Holiday preparations have caused a short hiatus from blogging on my latest topics. Watch for a new post at AITS.org soon, as well as further posts on project management and a follow up on the Materiality vs. Prescriptiveness controversy in auditing, and in public contracting and project management.
For now, however, is some music by Patty Griffin.
Oftentimes artistry comes from pain, and that is probably true in describing the start of Patty Griffin’s musical career. Her bio states that she was born in Old Town, Maine in 1964 and showed no interest in pursuing a musical career, though she learned to play the guitar and undoubtedly has a beautiful singing voice. Then came the breakup of her marriage in 1992. She began writing and performing songs in Boston coffeehouses and small clubs, where she had lived when her marriage ended. Her insightful lyrics and strong musical voice attracted other established artists, the likes of which were Willie Nelson, Emmylou Harris, and the Dixie Chicks. They began covering her songs at about the same time that she was began releasing albums beginning in the late nineties, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Personally, I came to her music early with the release of the album Flaming Red, in 1998. It and the one that preceded it, Living with Ghosts, are considered essential albums in the singer-songwriter genre, though her following albums are just as accomplished and have won her many musical accolades, not only from her audience but also from other songwriters and musical artists.
I saw her perform in concert at the now defunct Thirsty Ear Music Festival at a venue that consisted of a movie western set outside of Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 2008. She paused her performance to remark about the colors of the hills to the east she was facing–awash in yellow ochre and shades of magenta and pink–which she viewed as she sang her songs. The landscape there has inspired many artists. Behind her the desert sun was low in the sky, about ready to set, illuminating from behind the thin plains of clouds hanging in the air, the colors of red, orange, yellow, and grey. Then she resumed and sang “Up to the Mountain (MLK Song)” and in that moment it seemed to me that if there was a voice that would come from the throat of a muse, this was it.
Her latest album is entitled Servant of Love. Her website describes this album as exploring all of the aspects of love: both its positive and negative aspects, its pleasure and pain, its fulfillment and its loneliness. In this way her music continues to record and explore the human experience. Here she is performing “250,000 Miles.”
Life, Project Management, and Everything 