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Check ignition and may God's love be with you.

1/28/2014

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Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield was weightless, floating in the zero gravity environment of the International Space Station 200 miles above the surface of the earth.  If spending 5 months in the space station and posting videos about everyday life up there wasn't vanguard enough, what the 53-year old Hadfied did next came to capture the hearts and imaginations of millions of people back here on earth:  

He pulled out a guitar and sang “Space Oddity,” by David Bowie.  In space. 
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His acoustic guitar floating with him, Hadfield’s well-rehearsed version did falsetto justice to the Bowie original:

“This is Major Tom to ground control,
I’m stepping through the door,
And I’m floating in the most peculiar way,
And the stars look very different today…”

At face value, the 1973 hit by iconic rocker David Bowie was a futuristic sci-fi ballad about Major Tom, a lone astronaut in space, but the deeper themes are about exploration of the human condition, the courage to be different, and the conflicting emotions of the detachment it takes to truly be free in this universe. 

Of course Hadfield left out the part where Major Tom reports problems to ground control, and even inserted his own name in the song a couple times.  Since its release and worldwide popularity, the whole team successfully came back to earth and Major Tom, err Chris Hadfield has retired from the space program, as planned.  Just like in the song Major Tom makes it back to earth and is celebrated by the press and his fans as a hero, but the real reward was a few solitary moments orbiting the earth and the view from the dark starry heavens that belonged only to him.  

My friend told me about this video last night and I was immediately moved by both the vulnerability and depth of it.  Coincidentally, I began listening to Bowie’s classic a few weeks ago as I write as an eerily-dreamy reminder that no one ever accomplishes anything important by keeping their feet on the ground.  

What really fascinates me is how unique Hadfield’s solo-above-the-stratosphere truly is.  He did something that no one, and I mean NO ONE, in the history of the earth has done.  That’s remarkable when you consider the thousands of years of mankind’s modern history and the fact that there have been 100 billion people on earth.  Think about that – there are infinite possibilities to create, to do something different, to be the conscious ground control in the mission of our own lives.  As time goes on you’d think that we as a race of artists and dreamers and explorers had LESS ideas to launch, but instead inexplicably we have more, exponentially it seems.  What a pure, weightless experience; to summon the courage to be an innovator and let your imagination soar into its own orbit.  Art, writing, music, creation, ambient knowledge - they keep expanding into previously dark and empty corners of our existence to give us warmth.  The democratization of ideas, our social web of conscience, people helping others a world away who they’ve never seen and will never know - interconnectedness like never before.  Somehow the world is getting bigger and smaller at the same time, spinning out of control but also hugged tightly by a gravity much bigger than ourselves.  

I can only conclude that it’s our nature to keep launching into the unknown of the human psyche, just to test how far our light may spread while others look up and pray for our safe return.  This song, a soul floating in the atmosphere of endless possibility, Hadfield’s cold, silent journey a little bit farther into our humanity, somehow all encompass the best of our collective spirit, a spirit that is, by definition, exactly as vast as anything and everything we don't know, an idea so beautiful it makes our tears flow up.  

Well done, Major Tom.

-Norm  :-)
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I'm Beggin' You to Listen to This Song.

2/12/2013

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Have you ever heard a song out of nowhere that just turns you out?  I mean you hear it somewhere and you can't get it out of your head, to the degree that you ask everyone around you what it is, and then run home and search for it on YouTube and even...gulp...PAY to download it on iTunes?

That happened to me the other day down here in Orlando, hanging out a rooftop bar with my old friends the Famous brothers on a perfect 70 degree night among tiki torches and a glowing panorama of the downtown skyline.  The DJ was playing a hot mix of 90's hip hop and dance tunes and then THIS song came on, "Beggin' You," by MadCon, a spirited funk-hop ballad laid over the Four Season's 1967 song of the same name, "Beggin'"

I asked Big Mike Famous in all seriousness if we were listening to a new Roots joint, possibly with Jill Scott on stage and produced by Andre 3000.  The next day he found the actual artist for me and I posted the link on Facebook.  Within minutes a handful of people replied that they were either dancing on top of their desks at work or had a new favorite jam.  

Now I'm not in the habit of writing music reviews - I leave that to the more knowledgeable, diehard music bloggers like Adam Williams out of Great Britian.  But I thought it couldn't hurt to give these guys some shine.  A quick Wiki search revealed that MadCon, short for Mad Conference, consisting of Yosef Wolde-Mariam and Tshawe Baqwais along with female accompaniment, is actually a Norwegian band who's been around since 1992.  They got their start on a lot of European television shows and eventually blew up the the international charts and award shows everywhere from Poland to Portugal. 

It's the kind of song you have to crank while you're in the shower, or put on repeat on your iPod as you run on the treadmill and then you look up and you've run twice as far as usual.  Let's show MadCon some love and go to iTunes and....gulp..PAY to download it.  

Enjoy.  

 

    Do you have a new favorite song that you can't get out of your head?  

    Tell me about it!

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    Norm Schriever

    Norm Schriever is a best-selling author, expat, cultural mad scientist, and enemy of the comfort zone. He travels the globe, telling the stories of the people he finds, and hopes to make the world a little bit better place with his words.   

    Norm is a professional blogger, digital marketer for smart brands around the world,  and writes for the Huffington Post, Hotels.com, and others.

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