Katrina, Growing up, and Gospel

Good evening friends,

First of all... Yes, I did just blog yesterday evening, but when a girls got things to say... she's gonna say them!! Second of all, may this be your warning that I am typing this tonight in a very 'television off-melancholy music on' kind of mood and we all know what that can do to a blog! Read on, my friends, but exercise caution... for I do not know what awaits us...

After watching the relief concert and a few news reels of the happenings down south... my tear-laden eyes have had about enough. I am ridden with an odd combination of helplessness and guilt. I watch the footage of people being rescued from broken attic windows and nomads walking the once populated highways. I want to do what I can to help those people... people who are inevitably exactly like me in some way or another... but I convince myself that I am barely scraping by. Ironically, I somehow find enough to support my ever increasing media habits (3 for $20 DVD's from Blockbuster are hardly "scraping by") and don't think twice before programming my TiVo to record every episode of Big Brother 6 just in case I have to go out when it airs. I, along with many of us, am pretty hypocritical when it comes to giving of what we have earned... or in my case... giving of what we have been given. I'm not really a fan of celebrities who use their status as a platform, but at least they are doing something...at least most of them (Kanye! Quit it with the victim mentality and start doing something about the problem!). They are donating their money, they are speaking out, they are giving of their time and some are giving even of themselves. You don't need a summer blockbuster or a chart-topping album to do the same. I guess what I'm saying is that I'm gonna help, at least I'm going to try, and I think if we all did the same something amazing could take place.

Ok, moving on to something else that has been on my mind. No, smartass, not being single. Lately, I've been thinking a lot about being an adult, a full-fledged "grown up". Growing up is hard, yet everyday we seem to do it a little more. Every discovery, every mistake, every triumph, they tell us how to be older. They, in so many ways, tell us so many times across the span of our childhood that, suddenly, we wake up one morning and that childhood is gone and all we are left with is our confused adult self. It's funny how when we were kids the world was a tough place. Some bully at recess stole the teatherball court or your mom didn't get you a cookie at the grocery store. Small problems for small people. Sure there were tougher times for all of us- braces, divorces, broken bones, friends move away...etc. But here, in Adultville, there's still all of that. The difference is we understand it now. We know why our parents fought and why our best friend had to move Philadelphiahia and we are content in knowing. There are car payments, rent payments, break-ups, make-ups, credit card bills...the list goes on... and our little kid-selves now have to go out and confront it all, head on.

This is terrifying, really.

I mean, I was always up for a good adventure, but by adventure I never meant trying to find a second job or sorting out relationship problems. I meant going to the creek and catching tadpoles with my toes while snaking on Chocolate Dunkeroo's. No offense or anything, but whoever invented this whole 'growing up' thing sure should have thought it all out first :) Oh well... such is life.

Ok, the last thing I want to talk about tonight is music. Not the melancholy-filled acoustic riffs I am treating myself to this evening...I want to talk about gospel music. Down-home, southern comfort gospel! There is something so soulful about it. 'Give me Jesus' sung in the thick, sorrowful voices of gospel artists can honestly bring me to my knees. It's gorgeous in it's roughness. Gospel music, to me, is beautiful tragedy wrapped up in black and white keys and smooth bass. It's the kind of music that you find yourself experiencing. You do more than just listen, you feel it and it's that kind of music that moves me. It makes me want to pick up a guitar and do all I can to make something even remotely as inspired.

In fact... that's what I will do. Moods like the one I am in now can not go to waste.

Blessings, my friends.
Tempa