The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com

Wednesday, February 7, 2007 - 5A

'Once more
with feeling!'

ecently, my friend admit-
ted to me what gave his life
meaning.
"On stage - it's the only time I
feel really alive," my friend said
as we walked away from the Men-
delssohn Theater, where he'd been
rehearsing.
I suspected this was something
of an overstatement, but then again,
what was I going to do? Argue with
him? I should have asked
him to define his terms.
"I feel so alive!" peo-
ple yell as they jump out
of airplanes. Not hav-
ing done it myself, I can
guessjumpers certainly
feel, well, miraculously
not dead.
People who have
never performed on ABIGAI
stage themselves are
still sensitive to the COLOD
power the act of per-
forming holds. It can happen in the
most mundane setting, likS in high
school when that nondescript guy
or girl took a drumsolo on Arts Tal-
ent Day and became, for the dura-
tion of the performance, nothing
short of fascinating to you.
How can something we react
to with such adoration not be one
of our most necessary and most
human traits? How can it not be
difference between getting by and
feeling alive?
It doesn't have to be someone
who self-identifies as "aperformer"
who pulls us deeply into a moment
with them. It's not just the lights
and the stage that slays us. The
indefatiguable draw is separate,
even, from whatever the performer
is actually producing. Something
else powerfully attracts us to per-
formance.
The emerging discipline of posi-
tive psychology has coined a term
that seems to describe this state
we so love to witness. A concept
called "flow" has been posited as a
major contributor to an individual's
happiness. Flow is a psychological
state that occurs when a person
works on a task whose demands are
well-matched to their capabilities.
Well-matched doesn't mean "easy."
People hate busywork but love
tasks where they feel their person-
al strengths are precisely what's
needed. Unless the task strikes the
right balance, we become bored
with something that's too easy
or frustrated with something too
hard.
Sometimes, given a challenge
we find we have the confidence
to address, we will tackle it abso-
lutely. That's when everything else
going on around you seems imma-
terial, when "time flies." It may be
the harmonica or calculus or soccer
that does it for you-what matters
is not so much the action as how
you engage in it.
In some performances, we are
witnesses to flow. Something obvi-
ously deeply satisfying to an indi-
vidual is brought out - with what
can seem like superhuman bravery
- into the public.
Sinaboro - the University's
Korean drumming troupe, and one
that I was once a part of - had their
big annual performance on Satur-

day. The group makes music that
requires great attentiveness and
commitment to long and complex
pieces. In one part of their perfor-
mance, seven advanced players per-
formed one of the most demanding
pieces in the genre. It might have
been seven or it might have been 15
minutes long - it was hard to say,
because of its trance-like effects on
the audience. This was no lullaby,
buta profoundly challenging
performance. This music
requires following a com-
plex pattern of subtly shift-
ing rhythms. Sitting side
by side, the three perform-
ers on the most virtuosic
instrument had all closed
their eyes several minutes
in. As the piece neared its
L B. incredibly fast, pounding
peak, one player began to
NER scream, her hands mov-
ing too quickly to follow.
This combination of a deep
indulgence of impulse and a dis-
cipline we rarely sustain in daily
life awes us. We suspect that per-
formers are fulfilling fundamental
desires that we, too, want to expel
into the public space.
The purposefulness of perfor-
mance feels like a hugely confident
act. Save for slip-ups and totally
improvisational tangents, perfor-
mances are intended. What hap-
pens in them is done in the light of
being observed. As observed as we
are in our social lives, it's unsur-
prising that performers gather such
Art is everything.
Performance art
is for everyone.
social cache. All other behavior
aside, someone on stage welcomes
your gaze - and everyone hungers
to look and be looked at. For even
the briefest moments, performers
seem to get just what we all want.
So what gives? Why them and not
us?
When we see people perform
we see something that's already
in us. We have the same capacity
to engage in a task that fascinates,
that is, that lends itself to flow.
You could tweak your daily rou-
tine to find even the humblest daily
dose. And you can stock up on the
weekends courtesy of the talented
artists, the local finds and global
stars that come to this campus
every day.
Match your capacity for survival
with the demanding task of getting
to and from events. You, remark-
able organism, know just what's
required of you - a warm scarf and
a commitment to your goal. "It lets
you know you're alive!" we scream
into the wind.
- Colodner's hair is always
in the wind E-mail her at
abigabor@umich.edu.

Night
of the
'Animal'
FOLK ROCKER TO
CROON AT ARK
ByANNAASH
Daily Arts Writer
Last year Josh Ritter was Stephen King's
favorite musician. If that's not impressive
enough, the Republic of
Ireland has been all over Josh Ritter
him since he opened for
The Frames in 2002, and Tomorrow at
his album Hello Starling 7:30 p.m.
was No. 2 on its charts in $15
2003. At The Ark
Sadly, for many of us
here in the United States,
Josh Ritter is still struggling to climb out of
the brimming vat of crooning folk-rock, finger-
picking songwriters and establish himself as a
recognizable voice on our iPod Shuffles.
But things are beginning to change for the
29-year-old musician from Idaho. His latest
album, Animal Years, has earned him some
well-deserved spotlight on NPR and the David
Letterman Show, and it's been heralded as

Huh?
his breakthrough album. However, "break-
through" isn't necessarily the most accurate
description for what Ritter has done on this
album, but rather what this album has done for
Ritter's career in the United States. Technically
and stylistically, very little has changed. Critics
can still make the same broad generalizations
about Ritter's similarities to Dylan, and the
disparaging reviewer still has plenty of room
to box Ritter's simplicity into the routinely pre-
scribed fork-norms.
But there's something inexorably endearing
about a musician who doesn't resort to lofty,
uninterpretable metaphors and disjointed
abstractions in an attempt to embark on origi-
nality. Ritter isn't afraid of tradition, and this
almost-novel attribute allows his storytelling
lyrics to thrive in their own historical and lit-
erary density. What's being considered "break-
through" material on Animal Years is merely
the refined and poised version of the type of
stunning material we saw on his earlier, self-
released albums.

A graduate of Oberlin College with a degree
in American history, specifically American
folk-music (which he switched to after initially
pursuing neuroscience), Ritter didn't start mak-
ing music until he was 18. After four years of
studying folk music it's no surprise that Ritter's
music is deeply rooted in an Americana ardor,
but this doesn't hinder his reflection on current
social and political issues. And yes, a strain of
activism does round out the singer-songwriter
mold that he dwells in, but with one listen of the
10-minute ballad "Thin Blue Frame," you can
see that this man has used his template in the
best of ways: "Spirals and capitals like the twist
of a script / streets named for heroes that could
almost exist / The fruit trees of Eden and the
gardens that seem / to float like the smoke from
a lithium dream / cedar trees growing in the
cool of the squares / the young women walking
in the portals of prayer."
Ritter will be playing tomorrow at the Ark
- making it possible for you to decide whether
or not Stephen King has good music taste.

Ex-Hood member,
creates, fills 'Need'
By DEVIKA DAGA them in the service of actual songs,
Daily Arts Writer the results can be quite fascinating.
In the lead track, "Of Athroll
In another life, Bracken's founder Slains," for example, Adams throws
Chris Adams was the co-captain of the listener headfirst into a head-
the U.K. exper- nodding beat textured with bloops,
imentalist beeps and squelches of strings. His
group Hood. weary voice comes through in the
In what seems Bracken background and accentuates the
like a true rein- heavy bass and orchestra. The beau-
carnation, the We Know About ty of the track lies not in Adams's
Leeds native the Need lyrics - which are hardly decipher-
returns to the Anticon able - but in his ability to hold each
music scene as sound together.
a less-soused version of The Books Shards of a kaleidoscopic guitar
with his first album We Know About bounce around within "Fight Or
theNeed. Flight's" framework, dancing about
Adams's debut treads the rarely like light reflections on a darkened
walked line between electronic bedroom wall and lending the song
and organic, and often it can make
for a frustrating listen. Indeed, it
seems like Adams is interested in
seeing just how far he can push his
laptop to distort and fracture his
sound banks, to send them skitter-
ing around scattershot-like. Given
Adams's own description of the
Bracken project as "an attempt to
sound exactly like a pop band being
frozen solid and then shattered into
a million pieces," this shouldn't be
much of a surprise.
- But upon closer -inspection, the
glitch-addled elements of We Know
A bout the Need tend to blend togeth- FE SHMEF
er into a mass of twitching, shiver-
ing sound. When Adams harnesses SOPHOMORE
all of the epileptic rhythms and puts
JUNIOR11

So emo he writes songs in graveyards.
a unique airiness. -
"Back On the Calder Line" winds
downthe albumwithitsmosthaunt-
ing moments, bits of guitar caught
in a downward spiral that circle
around Adams's tentative voice. The'
song as a whole strikes a mourn-
ful tone heightened by a wavering
organ and vocal cries evoke scenes
from Middle Eastern minarets and.

bazaars.
There are moments where the
lines between all of these fascinat-
ing snippets simply blur together,
turning into something out of focus,
indistinct and smudged. Depend-
ing on your mood, We Know About
theNeed could be impenetrable and
obtuse - or completely ephemeral
and otherworldly.

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