Giftses!

[rachelmanija]

Thank you, coffee_and_ink, for CDs of Saiyuki Reload and Gankutsuou.

Thank you, yhlee, for the Cheerful and Melancholy mix CDs. Of all the mix tapes I've ever gotten, these were the best match yet with my musical tastes. (Although I'm still grateful for the one an ex-boyfriend made me that introduced me to The Magnetic Fields' beyond brilliant three-album set 69 Love Songs.)

I spent a long drive thinking, "Must get home and look up Yoon's set list to find out who sang that gorgeous song about the woman who maybe killed her child." Turns out it's Vienna Teng, who everyone on LJ but particularly coffee_and_ink has been recommending for quite some time. The song is "My Medea," and the other song by her, "Harbor," is also lovely.

Curiously, although I loved the song selections themselves, I wouldn't necessarily have tagged the same ones as "cheerful" or "melancholy." "The Rising of the Moon," although certainly rousing, always seems melancholy to me because I associate it with doomed men dying bravely, and since I can't understand enough Japanese to catch the lyrics of some songs beyond "dream," "I love you," "my heart," etc, the up-tempo ones mostly sounded cheerful to me no matter what CD they were on. That's not a complaint! Just an observation.

(I had a similar Japanese experience when my ex-boyfriend Alejandro was recently showing me video clips of a Japanese theatre director speaking in Japanese. To me, he sounded like this: "...Isn't it? ...Humans/humanity... ...Basic techniques... ...strength/power... ...Here... ...New... ...Fine arts... Isn't it? ...the strength/power of humans/humanity... ...Beautiful and fabulous.")

ETA: I knew I'd forgotten something, not that anyone is actually reading this on this Night of the Living Livejournal. Thank you, Yoon, for Wren's Quest, which I finished with great pleasure last night, and Wren's War, which isn't going to survive the Christmas weekend unread. And thank you, sartorias, for writing the charming Wren books. And thank you, sdn, for reprinting them so I could finally find out what happened after Wren to the Rescue.

And thank you, lnhammer, for the Philip K. Dick book.

Comments

[yhlee.livejournal.com]

mrissa said I had a weird definition of "melancholy," so it's all good. I think it really tends to come down to major and minor key, although now I have to go relisten to my own dang mixes to see if that is actually true. Maybe I should have called them Arbitrary Mix #1 and Arbitrary Mix #2? ^_^

I think I also should have explained to people that I almost never hear/process lyrics when listening to music unless they're very clearly repeated. This explains why I can listen to certain kinds of country without feeling any pain. *grin* Anyway, glad the loot arrived for you! Hee.

[larryhammer]

De nada. Haven't gotten to the Swan Wing thingy yet, and forgot to bring it to Santa Fe.

I adore "Harbor."

---L.

[penmage.livejournal.com]

I was similarly thrilled at the reprinting of the Wren books. Wren to the Rescue is an old childhood favorite of mine, and I had been waiting an awfully long time to get to read the sequals.