I don't want to wait by Paula Cole

photo taken from Amazon

It was because of the teenage series Dawson's Creek that I found out about my role model Paula Cole. "I don't want to wait" did not only become the hymn of my favourite series, but soon also my obsession. I was covering that song and it was part of many gigs I have been doing in my early music "career". Still today, people call me up, saying: "Hey, I just listened to 'I don't want to wait' by Paula Cole on the radio and I could not help but think of you. So how are you doing?"

The song is best known as the opening theme of the teenage series Dawsons’s Creek. Thanks to this the second release of the Album This Fire became a #11 pop hit single in 1997.

The text is a homage to carpe diem. The message is to live in the present and not in the past. You should not look back as life is too short to live in the past and think about every step you take.

"I don't want to wait" starts with the singer’s appeal to “open up your morning light and say a little prayer” for her. The use of piano chords makes the beginning very gentle.

The mood of the song then changes, when the drums start to play a forward pushing rhythm. Paula Cole paints a picture of a woman in 1944, waiting for her husband to come home from the front. She is using a monotonous melody to keep the verse in a story-telling style.

This then leads to the chorus that has a carpe diem theme: “I don’t want to wait, for our lives to be over.” To emphasize the change, the singer uses her head-voice, which shows more emotions than the verse.

The second verse is coming back to the illustration, telling the listener what happens when people wait: The man has returned from war – as a grandfather- , but the war still lives inside him, which makes it so hard “to be gentle and warm”. The chorus starts off again, telling you that you are better off not waiting.

Suddenly the mood changes completely and the use of blue notes portrays anger. That is typical of Paula Cole, as she is not afraid to sing “badly” to show her emotions. Paula Cole’s music is sometimes not nice and gentle, but hard and ugly, because her music always goes with the lyrics.

Her music is often not easy to listen to. Especially her newest album is more jazzy and a bit twisted. This makes her work really arty, which is probably why that artist is only known as the woman who wrote the Dawson's creek theme.

"I don't want to wait" is an exception. Apart from the few blue notes and the anger in the middle of the song, the melody is simple and it is easy to listen to. The art here lies more in the lyrics and the structure of the song. It might be one of Paula's easiest songs, but the structure is brilliantly thought-out.

The music video is sophisticated as well. It features Paula Cole as the story-teller in the beginning and then continues showing her in different times with different men. All men die. Pictured as an immortal creature, the protagonist has enough authority to give the advise to seize the day to their listeners as she has lost so many loved ones. She experienced that everthing has to come to an end and knows about the importance to live a life, instead of thinking about it.

Buskers: Breakfast for dog-eat-dog society

photo by Daily Mail

Tom Jones attracted hundreds of people while busking on London's South Bank for charity last Wednesday. His performance, consisting of a medley of his own songs as well as some covers, thrilled a huge crowd that was trying to make the best pictures of the 68-year-old singer. One man even climbed on a tree to get a better look at him, AFP revealed. Some members of the crowd supported him with backing vocals. Why isn’t it always like that? Why do you have to be a Tom Jones to attract such a huge and impressed crowd when busking?

Society is looking down on buskers. The stereotype is that they are unemployed, beggars or homeless. Some people refuse to give them money as they think the buskers will spend it on drugs. Other people heckle them or steal their money.

The Independent’s journalist Robert Hanks put it this way: “Traditionally, busking has been the province of toothless old men with penny-whistles and annoying students trying to sound like Bob Dylan and succeeding all too well.”

Other people complain about the noise, saying it is distracting them from their work in the office. Authorities are mad at buskers because they think the music will be even heard in nearby houses and churches. I am occasionally busking in my home town Cottbus in Germany and I have to face all these prejudices. Some people even go one step further saying that I should not beg for money since my mother is driving a BMW and my father a Mercedes.

But I dont busk for money. I don’t think many people do. I don’t even keep the money. Everything that I am earning from playing cover songs on the street is given to charity. But that doesn’t mean I don’t get anything out of it. It makes me happy to hear passers-by saying “she’s got a wonderful voice” when I am singing “Everybody hurts” by R.E.M. The best gift I can get from a kid that I have not seen before is a smile when I play the first chords of “Animal Instinct” by The Cranberries. I am amazed by those businessmen, who have been rushing to get back to the office but stopped to hear me sing and play “Kiss me” by Sixpence Non The Richer. These workaholics, who try to forget their loneliness by spending their life in the office, touch me when they take a break to listen to a song that reminds them of their ex-wives. It makes me laugh when bicyclists nearly drive into lampposts because they get distracted by me.

Buskers put passers-by in the good mood and encourage them to forget about their busy and miserable lives for a few minutes. What they might get back is much more valuable than money. They get back feedback, a smile and the knowledge that they made someone feel good for a short while. I feel sorry for those people who have prejudices against busking and complain about the noise. They obviously lack the ability to switch off their grumpiness. They are just miserable.

People in England seem to appreciate the art of busking much more. A BBC audio shows people’s views on busking. Passers-by say busking would “brighten up the place”, “work for tourists” and “get a nice atmosphere”, as long as it is not “too much in-your-face”.

In England buskers have to go to an audition to be allowed to busk on the underground or on the street. The quality of busking music is therefore much better than the one you can hear in Germany as everyone is allowed to busk everywhere for up to 30 minutes. That is probably why Britons appreciate this art more.

Even though the public opinion about buskers is slightly more positive in England, it doesn’t mean buskers have more importance in their lives. Tim Rutherford Johnson said in his post "Busking Bell" his blog "Rambler":

“Whenever I’m on the Underground, it’s usually because I have to be somewhere, by a certain time. That’s what I’m doing: buskers are great, and I often enjoy them, but it would take a hell of a lot more than Joshua Bell playing Bach to make me break my appointment and stop and listen for any length of time.”

But why is that so? People in England as well as Germany live in a dog-eat-dog society where everyone just minds their own business. They are staying in the office for more than twelve hours, have shorter breaks and much more work to do. Everything is getting more expensive and people just have too much to worry about: They want to please everyone, keep their jobs and own expensive cars. But what is the point in having an expensive car when you do not have time to travel? What is the point in losing yourself by trying to keep your job? What is the point pleasing everyone but yourself?

We all have to be nicer with each other. A simple smile can enhance the whole day. One minute of relaxation can improve your life. One nice word to someone else can not only make them but also you feel better.

The reason why Tom Jones attracted such a huge crowd is that those people wanted to show off by telling people they had listened to a celebrity. If he had played the same songs without being famous, they clearly wouldn’t have bothered.

Today's Society is Suicide

photo from Jac Jac's World

During the three days I spent in bed due to fever, a horrible headache and tonsilitis I was more worried about not being able to do my group blog assignment for university, screwing a presentation next Tuesday and not getting done with an essay a week before the deadline than thinking about my health. I couldn't help but wonder: Why are we always busy thinking about success when, at the end of the day, staying alive is the real success.

I only went to the doctor to get a paper for uni that says that I am ill. I'm glad I went as the doctor said I need antibiotics. Tonsilitis without a treatment with antibiotics can be dangerous for the heart. And I only thought about the stupid paper for uni.

I told my friend I could not come in to uni because of tonsilitis. She laughed at me saying, I clearly could come to uni with tonsilitis as her brother went to school for his GCSE exam with bronchitus. But, what's a GCSE worth when you are dead?

So many people go to work ill...or half dead. They work for twelve hours, get bullied and feel worse the next morning. Then they take a pill and go to work again.
Seriously, we HAVE to treat our bodies better.

I might sound like a hypocrit to some people. Here in England people call me the "beer lady" as I loved to drink two or three beers every day. I smoked for seven years and my eating behaviour was not that of a role model as well. Did you notice the tense?

I had to go through a lot to learn how horrible I am treating my body. At the beginning of this year, I had circulation problems daily, a mysterious stomach pain that no one could explain and on top of that I could not leave the house alone anymore. I was just a mess. I went to doctors nearly every day, but all they did was doing tests. Just when I started considering to take a year off from university, I had an encounter with a man who is into chinese medicine.

This chinese non-medical practitioner was able to cure me from my stomach pain and my circulation problems. He stopped drinking (at least on a daily basis) and I quit smoking. I changed my whole eating behaviour, which is not easy here in England where the food is just bad and people do not even know what spelt is. (I have to get all my health food and my tea from Germany, which is just ridiculous). Moreover, most of my problems are the result of my ongoing worries about being perfect. I always want to be the best, want to get the highest marks and feel depressed when I make mistakes. I did not realized how I damage my body with that.

Friends of mine sometimes do not eat for one day. They smoke, they drink, they take all kinds of drugs. They go out partying even though they are ill. They work all night, all weekends, because they want to earn as much money as possible and get the highest marks. One of my friends died three years ago, because he did not bother to take his antibiotics properly. He did not take his illness seriously, and made the worst mistake of his life.

Unfortunately society is like that. It is hard to relax and just listen to your body. You will be left behind by competitive society. Your rivals never rest.

When I was lying in bed on Thursday morning with fever, I thought I had made a mistake not going to university and pitching my idea for the group blog. Now I am convinced that I made the right decision. The body we have is something precious. It is the shell of our mind and we'd better not mess up with it as life can be over just like that.