Response to @joshgroban "Granted"

Josh was an extraordinary child. He saw musical theater when he was small and decided he wanted to do musical theater. 

That in and of itself is not unusual. What is unusual is that his determination to achieve that goal never wavered. 

He got into arts schools, arts camps, lessons, an arts college. Even after he booked a multimillion dollar music contact, he never let go of that dream, for thirty years, until he actually managed to get on a Broadway stage. 

Who has that kind of determination and focus? Certainly not me. I never even had any idea what I wanted to be, career wise, when I grew up until I was 57, when I decided I wanted to act. And now my determination to do that is wavering some. Before that, I was doing intellectual property law, mostly to please my dad. 

He also has some extraordinary gifts. He reports that he could come home and play at least the melody of all the songs from a musical on the piano after seeing the musical once. When Kat was dating him, she reported that he still does this, that he can play any song that he's heard. 

So he writes this song, "Granted," which promotes pursuing a dream. Josh had a dream. He pursued it. He got it. 

What about the rest of us? We don't have that kind of determination and focus. We don't have those natural gifts. We might not even have a dream, or not a realistic one. I have fantasized about marrying a number of celebrities. Is that going to happen? Probably not. And look what happened with Katie Holmes. She had a dream to marry Tom Cruise, as I also once did. She achieved her dream, but it apparently didn't turn out the way she hoped. That's often the case for me. Things aren't what I hoped they would be. 

So Josh got his dream and apparently loved it as much as he dreamed he would. That's also not so typical of dreams. 

I dreamed of a lifelong successful career. That failed. I dreamed of a happy marriage. My ex dumped me. I dreamed of brilliant children. I got disabled ones. I worked hard to stay fit and lose weight, in the hopes of having a healthy active lifestyle as an older person. Then I got cancer. 

Dreams. 

Sigh. 

@joshgroban Bridges album -- updated

This has a more upbeat feel than prior albums. The songs about romance are especially positive -- about being willing to commit rather than being predominantly about breakup or communications failures as was Josh's previous wont. This isn't a bad thing at all.  Illuminations was enough to break your heart if you cared about Josh at all, because he sounded so utterly miserable.  Songs that feel more comfortable with commitment include More of You, 99 years, and Won't Look Back. Run is more in the prior vein.

The arrangements are fairly uninteresting -- less complex, less intellectual than I would like to hear.  Also the instrumentals are mixed to be more quiet than previously.  The emphasis is on Josh's voice -- improved since new voice coach; and always extraordinarily very expressive.  Josh's voice is great, of course, but still I miss the prior intellectual focus of his music.

To my ear, Josh's expressiveness is most on show in "More of You," which is incredibly intense and feels very sexual.  Josh hasn't always been willing to show us that much of himself in terms of desire and connection.  I wonder if he'll be willing to sing it in concert. He had a previous very emotional and personal song, which sounded suicidal, called Love Only Knows.  So far as I know, that was never performed live.

But Josh has changed.  He used to be known for summarily deleting threads on the fora on his website that speculated about his personal life -- and never showing skin.  The most we'd get would be a couple of buttons undone around the neck and cuffs rolled up slightly above the wrist.  He went down a water slide fully clothed once, when he knew fans were around, apparently to avoid being photographed in a swimsuit.  But, then, very recently he tweeted a photo of himself in a swimsuit.  Given his prior behavior, that was a shock to me.

Also, he's attended more public events with his girlfriend of the moment.  He's dated a lot of women -- mostly in secret.  People who follow him closely have noticed things on twitter and talked about them on special gossip websites, so we suspect that there have been A LOT of women.  He didn't seem to feel comfortable being photographed with someone who he might only be seeing briefly, especially if he was seeing more than one at a time, which some of us suspected.  That seems to be changing, or maybe, given the songs about commitment on this album, he's more confident that he's closer to getting into something more permanent.

But I think he's feeling more comfortable with himself, in general. I think you see that in public appearances.  He used to speak in a high, anxious voice that made people speculate that he was gay.  Now he speaks in a lower voice. Even when he walks, to me, he looks more comfortable, more grounded, more in charge.

"More of You," could be an indication of that -- feeling more comfortable with letting us know that side of him.

I'm a huge Modern Classical fan.  Josh's modern classical/pop fusion stuff has been very exciting for me.  When I think of what sounds modern classical to me, I think of songs like Let Me Fall, Now or Never, Voce Existe en Mim, False Alarms, and Hollow Talk. There are hints of it too in Oceano and February Song.  Lucia's Kashmir on the Awake DVD was another example, tho perhaps more modern classical/metal fusion.  I was thrilled with the complex and varied music of Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812.  I like the more complicated arrangements like "Canto Alla Vita."

This whole album is much less musically intellectual than those examples. A touch of Josh's characteristic intervals/jumps and modern classical feel are somewhat apparent in Granted and Symphony, and a bit in River, but much more toned down than they used to be.  That disappoints me.

I guess the most complex arrangement is the last one -- Bigger than Us -- which is also back in the frustrated romance category.  Also Run -- Does frustration make him crave complex music? The duet with Andrea has a moderately complex classical arrangement -- but, while lovely, is not tremendously original to my ear.

Josh has had some fascinating world music influences on his albums, such as Lullaby and Weeping, which were related to his trip to South Africa.   Of course, many of his songs have been in romance languages, and one in Japanese, but I'm not sure I would call that world music, because they don't necessarily have arrangements that feel specific to another culture -- at least they don't feel that way to me.  I guess I'm used to Italian and French music.  I'm still waiting for Russian, German, Arabic, Chinese, and Swahili.  I love that world music feeling. Josh said in or thereabouts 2010 that he was working on a piano/zhonghu duet.  A couple of years ago he tweeted me that he was still working on it.  I was hoping we'd get that.

In the world music category on this album: Musica del Corazon, which has a very HIspanic feel -- but here in the USA there is so much Spanish language radio that this doesn't seem very exotic.  I don't feel that the Italian or French song sound like world music, even though they're not in English.  The duet with Andrea (We Will Meet Again) is the most canonically classical piece on the album, imho.

Duets with women on Bridges are mixed so that when Josh is singing  together with Jennifer or Sarah, you can't hear the women.  On the other hand the duet with Andrea is mixed so that you can hear both singers well when they're singing together. Why?

River is growing on me.  I really didn't like it the first time I heard it.  It sounded like a country song to me and Josh's voice sounds more thin and strained than on the other songs. But hearing it frequently has made it more palatable to me.  It certainly doesn't seem like a country song now.  I don't know why I thought so at first.

Remember: I edit blogs for a while after I write them, so if you read this early on you might want to come back and look at it again later.

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It was sometime after I wrote this blog that I really listened to the lyrics of "Run," and realized that it was likely about the singer standing by the bedside of a recently deceased loved one, in a hospital. Whoosh.  Very, very sad indeed.  Now that I've listened to the words of that song, it really knocks me for a loop.

RIP @jennr473 fan of @joshgroban

I've had 3 Grobie friends die prematurely: Lizzzie, Imazdi4ever (Donna) and now Jennr473.
I've been thinking about this. Why is this happening?

First, what sort of people become serious fans? These are not casual fans who buy an album and listen to it a few times. These are people who make a serious effort to get to lots of concerts, get every album, join a fan club, hang out with other fans, hang out by stage doors to get momentary glimpses of Josh and get his autograph.  These are people who hang out sufficiently often that Josh actually recognizes them when he sees them, or even tweets about them dying.

I have to think that these are people like me, people who are unhappy enough in their lives that somehow the idea of a celebrity is an escape -- somehow this bigger than life person can brighten the otherwise dismal life.

A person who has great stress in life will suffer adverse health consequences.  Medical studies are increasingly showing this.

Also, particularly with cancer, I believe cancer causes depression, as a symptom.  I've been through chemo twice and in remission twice.  I definitely feel that when I have cancer there is a subliminal drag on my psyche and my energy. I'm not depressed because I know I have cancer. I'm depressed before I know I have cancer, because at some level my body knows that something is horribly wrong.

Josh, himself, has described his work as "super depresso." I think particularly of his early songs "To Where You Are" and "For Always," which are directed at people who have lost a loved one.  But also there have been many songs about failed relationships "Now or Never," "Higher Window," "Happy in my Heartache," "Broken Vow," "Falling Slowly," etc.

These songs appeal to people with broken lives.

Those people either have or are going to have health problems.

Not a very pretty picture -- but, I fear, premature death awaits many of us hard core fans.

I'm frustrated, because I'm travelling with this ancient desk book running windows 7 and blogspot doesn't work well with this computer. I'm not going to be able to edit this unless I get to another computer.  if you're a regular reader of this blog, you'll know that I normally keep editing after posting.

fans mourn @joshgroban by attacking each other

So it happened again. I tweeted this.

You'll note I changed back to my original avi, my pet parrot, rather than the eagle with the pink cap.


I got a response.

She said

I said:

Here's the link to the instagram photo that we're talking about

https://www.instagram.com/p/BlBnKQTl8QI/?taken-by=bendybombshell

You'll note that at first I was confused and thought she was talking about the conversation I had the previous day with Daisy

Here's my blog about that

http://straightarrow372.blogspot.com/2018/07/rip-roaring-discussion-re-joshgroban.html

It just didn't occur to me that she could object to my sending a beautiful, artistic photo of scantily clad people.  Josh is no prude -- unlike some of his fans.  He would love that photo.

Apparently, fans are obsessed with the idea that if they could control what was tweeted to Josh they could have prevented him from leaving twitter.   They express this by attacking other fans.

In fact, historically, ever since Josh became famous, he has had a horror of fans attacking each other over social media posts directed at him.  He's talked about that repeatedly.  I included a screen shot of one of his comments in my immediately previous blog.

What was even worse was that if he defended a fan who was being attacked, then fans would attack him for getting involved.

I'm reminded of the five stages of grief:

Denial
Anger
Bargaining
Depression
Acceptance

Obviously, these fans are in the Anger and Bargaining stages, where they feel like somehow they could control whether he leaves by controlling what is tweeted to him -- not really understanding what was bothering him in the first place.

I withheld a political tweet just before he left, because I was worried that politics was what was upsetting him.  Of course, I don't know that. I'm just speculating.

rip roaring discussion re @joshgroban -- Ahh, it's been a while

NB: My interlocutor apologized and requested that her name be removed from the blog -- so I've edited it out.

It's been a while since I've been in one of these types of discussion.  I used to get into them all the time.  Screen shots follow

First, what she said:

Then what I said. Ugh. Sequence is lost here, but there never can be perfect sequencing in twitter discussions, because sometimes one party tweets in response to one tweet while the other person is composing a second tweet -- so the response ends up not being in sequence.

Links I referred to above, which you can't follow in screen shots.

https://creativesomething.net/post/55508909341/the-link-between-depression-and-creativity-and
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/whats-the-link-between-creativity-and-depression_us_592f3441e4b00afe556b0aac
http://straightarrow372.blogspot.com/2014/05/bipolar-boy-band-tweets.html
https://www.facebook.com/152218818163790/posts/583451145040553/
https://peterhollens.com/mad-world-depression/

This is reminding me of how people used to attack Lizzie, when she had thoughtful conversations with Josh on twitter. He always defended Lizzie. He always hated when fans attacked other fans for not being sheeples. He never wanted people to just fawn over him. He valued discussion.

He pleaded with fans over and over not to attack each other and to let him defend himself. It drove him crazy watching fans hurt each other.

I totally don't get [deleted]'s complaint at all. Why would I have to have had coffee with Josh to know that he said he was leaving twitter at the advice of his shrink? Why would I have had to have coffee with Josh to know about his many comments on twitter and in interviews about his many dark moments?  Why would I have to be in his family to respond to a tweet in which he himself raised mental health issues?

I think some fans grew up in families where discussions of any type were not welcome.  People were just supposed to brown nose those in power all the time.  I supposed that must be the dynamic in abusive families. If you aren't always saying nice positive things to the abusive daddy-o, he's going to beat you up.

Josh didn't grow up in that sort of family and neither did I. Well, half and half. My mom loved vigorous discussion and debate.  My dad hated them.  He didn't want them occurring in his presence.  My mom and I had to wait until he wasn't around.

Also, I think some fans still feel that mental illness, such as depression, is shameful and not to be discussed in public with strangers.  I don't feel that way.  As a matter of fact, I think that attitude is dead wrong.  We need to talk about mental health.  We can't help each other if we don't.  We need to recognize that mental illness is common.

I've been composing another blog about my feelings about Josh leaving twitter.  I thought that was going to be my next blog -- but this intervened.

I used to have endless discussions with Lizzie (late great tweep) about this business of geniuses necessarily being crazy -- and we don't want to fix them.  We need them to be crazy if we want them to keep creating works of genius.   She was a psychologist.  She wanted all mental illness fixed. I don't think that's desirable, myself.  I want Josh to be able to keep performing and composing.  If he gets to be perfectly well balanced, I doubt that he'll be able to continue to do that.

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But the sad thing here is that he did used to sometimes jump in and discuss with us -- and now he won't. Alas.

Symphony by @joshgroban

So if we bought a ticket to the concert, then we got a link to listen to “Symphony,” a song that’s dropping Friday, apparently.  How many times have I listened to it now? Twenty? Forty?  Not sure.

i’ve been following Josh fairly closely since 2010, about 8 years.  I read all his tweets.  I listen to a lot of his TV interviews.  I’ve just noticed that there are a lot of Instagram posts as well.  I’ve been to a fair number of concerts.  I went to Comet twice — first Broadway play i ever saw twice.  I’ve listened to some of the gossip as well.

I feel like I know this guy. I don’t really, of course.  I’ve shaken his hand. He might even recognize me dimly if he saw me again, because we’ve met a few times. But I’ve never had a real conversation with him. I’m not even sure any more that I would like him if he were my friend. Still, I feel like I know him.

One thing I know about him is that he’s really good at expressing emotions in singing.  He’s said, and I believe him, that he’s not nearly so good at expressing emotions when speaking. So I listen to this very heartfelt, emotional song, which was probably inspired by something out of his life — and it feels very much like the person who I think I know: a passionate person, who hasn’t had a lot of relationship success — and part of that is due to his very demanding career and passionate devotion to that.

I am the daughter of a great man, as well. I know that you don’t get to be a great man by spending lots of time with family and friends just to hang out.  You get to be a great man by focusing on what you want to be great at and shutting a lot of other stuff out.

You really hear that in this song.  You hear it a lot from celebs that they think the primary obstacle between them and relationship is that they’re married to their careers.

I was also raised by a mentally ill mother who used me as a little psychiatrist to listen to her problems  — not that she was ever willing to listen to mine.  Somehow I learned the idea that the way you express love is by listening to someone else’s drama — and swirling in it with them.

So I listen to all this emotion about a relationship that must ultimately have failed, because he seems not to be in one now — and I feel like I need to go out and rescue him — swirl in drama with him.  

That’s impossible of course.  He’s got too many fans who all would like to rescue him.  And he’s had bad experiences trying to deal with some of those fans.  There’s no way I’ll ever get anywhere near him emotionally — except by listening to him pour his heart into his music.

But still there’s this sense of intimacy, listening to his private thoughts.  And he feels familiar, like an old friend, talking to me — a high drama friend, maybe a bit like my mom.

But, ultimately, I’m still alone in my house.

I decided to do some graphics for Josh's Birthday.  They're a bit hard to read, but I like them, because if you look at them full size they have an interesting 3D effect.  You have to click on them to see that.