Rachel E. Watson

I colored this drawing recently.

Listening to an episode of "Snap Judgment" on NPR this afternoon reminded me of something that's been bouncing around in my brain for a couple of years but hasn't made its way into blogpost form yet: The evolution of music consumption.

The segment I listened to was from an episode called "The Stranger," wherein a Seattle musician chronicles a snapshot of his life as a teen breaking into the emerging 80s punk scene. Along the way, he meets a mysterious kid working at his friend's dad's hotel who is able to hook them up with mixtapes of something they really crave: the latest punk music. They later find out the friend is a now-famous (also now-deceased) musician; the knowledge comes upon the narrator in a goosebump-inducing rush at the end of the segment.

You can listen to it here to find out who the musician was:



As I reflected on my own teen years after listening to this episode, I remembered what it was I've been wanting to say for awhile about music.

I'm an 80s kid. In my teen years, my friends and I learned about music through word-of-mouth. You found out what was cool when other kids shared mixtapes, or later, CDs, with you. Or, if they were musically trained, they'd play garage or basement band jam sessions at your house, you'd ask what song it was, and that's how a new band groupie would be born.

As pointed out by Nate DiMeo over at The Memory Palace podcast, in the 1800s, you'd get one shot in a lifetime to hear a particular dazzling performer, and you'd likely never get to hear that music again. In a July 2012 podcast, DiMeo tells the story of opera singer Jenny Lind, who many called "the Swedish Nightingale" because of her angelic voice. Queen Victoria herself had to wait two years before she could hear a second performance from Lind.

Yet in my lifetime, I've been lucky enough to witness the birth of the YouTube generation. It's now much easier to find out about new music, let alone be able to listen to it for free whenever I feel like it.

I've heard a lot of angst expressed over how new technology has contributed to the Death of Rock 'n' Roll and the decline of the music industry in general. And sure, while empowering, this instantaneous access can also be isolating, if you let it, and financially challenging for the artists. Another topic for another day.

What I really want to say today is I don't think those of us born in this era pause and marvel often enough at our good fortune. We live in an age when the previously unthinkable is now the possible.

I'm taking today to appreciate the gift of widely available music. And here's a sample -- nightingales in their own right:

It's time to get serious about this blog. (Photo: Free images)

I learned a thing or two about blogging during a workshop at Jot Writers' Conference last weekend. It's time to put those ideas into practice.

My main takeaway from the workshop was that, in order to find success — that is, to gain and retain readers — a blogger should be consistent in how often s/he posts, and should have a clear mission, i.e., a theme, for the blog.

With that in mind, I'd like to articulate my plan for this space going forward. This is my commitment to you, my readers:

1. I will update the blog three times per week: Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays.
2. I will write about what I know and what I like. I've done a thorough content audit of my past posts, and I'm confident the structure I have in mind will work well with my areas of interest and expertise. If you like what I like, then this will be the blog for you.

Groovy Tuesday

Fine Art Friday

The world is a colorful place. (Photo: Free images)

Storytelling Sunday

Oh, books! I love you so much. (Photo: Free images)

The Cathedral of St. Andrew in Grand Rapids.

The Evangelical Choral Society is a severely underrated musical gemster in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and you, the public, can turn that around. You'll love this choir. It's filled with heart and technical skill. As they belt out the classics, the group will twist up your music-loving guts and knock your (probably) Argyle socks off.

On Saturday, my dear husband, precious sister and I were blessed to attend the group's semi-annual public performance. This spring's concert was held at the Cathedral of St. Andrew — the Grand Rapids Catholic Diocese headquarters.

Besides being an obscenely lovely building that's about to celebrate its 140th birthday, the cathedral, as noted by music director and diocese organist Nick Palmer, who welcomed the audience on Saturday, is perfectly acoustically designed to radically majestify the beauty of choral music. That's a paraphrase.

The church often hosts community concerts, not just sacred music but also opera and whatknot, which I think is a wonderful outreach. Brava, St. Andrew's! You brothers and sisters got it. And when you got it, flaunt it.

Randall Wm. Burghart addresses the audience between songs.

Saturday's concert, led by the group's esteemed conductor and music director, Randall Wm. "Randy" Burghart, featured three works in German, one in Latin and three in English, and two outstanding sopranos: Kristen Burghart (Randy's awesome classically trained singer-chef-cool person-wife, whose voice you local folks might recognize from Opera GR performances), and Mary Lehr Dean, whom I hadn't seen perform with the group before, but found to be an impressive talent whose high notes could probably break glass. But not the glass at St. Andrew's, because it was recently reinforced.

Here is Dean singing lead soprano on the song, "God So Loved the World," by Bob Chilcott:



Wow. Chills. (Bee tee dubs, I don't admit this very often, but I cried during Dean's performance. Coddle me, mommet. Oy vey.)

The program was about evenly split between classic and modern works: Johannes Brahms, Felix Mendelssohn and Georg Schumann, balanced with Chilcott, David Cherwien and a spiritual by the late Moses Hogan.

For me, the wild card was the Latin, Holy-Thursday masterwork by Marc Antonio Ingegnieri, "Ecce Vidimus Eum," a sixteenth-century liturgical piece I hadn't heard before. I loved it. Here it is:



I'm glad Burghart invited his longtime musical collaborator Bethany Schutter, an alto singer and Hudsonville High School voice instructor, to conduct one of the songs, the spiritual by Moses Hogan, "Deep River."

This is a favorite piece for me and my fellow pianist sister, Marissa, ever since we learned to play an arrangement of it years and years ago on keys. We were delighted to hear it performed a capella. The keyboard is no match for the agonizing so-good-it-hurts bazinga of a spiritual.



The closing performance was an 11-minute, beautiful, nuanced and expertly honed rendition of Felix Mendelssohn's "Hear My Prayer," the evening's only piece with organ accompaniment, as performed by St. Andrew's Nick Palmer. His pipe organ rocks the friggin' casbah.

"Hear My Prayer" was soprano Kristen Burghart's chance to shine, and she stepped up and delivered the goods, as she invariably does.

My sister and I were particularly tickled by her expressive countenance during her solo sections. Besides her overall pleasant demeanor, it seemed from where we were sitting that she mostly kept her eyes fixed on her husband's face, not his conducting gestures or her songbook or the crowd. The eye contact, or what appeared to us was eye contact, is a sweet habit of theirs I've noticed at other ECS concerts. I imagine it communicates their years of musical togetherness and mutual affection. (Or is that my mushy heart showing?)

Watch to see if you can catch her not-so-covert glances in this stunning video of the finale, "Hear My Prayer."

Regarding the caliber of the show as a whole, I foresee the cathedral taking up a collection for roof repairs, because the music raised the rafters off their hinges and slammed them back down again. Mylanta!



Like what you heard?

The Evangelical Choral Society, a nonprofit 501(c)3 organization, performs free concerts twice yearly: once in the spring and again in the fall. The fall 2015 concert will be held the Sunday before Thanksgiving at First (Park) Congregational Church, 10 E. Park Place NE in downtown Grand Rapids.

As an added bonus, at that concert, ECS will be performing with a full orchestra. (Squee!) To learn more, visit www.ecs-gr.org, or "Like" their Facebook page.

Note: I am, as you might have noticed from my inexcusably familiar remarks, acquainted with the Burgharts, owing to our mutual Cornerstone University ties. I was not, however, in any way paid or goaded into writing this review. So when you donate your moolah on the ECS website, and please do, you need not fret that the money will be mismanaged on dubious propaganda campaigns that involve hiring this cornball reviewer. I can't however, promise not to review their music again. Because they are my kryptonite. Peace out, homies.

It's no secret I've been going through a hard time lately. I've blogged about anxiety, depression and mood disorder symptoms, and I've taken blogging breaks here and there to replenish my reserves.

What exactly was I doing during those breaks?

Well, as I mentioned in a July 15 post, one of the main things I was doing was listening to music. Not just any music, but specific types that I knew would do my brain good. I named four of them in the July 15 blog post.

Here are three more:

1. Classical music. On my Pandora station, I've been listening to Johann Sebastian Bach, Ludwig van Beethoven, Sergey Rachmaninov and Claude Debussy. In my car, I listen to Johannes Brahms and a mix of Romantic period composers from a CD I got as a graduation gift from a family friend a long time ago.

Here's my favorite Bach piece:



2. Bards. Singer-songwriters or bands with lyrics that grab hold of my brain and shake all the lies out. That's what good songwriters do. I'm thinking of Bob Dylan, Warren Zevon, Brandi Carlile, The Avett Brothers, Mumford & Sons and Ryan Montbleau.

Here's a Ryan Montbleau song, for those of you who haven't heard his songwriting:



3. Soundtracks. I kid you not, one of the best ways to rise up from a low point is through singing or humming along with Disney soundtracks or other animated film songs. Fantasia is basically all classical music. The Aladdin soundtrack is compulsively singable. And my favorite ... of all time .. is the Anastasia soundtrack, with hits like "Once Upon a December," "Learn to Do It," and "In the Dark of the Night."

Here's the album's first track, "A Rumor in St. Petersburg":



Read more of my blog posts about music here.

Today, I'm celebrating with a friend and former roommate, singer-songwriter Sarah Lamb, who last week released her debut EP, "Waiting," under the name .ara.
After graduation — during the time we were roommates — Sarah spent a few years managing bookings and tours for West Michigan bands and singing background vocals for other acts, as well as working full- and part-time day jobs.

Amos Lee

I recently came across "The Music Is You: A Tribute to John Denver," a lovely collection of cover songs by various blues, country, folk, pop, rock and soul musicians.

Amos Lee's cover of "Some Days Are Diamonds" is one of my favorite numbers on the album. The song was written and recorded in 1976 by country singer Dick Feller. But it didn't hit the Billboard charts until John Denver recorded and released it as a single in May 1981.

In his 2013 cover, Lee enfolds Feller's pensive lyrics with his soulful, bluesy voice and gentle acoustic guitar picking. He plays with the tempo and melody, transforming the song from the rollicking version Denver recorded to a more contemplative, emotionally poignant tune.

There are plenty of things to like about Feller's original piano, guitar and strings version, and about Denver's bouncy cover, but Lee's rendition stirs my guts. 

See what I mean below:



"Some Days Are Diamonds"

This is my 100th blog post. Since it's Groovy Tuesday, the day I write about music, let's travel back in time 100 years and see what music was written in the year 1914.

Craft beer and quality songs go together like the yin and the yang.

Brandi Carlile is shown flanked by her friends and bandmates, Tim and Phil Hanseroth (R-L). (Photo: Meredith Aleccia)

That's part of why I was so thrilled when those two things on my list of "top favorites ever" were paired so perfectly at the Microbrew & Music Festival in Traverse City over the weekend.

On the lush green campus of the Village at Grand Traverse Commons in Traverse City, surrounded by food trucks and beer tents, Brandi Carlile and her close-knit, talented band pulled friendly, tipsy fans into a night of joy-filled singalongs.

Her music has inspired me and guided me out of the mud of life on occasions too numerous to count, and the show on Friday -- my fourth time seeing her perform -- was just another example that she's got a song for every emotion I feel.

In that spirit, tonight I want to share a song-and-drink pairing list Brandi's music and the festival setting inspired me to "craft." It combines beer or cider served at the tents with songs played during the concert. I picked the pairings based on how the quality of the songs matches up with the flavor or description of the drinks.

1. "Keep Your Heart Young" + the Sun Cup Lemon Wheat beer from Brewery Terra Firma. I picked this beer to go with this song because they are both light-hearted and whimsical.



2. "Have You Ever" + the 45th Parallale from Brewery Ferment. Brandi opened the concert with this song, and it immediately struck me how apropos to Northern Michigan it was. Woods, starry skies and snow to boot. A day in the 45th Parallel sticks with you.



3. "Pride and Joy" + Cranberry Ginger Cider from Northern Natural Cider House. The baseline of this song is regret, but just like the flavor of a cranberry, it leaves the mind, body and heart feeling cathartically healed.

 

4. "Dreams" + Screamin' Pumpkin Ale from Griffin Claw Brewing Co. This song is a guilty pleasure. The beer is basically dessert. What more do I need to say?



5. "The Story" + Little Honey Ale from Brewery Terra Firma. This beer "tells you the story" of what I like in a brew. Heavy on the honey and coriander, light on the hops, bright and clean.

Got a pairing suggestion?

If you're a Brandi Carlile fan and a beer fan and you want to give it a shot, I'd love to hear your pairing suggestions. Leave me a comment below or share it on my Facebook Community page.

David Bazan and the Passenger String Quartet.

On Saturday, my husband and I met up with some friends who were in town from South Bend to see a singer-songwriter perform a concert at the Ladies Literary Club here in Grand Rapids.

I'd never heard of David Bazan, a Seattle-based indie musician, but apparently he's been performing shows in town for 16 years, throughout all the stages of his career, first as frontman for Pedro the Lion, then as his solo singer-songwriter career developed.

Bazan currently is touring with the Passenger String Quartet, a neo-classical outfit of two violins, viola and cello that have backed acts such as Suzanne Vega and Macklemore & Ryan Lewis on tour. They're now on the road with Bazan, playing songs from their new album together.

The music cracked my heart open as I sat spellbound, eyes glued to the stage. Bazan's writing deals with themes of faith, doubt and bitterness. He is honest on his website about his struggles with alcoholism and his personal faith crisis from 2006 and beyond.

What I appreciate about Bazan is his unwillingness to tidily resolve these struggles in two verses and a chorus. The open-endedness in his music is heart-wrenching but resonant for me, a person for whom faith and joy do not come easily.

It's funny to note that despite its deep melancholy, his music brought me so much comfort. I felt, "Yes! This guy gets it. I'm not alone."

As he says on his website, "It's like my guts are on display in a museum, and I'm willing to keep paying admission night after night."

Here are two of the songs that struck the deepest chords for me:

"The Fleecing"

Deep green hills whose shoulders fade
Into the gray tall wet grass
Whose flesh makes fools of grazing sheep
Whose fleecing makes a fool of me

And who shall I blame for this sweet and heavy trouble?
For every stupid struggle, I don't know
I could buy you a drink, I could tell you all about it
I could tell you why I doubt it, and why I don't believe

But I can't say it like I sing it
And I can't sing it like I think it
And I can't think it like I feel it
And I don't feel a thing, oh no, I don't feel a thing

And who shall I blame for this sweet and heavy trouble?
For every stupid struggle, I don't know
I could buy you a drink, I could tell you all about it
I could tell you why I doubt it and why I don't believe it

And why I need it and what the pharisees don't see
And we'd have more drinks, we'd speak of so many things
But I don't know you and you don't know me

"Hard to Be"

You've heard the story, you know how it goes
Once upon a garden we were lovers with no clothes
Fresh from the soil we were beautiful and true
In control of our emotions 'til we ate the poison fruit

And now it's...

(chorus)
Hard to be
Hard to be
Hard to be
A decent human being

Wait just a minute
You expect me to believe
that all this misbehaving grew from one enchanted tree
And helpless to fight it we should all be satisfied
With the magical explanation for why the living die

And why it’s...

(chorus)

Childbirth is painful toil to grow our food
Ignorance made us hungry
Information made us no good
Every burden misunderstood

I swung my tassel to the left side of my cap
Knowing after graduation there would be no going back
and no congratulations from my faithful family
some of whom are already fasting to intercede for me

Because it’s...

(chorus)

A few months ago I wrote a post on my other blog about discovering my learning style. At that point I said I'd rather be deaf than blind, because I'm a visual learner.

Well, I'm still a visual learner, but in the past several months I've also discovered there's no way I could live without my hearing.

Music has been the single most influential and important factor of my existence the past few months. It's like a gateway to the soul, an outlet for expressing the feelings I couldn't possibly frame without the chords and riffs and strings, and the gentle, angry, happy or desperate strains.

Most of the songs that move me have been jazzy and soulful, or have touched some deep nerve within.

Some of them make me smile
and some have moved me to tears.

But the one thing the songs all have in common is their unfailing ability to bring me back to my Savior in awe, reminding me of the ultimate and original creative Master-- the one who gave us the ability and gifts to express ourselves musically.

Or, as in my case, if we can't sing it, we feel it terribly and wonderfully all at once. That vast and bottomless well, that spring coming from within, that cavernous space the music fills-- it is put there by our Maker. When we hear the music, it's meant to point us back to him.

There's no hyperlink for that.

Rhiannon Giddens

I was browsing through my viewing history on Amazon yesterday and discovered a new artist under the suggested purchases section.

Her name is Rhiannon Giddens, and she is an African-American, cross-genre, multi-instrumentalist musician and singer who just produced a debut solo album in February called "Tomorrow Is My Turn," after the Nina Simone song of the same title.

Her voice is ... wow. I don't think I know of anyone else recording music today with a sound quite like hers. She's got a throwback style that somehow feels fresh and new.

I'm glad T Bone Burnett agreed and helped produce her album, which is full of deftly arranged cover songs. Take a listen below to the final track on her record, which is her original song, "Angel City."

It's a gentle, memoir-like ballad that pulls on my heartstrings.

"Angel City," by Rhiannon Giddens

When I came to Angel City, I was on the run
Blinded by my own pity, I was nearly done
Stock heartbroken, bitter and poor, burdened down by sin
I fought hard to find the door, didn't know how to get in

[Chorus]
Time and time at hand, you helped me over the sand
Gently rising to be, you walked a mile with me
And I saw the sea

I am found where I was lost, I am closer to free
Heart unbound, whatever the cost, all rivers fall to the sea

[Chorus] x2


If slow and gentle ballads aren't your thing, the good news is, this album has a lot of variety of tempos and styles. I'd almost say "something for everyone," but I'll concede not everyone is going to love her voice like I do.

This is the sheet music to Rachmaninoff's "Vespers, Op. 37."

This post is about a beautiful kind of classical music I recently learned to love: sacred music, specifically vespers.

Since I was not raised in a liturgical tradition, I was unfamiliar with the concept of canonical hours, including vespers, the evening prayer, until very recently.

For the uninitiated, canonical hours are periods of prayer throughout the day.

My first exposure to the concept of vespers (thank you, YouTube) was Sergei Rachmaninoff's "All-Night Vigil, Vespers, Op. 37," written in 1915. It's an a capella composition for the Russian Orthodox Church — which, interestingly, Rachmaninoff did not attend at the time of writing — using its liturgical chants as source material for the first six movements.

Have a listen:



Isn't that beautiful? After my first hearing, I haven't been able to get those lovely sounds out of my head. Not that I want to.

The lyrics, translated below, remind me of a hymn I grew up singing: "Come Let Us Worship and Bow Down."

Here are the English words to Rachmaninoff's Vespers:

"All-Night Vigil, Vespers, Op. 37, O Come and Worship"

O come, let us worship before the Lord our Maker.
O come, let us worship and fall down
before the Lord Christ, our God and Maker.
O come, let us worship and fall down
and kneel before the Very Christ,
our God and Maker.
O come, let us worship and fall down before Him.

I was listening to a Spotify playlist called "Evening Unwind" a few weeks back, and her cover of Leonard Cohen's "Blue Alert" came on. I had never heard her voice, but I was instantly entranced. I was bewitched in a similar way by Rachael Yamagata in 2007, when I stumbled across her cover of Joni Mitchell's "River" on one of my Pandora stations.

I am always finding new truths about life, faith and creative pursuits in the music of Brandi Carlile, a Seattle-based folk rock singer-songwriter. (Photo: NPR.org)

I hopped in the car to visit a friend recently. Brandi Carlile’s “Bear Creek” album was in the CD player. The day before, I was listening to it for the first time in a few months. I said to my husband that Track 8, “I’ll Still Be There,” is a beautiful picture of friendship.

Then, while listening to it on the road to my friend Pam’s — holy waterworks — I realized something.

“I’ll Still Be There” is not just a sweet picture of human love. It also describes my relationship with the Holy Spirit. Especially lately, as I’ve emerged from a difficult season. Grief. Shame. Depression. Anxiety. I have a new appreciation for the Spirit’s role as The Comforter and Power-Giver.

To understand what I mean, listen to “I’ll Still Be There”:



I imagine this as a conversation between me and the Holy Spirit. I am talking to him and he is responding.

I tell him, “There never was a better love / to see the light of day” than his. He replies, “If the world should let you down / if the sky should fall and never make a sound,” he’ll be there.

We are both brokenhearted. The world let us down. I am brokenhearted by my suffering, yours and ours.

He is brokenhearted because he never wanted us to suffer. It was a known but not wished-for consequence of giving humanity free will. He wouldn’t take free will back, but our pain breaks his heart.

Otherwise, why would he say this through the Apostle Paul?

“In the same way, the Spirit himself helps us in our weaknesses. … (He) intercedes for us through wordless groans.” (Romans 8:26)

Wordless groans. That sounds intense. Does the Spirit of God care for me so much he would put himself through the pain of wordless groans on my behalf?

I am forced to conclude he does. All the evidence in my life points to it. And Scripture backs me up.

I am like King David in the Old Testament. I say to God,

“Have mercy on me, Lord, for I am faint; heal me, Lord, for my bones are in agony.” (Psalm 6:2)

I discovered a delightful singer-songwriter prodigy on Spotify the other day. You might have heard his ad that plays on stations similar to his. If not, I'd like to share him with you.

His name is Jacob Whitesides; he's a young Tennessean. He's got a voice like John Legend meets Jack Johnson meets a less-annoying version of John Mayer.

When I called him a prodigy above, I was serious.

Whitesides taught himself how to sing and play guitar at the age of 13 — quite early in the context of modern lifespans. Prodigies in Mozart's day blossomed at 4 and lived to be 40, if they were lucky. (Mozart wasn't lucky.)

Today's Easter message at my church, Ada Bible, was one of the best I've heard our lead teaching pastor, Jeff Manion, preach since I started attending there five years ago.

You can watch it here. Or, if you'd like the short version, read on.

"The Road to Emmaus," by Robert Zund (1877)

The Disciples on the Road to Emmaus 

Instead of a sermon on the discovery of the empty tomb, or a look at the resurrection through the eyes of one of the Twelve, Pastor Jeff's message zoomed out a bit and took a look at a conversation between two of the disciples in Jesus' outer circle, as they walked from Jerusalem to a small village called Emmaus on the Sunday of the resurrection. On that seven-mile hike, the pair were discussing Jesus' execution and their disappointment with the way things had apparently turned out.

[By saying these disciples were in the "outer circle," I mean they were more like groupies than bandmates. In other words, they weren't part of the chosen Twelve.]

These two groupies, Cleopas and another unnamed person, had believed Jesus was the one who would redeem Israel. But when Christ was crucified that Friday, it seemed to them that all of that had fallen apart. They were rudderless. Losing their faith.

But then, Jesus joined them on the road, alive, in the flesh. They were prevented from recognizing him, so he took the opportunity for a teachable moment. Luke chapter 24:17-27 has the story:

17 He asked them, “What are you discussing together as you walk along?”
They stood still, their faces downcast. 18 One of them, named Cleopas, asked him, “Are you the only one visiting Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?”
19 “What things?” he asked.
“About Jesus of Nazareth,” they replied. “He was a prophet, powerful in word and deed before God and all the people. 20 The chief priests and our rulers handed him over to be sentenced to death, and they crucified him. ...
25 He said to them, “How foolish you are, and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken! 26 Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?” 27 And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.

After this, they invited him to dinner in the village. As he gave thanks for the meal, the two disciples finally recognized him. Just like that, he vanished. They were so excited, they trekked all the way back to Jerusalem in the dark to tell the other disciples he had risen from the dead.

What's amazing to me about this story is that Jesus cared so much about these two that he took the time to personally explain everything they were so slow to see — all that the Scriptures had foretold but that they had either misinterpreted or forgotten. And, in so doing, he helped them regain their moorings.

Lost and Found 

A.N. Wilson

The existence of language is one of the many phenomena — of which love and music are the two strongest — which suggest that human beings are very much more than collections of meat. They convince me that we are spiritual beings, and that the religion of the incarnation, asserting that God made humanity in His image, and continually restores humanity in His image, is simply true. As a working blueprint for life, as a template against which to measure experience, it fits.

I can't think of a better truth to reflect upon this Easter evening.

That, and the unparalleled beauty of Bach, some of the most stunning and spiritual music you'll ever hear:

The Avett Brothers' 2007 album, "Emotionalism," was made for people who experience anxiety.

Well, I haven't asked the band for comment, but I'm pretty sure I can read their minds in this case. ;)

Here's why I care: I also struggle with anxiety, in addition to my battle with depression that I discussed Sunday. I just received an anxiety disorder diagnosis this morning, and the doctor put me on short-term and long-term medications for it. I also plan to explore it more at my next therapy session.

This isn't really a surprise. I have always known I tend to be a worrier. I feel anxious in crowds. My skin breaks out in hives when I have to speak in front of a large group — I'm so thankful for turtleneck shirts! — and I sometimes have panic attacks when I feel overwhelmed.

Like this morning, for instance. I contacted my therapist and a good friend who also experiences anxiety, and they both recommended I see my doctor and get a prescription.

If you can relate to any of the above, and if you also happen to like folksy/bluegrass/rock music, I strongly recommend you listen to The Avett Brothers' "Emotionalism" album.

Maybe don't listen to it right in the middle of a panic attack. For that situation, I recommend hymns. Or total silence. But once you are feeling stabilized, listened to "Emotionalism."

It seems almost every song on the record extends honesty and compassion toward folks who struggle with anxiety.

One song rises to the top: "Paranoia in B♭ Major." With a humorous, swinging tempo and witty lyrics, it perfectly captures my own experience with anxiety: The stress dreams, the worry about what other people are thinking of me, the sometimes debilitating tunnel vision that threatens to beat me up.

(Don't worry, anxious readers! It hasn't beat me to this day. :)

I keep tellin' myself that it'll be fine
You can't make everybody happy all of the time
I found myself in a place that I never been
A place that I thought that I would never be
There's people looking back at me

I keep having this dream; I'm at a party
There's people throwing drinks and screaming telling me that I don't belong
Lately life's been the same I find this comfortable place
With all my friends then my friends start telling me that I've always been wrong
And I'm so tired of being wrong

There was a time I could move there was a time I could breathe
The crowded spaces filled with angry faces
It didn't once cross my mind
With paranoia on my heels; Will you love me still
when we awake and you find that the sanity has gone from my eyes?

I got secrets from you, you got secrets from me
Because you're so worried about what I'm gonna think,
Baby I'm worried, too
But if love is a game, girl, then you're gonna win
I'll spend the rest of my life bringing victory in
If you want me to

Gil Bender (Owen Wilson) roams the streets in "Midnight in Paris."

The love and beauty

The movie's thumping heartbeat, though, is neither of these two vibrant lead characters. The film's sweet and tender core is its loving homage to literature, music, art and the character of Paris. The streets are filled with it, at all hours of the day — especially after midnight. Gil discovers this in an original and thrilling plot twist pretty early on in the film.