Prior to this, my main exposure to the musical had been Hawk, who would burst into songs like “The Internet Is for Porn” with startling regularity and in the most mixed of companies. Just one of the many things I love about him. So I had a funny mixed feeling of missing Hawk intensely while appreciating the growing familiarity and affection I have for the friends we accompanied to the show.

I took a moment to steep in that feeling. It’s not often that I get to see the layers of emotion as they are happening. Usually I am bowled over by it and left wondering what the hell happened hours later.

If you have a chance to see “Avenue Q” I cannot recommend it highly enough. The performers were outstanding, and the music and lyrics are clever and poignant. I laughed so hard my face hurt, and maybe got a little misty once or twice too. There was fur in my eye.

Crossing the street is still like walking in a dream. I look the wrong way first. Listening to music is not an option when I can’t even get the street-crossing down, so I listen to people instead. A young woman crying to her friend, sobbing, “They’re just such a wonderful group of people!” The convenience store clerk giving me a sly smile and “hello, my darling” when I ask for change for the bus.

The city smells like corned beef, like hops, like chicory, like petrichor, like soil and soot. Buses loom so tall they block out the sun at each stop. And the sun is so coy here I keep tabs on her every moment.

The moon is getting jealous. My legs are cramped and my legs are getting jealous. My fingers are jealous of my gloves and my boots are jealous of my knees.

“Thank you very much,” says the man as I hold the café door open for him. “Thanks,” I say simultaneously, and we are in well-mannered gridlock. I try “cheers” on but it still sounds funny when I say it.

My tongue is jealous of my tongue. So I made it chicken fajitas, and it tasted like San Francisco, only darker and older and everywhere away.

Flickr’s trajectory concerns me a bit, so I am trying something new with my photos. Please bear with the changes.

So, what do you guys think of #lanadelrey?

— stripmall (@stripmall) February 8, 2012

I replied with a link to this tongue-in-cheek tweet I liked from a few weeks ago:

How about you stop writing your unreported Lana del Rey think piece right now & start writing about one of the other 10,000 worthy artists?

— Otto Von Biz Markie (@Passionweiss) January 20, 2012

Because Ryan is a measured and reasonable individual (who actually wanted opinions from his followers and wasn’t being tongue-in-cheek himself, something I mistook) he responded to that:

@cygnoir I think it’s worth writing/having an opinion on LDR since she represents line of credibility in ‘indie’ music today.4 btr or wrs.

— stripmall (@stripmall) February 8, 2012

So I replied (in tweets, consolidated here into a paragraph):

Fair enough. My opinion as a person who loves a wide variety of music is that I don’t enjoy her music or even get her “brand”. Moreover, I am turned off by what seems to me to be an incessant discussion of whether or not her brand is her real persona. I mean, of *course* it’s not her “real” persona (in the way I understand reality) because she’s marketing herself. Musicians do this all the time, yet there is an obsessive, obstinate fascination with the legitimacy of her brand *specifically*. This I do not understand, despite trying to, because @FunkyPlaid likes her music, and I want to understand why. So far, the meta-discussion of her is the meat of her existence, to me. I find her music bland and her lyrics disposable. There is the totality of my opinion on LDR. As always, I am open to learning more and changing my opinion as a result.

Then FunkyPlaid responded to both Ryan and me (also consolidated):

I could give two shits about her “brand”. It’s no less relevant nor important than David Bowie, Manson, Morrissey, etc. For me, she’s nailed the feel of what she’s trying to convey, be it genuine or manufactured. It’s art, and it’s a show. I see the real problem is that she’s gotten too buzzy too quickly, before her new album has even been released.

In response to this portion of the conversation, I replied:

@FunkyPlaid @stripmall I think that is the crux of it: I have a very hard time separating musician from marketing. Except OK Go. :)

— Halsted M. Bernard (@cygnoir) February 8, 2012

Ed. note: I love OK Go videos yet cannot stand their music.

Then FunkyPlaid walked into my study and the “indie” aspect of all of this was brought up, which I neglected to address in my initial tweets. So here is my response to that portion (again consolidated) …

Sorry, I just realize I did not address the “indie music” aspect of your tweet. And @FunkyPlaid and I just talked about it RL … I just said to him, “I don’t see her as indie music.” And it’s true. Her marketing has exceeded an arbitrary level in my mind. I don’t know why that happened because I hadn’t thought about it before, but I see her as pop music even though I know she isn’t. So I think it is interesting to examine why that is, and the short-form is frustrating me enough that I’ll write a blog post.

And here we are.

To start, I am a casual yet enthusiastic listener of music. This means that I follow and support musicians I already know and enjoy, and I find new music from random Last.fm stations, friends’ recommendations, or The A.V. Club’s tweets. I do not actively read any music periodicals or blogs. I do not identify with a particular genre of music. I would classify my tastes as “eclectic” and I will listen to anything once.

I first heard about Lana Del Rey through FunkyPlaid. He enjoyed her music and so I looked up a few of her songs (I think via Hype Machine) and listened to them. I found the music dull and repetitive, and the lyrics disposable, as I said earlier. In short, the music did nothing for me, and so I stopped thinking about her.

Yet just a few days later, the media blitz was unavoidable. It seemed like every day someone I followed on Twitter was posting a link to an article about her brand, her persona, her rumoured plastic surgery, her impact on indie culture, etc. My friend Maura wrote one of these articles called “Lana Del Rey Takes Her Place on the Internet’s Sacrificial Altar with ‘Born to Die’”, and I generally like and respect what Maura writes, so I clicked through and read it. The video was embedded in the article, so I watched it. It bored and annoyed me, and at no time struck me as the work of an “indie” artist.

About the “indie” issue, I have the distinct pleasure of knowing a few indie musicians. These people are hard-working, talented people who spend much of their time creating and performing. In my mind, an indie musician, an indie act, an indie band, whatever, has a clear association with hard work, talent, integrity, and lack of bullshit.

This is, of course, a description that is entirely subjective. And this is the crux of my problem with writing about music: there are as many ways to use words that classify music as there are listeners. I know that when Ryan reads this, who has decades of experience not only as a musician but as a critical consumer of music, will come to it with completely different definitions of “indie” and “pop”.

On the marketing topic, I remain confused by Lana Del Rey’s brand. If it is a commentary on the America we have lost, it is a muddled and obsequious commentary — which, perhaps, is the meta-commentary that this dumbed-down commentary is the only one we are able to digest. If it is a critique of the objectification of women, it is cloaked in helpless melancholy over its own objectification, a pre-NOW pathos that caters to the male gaze instead of defying it. Emily Dunn wrote an incredibly intricate review of the “Video Games” video in response to Maura’s article above that addresses some of this. I appreciate the level of work that went into Emily’s review, yet wonder how much of this was intended by Lana Del Rey and how much is an intriguing interpretation of whitespace.

I don’t know. If I can’t determine the exact purpose of Lana Del Rey’s brand, how do I ascertain its impact on the rest of the musical landscape? If her music spoke more to (or for) me, I would spend more time attempting to answer that question. Her album has topped the charts here, so something she is doing is working for her. It isn’t working for me.

Anyway, I had an idea using the LensBaby and it didn’t work, but I ran out of time for today’s photo.

These are the little globe lights we have hanging in our bedroom fireplace.

Today FunkyPlaid and I rescued my desktop from the horrible 10.7.3 update, so it’s been a frustration-with-tools day, and likely time for sleep.

One of my earliest, fondest FunkyPlaid memories was made at Nathan and Krista’s house. We watched funny videos, told awful jokes, and laughed so hard that I thought I was going to be sick.

Not much has changed.

FunkyPlaid and I have had a lot on our minds recently, so it has been especially great to unwind and be silly with Nathan. Two days is not enough time.

Bonus photos! Delicious risotto ai funghi for lunch at Cibo e Vino:

And this Mar’s Wark gate looked like swan wings to me:

Still, a dream, a dream:

Today I was supposed to take a photo of the wacky air-traffic control tower at Edinburgh Airport when we went to pick up Nathan, but I got distracted by Nathan being here! In Edinburgh! With us!

We walked to City Café for a full Scottish breakfast, then walked home and napped. The evening was spent talking and laughing and eating lots of curry.

Now I am eavesdropping on talk of CSS and web design, and the Super Bowl is on in the background. It has been a wonderful day.

But I had nothing to worry about; my hat was the dullest of the bunch. There were so many amazing hats. If I weren’t so shy about taking strangers’ photographs, I would have captured some. Instead, I turned my cameraphone on Red Lex.

There were piles of candies on the tables, most of them familiar shapes with unfamiliar names. (“Smarties” are “Fizzers” here, for example.) These candies happen to be the perfect size for sneaking into brims of hats, hoods of jumpers, and pockets of purses while people are engaged in conversation. Hypothetically, of course.

I had a wonderful time at the party. And now, to bed, because Nathan arrives in the morning!

This one is definitely a keeper. Make it for your gluten-free and vegetarian and vegan friends — it works for all of them! And if you eat cheese, a smidgen of grated parmesan adds a nice tangy complement to the sweet and earthy flavors in this dish.

On our departure date, my mother-in-law transported all of us to the airport. She cranked the air-conditioning in her car up full-blast because I kept worrying about the sun cooking their little brains.

Why would I ever worry?

Every single day, Zen situates herself underneath the radiator near our front door and jams her little head up underneath it. We call this “cooking the brains”. She moved right before I snapped this photo tonight, but I managed to capture her in “bug” mode, on her back. Cooking the guts, I guess.