Conflicted.

Is it possible that a cover of a song can actually be better than the original?

Case in point: E.T. by Katy Perry.

Now, I love me some Katy Perry. Ever since that fateful night at the Schaeffer Crawfish Boil sophomore year with Steph when she sang "I Kissed A Girl" and someone in the audience actually gave her some cherry chapstick, I've been a fan. "One of the Boys" is one of my favorite girl power albums eva. Some of my fondest memories of the drama dept are "warming up" for a show by belting out "Teenage Dream" and "Waking up in Vegas." Wise decisions there, very wise. She's cute, she can sing, what more could you want? (Besides the fact that her dad's a preacher.... weird.)

But lately, I've been listening to some covers of Katy Perry songs more than Katy Perry herself. It all started with gLee. How could you not adore 30 guys in private school uniforms belting out "Teenage Dream"? It's just great.

What prompted this post is my recent obsession with Michael Henry and Justin Robinett's mash-up between E.T. and Waiting for the End to come. If you've never heard anything by these two guys... I don't know what to say. You haven't lived.

Judge for yourself. The first link is the original ET. The second is of Jayme Dee (yet another shout out to muh girl). And the third? If you've got a limited time frame, watch the third. Michael and Justin. IlovethemIlovethemIlovethem. #sweetaction.

Let me know what you think! I love feedback.

P.S.- I was listening to ET while I was blogging to ensure that it was "internet-appropriate" (like anything isn't), when my dad asked me if the song was by Katy Perry. I was shocked by his sudden interest in pop culture. He then proceeded to ask me what I thought about Lady Gaga's Judas. Props to you, Dad. My dad is the coolest dad around. (There's a 2009-2010 music appreesh allusion for ya.)

10 hours til Sara.

I love ya, tomorrow.

I love my life.

I love my friends.

I want to live like this forever.

But, that's not possible, so I'm just living for today. And tomorrow. Cause tomorrow is when I'm going to see SARA BAREILLES, the love of my life.

22 hours, people.

It's only a day away.

I like it when the girls stop by for the summer.

Therefore let the moon
Shine on thee in thy solitary walk;

And let the misty mountain-winds be free
      To blow against thee: and, in after years,
      When these wild ecstasies shall be matured
      Into a sober pleasure; when thy mind
      Shall be a mansion for all lovely forms,                       
      Thy memory be as a dwelling-place
      For all sweet sounds and harmonies; oh! then,
      If solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief,
      Should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts
      Of tender joy wilt thou remember me,
      And these my exhortations! 
I am so blessed to have experienced the beauty that Wordsworth described in his poem, Tintern Abbey.  The excerpt above is my favorite part of the entire poem, which we read in english last year. When we read it for the first time, my teacher asked us to think of a place that we could relate to this poem. Mine was so simple: Camp Skyline.
Let me set the stage for you: Eight years ago, I climbed into the car with my entire family and drove two hours to a tiny town in northern Alabama. I had never been much of a homebody, so I was excited to spend some time away and clear my very full fifth-grade head. Two weeks of endless club meetings, terrifying climbs up the ladder to the blob, mediocre birdhouses, and waaaay too many snickerdoodles later, I climbed into the same car with my entire family and drove two hours to a comparatively big city in central Alabama. But my life was altered forever.
Somewhat overdramatic, but yes, I consider my life to be completely different because of my time spent at camp. Something about it has a draw to my like nothing else in my life. I met some of my greatest friends there, as well as several role models. There is a cleansing that takes place at camp that you can't get anywhere else, and the nearness to the Lord is unmistakeable. 
Circumstances have kept me from going back to camp as a counselor last summer and the upcoming one, but my heart has been there ever since the end of Summer 2009. I left it on the Riverside bridge, in the Little River (inside the creeper, of course), above the ropes course (along with my fear of heights), inside the rocking chairs of the porch. I even left a little bit of it on top of the Rosey Den ceiling fan, where I lost quite a bit of blood after an incident with a ceiling fan. Ask the nurses about that one; I believe I hold the camp record for most bizarre accident during free period. 
This is probably completely irrelevant to anything you are interested in reading, and about half of what I just wrote probably makes no sense to you if you didn't go to camp with me, but I just had to get it out. A lot of things recently have made me miss the feeling that I get at camp. There is nothing like it; there is no way to describe it. The only way to understand it is to experience it. Which I hope you have.
Like Wordsworth says, I am so blessed to have memories of camp that I can pull out on a rainy day. When the "wild ecstasies have matured", when my mind becomes "a mansion for all lovely forms," my Skyline memory room will be the first one that I enter.


Just around the riverbend...


Shoulda been a mountie!


My sisters.

How the notes all bend and reach above the trees.

Wow. Just when I thought the OC couldn't get any better.

The End of Innocence. All around great episode, but nothing special.

And then they go and close with a fantastic song like Aeroplane Over the Sea, one of my favorite songs OF ALL TIME.

I mean, the OC has a great soundtrack. It's not debatable. But Neutral Milk Hotel?? Aeroplane Over the Sea?

Flawless.

Josh Schwartz, I applaud you.

I know I've already blogged once today, but I just had to share my awe and excitement with y'all.

Have a great week!

Clumsy.

Without a song or dance what are we?

I'm nothing special, in fact I'm a bit of a bore
When I tell a joke, you've probably heard it before
But I have a talent, a wonderful thing
cause everyone listens when I start to sing
I'm so grateful and proud
All I want is to sing it out loud

So I say
Thank you for the music, the songs I'm singing
Thanks for all the joy they're bringing
Who can live without it, I ask in all honesty
What would life be?
Without a song or a dance what are we?
So I say thank you for the music
For giving it to me
Thank you, Abba. Couldn't've said it better myself.


Tonight, as I was driving home from my little brother's baseball game (which he won... whoop whoop!) and belting out some of The Script (which I'm still lovin), I started thinking about how boring my car rides would be if I had no radio. Which led to thinking if no cars had radios. Which led to... well you don't really need my exact train of thought, but eventually it led to thinking about what a boring, silent world we would live in without music. Cheesy, I know, but true. 


*Side note* I've realized something in my recent months as a blogger. There is a reason that cheesy sayings are so famous. It's cause they're true. So I hereby pledge to quit apologize for using cliches.


Not only would the world be boring and silent, but I believe that we would become overwhelmed with all of our emotions and just go completely crazy. Seriously, think about it. My greatest moments of catharsis come from singing at the top of my lungs, whether in front of a crowd or in my room. There is no way that I could be emotionally stable without those times of release.


So next time you're rocking out to your favorite music, whether it be the chart-toppers of today or the bouncy pop of the most popular seventies' group, say an extra prayer of thanksgiving for the music. Because, as we all know, "all good and perfect things come from above."


"It is good to praise the Lord and make music to your name, O most High, to proclaim your love in the morning and your faithfulness at night, to the music of the ten-stringed lyre and the melody of the harp. For you make me glad by your deeds, O Lord; I sing for joy at the works of Your hands."
Psalm 92:1

It's been too long...

It's always been too long, hasn't it? As pointed out by one of my friends who just loves to "keep me accountable on" (aka annoy me about) my blog, I promised in my last post that I was here to stay, which I have not kept true to in the past week. So, sorry about that, Albert.

A few things that I'm lovin:
1. Jayme Dee- I've always been a fan of this youtube phenomenon, introduced to me by the great Lucy Hughes, but in the past couple days I've listened to her covers so much that her name automatically comes up in my youtube search bar.
One of my favorites...

2. College- What??? I know, I never thought I'd see the day, either. While I still don't want to leave high school, I'm not dreading college anymore. And guys, when I say dreading, I mean dreading. Like, I didn't want to go; thoughts of running away were running through my head frequently. So I think this is a pretty good thing.
3. Sleep- Yes, I am looking forward to college more now, one thing that I am still dreading is the lack of sleep that I  know I'm going to experience starting in August. After getting a taste of the college sleep schedule this weekend, I'm going to start getting extra hours of sleep in now. Hopefully they'll roll over to the fall. Probably not.
4. The Script- My friend burned me their most recent cd a couple months ago, but since then it's just sat in my cd player in the volv. I randomly pulled it back out again this weekend and I've been lovinggg it. It's not really my kind of music, but it's just so catchy!
5. Sarasarasarasarasarasarasarasara BAREILLES- I get to see her in ten days. NBD. Third time's the charm.

Looking at this list makes me realize how much I have to look forward to, but for some reason I still want to stop the clock. But I can't, and that scares me. I completely understand the overdone simile about life being like a roller coaster now that my senior year is rapidly coming to a close. There's no way to stop it, so I might as well throw my hands in the air and ride it out. But, holy cow, is that hard to do.

A Thousand Splendid Springs

Wow. Y'all should congratulate me. I have successfully completely one of the busiest weeks of my life. Just making it through last week is an accomplishment in itself, regardless of all the tests I may have failed.

I'm not going to go into every reason for why I was MIA last week, but 99.9% of the reason is because of The King and I, Briarwood's spring musical. If you didn't get a chance to see it, let me know and I'll hook you up with a video. Cause the play was ballin, beast, legit, etc etc etc.

So, with all of my excuses and apologies out of the way, let's move on to something a little more exciting. Like spring!

Spring is probably my favorite season. There is nothing more beautiful to me than spring's first azalea bush blooming in my backyard. Even though these bushes are nothing special to me (they're planted at my school, at my house, at my neighbor's house, etc), there is something spectacular and encouraging about the very first bud, begging to be fed by the sunlight.

And now that I've shown you my embarrassing poetic creative writing side, here's something else that I've been wanting to talk about: A Thousand Splendid Suns.

A thousand splendid props to Holly for suggesting this book (Witty, right?). I read The Kite Runner in the fall, and, while it ended with the tiniest glimmer of hope, it was almost too depressing. A Thousand Splendid Suns, which I read over spring break, is not only easier to relate to, but it ends with a bright light at the end of the tunnel, hinting at the hope of a better world. And Lord knows I love happy endings.

Now, the difficulty level. I feel like lots of people judge me because Splendid Suns is not quite as literary as the novels that I am expected to enjoy. Don't get me wrong, I love symbolism and all that jazz as much as the next english major-to-be, but sometimes it's nice to just read and not have to worry if the material will be on the AP exam. So all of this goes to say that A Thousand Splendid Suns is an easy read with a compelling plot. I like what I like. And there is nothing wrong with that.

So, bloggerson, I'm back. To stay.
Have a splendid spring!