Life is in flux BIG TIME these days. I want to keep in touch with all of my peeps. The Internet is this beautiful thing. I can move to a brand new city and still stay in easy, near-daily contact with the people I love. When I feel connected to the people in my life that matter, I am unstoppable!
I’ve always loved The Alarm. Declaration was one of my favorite albums for years. I was editing this picture last night and was loving the light in it so much. I was trying to think of a good title, and “We Are The Light” popped into my head, just because I’ve always loved that song so much. Here’s the original:
Following tangents is what I do best, so I headed to YouTube in search of a video of the song and came across the lead singer of The Alarm performing the track earlier this year. It’s wonderful. The audience does most of the singing for him. I started thinking about how I’ve always loved The Alarm, but I never really knew of many other people who did, so I posted the video on Facebook, and sure enough, lots of people piped up to say that they were long-time fans (one of the things I love about Facebook!).
And of course, to fully follow the tangent through, I looked up the chord, got out my guitar, and fumbled through the song myself. Here’s my own clunky version.
It’s a good message, I think: We are the light of our lives.
This is not a brilliant blog post. I just wanted a little corner of the web to post all three videos in order. I got a chance to see soundcheck, since the lead singer of the band, Alex (not “Edward,” oddly) is my friend Holden’s cousin. I posted the videos to TwitVid, but they landed online some time in the middle of the night, and they landed out of order! The point is how fun it was to get a chance to see them do this song earlier in the evening and then again in the space for a full house. There were better things about both performances. I do apologize for the spastic filming in the first video. I was dancing around a little too much – all over the floor, which was ALL MINE! Bwahahaha!!!
Because I was a member of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Chorus during the 1995-1996 season, I was lucky enough to be a performer in Opening Ceremonies of the Atlanta Summer Olympics. I found a video of Celine Deion singing “The Power of the Dream” on YouTube. There was a discussion about whether she was performing live or not. I knew a little bit about this, since I was there and knew just enough to be able to answer the questions the commenters were posing.
The whole experience was really cool. When you watch the video, you’ll see that I’m one of the people standing behind Ms. Deion (Hahaha!) in a choir robe on the ramp. It was quite the vantage point. At this time in the proceedings, Mohammed Ali had already lit the olympic torch, and the parade of nations was complete. It was an incredible place to be, and despite the cheesiness of the Babyface/Foster music (which we recorded in Symphony Hall about a month prior), watching this video this morning made me cry. Just because being in such a place at such a time amidst such an incredible confluence of energy was overwhelming. I love people. I love being where the action was. And on that day, in that place, that was the place to be. Watch it, and at around 2 minutes, listen and imagine how cool it all was for me.
Below the video, you’ll see my responses to the commenters queries about what was live and what was prerecorded.
OK, this is crazy, but I’m actually one of the performers in this. I sang in the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Chorus during this time. I am one of the people in a choir robe on the ramp behind Celine Deion. We prerecorded everything so that no matter what technical things went wrong, there would be something to play on air.
What I recall is that those recordings of us (the chorus) were blended with the mics that were on us in the actual stadium. For the soloists, however (Celine Deion, Jesse Norman, etc), the recordings were only in reserve for use in case the mics were failing to feed into either the stadium or to the live feed.
It all went as planned, and so I believe what you are hearing is, in fact, live Celine. What you are hearing from the orchestra and chorus is all recorded, but inside the stadium, it was both the pre-recorded stuff and the live performance.
Five days before my birthday, I wrote the following paragraph, but I never posted it. Now I have a video to share, and it seems that this would be exactly the kind of reason to go back to the blog. So here’s how I was feeling 5 days before I turned 40. Now I’m 40 and 1 day, and I feel like the same Abby I did last week. Go figure!
So I started this blog over 5 years ago when I was living in Memphis. I had just moved away from all my friends and wanted to keep in touch. It’s been a wonderful thing for me – having a place to share all the things that have meant something to me. On Sunday, I will turn 40. To me, blogging has been the stable force amidst so much instability: moves, relationships, jobs. And today, at age 39, 11 months, and about 25 days, I feel like I may finally be experiencing some stability. I have a private practice in a lovely building in downtown Raleigh. I have a 3-minute (on foot) commute to my apartment. It’s in this historic neighborhood – so pretty, and it has a great vibe. I’ve got a great boyfriend who loves me, challenges me, and is pretty much more fun than anyone I’ve ever met. Even though I lost Maggie this summer, I’ve got my hilarious Jeep, who (despite forgetting I’ve fed her within about 2 minutes) is an utter delight. Do I still need this blog? I don’t imagine I’ll shut it down, because here, people have me in their feed readers, and if I DO have something to say, this seems a fairly good place to stay it. But life has changed in the past 5 years for me, and a slightly more private online environment (like Facebook) seems a better place to share the “bloggy” topics I used to share here all the time. If you’re still reading, then thanks! Stay signed up, but don’t hold your breath. If you want to see me doing my thing, the better place to check is always Flickr. My photostream is how I communicate to the world now. I tend to save my writing for reports. But like I said, if I have something to say, I’ll be back around. As with most things, my output comes in waves, and right now, it’s ebb-time!
One more follow-up thought: I have some wonderful people in my life. Jake’s planning and generosity this weekend knocked me off my feet. Shannon and Brian are awesome as always (and not just because of Ham Dip, Beer, and DJing). My friends who came are awesome. Lalitree made me Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies. Pamela gave me the prettiest necklace and took a buzillion awesome pictures. Holden gave me a fun quad camera – the REAL kind that uses film. Robert and Elise got a babysitter and made the trek from Durham. Jake’s parents, Nancy and Barry, opened up their home and put on the charm. I could go on and on, but the more I go on, the more I need to talk about every single guest, and I’m sure you’re already bored by now! I am a lucky, lucky woman!
