Singers Best Quotes

So many people will tell you ”no”, and you need to find something you believe in so hard that you just smile and tell them ”watch me”. Learn to take rejection as motivation to prove people wrong. Be unstoppable. Refuse to give up, no matter what. It’s the best skill you can ever learn.

I have always, essentially, been waiting. Waiting to become something else, waiting to be that person I always thought I was on the verge of becoming, waiting for that life I thought I would have. In my head, I was always one step away. In high school, I was biding my time until I could become the college version of myself, the one my mind could see so clearly. In college, the post-college “adult” person was always looming in front of me, smarter, stronger, more organized. Then the married person, then the person I’d become when we have kids. For twenty years, literally, I have waited to become the thin version of myself, because that’s when life will really begin. And through all that waiting, here I am. My life is passing, day by day, and I am waiting for it to start. I am waiting for that time, that person, that event when my life will finally begin. I love movies about “The Big Moment” – the game or the performance or the wedding day or the record deal, the stories that split time with that key event, and everything is reframed, before it and after it, because it has changed everything. I have always wanted this movie-worthy event, something that will change everything and grab me out of this waiting game into the whirlwind in front of me. I cry and cry at these movies, because I am still waiting for my own big moment. I had visions of life as an adventure, a thing to be celebrated and experienced, but all I was doing was going to work and coming home, and that wasn’t what it looked like in the movies. John Lennon once said, “Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.” For me, life is what was happening while I was busy waiting for my big moment. I was ready for it and believed that the rest of my life would fade into the background, and that my big moment would carry me through life like a lifeboat. The Big Moment, unfortunately, is an urban myth. Some people have them, in a sense, when they win the Heisman or become the next American Idol. But even that football player or that singer is living a life made up of more than that one moment. Life is a collection of a million, billion moments, tiny little moments and choices, like a handful of luminous, glowing pearl. It takes so much time, and so much work, and those beads and moments are so small, and so much less fabulous and dramatic than the movies. But this is what I’m finding, in glimpses and flashes: this is it. This is it, in the best possible way. That thing I’m waiting for, that adventure, that move-score-worthy experience unfolding gracefully. This is it. Normal, daily life ticking by on our streets and sidewalks, in our houses and apartments, in our beds and at our dinner tables, in our dreams and prayers and fights and secrets – this pedestrian life is the most precious thing any of use will ever experience.

If experience is the best teacher, there's nothing that comes close to the experience of life.

I wrote the song 'Down to Earth' a few years ago, and i was really excited to record it for My World album. It's a huge fan favourite. So many people feel where i'm coming from. It doesn't need any spectacular stage effects in the touring show; the best thing i can do is just sing it straight from my heart. I'm not afraid to show my emotions; if you love someone, you should tell them. If you think a girl is beautiful, you should say that. Usher says some songs work best when there's a sob in the singer's voice. You gotta let that deep feeling come through. And that's how i felt about this song. Sometimes the emotion of it is enough to bring tears to my eyes.

The next chamber is full of songbirds, if I remember right. Their music is like turtleweed. It will put you to sleep if you listen to it. They sleep most of the time, so the best thing is to pass through without waking them up. If they do awaken, then you must sing loud enough to drown out their music." "Great," Han said. "Whose idea was that?" "It seemed like a good idea at the time," Crow said. "I was an excellent singer.

The wastepaper basket is the writer’s best friend.

When the others were picked up and walked home by friends or fathers or best friend’s sisters, I was the kid in a grey hoodie, walking with the poets, the singers, the thinkers, and I was not alone.

It is truly a great cosmic paradox that one of the best teachers in all of life turns out to be death. No person or situation could ever teach you as much as death has to teach you. While someone could tell you that you are not your body, death shows you. While someone could remind you of the insignificance of the things that you cling to, death takes them all away in a second. While people can teach you that men and women of all races are equal and that there is no difference between the rich and the poor, death instantly makes us all the same.

If I were an opera singer, I"d have sung you an aria. If I were an artist, I would have painted your portrait. But cooking is what I'm best at.

All men seek esteem; the best by lifting themselves, which is hard to do, the rest by shoving others down, which is much easier.

I might not be a good singer but I will praise and worship God with all my heart. I might not be the best dancer but I will dance for the Lord all the days of my life.

Quiet birds rob the universe of beautiful symphonies.

I didn't want to be a princess.' 'Really?' 'Really.' She smiled. 'Not wanting the crown means you're probably the best person to have it.

If doing the most you can for others means that you are also flourishing, then that is the best possible outcome for everyone.

Do not let anything that happens in life be important enough that you are willing to close your heart over it. When your heart starts to close just say, “No. I’m not going to close. I’m going to relax. I’m going to let this situation take place and be there with it.” Honor and respect the situation, and deal with it. By all means deal with it. Do the best you can. But deal with it with openness. Deal with it with excitement and enthusiasm. No matter what it is, just let it be the sport of the day. In time, you will forget how to close. No matter what anyone does, no matter what situation takes place, you won’t even feel the tendency to close. You will just embrace life with all your heart and soul.

I sense that you won't let the world push you into a life you don't want. Maybe I'm wrong, so let me at least say this: fight, America. You might not want to fight for the things that most others fight for, like money or notoriety, but fight all the same. Whatever it is that you want, America, go after it with all that you have in you. If you can do that, if you can keep from letting fear make you settle for second best, then I can't ask for anything more from you as a parent. Live your life. Be as happy as you can be, let go of the things that don't matter, and fight.

MOTHER – By Ted Kooser Mid April already, and the wild plums bloom at the roadside, a lacy white against the exuberant, jubilant green of new grass and the dusty, fading black of burned-out ditches. No leaves, not yet, only the delicate, star-petaled blossoms, sweet with their timeless perfume. You have been gone a month today and have missed three rains and one nightlong watch for tornadoes. I sat in the cellar from six to eight while fat spring clouds went somersaulting, rumbling east. Then it poured, a storm that walked on legs of lightning, dragging its shaggy belly over the fields. The meadowlarks are back, and the finches are turning from green to gold. Those same two geese have come to the pond again this year, honking in over the trees and splashing down. They never nest, but stay a week or two then leave. The peonies are up, the red sprouts, burning in circles like birthday candles, for this is the month of my birth, as you know, the best month to be born in, thanks to you, everything ready to burst with living. There will be no more new flannel nightshirts sewn on your old black Singer, no birthday card addressed in a shaky but businesslike hand. You asked me if I would be sad when it happened and I am sad. But the iris I moved from your house now hold in the dusty dry fists of their roots green knives and forks as if waiting for dinner, as if spring were a feast. I thank you for that. Were it not for the way you taught me to look at the world, to see the life at play in everything, I would have to be lonely forever.

Do not let anything that happens in life be important enough that you’re willing to close your heart over it. When your heart starts to close, just say, “No. I’m not going to close. I’m going to relax. I’m going to let this situation take place and be there with it.” Honor and respect the situation, and deal with it. By all means deal with it. Do the best you can. But deal with it with openness. Deal with it with excitement and enthusiasm. No matter what it is, just let it be the sport of the day. In time,

The best advice I can give a young aspiring singer is not to become an old aspiring singer.

Satire, sarcasm, and irony are always best when served with a side of truth. If Oscar Wilde were alive and on Twitter today, he’d be crucified.

SINGERS NAAIMASJIEN IS DE BESTE de beste waarom hoe kan dat wie weet alles is schijn

A or B, two options present themselves, and you choose the one that seems best at the time.

You can wake up in the morning, look forward to the day, and not worry about what will happen. Your daily life can be like a vacation. Work can be fun; family can be fun; you can just enjoy all of it. That does not mean you don’t do your best; you just have fun doing your best. Then, at night when you go to sleep, you let it all go. You just live your life without getting uptight and worrying about it. You actually live life instead of fearing or fighting it.

Exactly, I repeated myself. I believe we do it all the time. We always take up certain elements again. How can it be avoided? An actor’s voice always has the same timbre and, consequently, he repeats himself. It is the same for a singer, a painter…There are always certain things that come back, for they are part of one’s personality, of one’s style. If these things didn’t come into play, a personality would be so complex that it would become impossible to identify it. It is not my intention to repeat myself, but in my work there should certainly be references to what I have done in the past. Say what you will, but The Trial is the best film I ever made…I have never been so happy as when I made this film. (talking about directing, The Trial (1962) - from Orson Welles: Interviews (book))

Rosen explains as follows: “Hearing a succession of mediocre singers does not add up to a single outstanding performance.” In other words, talent is not a commodity you can buy in bulk and combine to reach the needed levels: There’s a premium to being the best. Therefore, if you’re in a marketplace where the consumer has access to all performers, and everyone’s q value is clear, the consumer will choose the very best.

If our best-educated citizens have no idea how to answer these basic questions, we will struggle to build a democracy that can solve the problems we face, whether they are what to do about climate change, the world’s poor, the problems of Australia’s Indigenous people, or the prospect of a future in which we can genetically modify our offspring. An education in the humanities is as valuable today as it was in Plato’s time.

What was remarkable was that associating with a computer and electronics company was the best way for a rock band to seem hip and appeal to young people. Bono later explained that not all corporate sponsorships were deals with the devil. “Let’s have a look,” he told Greg Kot, the Chicago Tribune music critic. “The ‘devil’ here is a bunch of creative minds, more creative than a lot of people in rock bands. The lead singer is Steve Jobs. These men have helped design the most beautiful art object in music culture since the electric guitar. That’s the iPod. The job of art is to chase ugliness away.

I have found that there is romance in housework: and charm in it; and whimsy and humor without end. I have found that the housewife works hard, of course–but likes it. Most people who amount to anything do work hard, at whatever their job happens to be. The housewife’s job is home-making, and she is, in fact, ‘making the best of it’; making the best of it by bringing patience and loving care to her work; sympathy and understanding to her family; making the best of it by seeing all the fun in the day’s incidents and human relationships. The housewife realizes that home-making is an investment in happiness. It pays everyone enormous dividends. There are huge compensations for the actual labor involved… There are unhappy housewives, of course. But there are unhappy stenographers and editresses and concert singers. The housewife whose songs I sing as I go about my work, is the one who likes her job (pp. 6-7). From Songs of a Housewife: Poems by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

Voluntary euthanasia occurs only when, to the best of medical knowledge, a person is suffering from an incurable and painful or extremely distressing condition. In these circumstances one cannot say that to choose to die quickly is obviously irrational.

Everyone agrees. The dead singers have the best voices. At four o'clock in the morning the dead singers have the best voices.

Hold on tight to your dream

If I could read people’s minds, I would not invade your privacy. Instead I would eavesdrop on every passerby. tattoo my arms with all the compliments, every wow she’s good looking, every I wish I was that confident. Meeting all of your ex-lovers would turn my chest and back into a masterpiece. Record every thing they should have told you every how could I have ever let her get away, every she was the best thing that ever happened to me. My legs would turn into patchwork with hatch marks for every time I wished you were still with me. It would not take a full day to cover this body with all of the nice things people didn’t think you needed to hear. If I could travel through time, I would go back to the moment before it was too late.

They were looking for a builder to construct the home they thought they wanted, but he was the architect, coming with a new plan that would give them everything they needed, but within quite a new framework. They were looking for a singer to sing the song they had been humming for a long time, but he was the composer, bringing them a new song to which the old songs they knew would form, at best, the background music. He was the king, all right, but he had come to redefine kingship itself around his own work, his own mission, his own fate.

Mystery the moon A hole in the sky A supernatural nightlight So full but often right A pair of eyes, a closin' one, A chosen child of golden sun A marble dog that chases cars To farthest reaches of the beach and far beyond into the swimming sea of stars A cosmic fish they love to kiss They're giving birth to constellation No riffs and oh, no reservation. If they should fall you get a wish or dedication May I suggest you get the best For nothing less than you and I Let's take a chance as this romance is rising over before we lose the lighting Oh bella bella please Bella you beautiful luna Oh bella do what you do Do do do do do You are an illuminating anchor Of leagues to infinite number Crashing waves and breaking thunder Tiding the ebb and flows of hunger You're dancing naked there for me You expose all memory You make the most of boundary You're the ghost of royalty imposing love You are the queen and king combining everything Intertwining like a ring around the finger of a girl I'm just a singer, you're the world All I can bring ya Is the language of a lover Bella luna, my beautiful, beautiful moon How you swoon me like no other May I suggest you get the best Of your wish may I insist That no contest for little you or smaller I A larger chance happened, all them they lie On the rise, on the brink of our lives Bella please Bella you beautiful luna Oh bella do what you do Bella luna, my beautiful, beautiful moon How you swoon me like no other, oh oh oh ((Bella Luna))

Q: Do you have any advice for upcoming writers who want to pen weird stories? A: READ, damn it. Fill your brain to the bursting point with the good stuff, starting with writers that you truly enjoy, and then work your way backward and outward, reading those writers who inspired the writers you love best. That was my path as far as Weird/Horror Fiction, starting with Lovecraft, and then working my way backward/outward on the Weird Fiction spiderweb. And don’t limit your reading. Read it all, especially non-fiction and various news outlets. You’d be surprised by how many of my story ideas were born while listening to NPR, perusing a blog, or paging through Vanity Fair. Once you have your fuel squared away, just write what you love, in whatever style and genre. You’ll never have fun being someone you’re not, so be yourself. When a singer opens their mouth, what comes out is what comes out. Also, don’t be afraid to fail, and don’t be afraid to walk away. Writing isn’t for everyone, and that’s totally fine. One doesn’t need to be a writer to enjoy being a reader and overall fan of genre or wider fiction.

Isaac Bashevis Singer, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature, wrote across many genres, including children’s books. In an essay called “Why I Write for Children,” he explained the appeal. “Children read books, not reviews,” he wrote. “They don’t give a hoot about the critics.” And: “When a book is boring, they yawn openly, without any shame or fear of authority.” Best of all—and to the relief of authors everywhere—children “don’t expect their beloved writer to redeem humanity.

There are some themes, some subjects, too large for adult fiction; they can only be dealt with adequately in a children's book. The reason for that is that in adult literary fiction, stories are there on sufferance. Other things are felt to be more important: technique, style, literary knowingness. Adult writers who deal in straightforward stories find themselves sidelined into a genre such as crime or science fiction, where no one expects literary craftsmanship. But stories are vital. Stories never fail us because, as Isaac Bashevis Singer says, "events never grow stale." There's more wisdom in a story than in volumes of philosophy. And by a story I mean not only Little Red Riding Hood and Cinderella and Jack and the Beanstalk but also the great novels of the nineteenth century, Jane Eyre, Middlemarch, Bleak House and many others: novels where the story is at the center of the writer's attention, where the plot actually matters. The present-day would-be George Eliots take up their stories as if with a pair of tongs. They're embarrassed by them. If they could write novels without stories in them, they would. Sometimes they do. But what characterizes the best of children's authors is that they're not embarrassed to tell stories. They know how important stories are, and they know, too, that if you start telling a story you've got to carry on till you get to the end. And you can't provide two ends, either, and invite the reader to choose between them. Or as in a highly praised recent adult novel I'm about to stop reading, three different beginnings. In a book for children you can't put the plot on hold while you cut artistic capers for the amusement of your sophisticated readers, because, thank God, your readers are not sophisticated. They've got more important things in mind than your dazzling skill with wordplay. They want to know what happens next.

When your heart starts to close, just say, “No. I’m not going to close. I’m going to relax. I’m going to let this situation take place and be there with it.” Honor and respect the situation, and deal with it. By all means deal with it. Do the best you can. But deal with it with openness. Deal with it with excitement and enthusiasm. No matter what it is, just let it be the sport of the day. In time, you will find that you forget how to close. No matter what anyone does, no matter what situation takes place, you won’t even feel the tendency to close. You will just embrace life with all your heart and soul. Once you’ve attained this very high state, your energy level will be phenomenal.

The singer could hardly have been drowned in a hip bath, but Mr. Garnet hoped for the best.

The waste basket is the writer's best friend.

the best brass bands and popular American and British singers the Philippines could imitate.

If there was a volcano under their feet, a Vesuvius that could erupt and bury this modern-day Pompeii at any moment, the best thing to do was dance on it.

they also all knew from experience that the best way to accomplish something considered undoable was merely to bring the right minds together.

Did you know that the human voice is the only pure instrument? That it has notes no other instrument has? It’s like being between the keys of a piano.

Furthermore, some of the best people in the country were connected with the Communist movement in some way, heroes and heroines one could admire. There was Paul Robeson, the fabulous singer-actor-athlete whose magnificent voice could fill Madison Square Garden, crying out against racial injustice, against fascism. And literary figures (weren’t Theodore Dreiser and W. E. B. DuBois Communists?),

When LA band L7 were being hit with mud balls, I watched from sidestage as badass singer Donita Sparks pulled out her tampon onstage and threw it at the audience, one of the best responses to rowdy crowd behavior I’d ever seen.

different forms. “The verbal intercourse of these raven-beings of the planet Saturn is somewhat like our own. But their way of speaking is the most beautiful I have ever heard. “It can be compared to the music of our best singers when with all their being they sing in a minor key. “And as for the quality of their relations with each other—I don’t even know how to describe it. It can be known only by existing among them and having the experience oneself. “All that can be said is that these bird-beings have hearts exactly like those of the angels nearest our Endless Maker and Creator. “They exist strictly according to the ninth commandment of our Creator: ‘Consider everything belonging to another as if it were your own, and so treat it.’ “Later, I must certainly tell you in more detail about those three-brained beings who arise and exist on the planet Saturn, since one of my real friends during the whole period of my exile in that solar system was a being of that planet, who had the exterior coating of a raven and whose name was Harharkh.

In every interview I’m asked what’s the most important quality a novelist has to have. It’s pretty obvious: talent. Now matter how much enthusiasm and effort you put into writing, if you totally lack literary talent you can forget about being a novelist. This is more of a prerequisite than a necessary quality. If you don’t have any fuel, even the best car won’t run.The problem with talent, though, is that in most cases the person involved can’t control its amount or quality. You might find the amount isn’t enough and you want to increase it, or you might try to be frugal and make it last longer, but in neither case do things work out that easily. Talent has a mind of its own and wells up when it wants to, and once it dries up, that’s it. Of course, certain poets and rock singers whose genius went out in a blaze of glory—people like Schubert and Mozart, whose dramatic early deaths turned them into legends—have a certain appeal, but for the vast majority of us this isn’t the model we follow. If I’m asked what the next most important quality is for a novelist, that’s easy too: focus—the ability to concentrate all your limited talents on whatever’s critical at the moment. Without that you can’t accomplish anything of value, while, if you can focus effectively, you’ll be able to compensate for an erratic talent or even a shortage of it. I generally concentrate on work for three or four hours every morning. I sit at my desk and focus totally on what I’m writing. I don’t see anything else, I don’t think about anything else. … After focus, the next most important thing for a novelist is, hands down, endurance. If you concentrate on writing three or four hours a day and feel tired after a week of this, you’re not going to be able to write a long work. What’s needed of the writer of fiction—at least one who hopes to write a novel—is the energy to focus every day for half a year, or a year, or two years. … Fortunately, these two disciplines—focus and endurance—are different from talent, since they can be acquired and sharpened through training. You’ll naturally learn both concentration and endurance when you sit down every day at your desk and train yourself to focus on one point. This is a lot like the training of muscles I wrote of a moment ago. You have to continually transmit the object of your focus to your entire body, and make sure it thoroughly assimilates the information necessary for you to write every single day and concentrate on the work at hand. And gradually you’ll expand the limits of what you’re able to do. Almost imperceptibly you’ll make the bar rise. This involves the same process as jogging every day to strengthen your muscles and develop a runner’s physique. Add a stimulus and keep it up. And repeat. Patience is a must in this process, but I guarantee results will come. In private correspondence the great mystery writer Raymond Chandler once confessed that even if he didn’t write anything, he made sure he sat down at his desk every single day and concentrated. I understand the purpose behind his doing this. This is the way Chandler gave himself the physical stamina a professional writer needs, quietly strengthening his willpower. This sort of daily training was indispensable to him. … Most of what I know about writing I’ve learned through running every day. These are practical, physical lessons. How much can I push myself? How much rest is appropriate—and how much is too much? How far can I take something and still keep it decent and consistent? When does it become narrow-minded and inflexible? How much should I be aware of the world outside, and how much should I focus on my inner world? To what extent should I be confident in my abilities, and when should I start doubting myself? I know that if I hadn’t become a long-distance runner when I became a novelist, my work would have been vastly different. How different? Hard to say. But something would definitely have been different.

For some we loved, the loveliest and the best That from his Vintage rolling Time hath prest, Have drunk their Cup a Round or two before, And one by one crept silently to rest. And we, that now make merry in the Room They left, and Summer dresses in new bloom Ourselves must we beneath the Couch of Earth Descend — ourselves to make a Couch — for whom? Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend, Before we too into the Dust descend; Dust into Dust, and under Dust to lie Sans Wine, sans Song, sans Singer, and — sans End!

The best work in literature is always done by those who do not depend upon it for their daily bread, and the highest form of literature, poetry, brings no wealth to the singer. For producing your best work also you will require some leisure and freedom from sordid care.

Grant glanced down at his khaki jacket. Since he’d slipped on the US Navy uniform in Agent Bounter’s office, he’d felt a confident swagger possess him. His spine lengthened, and his shoulders retracted. He should’ve been wearing this every day, not the stupid dress shirt and slacks of a lounge singer.

Tsundoku (Japanese) Buying books and not reading them; letting books pile up on shelves or floors or nightstands. My parents used to joke about making furniture out of them; instead of being coffee table books, they could be the coffee table. Ditto on nightstands, counters, roofs. When we were kids, my brother and I, teased about always reading, built a wall. Right through the middle of the neighborhood, protected ourselves with fiction and with facts. I loved the encyclopedias best; the weight of them, how my grandmother made me walk with one on my head to practice being a lady. It wasn’t until college that I built a grand stairway out of them; their glossy blue jackets looked like marble in the moonlight. I climbed it, to the top of the wall. Peering over, I found you, on the other side, alone in your bed, asleep. That was the first time you dreamed me. In your dream, you told me not to jump. But to be patient. (We were young then, it would be years before we’d meet) and then this morning, I found you in my bedroom. In your hands, How to Rope and Tie a Steer, a mug of coffee, a piece of slightly burned toast. I took The Sun Also Rises from the wall, made the first window into your heart.

I went to the room in Great Jones Street, a small crooked room, cold as a penny, looking out on warehouses, trucks and rubble. There was snow on the windowledge. Some rags and an unloved ruffled shirt of mine had been stuffed into places where the window frame was warped and cold air entered. The refrigerator was unplugged, full of record albums, tapes, and old magazines. I went to the sink and turned on both taps all the way, drawing an intermittent trickle. Least is best. I tried the radio, picking up AM only at the top of the dial, FM not at all." The industrial loft buildings along Great Jones seemed misproportioned, broad structures half as tall as they should have been, as if deprived of light by the great skyscraper ranges to the north and south." Transparanoia owns this building," he said. She wanted to be lead singer in a coke-snorting hard-rock band but was prepared to be content beating a tambourine at studio parties. Her mind was exceptional, a fact she preferred to ignore. All she desired was the brute electricity of that sound. To make the men who made it. To keep moving. To forget everything. To be that sound. That was the only tide she heeded. She wanted to exist as music does, nowhere, beyond maps of language. Opal knew almost every important figure in the business, in the culture, in the various subcultures. But she had no talent as a performer, not the slightest, and so drifted along the jet trajectories from band to band, keeping near the fervers of her love, that obliterating sound, until we met eventually in Mexico, in somebody's sister's bed, where the tiny surprise of her name, dropping like a pebble on chrome, brought our incoherent night to proper conclusion, the first of all the rest, transactions in reciprocal tourism. She was beautiful in a neutral way, emitting no light, defining herself in terms of attrition, a skinny thing, near blond, far beyond recall from the hard-edged rhythms of her life, Southwestern woman, hard to remember and forget...There was never a moment between us that did not measure the extent of our true connection. To go harder, take more, die first.

wI don’t care what they say about Aretha. She can be hiding out in her house in Detroit for years. She can go decades without taking a plane or flying off to Europe. She can cancel half her gigs and infuriate every producer and promoter in the country. She can sing all kinds of jive-ass songs that are beneath her. She can go into her diva act and turn off the world. But on any given night, when that lady sits down at the piano and gets her body and soul all over some righteous song, she’ll scare the shit out of you. And you’ll know—you’ll swear—that she’s still the best fuckin’ singer this fucked-up country has ever produced.

I don’t care what they say about Aretha,” said Billy Preston. “She can be hiding out in her house in Detroit for years. She can go decades without taking a plane or flying off to Europe. She can cancel half her gigs and infuriate every producer and promoter in the country. She can sing all kinds of jive-ass songs that are beneath her. She can go into her diva act and turn off the world. But on any given night, when that lady sits down at the piano and gets her body and soul all over some righteous song, she’ll scare the shit out of you. And you’ll know—you’ll swear—that she’s still the best fuckin’ singer this fucked-up country has ever produced.

When famous singer is following your account, When profesional photographers, CEOs, authors, and attorneys, added you into their circle, When a popular model added you as their friend, When a famous Korean actor asked you for adding him into your circle...... You're feeling wow and amazed, but the truth is you need your real friends

I was only a folk singer for about two years…. By that time, it wasn’t really folk music anymore. It was some new American phenomenon. Later, they called it singer/songwriters. Or art songs, which I liked best. Some people get nervous about that word. Art. They think it’s a pretentious word from the giddyap. To me, … the word art has never lost its vitality.

There was no such thing as abandonment, there were only people in impossible positions, people who had a best hope, or maybe only a sole hope. When the graver danger awaited, it wasn’t abandoning, it was saving. He’d been saved, he now saw. A beauty, his mother, a singer. Because of that, a terrible fate awaited—she hadn’t left him behind, she’d saved him from what was ahead.

I guess basically one wants to feel that one’s life has amounted to more than just consuming products and generating garbage. I think that one likes to look back and say that one’s done the best one can to make this a better place for others. You can look at it from this point of view: What greater motivation can there be than doing whatever one possibly can to reduce pain and suffering?

If you’re conscious, present, and paying attention, you will know what to do. The moment in front of you is talking to you. It doesn’t have to be in words. The piece of paper on the ground, the person who needs some help, whatever it is, your response becomes obvious. The deepest truth is that it doesn’t even matter what you do. What matters is where you’re coming from. What matters is your motive. If your motive is to let go of yourself and serve the moment in front of you, you are worthy of great respect. How would you like to meet somebody whose entire motive and purpose in life is to first let go of their personal blockages and then do their best to serve what’s in front of them? They can’t do wrong because their motive is pure. If the motive itself is pure and impersonal, in the end, it will spread light.

The whole day of Bel Tine would be taken up with singing and dancing and feasting, with time out for footraces, and contests in almost everything. Prizes would be given not only in archery, but for the best with the sling, and the quarterstaff. There would be contests at solving riddles and puzzles, at the rope tug, and lifting and tossing weights, prizes for the best singer, the best dancer and the best fiddle player, for the quickest to shear a sheep, even the best at bowls, and at darts.

Earlier that night, after dinner, I had sung a few folk songs for Paul. He had inquired about what I had learned during the school year and, already steeped in summer and drawing a blank, I offered a few songs I had memorized from Lan. I sang, in my best effort, a classic lullaby Lan used to sing. The song, originally performed by the famous Khanh Ly, describes a woman singing among corpses strewn across sloping leafy hills. Searching the faces of the dead, the singer asks in the song's refrain, "And which of you, which of you are my sister?

How different it could all have been … Taylor Swift was never meant to be a singer-songwriter; she was supposed to become a stockbroker. Her parents even chose her Christian name with a business path in mind. Her mother, Andrea, selected a gender-neutral name for her baby girl so that when she grew up and applied for jobs in the male-dominated finance industry no one would know if she were male or female. It was a plan that came from a loving place, but it was not one that would ever be realised. Instead, millions and millions of fans across the world would know exactly which gender Andrea’s firstborn was, without ever meeting her. In Taylor’s track ‘The Best Day’, which touchingly evokes a childhood full of wonder, she sings of her ‘excellent’ father whose ‘strength is making me stronger’. That excellent father is Scott Kingsley Swift, who studied business at the University of Delaware. He lived in the Brown residence hall. There, he made lots of friends, one of whom, Michael DiMuzio, would later cross paths with Taylor professionally. Scott graduated with a first-class degree and set about building his career in similarly impressive style. Perhaps a knack for business is in the blood: his father and grandfather also worked in finance. Scott set up his own investment-banking firm called the Swift

Honor and respect the situation, and deal with it. By all means deal with it. Do the best you can. But deal with it with openness. Deal with it with excitement and enthusiasm. No matter what it is, just let it be the sport of the day. In time, you will find that you forget how to close. No matter what anyone does, no matter what situation takes place, you won’t even feel the tendency to close. You will just embrace life with all your heart and soul. Once you’ve attained this very high state, your energy level will be phenomenal. You will have all the energy you need at all times. Just relax and open, and tremendous energy will rush up inside of you. You are only limited by your ability to stay open.

42. What is the name of her first EP? Title 43. When was her first EP released? September 9, 2014 44. What was she nominated for at the 2014 American Music Awards? New Artist of the Year 45. What was she nominated for at the 2014 MTV Europe Music Awards? Best Song with a Social Message 46. What was she nominated for at the 2014 NewNowNext Awards? Best New Female Musician 47. What was she nominated for at the 2014 Capricho Awards? Revelation International 48. What was she nominated for at the 2015 People's Choice Awards? Favorite Breakout Artist and Favorite Song 49. What was she nominated for at the 2015 Grammy Awards? Record of the Year and Song of the Year 50. Which albums of hers are self-released? I'll Sing with You and Only 17

I hope you'll make mistakes. If you make mistakes, it means you're out there doing something. I escaped from school as soon as I could, when the prospect of four more years of enforced learning before I could become the writer I wanted to be, seemed stifling. I got out into the world, I wrote, and I became a better writer the more I wrote, and I wrote some more, and nobody ever seemed to mind that I was making it all up as I went along. They just read what I wrote and they paid me for it or they didn't. The nearest thing I had, was a list I made when I was about 15, of everything I wanted to do. I wanted to write an adult novel, a children's book, a comic, a movie, record an audio-book, write an episode of Doctor Who, and so on. I didn't have a career, I just did the next thing on the list. When you start out in the arts, you have no idea what you're doing. This is great. People who know what they're doing, know the rules, and they know what is possible and what is impossible. You do not, and you should not. The rules on what is possible and impossible in the arts, were made by people who had not tested the bounds of the possible, by going beyond them, and you can. If you don't know it's impossible, it's easier to do, and because nobody's done it before, they haven't made up rules to stop anyone doing that particular thing again. That's much harder than it sounds, and sometimes, in the end, so much easier than you might imagine, because normally, there are things you have to do before you can get to the place you want to be. When you start out, you have to deal with the problems of failure. You need to be thick-skinned. The things I did because I was excited and wanted to see them exist in reality have never let me down, and I've never regretted the time I spent on any of them. If you have an idea of what you want to make, what you were put here to do, then just go and do that, whether you're a musician or a photographer, a fine artist, or a cartoonist, a writer, a dancer, singer, a designer, whatever you do, you have one thing that's unique, you have the ability to make art. For me, for so many of the people I've known, that's been a lifesaver the ultimate lifesaver. It gets you through good times, and it gets you through the other ones. The one thing that you have, that nobody else has, is you! Your voice, your mind, your story, your vision. So write and draw, and build, and play, and dance and live, as only you can. Do what only you can do best, make good art.

This unusual television moment received much international attention, as did another CNN interview in which I displayed a large map of the Middle East. I “walked” through the Arab countries from Morocco to the Indian Ocean with the open palms of my hands. Then I covered Israel with my thumb.10 For many used to seeing the map of Israel alone on a full screen, a great Israeli Goliath “oppressing” the small Palestinian David, this demonstration came as a shock. It was Israel that was David. This was the best way I could think of to convey that the Arab world was hundreds of times the size of Israel. These interviews may have been seen by some unlikely viewers. When visiting Japan that year, singer Perry Como was asked by the Japanese government how to improve Japan’s image in the United States. He suggested they hire my services.

In a seminal 1981 paper, the economist Sherwin Rosen worked out the mathematics behind these “winner-take-all” markets. One of his key insights was to explicitly model talent—labeled, innocuously, with the variable q in his formulas—as a factor with “imperfect substitution,” which Rosen explains as follows: “Hearing a succession of mediocre singers does not add up to a single outstanding performance.” In other words, talent is not a commodity you can buy in bulk and combine to reach the needed levels: There’s a premium to being the best. Therefore, if you’re in a marketplace where the consumer has access to all performers, and everyone’s q value is clear, the consumer will choose the very best. Even if the talent advantage of the best is small compared to the next rung down on the skill ladder, the superstars still win the bulk of the market.

Around that time, when the band was in Australia, I had a recurring voice problem and was advised to visit a doctor with a reputation for helping singers. The doctor had a sense that anxiety explained this constant sore throat rather than, as several of my nearest and dearest had suggested, the cheroots, the alcohol, and the talking into the small hours. It was in my interest to trust the good doctor, and because he also had such good references, I agreed to something I’d never previously agreed to. I allowed him to put me under hypnosis. Well, almost … “Imagine,” said the doctor, “a room with all your best memories around you. Be in the room. Now open the drawer. Find those memories. The best things that have ever happened to you. The affirmations. Your partner, your children, your best friends. A moment that changed your life’s direction. All the best things. Be in that room.

 I walk away, feeling Brody’s gaze on me. There’s no doubt that as soon as we get back in the car, I’m going to get it—good. Instead, Brody stays quiet while I assemble the paperwork. He may not be speaking, but he’s saying a whole lot in the silence. “Just say it,” I mumble and finally look over. “I’m not saying a word.” He raises his hands. “Clearly, you two know each other, and it ain’t from growing up here. You tell me everything, so there is no way you wouldn’t have told me you know him,” Brody pauses and leans back. “I’m not saying a word about who you may or may not have slept with recently. Even though, it’s pretty obvious.” “You know, you not saying a word took you a long time.” “It’s not like you’ve had a five-year drought since your divorce. Or that you slept with a singer/actor. Nope. I have nothing to say about that. Not a thing.” I groan. “Could you not say anything for real this time?” “Sure thing, boss. I’ll just be over here, watching Hell start to thaw.” This is not going to get any better. I’d almost rather hear the questions. This is Brody Webber. My partner, my friend, and the one person who I have enough dirt on to make his life hell if he repeats this. “Okay, fine. Yes, I slept with Eli Walsh. I was crazy and dumb. I also had about six beers, which is two over my threshold, and I was trying to be in the moment for once. Fucking Nicole and her pep talks.” Brody coughs a laugh and then recovers. “Sorry, go on.” “I swear, you better keep this to yourself. If you tell anyone . . .” I give him my best threatening face. “I mean anyone, I’ll make your life a living nightmare.” He shakes his head and laughs again. “I won’t say a word, but you had a one-night stand with one of the most famous men in the boy band atmosphere. You’re too cool for me, Heather. I don’t think we can be friends. I’m sure you and the band will be happy without me.” I huff and grab the papers. “I’m getting a new partner.” I walk back over to the car, praying this will be painless

The best way to let go of stored pockets of pain is to practice. Just as you practice scales to learn the piano or practice a sport to get good at it, so you practice letting go to learn how to do it. You start with simple things. We call these the low-hanging fruit. There are many situations each day when you create inner disturbance for absolutely no good reason. Bothering yourself about the car in front of you does no good at all. It only makes you tense and uptight. The cost-benefit analysis is one-hundred-percent cost and zero benefit. Letting go of that tendency should be easy, but it’s not. You will find that you’re in the habit of insisting and demanding that things should be the way you want, even if it’s irrational. Things are the way they are because of all the influences that made them that way. You are not going to change the weather by complaining about it. If you are wise, you will start to change your reactions to reality instead of fighting with reality. By doing so, you will change your relationship with yourself and with everything else.

Alice's Cutie Code TM Version 2.1 - Colour Expansion Pack (aka Because this stuff won’t stop being confusing and my friends are mean edition) From Red to Green, with all the colours in between (wait, okay, that rhymes, but green to red makes more sense. Dang.) From Green to Red, with all the colours in between Friend Sampling Group: Fennie, Casey, Logan, Aisha and Jocelyn Green  Friends’ Reaction: Induces a minimum amount of warm and fuzzies. If you don’t say “aw”, you’re “dead inside”  My Reaction: Sort of agree with friends minus the “dead inside” but because that’s a really awful thing to say. Puppies are a good example. So is Walter Bishop. Green-Yellow  Friends’ Reaction: A noticeable step up from Green warm and fuzzies. Transitioning from cute to slightly attractive. Acceptable crush material. “Kissing.”  My Reaction: A good dance song. Inspirational nature photos. Stuff that makes me laugh. Pairing: Madison and Allen from splash Yellow  Friends’ Reaction: Something that makes you super happy but you don’t know why. “Really pretty, but not too pretty.” Acceptable dating material. People you’d want to “bang on sight.”  My Reaction: Love songs for sure! Cookies for some reason or a really good meal. Makes me feel like it’s possible to hold sunshine, I think. Character: Maxon from the selection series. Music: Carly Rae Jepsen Yellow-Orange  Friends’ Reaction: (When asked for non-sexual examples, no one had an answer. From an objective perspective, *pushes up glasses* this is the breaking point. Answers definitely skew toward romantic or sexual after this.)  My Reaction: Something that really gets me in my feels. Also art – oil paintings of landscapes in particular. (What is with me and scenery? Maybe I should take an art class) Character: Dean Winchester. Model: Liu Wren. Orange  Friends’ Reaction: “So pretty it makes you jealous. Or gay.”  “Definitely agree about the gay part. No homo, though. There’s just some really hot dudes out there.”(Feenie’s side-eye was so intense while the others were answering this part LOLOLOLOLOL.) A really good first date with someone you’d want to see again.  My Reaction: People I would consider very beautiful. A near-perfect season finale. I’ve also cried at this level, which was interesting. o Possible tie-in to romantic feels? Not sure yet. Orange-Red  Friends’ Reaction: “When lust and love collide.” “That Japanese saying ‘koi no yokan.’ It’s kind of like love at first sight but not really. You meet someone and you know you two have a future, like someday you’ll fall in love. Just not right now.” (<-- I like this answer best, yes.) “If I really, really like a girl and I’m interested in her as a person, guess. I’d be cool if she liked the same games as me so we could play together.”  My Reaction: Something that gives me chills or has that time-stopping factor. Lots of staring. An extremely well-decorated room. Singers who have really good voices and can hit and hold superb high notes, like Whitney Houston. Model: Jasmine Tooke. Paring: Abbie and Ichabod from Sleepy Hollow o Romantic thoughts? Someday my prince (or princess, because who am I kidding?) will come? Red (aka the most controversial code)  Friends’ Reaction: “Panty-dropping levels” (<-- wtf Casey???).  “Naked girls.” ”Ryan. And ripped dudes who like to cook topless.”  “K-pop and anime girls.” (<-- Dear. God. The whole table went silent after he said that. Jocelyn was SO UNCOMFORTABLE but tried to hide it OMG it was bad. Fennie literally tried to slap some sense into him.)  My Reaction: Uncontrollable staring. Urge to touch is strong, which I must fight because not everyone is cool with that. There may even be slack-jawed drooling involved. I think that’s what would happen. I’ve never seen or experienced anything that I would give Red to.

FOLKSBIENE, an impoverished, frail Yiddish theater company in constant danger of annihilation, had outlasted all the giants. The year of Schwartz's death the little troupe moved into the Forward building, guaranteeing it a permanent home with four walls and a roof, plus heat in the winter, fans in the summer, and best of all, continuing subsidies from the newspaper and the Workmen's Circle. Sporadically, other Yiddish productions would take place in New York, but they were one-shots, musicals, and charity fund-raisers. Ensconced in their new place, Folksbiene managers claimed that theirs was the oldest continuously operating Yiddish theater in the world. As proof, all past productions were listed year by year, ranging all the way back to 1915. It was an impressive roster. Among the authors included were Sholem Aleichem, Leon Kobrin, and both Singer brothers, Israel Joshua and Isaac Bashevis; also the Russians Alexander Pushkin and Maxim Gorki; and such American authors as Theodore Dreiser, Eugene O'Neill, Sherwood Anderson, and Clifford Odets. It didn't matter how well attended those shows were, or how well acted, or the duration of their runs. The point was that the Folksbiene had survived, just as the Jewish people had survived. Together, they were the keepers of the flame. It was a very small candle in a very big city.

No,’ he says very firmly. ‘It doesn’t matter how good a drummer, singer, or trombone-mimer you are, bragging about anything is bad form. They have a mantra in the business – “Lego over ego” – and people follow it.’ He tells me that he and his fellow non-Danes have been guided towards the writings of a 1930s Danish-Norwegian author, Aksel Sandemose, for a better understanding of how best to ‘integrate’ into the workplace in Denmark. Sandemose outlines ten rules for living Danishly (otherwise known as ‘Jante’s Law’) in his novel, A Fugitive Crosses His Tracks. These, as far as Google Translate and I can make out, are: You’re not to think you are anything special You’re not to think you are as good as we are You’re not to think you are smarter than us You’re not to convince yourself that you are better than us You’re not to think you know more than us You’re not to think you are more important than us You’re not to think you are good at anything You’re not to laugh at us You’re not to think anyone cares about you You’re not to think you can teach us anything ‘Crikey, you’re not to do much round here, are you?’ ‘Oh, and there’s another, unspoken one.’ ‘Yes?’ ‘“Don’t put up with presenteeism”. If anyone plays the martyr card, staying late or working too much, they’re more likely to get a leaflet about efficiency or time management dropped on their desk than any sympathy.

Among the papyri interpreted as fragments of books once used by teachers and students, the Psalter is better represented than any other volume of Jewish or Christian canonical Scripture, strongly suggesting that the Davidic Psalter was more used and read ‘than any book of the Old Testament, perhaps more than any book of the Bible, throughout the Christian centuries in Egypt’. A recent inventory of papyrus notebooks lists eleven items for the period between the third century and the seventh inclusive, of which eight give primarily or exclusively the texts of the psalms. Narrowing the period of the third century to the fifth gives seven papyrus items of which five contain copies of psalms. These notebooks are the best guide to what the literate slaves of larger households, grammar masters and attentive parents were teaching their infants in Egypt, both Jewish and Christian, and they suggest that the psalms were a fundamental teaching text in the social circles where men and women used writing, or aspired to it for their children. That is hardly surprising, since the psalms were ideal for teaching the young in households wealthy enough to afford the luxury of an education for an offspring. An almanac of prayer and counsel for times of good and adverse fortune, the poems of the Psalter are arranged in sense-units of moderate length by virtue of the poetic form. This makes them amenable to study, including the slow process of acquiring the skills of penmanship (Pl. 29).

Despite the rise of the mental health profession, people are becoming increasingly vulnerable to depression. Why? Martin Seligman, a brilliant psychologist with no religious ax to grind, has a theory that it’s because we have replaced church, faith, and community with a tiny little unit that cannot bear the weight of meaning. That’s the self. We’re all about the self. We revolve our lives around ourselves. Ironically, the more obsessed we are with our selves, the more we neglect our souls. All of our language reflects this. If you’re empty, you need to fulfill yourself. If you’re stressed, learn how to take care of yourself. If you’re on a job interview, you have to believe in yourself. If you’re at the tattoo parlor, you must learn to express yourself. If someone dares to criticize you, you have to love yourself. If you’re not getting your own way, you have to stand up for yourself. What should you do on a date? You ought to be yourself. What if your self is a train wreck? What do you do then? Self is a stand-alone, do-it-yourself unit, while the soul reminds us we were not made for ourselves. The soul always exists before God. So soul is needed for deep art, poetry, and music. Former opera singer Scott Flaherty said it best: “I mean, when you sing you’re giving voice to your soul.” Imagine singing, “Then sings my self, my Savior God to thee,” or “Jesus, lover of my self.” Innately we know that the self is not the soul, even as we do everything we can to preserve it.

right to use Apple Corps for their record and business holdings. Alas, this did not resolve the issue of getting the Beatles onto iTunes. For that to happen, the Beatles and EMI Music, which held the rights to most of their songs, had to negotiate their own differences over how to handle the digital rights. “The Beatles all want to be on iTunes,” Jobs later recalled, “but they and EMI are like an old married couple. They hate each other but can’t get divorced. The fact that my favorite band was the last holdout from iTunes was something I very much hoped I would live to resolve.” As it turned out, he would. Bono Bono, the lead singer of U2, deeply appreciated Apple’s marketing muscle. He was confident that his Dublin-based band was still the best in the world, but in 2004 it was trying, after almost thirty years together, to reinvigorate its image. It had produced an exciting new album with a song that the band’s lead guitarist, The Edge, declared to be “the mother of all rock tunes.” Bono knew he needed to find a way to get it some traction, so he placed a call to Jobs. “I wanted something specific from Apple,” Bono recalled. “We had a song called ‘Vertigo’ that featured an aggressive guitar riff that I knew would be contagious, but only if people were exposed to it many, many times.” He was worried that the era of promoting a song through airplay on the radio was over. So Bono visited Jobs at home in Palo Alto, walked around the garden, and made an unusual pitch. Over the years U2 had spurned

Happy Shree Krishna Janmastami. Shree Krishna has 16 kalas and Ram has 12 Kalas, Ram hide 2 kalas because he killed Ravan. Buddha has 9 Kalas and Shreeom Surye Shiva has 25 Kalas. We all are one world human family even though we must tell the truth knowledge for the peaceful and better world. Name of the Kalas of Shreeom Surye Shiva 1. Kirpa – Compassion 2. Dhriti – Spiritual patience 3. Kshama – Forgiveness 4. Dandaneethi – Justice 5. Samatwa – Impartiality 6. Bhagamalini Dharma – Detachment, lordliness , righteousness , glory , beauty , omniscience. 7. Tapasya – Meditation and piritual powers 8. Jvalita – Invincibility possible 9. Samaah – Beneficience, bestower of all wealth in the world and nature. 10. Saundarjyamaya Aatma – Very beautiful soul 11. Kumaarii Sansaara – Best of miss world and Mr. world 12. Sangitajna – Best of singers 13. Neetibadi – Embodiment of honesty 14. Satyabadi – Truth itself 15. Sarvagnata – Perfect master of all intellengence. 16. Sarvaniyanta – Controller of all 17. Duhkhajihasa- Wish to avoid pain and sarrow as well as stress and axiety 18. Svasanvedana Gyaana- Understanding the noble knowledge 19. Gyaana and Achara- Knowledge and conduct 20. Nyaayyam Padani- Choosing the right and good words 21. Budhdhvaa Srishhtii - Knowing about the world 22. Guruha Samadhi- Best Guru who can lead in to the enlightenment 23. Guruha-deva-manussanam, Gurus of Devis and Devtas and existence of the world. 24. Siddhanta, Arambha-vada - The perfect for every existence, subject and object. 25. Bhaagadheya- the best fortune

Not long after I learned about Frozen, I went to see a friend of mine who works in the music industry. We sat in his living room on the Upper East Side, facing each other in easy chairs, as he worked his way through a mountain of CDs. He played “Angel,” by the reggae singer Shaggy, and then “The Joker,” by the Steve Miller Band, and told me to listen very carefully to the similarity in bass lines. He played Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love” and then Muddy Waters’s “You Need Love,” to show the extent to which Led Zeppelin had mined the blues for inspiration. He played “Twice My Age,” by Shabba Ranks and Krystal, and then the saccharine ’70s pop standard “Seasons in the Sun,” until I could hear the echoes of the second song in the first. He played “Last Christmas,” by Wham! followed by Barry Manilow’s “Can’t Smile Without You” to explain why Manilow might have been startled when he first heard that song, and then “Joanna,” by Kool and the Gang, because, in a different way, “Last Christmas” was an homage to Kool and the Gang as well. “That sound you hear in Nirvana,” my friend said at one point, “that soft and then loud kind of exploding thing, a lot of that was inspired by the Pixies. Yet Kurt Cobain” — Nirvana’s lead singer and songwriter — “was such a genius that he managed to make it his own. And ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’?” — here he was referring to perhaps the best-known Nirvana song. “That’s Boston’s ‘More Than a Feeling.’ ” He began to hum the riff of the Boston hit, and said, “The first time I heard ‘Teen Spirit,’ I said, ‘That guitar lick is from “More Than a Feeling.” ’ But it was different — it was urgent and brilliant and new.” He played another CD. It was Rod Stewart’s “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy,” a huge hit from the 1970s. The chorus has a distinctive, catchy hook — the kind of tune that millions of Americans probably hummed in the shower the year it came out. Then he put on “Taj Mahal,” by the Brazilian artist Jorge Ben Jor, which was recorded several years before the Rod Stewart song. In his twenties, my friend was a DJ at various downtown clubs, and at some point he’d become interested in world music. “I caught it back then,” he said. A small, sly smile spread across his face. The opening bars of “Taj Mahal” were very South American, a world away from what we had just listened to. And then I heard it. It was so obvious and unambiguous that I laughed out loud; virtually note for note, it was the hook from “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy.” It was possible that Rod Stewart had independently come up with that riff, because resemblance is not proof of influence. It was also possible that he’d been in Brazil, listened to some local music, and liked what he heard.

the KLF were a bunch of conceptual pop tricksters who won the hearts of their home country with stunts like recording country singer Tammy Wynette in a rap context. Performing at the prestigious BRIT awards, Extreme Noise Terror blasted the KLF hit “3 a.m. Eternal” into oblivion while the KLF sprayed the audience with machine guns preloaded with blanks. When the KLF were awarded “Best British Group” honors later that night,

When he had cancer and knew that the end was not far away, I asked him what had driven him to spend his life working for others. He replied: I guess basically one wants to feel that one's life has amounted to more than just consuming products and generating garbage. I think that one likes to look back and say that one's done the best one can to make this a better place for others. You can look at it from this point of view: what greater motivation can there be than doing whatever one possibly can to reduce pain and suffering?

Rosen explains as follows: “Hearing a succession of mediocre singers does not add up to a single outstanding performance.” In other words, talent is not a commodity you can buy in bulk and combine to reach the needed levels: There’s a premium to being the best. Therefore, if you’re in a marketplace where the consumer has access to all performers, and everyone’s q value is clear, the consumer will choose the very best. Even if the talent advantage of the best is small compared to the next rung down on the skill ladder, the superstars still win the bulk of the market.

Self is a stand-alone, do-it-yourself unit, while the soul reminds us we were not made for ourselves. The soul always exists before God. So soul is needed for deep art, poetry, and music. Former opera singer Scott Flaherty said it best: “I mean, when you sing you’re giving voice to your soul.” Imagine singing, “Then sings my self, my Savior God to thee,” or “Jesus, lover of my self.” Innately we know that the self is not the soul, even as we do everything we can

Michael Kidd, one of New York’s best choreographers, had already been working in Hollywood, but on Seven Brides he was essential, as his extremely athletic style matched the aggressive nature of the backwoodsman avatar. And, in a unique casting scheme, the brothers and brides were primarily dancers. Keel and Powell of course were singers, and, further, MGM was building Jeff Richards as a jeune premier and insisted on making him one of the brothers. A former baseball player, Richards was anything but a ballroom whiz, and Kidd had to work around him—Richards is especially awkward in “Goin’ Co’tin’,” ensconced in a chair almost throughout while Powell teaches his brothers how to dance—and, at that, MGM ended up dubbing some of the boys and girls. But Seven Brides is a dance piece in a way even the Astaire-Rogers RKOs aren’t. They dance because Astaire dances. Seven Brides dances because that’s how we understand the difference between what men want women to be (chattel) and what women want men to be (nice to them).

The reason why we can’t see our eyes moving with our own eyes is because our brains edit out the bits between the saccades—a process called saccadic suppression. Without it, we’d look at an object and it would be a blurry mess. What we perceive as vision is the director’s cut of a film, with your brain as the director, seamlessly stitching together the raw footage to make a coherent reality. Perception is the brain’s best guess at what the world actually looks like. Immense though the computing power of that fleshy mass sitting in the darkness of our skulls is, if we were to take in all the information in front of our eyes, our brains would surely explode.** Instead, our eyes sample bits and pieces of the world, and we fill in the blanks in our heads. This fact is fundamental to the way that cinema works. A film is typically 24 static images run together every second, which our brain sees as continuous fluid movement—that’s why it’s called a movie. The illusion of movement actually happens at more like 16 frames per second. At that speed, a film projection is indistinguishable from the real world, at least to us. It was the introduction of sound that set the standard of 24 frames per second with The Jazz Singer in 1927, the first film to have synchronized dialogue. The company

In the years before Stanley Kubrick became Stanley Kubrick, the man had been a photographer by trade as well as an avid student of film. He had made two small feature films, almost completely by himself, with the second, Killer’s Kiss, being the more notable and successful. It was a small film but its tone and style, especially done on a self-financed shoestring budget, caught the eye of United Artists. The best thing to come from that film was that UA told Kubrick that when he came up with something else, they’d like to take a look at it. Alexander Singer, who later

There is great freedom in not caring about authority or being great or big. We don't have to be nice to everybody, go in boring cocktail parties, or swagger while pretending to be better than we are. In fact, the best dancers don't care if they dance well, the best singers don't obsess over the right notes, and the best Christians don't care if they're the best . . . because they know they aren't. And those are the very Christians who change the world.

Give me the things that I need more often than the things I want. You see, I hope the universe brings us to our knees every time that we start begging for the sun more often than we are thankful for the rain. You see, I never want to know love without heartbreak. I want the universe to take me for my best parts and my worse ones. Just as I try to take people for theirs. You're not perfect, but I hope that we never try to be. You see, scientists say that for giant redwood trees to grow, they must first run at over 1000 degrees until their seeds gain the courage they need to release their seeds back down to the earth. This, this is for the people still burning. The rooftop dreamers, the naive believers, the late-night shower singers. You see, this is for the people with rough parts, with sandpaper in their history. The out-of-tune orchestra performers, the two-left-feet dance club goers, the poets, still trying to figure out how to rhyme. You don't need to hide. You need to let your rain shine. And yes, I said rain shine. As in let your best and worst parts be on display. Because you are not just your name. You're not just your biggest mistake or your shiniest trophy. You are a perfect story. Built up of highs and lows, lessons learned and lessons earned. and this, this is for you. When all else fails, let it remind you that you are a masterpiece of everything that we call art. You are a hot thunderstorm, a bright shadow, a cold volcano. You are every part of you.

You are capable of ceasing the absurdity of listening to the perpetual problems of your psyche. You can put an end to it. You can wake up in the morning, look forward to the day, and not worry about what will happen. Your daily life can be like a vacation. Work can be fun; family can be fun; you can just enjoy all of it. That does not mean you don’t do your best; you just have fun doing your best.

Many residents had written letters, sickened by the aftermath of the spraying. Health officials were unbowed. But Olga Huckins refused to be ignored. She sent a copy of her Boston Herald letter to her friend, Rachel Carson. Four years later, Carson published a book about it. Called Silent Spring, it became an international best seller, alerting the world to the dangers of pesticides, landing Carson on national television programs and in front of congressional hearings, winning praise from people as diverse as President John F. Kennedy, Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, and singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell, and making Carson one of the most famous and most influential women in the United States. Unfortunately,

Kazuo Ishiguro was pushing for such an expansion in his 1917 Nobel Lecture. After speaking so movingly about the effect singers have on his writing and discussing a film, amidst his literary musings and remembrances, he ended with a plea that serves well as a conclusion to this Nobel Prize section with its comments on future generations, genre and form: “… we must widen our common literary world to include many more voices from beyond our comfort zones of the elite first world cultures. We must search more energetically to discover the gems from what remain today unknown literary cultures, whether the writers live in far away countries or within our own communities. Second: we must take great care not to set too narrowly or conservatively our definitions of what constitutes good literature. The next generation will come with all sorts of new, sometimes bewildering ways to tell important and wonderful stories. We must keep our minds open to them, especially regarding genre and form, so that we can nurture and celebrate the best of them.

Kazuo Ishiguro was pushing for such an expansion in his 1917 Nobel Lecture. After speaking so movingly about the effect singers have on his writing and discussing a film, amidst his literary musings and remembrances, he ended with a plea that serves well as a conclusion to this Nobel Prize section with its comments on future generations, genre and form: “… we must widen our common literary world to include many more voices from beyond our comfort zones of the elite first world cultures. We must search more energetically to discover the gems from what remain today unknown literary cultures, whether the writers live in far away countries or within our own communities. Second: we must take great care not to set too narrowly or conservatively our definitions of what constitutes good literature. The next generation will come with all sorts of new, sometimes bewildering ways to tell important and wonderful stories. We must keep our minds open to them, especially regarding genre and form, so that we can nurture and celebrate the best of them. In a time of dangerously increasing division, we must listen. Good writing and good reading will break down barriers. We may even find a new idea, a great humane vision, around which to rally.

all I did was my very best to serve what was put in front of me and let go of what it stirred up within me.

Maar volgens Singer is de dood, of de levendige gedachte eraan, juist de beste leraar van het leven. Leven in de wetenschap dat de dood realistisch is, kan de sleutel zijn tot een gelukkig leven. Er

My experiment with surrender had taught me to always be present in the current moment and do my best to not allow my personal preferences to make decisions for me.

Some years ago an LA rock singer from the same scream and raji’s era as JA who has been friends with all of them forever told me that he and another lead singer of a stadium band of the same vintage had a conversation where they agreed that 1.0 Perry was the best of them all by far but also that they wondered if it was some sort of mirage in that it lasted a few years and was completely gone different guy non magical non great non serious ever since then, as tho the original guy never existed.

Improving your discovery process should come after regaining your ability to ship. You can have the best strategy in the world, but if you can’t act on it, what good does it do?

Mick had become uncertain, had started second-guessing his own talent—that seemed, ironically, to be at the root of the self-inflation. For many years through the ’60s, Mick was incredibly charming and humorous. He was natural. It was electrifying the way he could work those small spaces, as a singer and as a dancer; fascinating to watch and work with—the spins, the moves. He never thought about it. That performance was exciting without him appearing to do anything. And he’s still good, even though to my mind it’s dissipated on the big stages. That’s what people have wanted to see: spectacle. But it’s not necessarily what he’s best at. Somewhere, though, he got unnatural. He forgot how good he was in that small spot. He forgot his natural rhythm. I know he disagrees with me. What somebody else was doing was far more interesting to him than what he was doing. He even began to act as if he wanted to be someone else. Mick is quite competitive, and he started to get competitive about other bands. He watched what David Bowie was doing and wanted to do it. Bowie was a major, major attraction. Somebody had taken Mick on in the costume and bizarreness department. But the fact is, Mick could deliver ten times more than Bowie in just a T-shirt and a pair of jeans, singing “I’m a Man.” Why would you want to be anything else if you’re Mick Jagger? Is being the greatest entertainer in show business not enough? He forgot that it was he who was new, who created and set the trends in the first place, for years. It’s fascinating. I can’t figure it out. It’s almost as if Mick was aspiring to be Mick Jagger, chasing his own phantom. And getting design consultants to help him do it. No one taught him to dance, until he took dance lessons. Charlie and Ronnie and I quite often chuckle when we see Mick out there doing a move that we know some dance instructor just laid on him, instead of being himself. We know the minute he’s going plastic. Shit, Charlie and I have been watching that ass for forty-odd years; we know when the moneymaker’s shaking and when it’s being told what to do. Mick’s taken up singing lessons, but that may be to preserve his voice.

one of the best teachers in all of life turns out to be death. No person or situation could ever teach you as much as death has to teach you.

When is it best to give up on a major life goal? Early in my career, I always encouraged patients to keep trying, keep trying, don’t let your depression symptoms fool you into thinking you can’t succeed. Often that was good advice. Some applicants get into medical school the fourth time they apply. Some singers land a gig with the Grand Ole Opry after their fifth year in Nashville. But more become increasingly despondent as failure follows failure. Sometimes a five-year engagement turns into marriage. Sometimes staying another year in LA trying to break into film pays off. But not often. Sober experience combined with my growing evolutionary perspective to encourage respecting the meaning of my patients’ moods. As often as not, their symptoms seemed to arise from a deep recognition that some major life project was never going to work. She was glad he wanted to live with her, but it looks increasingly like he will never agree to get married. The boss is nice now and then and hints at promotions, but nothing will ever come of it. Hopes for cancer cures get aroused, but all treatments so far have failed. He has stayed off booze for two weeks, but a dozen previous vows to stay on the wagon have all ended in binges. Low mood is not always an emanation from a disordered brain; it can be a normal response to pursuing an unreachable goal.

ethnic groups, but to say that we don’t divide each other into races would be to ignore thousands of years of human history. Not to mention the fact that white people drive a car like this: Fig. 3 While black people drive a car like this: Fig. 4 Despite increasing globalization and intermarriage, or “miscegenation,” there are still distinct and important differences between members of the different races. Since the subtlety and scope of those differences are far too complicated to be helpful to us in everyday life, we employ certain heuristics, or “stereotypes,” to better understand and more comfortably interact with those different from ourselves. Like the Maori. Such stereotypes are sometimes controversial, because they can oversimplify the differences between individuals. Every person is different, and it is rare for someone to fit a stereotype perfectly. Except for so-called “walking stereotypes,” like Carson from Queer Eye.2. Others don’t have any of the characteristics ascribed to their race in such stereotypes. It’s an imperfect science at best. For example, just because the Maori are, in general, lazy, selfish, and long-winded, that does not mean that noted Maori opera singer Kiri Te Kanawa is any of those things. In fact, she is only two of them, because she is a soprano, and sopranos tend to be very succinct. Even so, stereotypes can be very useful in our everyday social interactions and decision-making. They are actually a kind of survival instinct—a crude form of received inductive reasoning that can help us make snap judgments in situations where we don’t have all the facts. When entering into a business deal with someone of Roma descent, for instance, I am very careful of my possessions. Knowing the stereotype that gypsies are tramps and thieves,3. I am able to better protect myself when coming into contact with them,

Friends will come along as u go some will stay and some will go but give your best to them while they were here

In a Burst of Oneness When wax and wick work best, light and heat are all that's left. Like a candle, our wick of spirit is encased in our humanity, and when our spirit is touched, we light up until all we know melts and changes shape for the burn of our experience. Repeatedly, our sweat and struggle burns our sense of self and world away, so that our Divine spark can be released, again and again. These moments of Spirit-Lighting-Up not only rearrange our lives, but they light and warm those who stay near. In such moments, we become one with what we see, and this sudden Oneness is what the faithful of all paths have called Love. And in the illumination of Oneness called Love, all that's left is a willingness toward birth, an urge to be touched by something timeless and fresh. All that's left is the want of deep parts in strangers. To relish the waking over being awake, the burning over being burned, the loving over being loved. When we can be—no matter how briefly—at one with what we have in common with all life, we are rewarded beyond attachment and ownership. This is the difference between becoming a singer and becoming the song. This is the best of ambition: that the dancer melts into the dance, and the lover melts into the act of love, and the builder melts into the thing being built, until in a burst of Oneness, dancer and lover and builder are one. Perhaps momentarily, when swimming with the stream, we are the stream; when moving with the music, we are the music; when rocking the wounded, we are the suffering. Perhaps momentarily, when thinking without masks, we are pure thought; when believing without doubt, we are God. Perhaps love is an instrument we play for all we're worth in an orchestra yet to be convened. Perhaps this is why, in the fullest moments of loving or knowing or being, we go nameless and timeless and breathless—everything about us used up, like a candle, burned over and over, just to light entire rooms with our flicker.

You,” Elena says, pointing directly at me. “Come with me. Alex, I want you and your brothers to sing.” Alex shakes his head. “Elena, I don’t think--” Elena holds up a hand in front of Alex, silencing even him. “I didn’t ask you to think. I asked you to join your brothers in singin’ to me and my new husband.” Elena opens the door and yanks me through the house, stopping only when we reach the backyard. She lets me go only to grab the microphone from the lead singer. “Paco!” she announces loudly. “Yeah, I’m talkin’ to you,” Elena says, pointing to Paco talking to a bunch of girls. “Next time you want to take a dump, do it in someone else’s house.” Paco’s entourage of girls backs up and giggles, leaving him alone. Jorge rushes to the stage and attempts to pick up his wife. The poor man struggles while everyone laughs and claps. When Elena is finally off the stage and Alex talks to the band leader, the guests cheer for Alex and his brothers to sing. Paco sits next to me. “Uh, sorry about the bathroom thing. I tried to warn you,” he says sheepishly. “It’s okay. I think Elena embarrassed you enough.” I lean over to Paco and ask, “Seriously, what do you think of Alex and me together?” “Seriously, you’re pro’bly the best thing that’s ever happened to the guy.

One thing I had figured out by then was that talent, like everything else, was just a starting point. What counted was what you did with it. I knew I wasn't the most talented guitar player or the best singer or the best writer, but I could do all of those things, and I had a complete vision of what it was going to take to succeed---a vision that included working, working, working.

So what’s the story your grandpa told you?” I leaned back against the blanket, propping my head in one hand and looking up at him. “It wasn’t about the pond, I guess. It’s more about the town. I didn’t ever come to Mona when I lived here. I never had reason to - so when I asked my grandpa if there were any good fishing spots around here, and he mentioned this pond, I asked him about the town. He said Burl Ives, the singer, was once thrown in jail here in Mona. It was before his time, but he thought it was a funny story.” “I’ve never heard about that!” “It was the 1940’s, and Burl Ives traveled around singing. I guess the authorities didn’t like one of his songs - they thought it was bawdy, so they put him in jail.” “What was the song?” I snickered. “It was called Foggy, Foggy Dew. My grandpa sang it for me.” “Let’s hear it!” I challenged. “It’s far too lewd.” Samuel pulled his mouth into a serious frown, but his eyes twinkled sardonically. “All right you’ve convinced me,” he said without me begging at all, and we laughed together. He cleared his throat and began to sing, with a touch of an Irish lilt, about a bachelor living all alone whose only sin had been to try to protect a fair young maiden from the foggy, foggy dew. One night she came to my bedside When I was fast asleep. She laid her head upon my bed And she began to weep She sighed, she cried, she damn near died She said what shall I do? So I hauled her into bed and covered up her head Just to keep her from the foggy, foggy dew. “Oh my!” I laughed, covering my mouth. “I don’t think I would have stuck Burl Ives in jail for that, but it is pretty funny,” “Marine’s are the lewdest, crudest, foulest talking bunch you’ll ever find. I’ve heard much, much worse. I’ve sung much, much worse. I tried to remain chaste and virtuous, and I still have the nickname Preacher after all these years - but I have been somewhat corrupted.” He waggled his eyebrows at his ribaldry. “I kind of liked that song…” I mused, half kidding. “Sing something else but without the Irish.” “Without the Irish? That’s the best part.” Samuel smiled crookedly. “I had a member of my platoon whose mom was born and raised in Ireland. This guy could do an authentic Irish accent, and man, could he sing. When he sang Danny Boy everybody cried. All these tough, lethal Marines, bawling like babies

She trusted Finn completely. If he said a pool was safe to swim in, she dived in without a second thought, and the dreaded piranha fish did not tear at her flesh, nor did a caiman come at her with snapping jaws. If he told her a mushroom was safe to eat, she ate it. “My father had this thing he used to say to me,” she told Finn. “It was in Latin. Carpe diem. ‘Seize the day.’ Get the best out of it, take hold of it and live in it as hard as you can.” She pushed back her hair. “After he died, and my mother, I couldn’t do it too well. There never seemed to be a day I wanted to seize all that much. But here…” “Yes, some places are right for you. Your mother was a singer, wasn’t she?” “Yes. But she never made a fuss about it. I never remember her saving her voice for the performance or gargling with eggs and all that stuff. She’d just sing--in the house, in the garden, anywhere.” “Everyone says you ought to get your voice trained,” he said, and frowned because if she had a future as a singer, perhaps she shouldn’t be taking off into the unknown. She shook her head. “I’m all right like this.” “But won’t you miss music?” “There’s always music. You just have to open your mouth.

Hearing a succession of mediocre singers does not add up to a single outstanding performance.” In other words, talent is not a commodity you can buy in bulk and combine to reach the needed levels: There’s a premium to being the best.

THE BEST SINGERS ARE THOSE WHO WERE TOLD BY "LIFE" THAT THEY DIDN'T HAVE A REASON TO SING OR REJOICE BUT THEY SANG ANYWAY -HOPENATION

Damn it, don’t you have any decent music in this house? Be right back, I’m getting my iPod out of my truck.” “I keep a loaded shotgun under this couch, Toby, and I’m bringing it out if I hear Michael Bolton. And this isn’t a house. It’s a small tin can.” Toby grumbled. “Why the hate, dude? That man’s voice is beautiful. I’m telling you, if he showed up at my door singing a ballad, I’d give him anything he wanted without blinking an eye. My social security number, where I keep the hidden house key, the secret ending to The Crying Game, anything.” “If I pretend to be deaf, will it get me out of a continued discussion about whiny singers? And does my sister know about this sick obsession of yours? ’Cause I imagine the best thing about your taste in music is all the money you save on buying condoms.” “Fine. But I don’t want to hear your head-banging crap, so no music.

There’s a country that does something a little like this. Its young people, including its very best educational prospects from all different backgrounds, spend two or three years training and solving problems in a nonhierarchical environment and get together every year. Many then collaborate to start companies. This country leads the world in venture capital investments per capita (over $170, versus $75 in the United States in 2010).1 It has more companies on the NASDAQ than any non-US country except for China, despite having a population of less than eight million.2 Its quarterly gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate was above 5 percent in 2011 and it’s in the top thirty globally in per capita GDP, above Spain and Saudi Arabia, among others.3 This country is Israel, where eighteen-year-olds complete two- or three-year tours in the military, getting to know each other in highly selective military units. They operate at a high level of autonomy and responsibility and then travel the world for months before heading to college and/or grad school. In Dan Senor and Saul Singer’s book Start-up Nation, this network and training ground is credited as helping give rise to a culture of risk taking and entrepreneurship. By the time Israelis graduate from college, they’re in their midtwenties and mature; in many cases, they’ve already been in operating environments and borne life-and-death responsibilities. This cocktail of experience gives rise to a mixture of both courage and impatience. As one entrepreneur put it, “When an Israeli entrepreneur has a business idea, he will start it that week. The notion that one should accumulate credentials before launching a venture simply does not exist. . . . Too much time can only teach you what can go wrong, not what could be transformative.”4 Another observer commented, “Israelis . . .  don’t care about the social price of failure and they develop their projects regardless of the economic . . . situation.”5

Legends of Bangladesh - A bunch of pure souls who achieved the glory for a country, Bangladesh, will remember forever as the legends of the nation. The world will know them for their work, sacrifice, love and mostly commitment to give best to their country until last breath. Some of them are famous for writing, some are journalism, Actor movie directors, sportsmen, cricketer, Footballer, economist, scientist, photographer, singer, businessman, martyr, architect, magician and so on. Its not enough to salute and remember them, nationwide respect and acknowledgment with proper mind will fulfill their destiny of making a golden country with all those hard work.

I once heard the singer Ellie Holcomb say, “God didn’t come to make bad people good; He came to make dead people alive.” It rocked me because I think so much of our lives we spend trying to be good. We forget good is near impossible. It’s life that Christ came to offer us. And only through His life offered for us can we ever arrive at the gift of goodness. We are none of us bad or good; we are all of us dead. Dead in our sins and our old cycles of pain and lies and despair. And Jesus has come to breathe His own living breath into our dry bones. He calls your name into the tomb. He yells it. He sings it. He whispers it. He calls you by name in whatever way He knows you will hear Him best. And then He trades His own life for yours so that you can walk out of your past and your broken relationships and the shrapnel that has characterized your life and walk into the light to stand with Him—the greatest of all friends—beloved, whole, and heart-pumpingly alive.

To listen through aural debris to Francesco Tamagno (1850–1905), Verdi's original Otello, or to Alessandro Moreschi (1858–1922), the last castrato, is a fascinating experience but one that cannot be endured for much longer than holding one's head down a wishing well. The pitch is wobbly, the static obtrusive and any impression of the singer's musicality requires an imaginative leap on the listener's part.

Greatness doesn’t happen by chance, nor does it occur in a vacuum. Greatness comes from, first, a passion for what you do; and second, a clear understanding of what you can and want to be best at.

one of the best teachers in all of life turns out to be death. No person or situation could ever teach you as much as death has to teach you. While someone could tell you that you are not your body, death shows you. While someone could remind you of the insignificance of the things that you cling to, death takes them all away in a second.

Alapana In manodharma sangita, the principal vehicle of exploring a raga’s identity is the alapana, which in Sanskrit means ‘to speak, address, convey, communicate’. In the context of classical music, alapana is the opening of a raga that brings forth all of its facets without the use of other elements, like sahitya or tala. The focus of this exercise is entirely on the exploration of the raga. How does one explore a raga? We have already discussed what a raga is and the various factors that go into the making of its identity. A musician should have internalized the different facets of a raga before attempting to present an alapana in that raga. The resources needed for internalizing a raga lie, of course, in the numerous compositions that have been created by vaggeyakaras in the raga. In order to present the raga in an alapana, the musician needs clarity regarding the essential svaras, phrases and movements. A similar internalization exists in the mind of the musically attuned listener. In this commonality of cognition between the musician and listener is the raga’s identity. It is this internalized rendering of a raga that best reflects what is referred to as the musician’s manodharma. So closely integrated is the singer’s manodharma with the raga’s identity in an alapana that the alapana becomes synonymous with the raga.

That drummer is hot,” Sam says. He’s still watching the footage with no sound, since we play the TV with subtitles for Logan all the time. “I would have thought you’d like the lead singer best,” Emily says, watching his face. He shakes his head. “Not my type.” “Not enough ass,” Pete tosses out. “He’s not into skinny chicks.” Pete looks over at Emily. “No offense, Em.” Emily rolls her eyes and points to her very pregnant belly. Sam shoots Pete a look and shoves Pete’s legs out of his lap. Pete makes a move like he’s grabbing and squeezing. “Sam likes a girl he can hold on to.” Sam’s face goes pink as he shrugs. “I like curves,” he says. “I can’t help it.” Pete shoves him again. “He wants tits and ass,” he says, making that squeezing motion again. “And a brain,” Sam says, holding up his finger. “And an appetite,” I add. Sam raises his brow. “I like to cook. So I like a girl who likes to eat. Go figure.” Emily laughs. Sam must feel the need to explain himself because he goes on. “I hate taking a girl to dinner and having her order a salad. Or having her tell me she can’t eat one of my famous cupcakes because she’s on a diet.” He shivers like he’s repulsed by the very idea of it. He draws an hourglass figure in the air with his hands. “I’ll take tits, ass, and thighs, please,” he says, as though he’s ordering dinner. “And, dammit, if there’s icing that can be licked off places, I want her to be able to partake without thinking about calories.” “TMI, Sam!” Emily cries, covering her ears. Sam laughs, so I throw a remote at his head. “Act like a gentleman,” I warn, because I feel like I should. But that shit’s funny as hell.

I want to start everything in New, what's the bad point?? I don't want to have problems with people which we can be friends or nothing, but not argue as before. What's the purpose what did you gain??? Points?? Money?? PS3??? Xbox??? Nothing just useless and making troubles with people, if we must discuss something let's to be about the fucking Bulgarian Schools, talk about them, I hate them as much as you hate them, I hate the Bulgarian as much as you hate them, I hate the fucking teachers in the fucking schools with which just have fucking problems. How can somebody joke with your spelling or with your mistakes for months???? ... What more to tell you??? That I'm sorry that I'm a Bulgarian guy, because I'm sorry, I can't live with this fucking people, what do they created??? Nothing just staying home and jerkoff non-stop, very creative! And guest what happened??? Here come the "?" people which are terrorists in france and have killed a lot of people and here will be planed the same....,what more only the thought that somebody has graduated from the best school existed in Bulgaria and to have fails with the writing like making so easy mistakes that nobody will make ever, to make mess on the sheets and many other things and this on very important day. A day in which you choose the president or the pre-minister or some kind like this, which is important. I'm very sorry that I'm Bulgarian guy, I don't want to be the cases are this, I want to be an American or a guy from Great Britain, but whatever to be, but to know this language. All people use it, and we are the only people which or some others as one User said that France and Germany are also with the worst English in case that Germany words are like English, but little fucked like spelled and written different like Sänger - singer songster schreiben WOw, this is really fucked just look how arae spelled how are written little like joking with English, aren't they??? If they aren't okay, that's your opinion _ I don't have something against it! If there was chance to be other race no matter what American guy or whatever ot to change my country ot my native language I will do it. If there is chance to and learn English, I go and learnt it without giving and shit about the fucking Bulgarian, I won't call my parents, friends and everything, just everything will be mainly for learning English the best way as possible. I fill fucked there are people which can't read, english, to don't talk about bulgarian, all day I'm seeing how mass media brain washes. I don't see how can be improved Bulgaria it's a fail I know why Adolf Hitler wanted to destroyed it and why Churchill Wanted also, I'm not sure about Churchill, but for HItler I'm sure that he wanted to kill us because of that, whatever you understand me what level we are as nation. I hate the fucking Bulgarian people what to learn from them to joke with people badly??? Very Creative??? To jerkoff all time and to don't give a damn shit about the things around the world?? Or to be with friends which can't think or people which are so much stupid that I'm sorry about them... Whatever, read it if you want if you don't want don't read it, but first check it before you block me. Thank you I appreciate your reading!

In the early '90s a beautiful young Russian soprano who loved music was studying opera at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. She told us how despite her single-minded focus on developing her voice, her teachers thought that perhaps, at best, one day she could sing in a chorus somewhere. But the soprano wasn't going to let her teachers' low opinion of her stop her from achieving her goal. While becoming a part-time janitor may not seem like a brilliant career move for an aspiring opera star, she took a job mopping floors at St. Petersburg's Kirov Opera, the greatest opera company in Russia. Still working hard in the conservatory, she earned the chance to audition for the Kirov and was accepted into the ensemble. During rehearsals, when the lead singer became ill, the stage director asked the soprano if she knew the part. "Of course I knew it", she told us. "I knew all the parts. I was ready." She had worked hard; she had worked smart by putting herself in the right place at the right time. And she performed well. Her once-skeptical teachers never could have imagined the career that the soprano, Anna Netrebko, would go on to have, becoming an operatic superstar and the reigning diva of the twenty-first century.

Probably the best-known tenet of modern moral philosophy: the doctrine that there is an unbridgeable gulf between facts and values, between descriptions of what is and prescriptions of what ought to be.

Do not let anything that happens in life be important enough that you’re willing to close your heart over it. When your heart starts to close, just say, “No. I’m not going to close. I’m going to relax. I’m going to let this situation take place and be there with it.” Honor and respect the situation, and deal with it. By all means deal with it. Do the best you can. But deal with it with openness.

Once you have reached a deep level of inner clarity, you will notice that just because you are content with reality doesn’t mean you don’t interact with it. The world continues to appear before you, but there’s nothing personal about it anymore. It is just the part of creation passing before you at that moment. Reality doesn’t bother you because you don’t need anything from it. It simply exists and you simply exist—in perfect harmony. Every moment unfolding in front of you is there for you to serve. It can be as simple as appreciating it, or you may be able to raise the energy of the moment passing before you. A smile, a kind word, a helping hand—these are all ways of raising the energy as it passes by. Doing your job to the best of your ability, taking care of your family, serving your community—these simple acts are just as much service to the universe as anything else.

Pure digital simulation couldn’t prepare you best for the real world, something that applied also to this machine.

The worst dog gets the best bone. Why is it?

Could a man really know what was best for him? How easily men were deluded by a word, a smile, a gesture.

By now, you can see how these samskaras are running your life. To begin with, they keep coming up by themselves, and that alone causes suffering. To avoid this, you have to commit a major part of your life to creating situations that make it comfortable to live inside yourself. You end up relying on your brilliant analytical mind to figure out how to be okay. Your mind does this by imagining what would work for you. It just starts making up things, playing make-believe. As these imagined thoughts arise, you can feel how they affect your blockages. You’re trying to see how the world needs to be to fit you the best. “What if this person was a certain way?” “What if that person hadn’t said what they said to me?” “What if I change jobs to become the boss so people would have to listen to me instead of me listening to them?” Everything going on in your personal mind is because you’re either trying to match the stored patterns that will make you feel better or avoid the patterns that will make you feel worse. Both ways, the stored patterns are running your life. Don’t feel bad about it; it’s that way for pretty much everyone and always has been.

Will you dare to do this experiment? Don’t try to make the person stop talking. Just try to get to know what you live with inside by externalizing the voice. Give it a body and put it out there in the world just like everybody else. Let it be a person who says on the outside exactly what the voice of your mind says inside. Now make that person your best friend. After all, how many friends do you spend all of your time with and pay absolute attention to every word they say? How would you feel if someone outside really started talking to you the way your inner voice does?

CLICKCHAT POSTS ON “FANS OF CLAUDIA TAPPER” WALL ClaudiasBiggestFan This is a page dedicated to the greatest singer in the history of the universe. Post all your favorite videos of Claudia’s AMAZING singing here! ILoveClaudia She is the best EVAH! This is my favorite! ClaudiaSuperstar Whenever she sings I get tears in my eyes <3<3<3

Do not let anything that happens in life be important enough that you’re willing to close your heart over it. When your heart starts to close, just say, “No. I’m not going to close. I’m going to relax. I’m going to let this situation take place and be there with it.” Honor and respect the situation, and deal with it. By all means deal with it. Do the best you can. But deal with it with openness. Deal with it with excitement and enthusiasm. No matter what it is, just let it be the sport of the day. In time, you will find that you forget how to close. No matter what anyone does, no matter what situation takes place, you won’t even feel the tendency to close. You

If experience is the best teacher, there’s nothing that comes close to the experience of life.

Do we know of effective ways to help the poor?” Implicit in Singer’s argument for helping others is the idea that you know how to do it: The moral imperative to ruin your suit is much less compelling if you do not know how to swim. This is why, in The Life You Can Save, Singer takes the trouble to offer his readers a list of concrete examples of things that they should support, regularly updated on his Web site.12 Kristof and WuDunn do the same. The point is simple: Talking about the problems of the world without talking about some accessible solutions is the way to paralysis rather than progress. This is why it is really helpful to think in terms of concrete problems which can have specific answers, rather than foreign assistance in general: “aid” rather than “Aid.” To take an example, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), malaria caused almost 1 million deaths in 2008, mostly among African children.13 One thing we know is that sleeping under insecticide-treated bed nets can help save many of these lives. Studies have shown that in areas where malaria infection is common, sleeping under an insecticide-treated bed net reduces the incidence of malaria by half.14 What, then, is the best way to make sure that children sleep under bed nets? For approximately $10, you can deliver an insecticide-treated net to a family and teach the household how to use it. Should the government or an NGO give parents free bed nets, or ask them to buy their own, perhaps at a subsidized price? Or should we let them buy it in the market at full price? These questions can be answered, but the answers are by no means obvious. Yet many “experts” take strong positions on them that have little to do with evidence. Because malaria is contagious, if Mary sleeps under a bed net, John is less likely to get malaria—if at least half the population sleeps under a net, then even those who do not have much less risk of getting infected.15 The problem is that fewer than one-fourth of kids at risk sleep under a net:16 It looks like the $10 cost is too much for many families in Mali or Kenya. Given the benefits both to the user and others in the neighborhood, selling the nets at a discount or even giving them away would seem to be a good idea. Indeed, free bed-net distribution is one thing that Jeffrey Sachs advocates.

In Rodgers and Hammerstein’s familiar “A Wonderful Guy,” from South Pacific, the hard, alliterative consonants of the opening line, “corny” and “Kansas,” fall precisely on the downbeat of two successive measures. However interesting Rodgers’s waltz and Hammerstein’s simile, the two join in a musical-verbal conjunction that conveys the emphatic joy of the singer at that moment. Hammerstein knew that the anapests (“corny as,” “Kansas in”) were verbal equivalents of the waltz, which he emphasized with the crackling alliteration. Kansas is actually not very corny in August: Kansas is the wheat state and Iowa is the corn state. If you imagine “I’m as corny as Iowa in August,” you can hear the poetic, musical, and dramatic reasons for Hammerstein’s agricultural stretcher. Americans hear and, consequently, understand these verbal-musical bundles automatically; the words and music of the best American film and theater songs fit so snugly that their conjunction seems “natural.” Only by pulling words and music apart does one hear careful art coyly masquerading as simple nature.

One of his key insights was to explicitly model talent—labeled, innocuously, with the variable q in his formulas—as a factor with “imperfect substitution,” which Rosen explains as follows: “Hearing a succession of mediocre singers does not add up to a single outstanding performance.” In other words, talent is not a commodity you can buy in bulk and combine to reach the needed levels: There’s a premium to being the best.

11 — I have explained where Wagner belongs—not in the history of music. What does he signify nevertheless in that history? The emergence of the actor in music: a capital event that invites thought, perhaps also fear. In a formula: "Wagner and Liszt."— Never yet has the integrity of musicians, their "authenticity," been put to the test so dangerously. One can grasp it with one's very hands: great success, success with the masses no longer sides with those who are authentic,—one has to be an actor to achieve that!— Victor Hugo and Richard Wagner—they both prove one and the same thing: that in declining civilizations, wherever the mob is allowed to decide, genuineness becomes superfluous, prejudicial, unfavorable. The actor, alone, can still kindle great enthusiasm.— And thus it is his golden age which is now dawning—his and that of all those who are in any way related to him. With drums and fifes, Wagner marches at the head of all artists in declamation, in display and virtuosity. He began by convincing the conductors of orchestras, the scene-shifters and stage-singers, not to forget the orchestra:—he "redeemed" them from monotony .... The movement that Wagner created has spread even to the land of knowledge: whole sciences pertaining to music are rising slowly, out of centuries of scholasticism. As an example of what I mean, let me point more particularly to Riemann's [Hugo Riemann (1849-1919): music theoretician] services to rhythmic; he was the first who called attention to the leading idea in punctuation—even for music (unfortunately he did so with a bad word; he called it "phrasing"). All these people, and I say it with gratitude, are the best, the most respectable among Wagner's admirers—they have a perfect right to honor Wagner. The same instinct unites them with one another; in him they recognize their highest type, and since he has inflamed them with his own ardor they feel themselves transformed into power, even into great power. In this quarter, if anywhere, Wagner's influence has really been beneficial. Never before has there been so much thinking, willing, and industry in this sphere. Wagner endowed all these artists with a new conscience: what they now exact and obtain from themselves, they had never extracted before Wagner's time—before then they had been too modest. Another spirit prevails on the stage since Wagner rules there: the most difficult things are expected, blame is severe, praise very scarce—the good and the excellent have become the rule. Taste is no longer necessary, nor even is a good voice. Wagner is sung only with ruined voices: this has a more "dramatic" effect. Even talent is out of the question. Expressiveness at all costs, which is what the Wagnerian ideal—the ideal of décadence—demands, is hardly compatible with talent. All that is required for this is virtue—that is to say, training, automatism, "self-denial." Neither taste, voices, nor gifts: Wagner's stage requires one thing only—Teutons! ... Definition of the Teuton: obedience and long legs ... It is full of profound significance that the arrival of Wagner coincides in time with the arrival of the "Reich": both actualities prove the very same thing: obedience and long legs.— Never has obedience been better, never has commanding. Wagnerian conductors in particular are worthy of an age that posterity will call one day, with awed respect, the classical age of war. Wagner understood how to command; in this, too, he was the great teacher. He commanded as the inexorable will to himself, as lifelong self-discipline: Wagner who furnishes perhaps the greatest example of self-violation in the history of art (—even Alfieri, who in other respects is his next-of-kin, is outdone by him. The note of a Torinese). 12 The insight that our actors are more deserving of admiration than ever does not imply that they are any less dangerous ... But who could still doubt what I want,—what are the three demands for which my my love of art has compelled me?

In a seminal 1981 paper, the economist Sherwin Rosen worked out the mathematics behind these “winner-take-all” markets. One of his key insights was to explicitly model talent—labeled, innocuously, with the variable q in his formulas—as a factor with “imperfect substitution,” which Rosen explains as follows: “Hearing a succession of mediocre singers does not add up to a single outstanding performance.” In other words, talent is not a commodity you can buy in bulk and combine to reach the needed levels: There’s a premium to being the best.

The Blasters proved to be the most prominent and popular of these acts by far. Originally a quartet, the band was bred in Downey, just down the freeway from East L.A. In their teens, brothers Phil and Dave Alvin were bitten by the blues bug; they became habitués of the L.A. club the Ash Grove, where many of the best-known folk and electric blues performers played, and they sought out the local musicians who could teach them their craft, learning firsthand from such icons as Big Joe Turner, T-Bone Walker, and Little Richard’s saxophonist Lee Allen (who would ultimately join the band in the ’80s). But the Blasters’ style was multidimensional: they could play R&B, they loved country music, and they were also dyed-in-the-wool rockabilly fans who were initially embraced by the music’s fervent L.A. cultists. Their debut album, 1980’s American Music, was recorded in a Van Nuys garage by the Milan, Italy–born rockabilly fanatic Rockin’ Ronnie Weiser, and released on his indie label Rollin’ Rock Records, which also issued LPs by such first-generation rockabilly elders as Gene Vincent, Mac Curtis, Jackie Waukeen Cochran, and Ray Campi. By virtue of Phil Alvin’s powerful, unmannered singing and Dave Alvin’s adept guitar playing and original songwriting, the Blasters swiftly rose to the top of a pack of greasy local bands that also included Levi and the Rockats (a unit fronted by English singer Levi Dexter) and the Rockabilly Rebels (who frequently backed Ray Campi). Los Lobos were early Blasters fans, and often listened to American Music in their van on the way to their own (still acoustic) gigs. Rosas says, “We loved their first record, man. We used to play the shit out of that record. Dave [Hidalgo] was the one who got a copy of it, and he put it on cassette.

Partly thanks to Helsinki’s Sibelius Academy, Finnish musical education is among the best in the world, with Finnish conductors, singers and musicians performing with some of the world’s top orchestras. There are some excellent classical-music festivals in Finland.

Dylan, Duende, Death and Lorca Does Bob Dylan have Duende? DUENDE dancers perform moving, unique, unrepeatable performances Does Bob Dylan have duende? Do you have duende? What is duende? Duende is a Spanish word with two meanings. A duende is a goblin or a pixie that probably lives at the bottom of the garden and gives three wishes to old ladies who deserve a break. The duende was best defined by Spain’s great poet Federico García Lorca during a lecture he gave in New York in 1929 on Andalusian music known as cante jondo, or deep voice. ‘The duende,’ he said, ‘is a momentary burst of inspiration, the blush of all that is truly alive, all that the performer is creating at a certain moment.’ The difference between a good and a bad singer is that the good singer has the duende and the bad singer doesn’t. ‘There are no maps nor disciplines to help us find the duende. We only know that he burns the blood like a poultice of broken glass, that he exhausts, that he rejects all the sweet geometry we have learned.’ Some critics say Bob Dylan does not have a great voice. But more than any other performer since the birth of recorded music, Dylan has revealed the indefinable, spine-tingling something captured in Lorca’s interpretation of duende. ‘It is an inexplicable power of attraction, the ability to send waves of emotion through those watching and listening to them.’ ‘The duende,’ he continues, ‘resembles what Goethe called the demoniacal. It manifests itself principally among musicians and poets of the spoken word, for it needs the trembling of the moment and then a long silence.’ painting off hell by Hieronymus Bosch Hell & Hieronymus Bosch Four elements can be found in Lorca’s vision of duende: irrationality, earthiness, a heightened awareness of death and a dash of the diabolical. I agree with Lorca that duende manifests principally among singers, but would say that same magic may touch us when confronted by great paintings: Picasso’s Guernica, Edvard Munch’s The Scream, the paintings of heaven and hell by Hieronymus Bosch. The duende is found in the bitter roots of human existence, what Lorca referred to as ‘the pain which has no explanation.’ Artists often feel sad without knowing why. They sense the cruel inevitability of fate. They smell the coppery scent of death. All artists live in a permanent state of angst knowing that what they have created could have been better. Death with Duende It is not surprising that Spain found a need for the word duende. It is the only country where death in the bullring is a national spectacle, the only nation where death is announced by the explosion of trumpets and drums. The bullring, divided in sol y sombre – the light and shade, is the perfect metaphor for life and death, a passing from the light into darkness. Every matador who ever lived had duende and no death is more profound than death in the bullring.

Q: What can ordinary people with busy lives and not a lot of political access do to address this stuff? You can try to address it in your own life. You can try to set up your life so you have to drive as little as possible. In so doing, you vote with your feet and your wallet. When more people bike, walk and use public transit, there is greater pressure on elected officials and government agencies to improve these modes of transportation. It thus increases the profitability of public transit and makes cities more desirable places to live. It also helps reduce your carbon footprint and reduces the amount of money going to automobile manufacturers, oil companies and highway agencies. In a globally connected capitalist world, cities and countries are competing for highly skilled labor—programmers, engineers, scientists, etc. To some degree, these people can live anywhere they want. So San Francisco or my current city in Minnesota aren’t just competing with other U.S. cities but are competing with cities in Europe for the best and brightest talent. Polls and statistics show that more and more skilled people want to live in cities that are walkable, bikeable and have good public transit. Also our population is aging and realizing that they don’t want to be trapped in automobile-oriented retirement communities in Florida or the southwest USA. They also want improved walkability and transit. Finally, there’s been an explosion of obesity in the USA with resulting increases in healthcare costs. Many factors contribute to this but increased amounts of driving and a lack of daily exercise are major factors. City, state and business leaders in the US are increasingly aware of all this. It is part of Gil Peñalosa’s “8-80” message (the former parks commissioner of Bogotá, Colombia) and many other leaders. (2015 interview with Microcosm Publishing)

The best way to free yourself from this incessant chatter is to step back and view it objectively. Just view the voice as a vocalizing mechanism that is capable of making it appear like someone is in there talking to you. Don’t think about it; just notice it. No matter what the voice is saying, it’s all the same. It doesn’t matter if it’s saying nice things or mean things, worldly things or spiritual things. It doesn’t matter because it’s still just a voice talking inside your head. In fact, the only way to get your distance from this voice is to stop differentiating what it’s saying. Stop feeling that one thing it says is you and the other thing it says is not you. If you’re hearing it talk, it’s obviously not you. You are the one who hears the voice. You are the one who notices that it’s talking.

Who sees when you see? Who hears when you hear? Who watches the dreams? Who looks at the image in the mirror? Who is it that is having all these experiences? If you try to just give honest, intuitive answers, you are simply going to say, “Me. It’s me. I’m in here experiencing all of this.” That’s about the best answer you’ll have.

Acceptance is best understood as nonresistance to reality. Try as you may, no one can make an event that has already happened not have happened. Your only choice is to accept the event or resist it.

Wrapped In My Memory" It couldn't have happened To a better man It couldn't have been any Different than it was And you're wrapped in my memory like chains For I say that the flowers will always be there in my heart Like an old fashioned movie with all of you playing the parts Wonder if I'll never Be so unafraid To walk to the river And turn around again And you're wrapped in my memory like chains For I say that the flowers will always be there in my heart Like an old fashioned movie and I never forget your part I never forget your part Standing on that stage Tell us what you've been feeling Before you started to fade You gave me something to believe in And that the best thing That anyone can give And you're wrapped in my memory like chains (Yeah you're only a memory now) And you're wrapped in my memory like chains (Yeah you're only a memory now) And you're wrapped in my memory like chains (Yeah you're only a memory now) And I can't wait until we see each other again And I can't wait until we see each other again And I can't wait until we see each other again And you're wrapped in my memory like rolled gold Shawn Smith, Sheild of Thorns (2003)

In some ways the beginnings of Israeli high-tech could be traced to one particular failure. In the 1980s, as young people around the world were logging on to their first desktop computers, Israel brought together some of its best engineers to work on an ambitious project: the Lavi fighter jet, a made-in-Israel aircraft and part of the doctrine of self-reliance. A catalyst for groundbreaking technology in avionics and electronics, it proved to be a spectacularly expensive escapade and was shut down in 1987 under intense pressure from the Americans, who preferred Israel to spend their military aid on American aircraft. Hundreds of highly specialized scientists and engineers were released into the Israeli civilian market. The injection of the aforementioned Soviet immigrant engineers in the 1990s boosted the genesis of the start-up phenomenon, encouraged by prescient government support and incentives. The country’s new moniker and brand was minted with the publication in 2009 of a proud, blue-and-white-covered volume titled Start-Up Nation that chronicled what its authors, Dan Senor and Saul Singer, called the story of Israel’s economic miracle. It fast became a bestseller.

Knowledge was the next best thing to life itself, and knowledge of the unknown and mysterious was something she’d craved ever since she could remember,

In late March 1962, JFK personally asked Marilyn Monroe to appear at his birthday gala. Both were attending an event—and were overnight guests—at singer and actor Bing Crosby’s home at 70375 Calico Road, near Palm Springs, California, in the appropriately named Rancho Mirage area. According to rumor (no one knows for sure), the president and the movie star ensconced themselves in the two-bedroom attached casita, complete with its own fireplace, kitchen, and—importantly—private entrance.

When we make the selection of our final six, I would like to authorize further cognitive augmentation,92 and a couple other things that the JSOC93 meat department is now using with the One Hundred Sixtieth helo drivers94 and the Persistent Operations Group,” said Best.

Our best hope for the future is not to get people to think of all humanity as family—that’s impossible. It lies, instead, in an appreciation of the fact that, even if we don’t empathize with distant strangers, their lives have the same value as the lives of those we love.

stopped and leaned against a wall as the tears came, the realisation that I would never see him again, never hear his voice, his laugh, smell the aroma of coffee that clung to him. To everyone else, the people who didn’t know him, the world had lost a talent, a singer. They had lost his songs. But I had lost my best friend, the person who knew more about me than anyone else. I had lost Laura. I hardly ever saw my parents. I had no siblings. And now I had lost my only real friend. ‘What the fuck am I going to do without you?’ I whispered into the snow.

CONCERT CHECKLIST 1. Secure a date on the calendar. Be sure it is listed on the official school calendar to protect it. 2. Reserve a performance venue for the concert and for final rehearsals. 3. Have tickets printed if they are to be used. 4. Plan the printed program and get it to the printer by the deadline date. 5. Plan the publicity. The following types of publicity can be utilized to draw a sizable concert audience: Radio releases Television releases Newspaper releases Online listings School announcements Notices to other schools and/or organizations in the area Posters for public placement 6. Send complimentary tickets to: Civic leaders Board of Education Superintendent People who have helped in some way Key supporters Key people to stimulate their interest 7. Have the president of the choir send personal letters of invitation to people that are special to the music program (newspaper editor, Board of Education, Superintendent, civic club presidents, supporters etc.). 8. Appoint a stage manager. He should be someone who can control the stage lighting, pull curtains, shut off air circulation fans that are noisy, and see that the stage is ready for the concert. 9. Arrange for ushers. 10. Check wearing apparel. Be sure that all singers have the correct accessories (same type and color of shoes, no gaudy jewelry for girls, etc.). 11. Post on bulletin board and tell students the time they will meet for a pre-concert warm-up. High school students will perform best if they meet together at least forty-five minutes before the concert.

She looked at me again, and the sweet and shy Nicole disappeared. Her eyes blazed. "The others aren't here, are they?" she said. "You have no intention of rescuing me. Why would you? I'm competition for your precious Daniel. You don't want him, but you don't want anyone else to have him either. You're a selfish b*tch, Maya Delaney. A sl*t, too, fooling around with every guy in sight, right under his nose." As Nicole raged, the hair on my neck prickled, because in her eyes, I saw madness. Obsession and madness. "Everything comes so easy for you, doesn't it, Maya? School, boys, friends, sports. Even your precious animals. You can't just take care of them like any normal person. You have to be some kind of animal whisperer. Magical healer. So damned special. Like Serena, captain of the swim team and the best singer on the freaking island, and how much does she practice? Sings in the shower. Paddles around the lake. Do you know how hard I work? It's never enough. You two get the trophies and the solos and the As and the boys." You're crazy, I thought. Did they do this to you with their experiments? Or is this just you? I started inching back. "You're just going to leave me here?" she said. "Well, you know what, Maya? I could use a little company." She screamed, a long drawn-out shriek of feigned terror.

God, who cares about the sparrows, orchestrates an opera every summer and gives the best arias to bugs.

To liberate the A, the C must provide a loud enough drum beat, a constant signal to their lead singer that the support they need is right behind him.

In a seminal 1981 paper, the economist Sherwin Rosen worked out the mathematics behind these “winner-take-all” markets. One of his key insights was to explicitly model talent—labeled, innocuously, with the variable q in his formulas—as a factor with “imperfect substitution,” which Rosen explains as follows: “Hearing a succession of mediocre singers does not add up to a single outstanding performance.” In other words, talent is not a commodity you can buy in bulk and combine to reach the needed levels: There’s a premium to being the best. Therefore, if you’re in a marketplace where the consumer has access to all performers, and everyone’s q value is clear, the consumer will choose the very best.

Everything comes so easy for you, doesn’t it, Maya? School, boys, friends, sports. Even your precious animals. You can’t just take care of them like any normal person. You have to be some kind of animal whisperer. Magical healer. So damned special. Like Serena, captain of the swim team and the best singer on the freaking island, and how much does she practice? Sings in the shower. Paddles around the lake. Do you know how hard I work? It’s never enough. You two get the trophies and the solos and the As and the boys.” You’re crazy, I thought. Did they do this to you with their experiments? Or is this just you?

I’m real tall when I stand on my charisma. – Harlan Ellison, Science Fiction Writer You can always come back, but you’ve got to come back better. If you come back worse, or even the same, you’re dead. – Phil Spector You get to the point where you have to change everything – change your looks, change your money, change your sex, change your women because of the business. – Mick Jagger We’ve always been fascinated by movie stars and singers, but the fascination with people who really have nothing to offer is something new. – Carl Hiaasen, American Writer Charisma. You can’t buy it. You can’t make it. And you sure can’t fake it. – Unknown. Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read. -Groucho Marx

The show was one of radio’s most consistent until 1950, when Harold Peary announced that he was quitting his starring role. Rumor had it that Peary had held out for more money. His series was still carrying a rating in the midteens—certainly no disgrace at any time, and highly respectable in radio’s final years, when the once-lofty Hope, Bergen, Benny, and Fibber powerhouses were doing little better themselves. Peary admitted he was bored: he had slowly tired of the role and was frustrated that his onceremarkable versatility had been eclipsed under a blanket of Gildersleeve typecasting. People forgot that he had been a singer, he said, and that he had been one of the best of the old Chicago dialect men in the days before he moved with Fibber McGee and Molly to Hollywood. This might have killed most shows, but NBC and Kraft had on tap one Willard Waterman, who had once been denied acting jobs on McGee because his voice sounded so much like Peary’s. Waterman and Peary had traveled similar routes on their climb through radio. Waterman had arrived in Chicago around 1936 and had played many of the same bit parts that Peary would do the following year. While Peary was establishing himself on McGee, Waterman was working The First Nighter Program, Ma Perkins, and The Story of Mary Marlin. Like Peary, Waterman was a prolific and versatile talent, doing up to 40 parts in a week.

Carnival Cruise Lines has its own successful way of doing things, which in this case involved creating a musical group called “The Hot Shots!” The word “Fantastic” comes to mind when thinking of this musical group! Each member auditioned separately at the Carnival rehearsal facility in Miami and then rehearsed as a group until they were ready for the big leagues aboard ship. Fortunately for me and my team, which includes Jorge Fernandez, a former guitar player from Cuba and now a top flight structural engineer in the Tampa Bay area, who helps me with much of my technical work; Lucy Shaw, Chief Copy Editor; Ursula Bracker, Proofer, and lucky me Captain Hank Bracker, award winning author (including multiple gold medals), were aboard the Carnival Legend and were privileged to listen to and enjoy, quite by chance, music that covered everything from Classical Rock, to Disco, to Mo Town and the years in between. Talented Judith Mullally, Carnival’s Entertainment Director, was on hand to encourage and partake in the music with her outstanding voice and, not to be left out, were members of the ship’s repertory cast, as well as the ship’s Cruise Director. The popular Red Frog lounge on the Carnival Legend was packed to the point that one of the performances had to be held on the expansive Lido deck. However, for the rest of the nights, the lounge was packed with young and old, singing and dancing to “The Hot Shots!” - a musical group that would totally pack any venue in Florida. Pheona Baranda, from the Philippines, is cute as a button and is the lead female singer, with a pitch-perfect soprano voice. Lucas Pedreira, from Argentina, is the lead male singer and guitar player who displayed endless energy and the ability to keep the audience hopping! Paulo Baranda, Pheona’s younger brother, plays the lead guitar to perfection and behind the scenes is the band’s musical director and of course is also from the Philippines. Ygor, from Israel, is the “on the money” drummer who puts so much into what he is doing, that at one point he hurt his hand, but refused to slow down. Nick is the bass guitar player, from down under New Zealand, and Marina, the piano and keyboard player, hails from the Ukraine. As a disclaimer I admit that I hold shares in Carnival stock but there is nothing in it for me other than the pleasure of listening to this ultra-talented group which cannot and should not be denied. They were and still are the very best! However, I am sorry that just as a “Super Nova” they unfortunately can’t last. Their bright shining light is presently flaring, but this will only be for a fleeting moment and then will permanently go to black next year on January 2, 2020. That’s just the way it is, but my crew and I, as well as the many guests aboard the Carnival Legend, experienced music seldom heard anywhere, any longer…. It was a treat we will remember for years to come and we hope to see them again, as individual musical artists, or as perhaps with a new group sometime in the near future!

Moon River’ was written to explain that Audrey/Holly was really a yearning country girl; it becomes an anachronism, therefore, to have it sung by a male singer, although Danny Williams’s version later became a top-of-the-hit-parade best-seller. It was Audrey’s rendition of the song, in fact, which first convinced many critics that they were dealing with no ordinary talent. The cigarette-girl extra in the British quickie had reached the Olympian heights and become a Hollywood superstar; most agreed that it would have been hard to think of any other actress who could have suggested as convincingly as Audrey did the desperate frailty beneath Holly’s smart façade.

We are not in general a music-loving race. Tranquil peace is the music we love best; our life is hard, we are no longer able, even on occasions when we have tried to shake off the cares of daily life, to rise to anything so high and remote from our usual routine as music.

You know Eric Richards? I mean, like, personally know him?” Her eyes were so large they nearly disappeared under the fringe of her bangs. “I mean, as in really, truly know him?” I was about to say something, but before I could, Meg threw herself backward onto one of the bunk beds and squealed, “He’s so cute!” “He must be the cutest boy in the entire world,” Katie added. “And the best singer,” Suzanne added. What am I doing? I wondered. The closest I’d ever been to Eric Richards was the poster I’d glued to my wall with Triple Tropical Bubble Gum.

Best Vocal Remedy is a website that helps people discover the best ways in which to cure and protect a sore or lost voice. We review the best throat spray for singers. As well as discuss tips for maintaining and protecting a healthy voice. Give your vocal cords the treatment they deserve whilst keeping up with our tips and reviews. Our content is not only for singers but instead, for anyone that uses their voice a lot. For examples, singers, teachers, and lecturers will find us useful.

Kramer’s unadorned prose is evocative of the best Jewish-American writing: of Singer, Malamud, Bellow, Ozick, Roth, Kunitz, Paley. This is the speech of the newly arrived, the immigrant, the oppositionist, the pariah; it is underclass, or working class, or even middle-class.

But “God” is the best song any Beatle wrote about religion, with all due respect to George’s “My Sweet Lord.” Both were produced by Phil Spector the same year—with Ringo on drums. (Talk about ecumenical.) “God” is where John does his most beautiful singing, reaching for a doo-wop tremble straight out of his beloved Rosie and the Originals, with that “Elvis echo” on his voice. It’s one of the two or three songs I’d play if I had ten minutes to convince a jury that John was the greatest of rock and roll singers-as-singers. Along with “Girl,” and maybe “Ticket to Ride.” Or “You Can’t Do That”? “Money”? “I Want to Hold Your Hand”? “Happiness Is a Warm Gun”? “Oh My Love”? “I’m So Tired”?

Hearing a succession of mediocre singers does not add up to a single outstanding performance.” In other words, talent is not a commodity you can buy in bulk and combine to reach the needed levels: There’s a premium to being the best. Therefore, if you’re in a marketplace where the consumer has access to all performers, and everyone’s q value is clear, the consumer will choose the very best. Even if the talent advantage of the best is small compared to the next rung down on the skill ladder, the

The film version of Chicago is a milestone in the still-being-written history of film musicals. It resurrected the genre, winning the Oscar for Best Picture, but its long-term impact remains unclear. Rob Marshall, who achieved such success as the co-director of the 1998 stage revival of Cabaret, began his career as a choreographer, and hence was well suited to direct as well as choreograph the dance-focused Chicago film. The screen version is indeed filled with dancing (in a style reminiscent of original choreographer Bob Fosse, with plenty of modern touches) and retains much of the music and the book of the stage version. But Marshall made several bold moves. First, he cast three movie stars – Catherine Zeta-Jones (former vaudeville star turned murderess Velma Kelly), Renée Zellweger (fame-hungry Roxie Hart), and Richard Gere (celebrity lawyer Billy Flynn) – rather than Broadway veterans. Of these, only Zeta-Jones had training as a singer and dancer. Zellweger’s character did not need to be an expert singer or dancer, she simply needed to want to be, and Zellweger’s own Hollywood persona of vulnerability and stardom blended in many critics’ minds with that of Roxie.8 Since the show is about celebrity, casting three Hollywood icons seemed appropriate, even if the show’s cynical tone and violent plotlines do not shed the best light on how stars achieve fame. Marshall’s boldest move, though, was in his conception of the film itself. Virtually every song in the film – with the exception of Amos’s ‘Mr Cellophane’ and a few on-stage numbers like Velma’s ‘All That Jazz’ – takes place inside Roxie’s mind. The heroine escapes from her grim reality by envisioning entire production numbers in her head. Some film critics and theatre scholars found this to be a cheap trick, a cop-out by a director afraid to let his characters burst into song during the course of their normal lives, but other critics – and movie-goers – embraced this technique as one that made the musical palatable for modern audiences not accustomed to musicals. Marshall also chose a rapid-cut editing style, filled with close-ups that never allow the viewer to see a group of dancers from a distance, nor often even an entire dancer’s body. Arms curve, legs extend, but only a few numbers such as ‘Razzle Dazzle’ and ‘Cell Block Tango’ are treated like fully staged group numbers that one can take in as a whole.

EBB: As I recall, “Cell Block Tango” was a very difficult number to write. It’s not so much a song as a musical scene for six women, and each has to tell her personal story in the course of a musical refrain that keeps repeating. It was difficult because each of the stories had to be entertaining and also meaningful. Each one had to be of a length that didn’t go on too long and run the risk of being boring. We kept rewriting and rewriting those stories that the women told to go with the refrain— He had it coming He had it coming He only had himself to blame. If you’d have been there If you’d have seen it I betcha would have done the same! KANDER: When Gwen was sick during Chicago, Liza took over for eight weeks and she came close to making the show a hit. EBB: She did all of Gwen’s blocking. KANDER: She learned that show in a week. EBB: I guess I should confess this. I had been with Liza in California, and when we were on our way back to New York on the plane, when I knew Liza was going to do Chicago, I was egging her on to get little things back into the show that I lost during my collaboration with Fosse. I desperately wanted “My Own Best Friend” to be a song just for Roxie. That was the way it was originally supposed to be done. But Bobby took that song and added Chita as Velma. He had them at the edge of the stage, obviously mocking the high-end cabaret singers with their phony Oh-look-at-me attitude. He hated songs like— KANDER: “I Did It My Way.” EBB: And “I Gotta Be Me.” He hated them.

A Child’s Prayer M. Bentham-Edwards God make my life a little light, Within the world to glow; A tiny flame that burneth bright Wherever I may go. God make my life a little flower, That giveth joy to all, Content to bloom in native bower, Although its place be small. God make my life a little song, That comforteth the sad; That helpeth others to be strong, And makes the singer glad. God make my life a little staff, Whereon the weak may rest, That so what health and strength I have May serve my neighbors best.

Hack # 12: The Two-Minute Rule The Two-Minute Rule, from best-selling author David Allen’s book Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, is a simple but powerful way to cut through a long to-do list. The basic principle is that if a task takes less than two minutes, you do it right now. Knocking out quick tasks straight away prevents mental clutter and overwhelm, clearing space to focus on what really matters.

Hack # 17: Find the Smallest Possible Version of a Task James Clear’s best-selling book Atomic Habits focuses on the idea that small, consistent changes in behavior can lead to big results over time. Instead of trying to make drastic changes all at once, Clear suggests focusing on tiny habits that are easy to do and build on each other. You can use the same idea to start tasks – by shrinking them down to the tiniest possible step.

At its best, art can be nothing more than a means of forgetting the human disaster for a while.’ I am still working hard to make this ‘while’ worthwhile. — I.B.S., ‘Author's Note,’ July 6, 1981.

Do we think that our interests are best fulfilled by conspicuously consuming as many expensive items as possible, so that everyone knows we are rich? Or do we include among our interests the satisfactions that come from helping others?

THE MYSTERY OF Q In addition to the four gospels, scholars often refer to what they call Q, which stands for the German word Quelle, or “source.”3 Because of similarities in language and content, it has traditionally been assumed that Matthew and Luke drew upon Mark’s earlier gospel in writing their own. In addition, scholars have said that Matthew and Luke also incorporated some material from this mysterious Q, material that is absent from Mark. “What exactly is Q?” I asked Blomberg. “It’s nothing more than a hypothesis,” he replied, again leaning back comfortably in his chair. “With few exceptions, it’s just sayings or teachings of Jesus, which once may have formed an independent, separate document. “You see, it was a common literary genre to collect the sayings of respected teachers, sort of as we compile the top music of a singer and put it into a ‘best of’ album. Q may have been something like that. At least that’s the theory.

When his students didn't get a concept, he didn't want to see them go silent and give up. He wanted to see them try again and again. He wanted them not to accept not understanding. The only way forward was to keep giving your next best wrong answer.

Her smile was brittle. "Well, I know Kieran's achieving something if someone like you is willing to be in a relationship with him." "Someone like me?" She gestured to me from head to toe. "Respectable. Elegantly dressed, if a little flamboyant with color. Beautiful manners, well-spoken. Clearly you listened to your parents when they told you how to behave." I choked back a snort at the thought of my biological father being Mr. Manners. The sheer audacity of it. "Kieran probably hasn't told you about all the times we had to get him out of trouble," she continued. I blinked, confused. "No." She ticked off on her fingers as she spoke. "He skipped classes, he stole money out of my wallet, he crashed our cars more than once. Not to mention the drinking, my God. He couldn't hold his liquor at all. We were so ashamed." I held back my eye roll. It was like having a conversation with a steamroller. As she continued to list Kieran's crimes, I realized that she relished this monologue, all the ways he'd done them wrong. Like she never wanted him to grow up because then she'd have to stop being a martyr. "But anyway, that's all in the past. Finally, he's become who we always wanted him to be, and we can hold our heads up." The thought of being a source of pride to these snobby, plastic people made me want to drink ten flutes of prosecco, climb onto their dining room table, and do Amy Winehouse karaoke, Diane's advice about polish and presentation be damned. But all I needed to shock them was the truth. "I haven't seen my father in over twenty years," I began. "As far as I know he's still the lead singer of the second-best hair metal band in Spokane. My mother's salary was for keeping herself in clothes and boyfriends. Sometimes I had to break into my piggy bank so that I could by Cup O' Noodles at 7-Eleven for my brother and me. I've made a good life in spite of my parents, not because of them. It's one of the reasons I fell in love with your son. I knew he was a survivor, too. But thank you for the compliments. Now, if you'll excuse me.

Hack # 19: Keep Cleaning Supplies Ready in Each Room One of the best ways to reduce friction when you want to clean the house is to prepare your cleaning tools ahead of time so that they are easily at hand in each room. It makes the process so much smoother.

It’s all about the love, Willy. He wants to give you everything—peace, joy, comfort, security, forgiveness . . . All of it. He came to Earth in the form of His only son and paid a price for our sins that only He could pay. We could never do enough to deserve His forgiveness and His love, but that’s the best part. We don’t have to do anything to deserve it or earn it. All we have to do is believe, which involves repenting, acknowledging, and accepting Jesus as our Lord and Savior. That’s the first step in shrugging off the old man and taking Jesus into our hearts.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve always loved the farm. But Daddy has always said that making decisions based on the heart is careless. And lately, my heart has been going in another direction. No one knows about my dreams of leaving the farm one day to be a famous singer other than my best friend, Jax. Growing up as a Coleman on the farm means not being allowed to have dreams.

He had attended meetings of the Mothers’ Union, the Women’s Institute and the PCC. He had organised the flower rota, and typed up a timetable for the church wardens, the sidesmen, and the volunteers to clean and polish the brasses. He had edited the monthly issue of the parish magazine, continued with the weekly Bible study group, and run a series of confirmation classes. He had even taken a group of Scouts and Cubs on a hike, supervised the building of the Christmas crib, organised the carol singers and set up a search for a lost cat. At the same time he had continued his teaching at Corpus. Any visiting archdeacon, sent to check up on him, would have no cause for complaint, but Sidney knew that he was not at his best. He had not visited the sick as regularly as he had hoped, he was three weeks behind on his correspondence and he had not even begun to write the big Advent sermon which he was due to preach in King’s College Chapel.

I know I always want to do the best I can.

The best music happens when you have a personal connection to it.

Let it be a person who says on the outside exactly what the voice of your mind says inside. Now make that person your best friend. After all, how many friends do you spend all of your time with and pay absolute attention to every word they say?

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By Sami Abouzid I have never been to music school. I went to the Sami Abouzid School—the best school in life. I taught myself everything I needed to know to create symphonies, compose soundtracks, and produce hits in many languages. I am the best teacher I ever had. No one in this life will ever teach you something truly powerful for your soul. The majority in this field chase money, business, and ego—no emotions, no artistic vision, no eternal goals. In music, jealousy runs deep. When you create something amazing, they don’t say, “Well done.” They look away. I’ve never met a musician who reached out with genuine happiness for me. Years ago, singers walked into my family store, heard my music, and left in shock when they learned it was mine. That’s why I have no friends in music—I am my own best friend. And I’m lucky for that. This month, on my birthday, I will reward myself by releasing 10 albums worldwide in one shot—to show every person who said, “You can’t,” that I can. I came to America with one song. Now I have 1,000 songs, 10,000 versions, and 672 soundtracks—created my way, not theirs. God bless America. Thanks to Allah, I conquered my dreams.