Paste
I found a wonderful magazine at Borders this weekend. Paste
offers what they call "signs of life in music and culture". It
is chocked full of articles and interviews with some of my favorite alt, indie
and Americana artists.
In an interview with Ani DiFranco, she relates an experience she has last
April. At Carnegie Hall on April 6, she was performing a solo show. The first was exactly one year early, however she says...
"It
was a completely different city. I was a completely different
person, and I felt like I was looking out at a completely different
room." 1
She then began to recite "Self
Evident", a poem she wrote following September 11.
"I started speaking and I thought, 'What the fuck am
I doing? Where do I get the right...what am I dumping on whose lap
at this moment?" As she spoke, though, the hall became
pin-drop quiet. Somewhere in the rapt audience, high in the third
balcony, someone began to sob."
This story reminds me of the importance of art in our society and culture;
that art is not only necessary to help us express ourselves to but to help us
feel emotion and sometimes help us heal ourselves. We need art to live.
A nice side note: I was talking to my friend Karla on the phone this afternoon
and telling her about my discovery of Paste. I told her "it's like
they wrote this magazine just for me." We talked for about twenty
minutes and before we hung up she said, "I just sent you an email. Be
sure to check it when you get off the phone."
When I did, I saw Karla had ordered a year's subscription of the magazine while
we were on the phone. Isn't that sweet?
1Paste - Volume 1 Issue 2
