept, right? Protest if you are feeling that strongly about it (which, people have the right to feel strongly about it, I would say). But threatening comparable violence or hatred is counter-productive, and only serves to pit more people against each other. What the U.S needs right now is an effort put into understanding between demographics and ideologies.

Anyway, that's my two cents, now that I've broken through the block of "But the popular vote!"

Never been more grateful to be Canadian.