Jessica Charters

I'm working on my speech for my communication class right now. I'm looking at Fisher's Narrative Paradigm which states that humans are story telling beings and therefore our communication is generally like a story. We view our life as a story with a beginning, an end, characters, conflict and resolution. Super interesting stuff. Anyway, I'm applying it to song lyrics and looking at how most songs are narrative in their lyrics and explaining why this is using Fisher's theory.

Very cool, BUT that is not why I wanted to blog.

I was explaining this all to my dad and he shared with me something he heard on the radio the other day. I guess they were talking about how the idea that music "picks up where words stop" didn't come around until the revolutionary era. Until then music was just music, but after the revolution became a way to express what words could not.

The other day I bought the cutest notebook at Walmart. It's vintage looking and very cute, but I bought it with a very specific purpose in mind. There are so many times when I am listening to a song and a line of lyric just hits me. It stirs some sort of emotion in me. I will play the song again and again just to hear that one line and feel that same emotion. I bought my notebook to record these lines of songs.

For days and days my notebook just sat there. I finally decided I should probably start to actually record some of these song lines. I wrote my first one down. Easy enough. But then I went to try to explain what it was I felt exactly. I was stuck. I tried to write who the song reminded me of or why it made me feel what I did but I just couldn't. In this case music definitely picked up where words stopped. I finally managed to put something down on the page. Although as I go back and read what I wrote it seems immature, trivial, and I actually feel dumb or embarrassed reading it. Mostly because it makes absolutely no sense and the words are in no way comparable to what I feel.

Sadly now I don't know what to do with my cute, little vintage notebook but what I do know is I sure do love music, so much.

Here are a few songs that have had an impact in my life for one way or another {no order}:

 Winter Song - Ingrid Michaelson and Sarah Barellies
 Finale B - RENT
 On my Own - Les Miserables
 Gravity - Sarah Barellies
 Swing Set Chain - Loquat
 'Til Kingdom Come - Coldplay
 Fix You - Coldplay
 Crossfire - Brandon Flowers
 1234 - Feist
 Boston - Augustana
 Mean - Taylor Swift
 Someone Like You - Adele
 Something Good - The Sound of Music
 Edelweiss - The Sound of Music
 Everything has Changed - Taylor Swift
 Last Time - Taylor Swift
 Amie - Damien Rice
 Forever Young - Jay Z
 Vanilla Twilight - Owl City
 West Coast - Coconut Records
 Curl up and Die - Relient K
 Fawkes the Phoenix - Harry Potter
 The Longest Time - Billy Joel
 And Then You - Greg Laswell
 And So It Goes - Billy Joel
 Your Love is a Song - Switchfoot
 Sooner or Later - Mat Kearney
 Tonight - West Side Story
 Home - Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros
 Battle Born - The Killers
 Prize Fighter - The Killers
 Colors of the Wind - Pocahontas
 Run - George Strait
 Falling Slowly - Once
 Isn't she Lovely - Stevie Wonder
 Never Forget You - The Noisettes
 I Dreamed a Dream - Les Miserables

Okay. I'm going to stop. This list is not very diverse or well rounded and definitely nowhere near being complete but hey, at least I threw a few down.

OH! And I saw Gloriana the other day. Love me some country music! OH! And I see The Killers show in 11 days. But who's counting? OH! And I am HOME!!!!

 Gloriana :)

My flight was delayed an hour and a half. On top of that I was at the airport 4 hours early to begin with because of my ride situation. So what did I do with my 5.5 hours of time? Modern Family, The Office, walking across the entire airport with all my stuff in order to eat at Cafe Rio (anything for my cafe), lots of people watching, reading, Pinterest, AND random photo shoots! Of myself!