Gaga oooh lala

On Sunday night, BBC3 showed a live Lady Gaga performance from their Radio 1-sponsored One Big Weekend festival. As I don't see Gaga gracing Inverness with her jams anytime soon, I watched. And was entranced.

See, I quite like Gaga. There. It's public now.

When she dropped her first single that soon became required music at every store in greater Scotland I didn't rate her beyond a poptart Madonna wannabe. But then I read some interviews where she gave props to many musicians I admire - including jazz and blues greats - and started getting press for her weird and wonderful costumes (love the bubble dress/bubble perspex piano). What she lacks in vocal prowess she makes up for in piano skills - she can rock the ivories in 2" fingernails. She inspires positivity in nontraditional communities, and she donates her time and cash to gay rights organizations and people who make sure kids get to experience music despite their lack of school music classes. Indeed, she gave a great shout-out to the band and choir geeks in her performance on Sunday - take that, cheerleaders!

I've been a pop music junkie all my life. I like the simplicity of a well-written pop song. I like that sudden realization that I've been unconsciously moving to a beat. Gaga writes good pop. The soaring chorus of "Poker Face" is delicious. Some of her songs irritatingly stick in the brain for hours. But that's not why I like her.

She's interesting. She's outspoken. She's creative. She has become an icon in a very short space of time - even my dad knows who she is. The misfits of the world have embraced her as their own, and she has revelled in their love. She's a huge force for the LGBT community in America and around the world and is on the list of Forbes' World's Most Powerful Women. Her achievements should be celebrated.

Oh, and she's 25. It must be so tiring to be Gaga.

Yes, the Haus of Gaga's ethos is to attract attention, and Gaga admits she wants to singlehandedly change the face of pop music. I think she already has. I delight in her bizarreness. So yeah, I quite like Gaga. My intellectual mates might grill me for it, but I think she serves a purpose - to entertain.

of Hadley Hemingway

I know he treated women atrociously; I know he was a drunk; I know he was depressed enough to shoot himself in the head. I also know that growing up in Wichita, I knew Hemingway as a guy who worked for the Kansas City Star - practically makes him family - and he was a guy who escaped to Paris and wrote beautiful stories. After countless book reports on the guy, and knowing that his first wife was crucial to developing his writing style, I decided that if I ever had a little girl, I'd name her Hadley (after Hemingway's enigmatic first wife) and if I had a second, she'd be called Brett (after Miss Ashley, of course). 

Hadley is big news now, as a book called The Paris Wife has just been released. Reviews have been mixed; the Times wasn't so great, NPR was suitably noncommittal, but my favorite review was written by one of my favorite Guardian writers, Hadley Freeman. I'd always wondered if she was named for Mrs. Hemingway - Freeman confirms this: I was not named after someone, I was named after someone's wife. A Wag, in other words, with a name that makes me sound like an investment bank, and not even an investment bank wants to sound like one these days.  But she loved it; since I read Hadley often, and trust we have similar temperaments, I'll read it.

I'd already chosen this as a blog topic today when I heard Mary Chapin Carpenter on Radio Scotland this afternoon. She was talking about her new record, which includes a song called Mrs. Hemingway (hear it here). It's a heartbreaking song, gentle and rich in story. They played it and the lyrics are exactly how I imagined their lives were:

Living in Paris, in attics and garrets 
Where the coal merchants climb every stair
The dance hall next door is filled with sailors and whores
And the music floats up through the air
There's Sancerre and oysters, and Notre Dame's cloisters
And time with it's unerring aim
For now we can say we were lucky most days
And throw a rose into the Seine

There's something quite beautiful about this woman, who died in 1979, having a little renaissance in 2011. 

You are the music while the music lasts. - TS Eliot

Saw the glorious Mumford and Sons on Tuesday night. This was rather amazing for numerous reasons, not least that Inverness ain't exactly the hot spot for Grammy-calibre artists. First, I got up at 5:30am to stand in line - people had camped! - and I was still ticket number 361. How cool to limit tickets to 2 per person, £20 each, and no internet or phone sales? Old school, these guys - were they even born before the internet existed? Staging was simple: hanging lights and instruments. That's the light board in the photo - I actually *saw* them thanks to a step behind the lighting board box - this is amazing as my 5'1" self usually gets to see armpits and breasts at shows. Highlights were the keyboardist playing so hard that his keyboard shuffled and slid along the stage, the banjo and dobro player on his back with legs in the air like any good bluegrass player, and the guys switching instruments throughout. It's so refreshing to hear a band actually play, actually sing harmonies, and actually have a blast doing it - these guys are the real deal. For one night, Inverness felt like the center of the world.

M and I are rediscovering music after buying our new car - the poor Polo's stereo system was akin to a late-80s ghettoblaster - and one of our faves is Elbow. Their show with the BBC Concert Orchestra is stunning, and their new record Build a Rocket, Boys!, which came out this week, is fantastic. Great sweeping melodies and pretty instrumentals and lovely, soothing vocals. Delicious. Am also rocking Ellie Goulding and Tinie Tempah, who is the most articulate rapper I've ever heard interviewed.

So, apparently Spotify is heading to America. This is brilliant, as it's a dream music streaming service that is also available via 3G on the iPhone for £10 or £5 per month - or free if you can handle the short ads between every 3 songs. You can share playlists with friends so there's a social networking element, and they've got 10 million tracks available. I can remember twice that I didn't find what I wanted to hear - one was the new Eminem record when it came out, (now available) and Adele's new record isn't on there yet - though her singles are. Good stuff.

Man must shape his tools lest they shape him. - Arthur Miller

I love this image by Matt Leyen. My friend Alex has spent the past few weeks in Scotland and our conversations often turn to the parallels between composing music and writing. We both approach composition in a similar way; we get an idea, twist it on its head, then see what happens. With longer pieces, we both like to consider the whole, but not too much, at the risk of losing spontaneity. And we spoke of the solitude required, the self-reliance and gentle ego that is essential to create.


We also both need tools. On a chilly evening a few weeks ago, our iMac briefly became a studio, with Matt on the Uilleann bagpipes, Alex on bodhrán, and our friend Melody on melody, and GarageBand - and in about an hour, we had a single. Wow.


The tools is the difficult part for me. As we pack up the house, bit by bit, I've had to let go of the tools that get me through the day - books on technique, Style Guides, Indesign help books, other people's novels that I read to get my head back in the flow of words. Come June and all I'll have is a laptop. It's cathartic to do without.

Fred Morrison

Monday night we made the 2-hour trek south to Blair Castle to see Fred Morrison. Fred's a piper. That holds a lot of weight in our household.

Fred's not just a piper. He's a genius at the pipes. He plays various types of bagpipes and has invented his own. He can get a tiny hall rocking in 10 seconds. His fingers fly, his body rocks back and forth, and he plays with the most serene, joyful smile on his face. He is beautiful to watch.

It is inspiring to see someone who is completely happy in the moment.

In light of the NaNoWriMo project that's happening, I wonder if those participating are happy in their moment. Do writers consider the act of writing, of being 'in the zone' and churning words out, their performance? Or is it only piles of words until someone else reads them? Is it the joy of the process that keeps writers going, or the accolades after the work is finished?