I just watched Rosie Thomas' All the Way From Michigan Not Mars DVD last night. It was pretty amazing, amusing and inspiring. I actually laughed out loud, literally. That was probably the only time I could've typed "LOL" and not been exaggerating. It made me want to go see her play, but she's only on the west coast currently. The movie, which was a mixture of documentary and live shows, did a great job of capturing Rosie Thomas' personality, which is wildly enigmatic to me. In person, in interviews, she is chatty, almost as if she has ADD. She's very bubbly and cheerful, in an artsy way. Once she starts singing, however, it's like time slows to a crawl, the audience falls silent and something beautiful happens. It's like a 180. Several times in the movie, she was on stage with Sufjan Stevens and Denison Witmer, joking around and laughing pretty hard, only to go into the next song and have the audience, and me for that matter, on the edge of their seats and a million miles away, feeling so deeply something that refused to be named or identified. I'm not sure if it's empathy, nostalgia or longing. Something in Rosie Thomas' music is pulling. It sucks you in and rolls you around and around and around, in the most mellow way you could imagine. And then, when the song was over, it was like coming up for air. And she makes that air very vulnerable, yet easy, and free from any pretension. It's like her music and personality strips away all the pretense, all the show, everything that tries to present itself in a better light, and leaves room for us to be ourselves and not feel alone or awkward.
I kept saying to myself as I watched... "I want to make music like this."
(I highly recommend getting the DVD. It comes with a vinyl, too.)
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