Last Saturday I went to see one of my favorite artists Matisyahu. This was my third time seeing him, as always, he delivered. His shows are musical and spiritual experiences that lift the spirit and consume the body with rhythmic beatboxing movement. The light is strong within him and you can't help but be lifted from it. And the dancer in me cannot be around music without it manifesting into physical form, and last Saturday night was no different. I danced the entire show.
Matisyahu, born Matthew Miller (also goes by "Matis"), played for more than two hours weaving in is new music along side his older material and his commercial hit "King Without a Crown." He also performed an intense and hard-driving version of "Jerusalem" where every note and beat consumed me, and ended the performance with one of my favorites, Warrior, which is about struggle and "fighting for your soul" and transforming the dark into light and lifting us up. And that is exactly what Matis delivered. He lifted us through his music, words and performance.
His music is a true collaborative work of art and life, and his live performance is also collaborative where he lets everyone shine. The solos from each of his band members were intense, free-flowing and electrifying. In those moments it was like a mini geek fest for musicians.
Last month Matis released "Shattered" his new EP, consisting of four songs, that is a prelude to the new album due out in early 2009. Matis first hit the scene with his debut album Shake Off the Dust...Arise. However, it wasn't until after his next two albums took off that Shake Off the Dust...Arise began to gain interest.
The first time I heard Matis was in 2006 with his 2005 Live at Stubb's album, which was a live recording from a show that he did at Stubb's in Austin, Texas. It was followed by his second studio album Youth. Both Youth and Live at Stubb's received critical acclaim.
When Matis first began to gain in popularity he was, and still is, described as a Chasidic Jewish reggae artist who blends the sounds of reggae, hip-hop, rock, beatbox and spoken word weaved with lyrics of inspired Jewish teachings and messages of struggle and hope. His music inspires and his passion for his work is evident.
Today marks the end of an era with the closing of the award-winning Broadway musical Rent at Broadway's Nederlander Theatre.
Today Mark, Roger, Mimi, Angel, Collins, Maureen, Joanne and Benny took the stage one last time for the final performance of Rent after a successful 12-year run on Broadway.
Those of you who know me really well know that my roots are in theater arts and my all-time favorite musical is Rent, not just because I love musical theater, but also because it represents a time, a generation, a cause, and it parallels aspects of my own life and past.
I write this post today in celebration of Rent. However, it's also a very personal post for a time passed and loved ones lost. And it's about celebrating life everyday because as the song goes "There's No Day But Today."
The first time I saw Rent, I felt like I was watching my own life up on
that stage. I was mesmerized. I was in awe. I was in love. It took my
breath away, but at the same time my heart sank because Rent's creator,
the late and brilliant Jonathan Larson, would have been someone I personally would have been honored to have been friends with, or at minimum, had the chance to meet.
Larson tragically died from an aortic aneurysm after being misdiagnosed (twice) in a New City emergency room. He died the night before Rent's first preview at the New York Theater Workshop and ten days before his 36th birthday. Writer and Rolling Stone Editor David Lipsky described the night Larson died, right after the final dress rehearsal on January 25, 1996:
He (Jonathan) was interviewed by a reporter from the New York Times, who told him off the record that he thought the play a marvelous achievement. Then he went home, put on some water for tea, and died. His roommate found him on the floor of the kitchen, beside his coat. Jon was 35 years old.
It's such a tragic and sad story. After all those years of school, writing and re-writing musicals, and the blood, sweat and tears working on Rent, Larson never got to reap the rewards of his hard work and enjoy Rent’s smashing success. His death was surreal and is still a reminder to us all that there truly is No Day But Today.
Larson brilliantly captured an era and was able to convey a truth that many of us from that time were living. 1996, the year Larson died and Rent debuted, was one of the worst years of my life. That year I went to more funerals than someone of my age should have to experience in a lifetime. I went to ten funerals that year and 2 more at the beginning of 1997. One of those funerals was my own father's who I tragically lost to suicide.
Three weeks following my dad's death, and the first day that I began to feel like I was going to survive the nightmare of his sudden death, I came home to a phone call from one of my best friends, Beth Cortopassi, who informed me that her brother-in-law, and my dear friend, Peter Cortopassi had died that day. Losing him crushed me all over again, and even worse, not being by his side when he died was more than I could bear.
I met Peter through Beth. She had kept telling me that I had to meet her brother-in-law because she thought the two of us would hit it off, and we did. It was a great friendship. We never judged each other and always supported each other, even when we didn't agree with each other or when we didn't like who the other was dating. Our friendship lasted through the good, the bad and the ugly. And it got ugly sometimes, but overall, it's was a friendship that I will always cherish. What I miss most is being able to call him when I'm having a rotten day. He always put me in a happier place. I sure miss that.
Peter was one of the most creative and engaging individuals that I ever met. We had some good times together. He sure made me laugh a lot. In fact, a few days after his services Beth and I were sitting in his apartment in San Francisco still in shock that he truly was gone, even though we had months to prepare ourselves. That final goodbye was never easy to accept.
I sat there that day in his apartment trying to still feel him, wrapping myself in his clothes, smelling his pillow as his scent was still very much on it, and taking in every piece of art that his hands had created when the phone rang. It was a friend of his, who didn’t know that Peter had died, and he was having a bad day and was calling Peter because he said that Peter always made him laugh and cheered him up. I knew exactly what he meant. Peter had that gift. He was beautiful and full of life.
Peter certainly knew how to live life to the fullest (and then some), which is why it was so difficult when his body began to breakdown. After almost a decade of living with HIV, his body could no longer fight the virus and he died on a warm Sunday afternoon in March of 1996.
That year, I went to too many funerals of friends and family and all of them were too young to die with so much life left in them to live. By December of 1996, after the funeral of another friend who also died of AIDS, the ground beneath me was so unstable that I was afraid to pick up the phone every time it rang for fear it would be another death. But as the song Without You from Rent says "the ground thaws, the rain falls, the grass grows...the seeds root, the flowers bloom, the children play, the stars gleam, the poets dream, the eagles fly, without you, the earth turns, the sun burns, but I die..."
Yes, you die inside, but in time, you live again. If I've learned anything in this life, it's that life is for the living and no matter how much pain and loss you have experienced, you have to pick yourself up and move on and live everyday as if it was your last.
Sadly, I wasn’t able to be at today’s final performance of Rent because I’m 3,000 miles away from Broadway stuck on the West Coast preparing for a crazy work week with two conferences, TechCrunch50 in San Francisco and DEMOfall in San Diego.
It was at last year's DEMOfall conference that in the middle of the conference I received a text message that sank my heart all over again as it has with every death. Whether the tragic news comes in person, by phone or text message, it hurts all the same.
As I write this today in celebration of life, Rent and in remembrance of its creator Jonathan Larson, I also want to take a moment to remember Hugh Hammersley and John Greco who died a year ago this month in a tragic car accident on their way to work early Wednesday morning on September 26, 2007. John was only 20 years old and Hugh had celebrated his 21st birthday the night before the accident. It was their deaths that I learned about via that heart-sinking text message at DEMO last year.
I know Hugh's family and met John's mother once several years ago, and had the opportunity to spend more time with both families last year during the services and the days following. As we approach the one year anniversary of their passing, I will be remembering them and keeping them in my thoughts and prayers.
I've seen Rent so many times that I've lost count, and sadly, while I wasn’t able to be there today to experience the final Broadway performance, I certainly was there in spirit, just as my dad, Peter and the others who I love and have lost are still with me as I dance my way through this life.
Tonight was the official CD release party for singer-songwriter Kendall Payne's new CD Paper Skin. Payne is an artist who has experienced firsthand the highs and lows of the music industry, so it's good to see that she has persevered and endured through it all as she hit the stage tonight in Los Angeles to share her new music.
I first saw Payne play last year and was moved by her vocals and music. Her music is honest and heartfelt. Her sound is similar to Sarah McLachlan. Let's just say that Payne would have been a great addition to the Lilith Fair lineup back in the summer of 1999.
In addition to being a talented singer-songwriter, she is an accomplished musician. Guitar was her instrument of choice until April 2006 when she decided to "tickle the ivories for a season."
Read how her latest CD came to fruition (the following is an excerpt from Kendall Payne's Web site):
After receiving a piano as a gift from her husband in
early April of 2006, Payne decided to set aside her acoustic guitar and
tickle the ivories for a season. “It’s kinda funny,” Payne recalls, “I
decided to learn piano because I wanted to have a Christmas party.
Sounds strange, but it’s true. I love singing carols and they sound
much better on piano. So everyday from April to December I would
practice ‘Joy to the World’, ‘Silent Night’, and a host of other
classics. My neighbors weren’t too happy come mid-July, but my party
guests were very impressed come December!”
Having played guitar all her life Payne began to feel that her
songwriting had grown predictable. However, the novelty of a new
instrument awoke her creativity. “I let my heart, not my head, find the
melody.” Before too long the demos for “Paper Skin” were compiled and
with a newly inspired confidence Payne headed into the studio with
producer Tim Schoenhals.
The album took approximately three weeks to record, mix, and master,
with most of the vocals and performances being recorded in just one
take. “My last two albums took the better part of a year to make. I
simply refused to do that this time,” states Payne.
The title of the album “Paper Skin” does not mislead, for it is by
far her most honest work to date, replete with universal, life-inspired
themes of love, loss, failure, spirituality, and the unrelenting hope
of the human spirit. What makes Payne's music so special and so
well-received and respected is her uncanny ability to weave life's most
commonly shared experiences into some of the most brilliant lyrics and
most moving melodies. Her music is nothing less than amazing and
nothing but apropos, it is the soundtrack for life!
As I sat in rush-hour traffic last week listening to NPR's All Things Considered with Michele Norris, I had the pleasure of listening to an interview with Author Bich Minh Nguyen (pronounced bit min new-win). Nguyen discussed her new book Stealing Buddha's Dinner, a memoir about growing up in America as an outsider trying to assimilate in a culture of fast foods, Rice-A-Roni and Toll House Cookies as it clashed against the Vietnamese foods and customs in the Nguyen household.
It was a thought-provoking interview that left me pondering my own ideas on how brands and products shape our culture, and it also stirred up my own memories of trying to fit in when you don't belong (or at least feeling like you don't belong).
Nguyen's use of food as symbolic parallels to her longing to assimilate in the world around her, which was predominately conservative and white in the town of Grand Rapids, Michigan, is a creative twist and look at how foods and products do shape our culture. Until this interview, I had never really given much thought about how foods influence and shape American culture, but they do. They are actually a big part of American culture.
Food is something that can bring people together, but it can also make a child stand out among peers when the foods he or she eats at home are different than those of his or her peers.
For the most part, growing up in my home was typical American fare, but it was balanced against Japanese foods such as sashimi, sukiyaki, and futomaki and inari sushi. My friends, who were mostly white, found this "exotic" food to be odd and preferred McDonald's or a Burrito Supreme from Taco Bell, or the bag of Dorito's and a Pepsi that we all had for lunch everyday down at the 7-11 store during our middle school years.
Japanese food was a differentiator back then, but now sushi is part of the American landscape. I suppose that's assimilation all in of itself. But I still have friends that think eating raw fish is somewhat disgusting. I suppose it's one of those things that you just have to grow up with, sort of like eating chicken feet or pig intestines. If you grew up with it, it's just food, but if you didn't, then it's foreign and nasty.
I can relate to Nguyen's experience on some levels, but given that I am half white, I suppose that I was a bit more assimilated when it came to foods in my home growing up. However, I do understand feeling different, and not quite fitting in. I, too, grew up in a predominately white neighborhood, but being half white and half Japanese, I supposed it allowed me to cross the line into each culture (White America and Japanese) despite never fitting in completely in either.
Growing up in the 1960s and 70s, I was the only hapa kid at my school, besides my brother that is. The kids at my school were almost all white and I clearly felt different. Sometimes it was racial slurs or actions, such as pulling their eyes to be slanted or talking with an Asian accent trying to be funny; and other times it was innocent comments or questions about Japanese culture, but either way, it made me feel different and sometimes like an outsider.
What I find interesting is how people will always notice differences before likeness. It didn't matter what group of kids I was with. I was always different. The white kids viewed me more as Japanese than white; and when I was with my Japanese friends hanging out in Japantown, I again, was different. You can't hide your race, it's printed on your face, so it was a little hard to blend in. However, times have changed over the years and assimilation and acceptance continues to improve. A few years ago I attended the Obon Festival, and I was delighted to see that there were so many hapa kids running around.
There is a bit of a duality when your home life differs from what you see in your friend's homes, on TV and in movies, be it cultural or dysfunction. As children, we are desperate to not stand out and will do anything to feed our desires to fit in.
It's funny now, because as we get older we make a shift in thinking and we love that we are unique whether it be our ethnic background or even our names. I hated my Japanese name growing up, because it was unusual and made me different. I didn’t want to be different. I wanted a name like Tammy or Lisa. I wanted a “normal” name. I didn’t have the luxury of getting to pick an “American name” like the Vietnamese immigrant children did when they arrived in America. I remember how cool I thought that was.
Now, I look back and think how silly that was. I bet many have dumped their “American names” and have returned to using only their birth names at home and in their professional lives. I love my name now. I love its uniqueness and that it represents my roots, my ancestors, and my connectedness to where I come from. Some times I think that's part of America's problem. Too many people have lost where they've come from. They don't know their roots, their ancestors, or the culture and customs in which their ancestors lived.
Instead, many Americans are held captive to the American Way of materialism, brand names, fast cars, fast food and junk food. And let's not forget our insatiable appetite for instant gratification. Buy now, pay later, which really means fall further in debt and remain enslaved to the materialistic American Way. It's sad. Because the American lifestyle is killing us in more ways than one.
Assimilation is good to a point, but not if it means giving up who you are and where you come from. Yes, if you move to a new country, you need to learn the language, customs and ways, and you need to adapt in order to survive, but in the process it’s important to hold onto your own customs and culture and also share it with others. It’s what I love about America. There are so many people from all over the world and learning about others’ cultures is what makes life so rich and beautiful.
Today marks the end of an era with the closing of the award-winning Broadway musical 
Tonight was the 
