Everything is Illuminated

Once in a while you catch a glimpse of something. Maybe an idea you’re working on. A game you’re learning. A story you’re writing. A thing you’re craving. An emptiness you need to fulfill. A collection you’re amassing. A life you’re living. In that glimpse you realize you fully understand what it is that you’re after. Everything makes sense and all is good.

I get those moments every so often. The night before last I actually had it a few times while playing poker. It’s when you know exactly what another player is holding. It gives you a feeling of power because you know what you can get away with and what you can’t. I would like to get to the point where I’m right about such things at least 90% of the time. Right now, I’d say I’m close within 50% of the time and spot on about 30% of the time. I’m getting better at it. The ultimate player that is capable of reading other players and knowing exactly what they have is Daniel Negreanu. It’s facinating to watch him play.

Then there’s the moments when you’re a musician and you’re playing your instrument and something just clicks. Maybe it’s something you’ve been working on for a long time, or maybe a short time. All of a sudden it doesn’t matter anymore because you can do what you were thinking. Or if you’re learning someone else’s playing and songs. It’s a real joy when you can end up playing it with very little effort to learn. Sometimes I’m able to pick up a song in a matter of minutes. Sometimes it takes hours. I think most of that stems from whether I can understand someone else’s song structure or not. The technical part of playing something isn’t the hard part. But keeping it straight in the head, playing and singing at the same time, while being entertaining – that’s a trick. I’ve come across very few songs where I could just pick up and play like it was nothing. That’s one thing I like about music, the challange.

The other night I rented Everything is Illuminated. It’s a quirky movie starring Elijah Wood. It in he plays a young man from the US who collects the most random stuff that relates to moments in his and his family’s life. What he does is take a trip to a small part of Russia to find something or someone that was important to his grandparents, shortly after his grandmother dies. He’s a fish out of water in the US and even moreso in the Ukraine. Over the course of his journey he finds out the backstory to a large chunk of his family’s past. In addition he learns about himself, overcomes a phobia, and expands his horizon.

The characters are insanely great. The story is intriguing, and I do recommend it. Today’s song is one such song that could have very easily been in the soundtrack of Everything Is Illuminated. I imagine it is perfect for his scene near the river towards the end of the movie. The melody is fairly haunting and the moment during that part of movie was exactly that, haunting. It is intercut with scenes of the older characters during World War II. When Jewish people were executed for their faith. Not exactly a happy moment, but there was a shining moment that I won’t give away.

The movie is touching, very much like this song is touching. There’s a lot of emotion being eeked out on screen. Much of it is funny. Some of it is sad. Some of it is unbelieveable. It’s a roller-coster and this song very much feels like that. So while i’m not an expert in this style/genre, I can say that it’s a very worthwhile song and I belive you need to explore the concept of helping someone find themselves which in turns helps out today’s blog choice. The album itself is a mix of this style and that. I think you ought to get the song, at the very least get the CD.