We went to see Regina Spektor last night at Sokol and I would have to say the crowd was unruly. I joked with a girl in the audience about how I could very easily bulldoze my way to the front, since most of the crowd were females. Females with drunk boyfriends lurking toward the back near the bar. I don't think I really noticed any of this at first because I was really apprehensive about seeing her perform, but somewhere in the middle of probably her fourth or fifth song she asked the audience if they could keep it down, "I'm not lip syncing you know." I think she was right to ask that to some extent, as she is not the type of artist that you can just sort of listen to while you're catching up on Sports Center highlights... not in the least. Sokol always seems perfect for shows like hers because of the intimate vibe that comes from being in that old building, with its long history of elegant music acts. It was no different for her if people would have been able to get over themselves and their obvious self-absorption. The woman sits down and begins playing the piano as if she were just messing around in her parlor. She flitters out sweet melodies from the stage and bats her eyelashes, sometimes, as Brooke pointed out to me, having her eyes lightly shut as she plays each note and sings each lift and octave... I was familiar with a few of her songs but not all, so I could keep the objectivity I needed to truly appreciate that here was talent, here was a presence that pulled us all in. Just focusing on the lyrics, I'd here lines that rang with a graceful truth... then on a few songs, I'd find her telling kitschy (her own oft-used word) and sometimes gentle stories no doubt about personalities or situations she had known throughout her still short life. Graceful was how I would describe her if I had to use only a word. Full of gentle lightness and being, radiating out from that tender muscle that seems to beam from her ribcage is the closest sentence I could use to frame her essence...

I want to sing to you my love
My only love and happiness
Don't be so blue so blue my love
This too shall pass this too shall pass

But tell me, what have I done to deserve you?
Must have done something cause that's how it works
Must have been kind to kittens and birds,
In a previous life must have thought happy thoughts...

I found myself with tears of joy, leaping inside when she would work out a refrain, how she had found those phrases which it seems so many solid songwriters are able to bracket as the words they most want to be remembered by... word they long to fill the air with.

I couldn't help it, thinking that here is a new shining star, coming from somewhere East, I know that part of her descent is Russian/ Eastern European and that this woman has the power to influence another age if she chooses, endless troupes of lovestruck teenagers or twenty-somethings, idealists yearning for love or the capacity or the wherewithal to understand or care about love... for me, I watched my own lover's expressions intermittently throughout the show, watched as she perked up at certain songs, mumbled the words to others, expressed joy, sorrow, wonder, hope, love. The last of all being the greatest. The greatest of all being love.

And with that I leave you with some thoughts to share, courtesy of Miss Regina Spektor,

Samson came to my bed
Told me that my hair was red
Told me I was beautiful and
Came into my bed
Oh I cut his hair myself one night
A pair of dull scissors in the yellow light
And he told me that I'd done alright
And kissed me till the morning light
The morning light
And kissed me till the morning light.

Brooke tells me this song reminds her of me,  and ofttimes I haven't the foggiest
idea of what people are seeing.   More and more,  I'm focused on how I'm trying to
live my life to the best of my ability rather than how people see what I do.
But this idea of Samson strikes me this time, as I am a person trying to stand,
trying to be the rock,  and along comes this woman who is so wonderful and complete
and she's Delilah,  al she wants to do is cut my hair to expose the beauty within me,
and to see me pure, as I am,  but if she cuts my hair,  it renders me vulnerable.
I don't know.   Why doe sthe Bible keep coming back to me?  The Old Testament and its
stories.  Sometimes even the New Testamnt, stories about Jesus.