1/23
i'm thankful to have gone back to doing lazy yoga, since i wasn't doing more formal yoga because i wouldn't make myself or would find an excuse not to or would say i didn't have the time and i could feel the negative effects of that absence in my body. i'm thankful that lazy yoga may not be ideal, but it is much better than no yoga at all. i'm thankful for something, which is greater than nothing even if it's less than everything. i'm thankful for the way that the phrase "practice makes perfect" is both a lie (what is perfect? is it ever possible to reach perfect?) and a truth (since practicing (and the act of practice) move us closer to some ideal state). i'm thankful to spend ten or fifteen minutes i would have otherwise dissolved in front of a screen connecting with my body. i'm thankful that even if i don't have a "perfect" session, i always finish feeling better than i did before i started. i'm thankful for warrior 3, which when i get it right makes me feel like superman, like i might actually be able to lift off the ground and fly.
i'm thankful for one change to my lazy yoga for now, which is that i'm trying only listening to music instead of podcasts, because of the thought that music can aid me in focusing inward whereas podcasts are (wonderful) distractions. i'm thankful that there is this music cue on the soundtrack for the young pope, which is a golden pastoral beautiful thing full of looped pizzicato plucks and pops, which plays in almost every episode and which i wanted to find so that i could listen to it while doing my yoga. i'm thankful that while searching to try to find the song, i found the song "shaker loops" by john adams, which i thought from the title might be it. i'm thankful to have listened to that while i did yoga in our dimly-lit bedroom on saturday night and to have been awed by its beautiful cycles of trembling, for the violins and cellos played like the wings of insects. i'm thankful for ecstatic minimalism, to have learned that it began as a piece "in which Adams tried to emulate the ripple effect of bodies of water in his music."
i'm thankful that in the finale of the young pope, they played the golden plucked thing i love so much and then it segued into another song with a voice that sounded familiar and that i realized then was andrew bird. i'm thankful for andrew bird, who i saw at one of the first concerts i ever attended, my freshman year of college, and who then blew my mind with the way that he could build walls and ceilings and floors of sound with loops of his instruments (i'm thankful for this reminiscence of his music, which gets at the essence of how "he's almost better for his mistakes" because it "demonstrates he's/we're all human" but also gets at how his shows aren't shows but opportunities to "see him make something unique happen, to do something very specific with the sound and the space, on that day, with whoever is there listening"). i'm thankful for his whistling, which is like birds and theremins and the breeze through a tree on a sunny morning.
i'm thankful to have found that the song that kept playing on the young pope is one i hadn't heard before, off of one of his earlier albums, called "logan's loop." i'm thankful that i was kind of startled when i read that, because my younger brother's name is logan and because he and his long-time girlfriend, who is now his fiancee, are getting married in the morning of the 30th of this month. i'm thankful that they specifically chose to get married that morning because after it happens, they are flying to chicago to see andrew bird, their favorite musician, perform in urbana. i'm thankful to hope that night he plays "logan's loop" and then transitions into the song that plays in the finale, "pulaski at night" (i'm thankful for this mix of the two of them over sped-up video out the back of the el as it flies through the twilight).
i'm thankful for the director of the young pope, who describes liking andrew bird because his "music features a combination between play and intelligence that I like very much. He produces intelligent pieces of music that also have a light and playful soul. And this blend is rather rare in contemporary music. Too often, unfortunately, a light piece of music is also musically insignificant." i'm thankful for things that are light but are also significant, like that song and like the young pope, which is one of the more moving and strange pieces of art that i've experienced in a long time. i'm thankful for this video i found this morning, while confirming tour dates to know when my brother is getting married, of andrew birds and jim james in his living room playing one of my all-time favorite songs, "i'm set free," which is a song that manages the trick of being holy and irreverent at the same time. i'm thankful to be set free to find a new illusion.
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