Transatlanticism and Garden State

The song and movie that are most on my mind right now can really say a lot about where I am in life. Transatlanticism is the title track of Death Cab for Cutie's latest album. I'm going to their concert in October, and I'm quite excited. I went to Garden State last Saturday night, and it was quite an emotional rush for me. The main reason is that it's a good movie, and I highly recommend it. The more important reason deals more with me relating to the characters and situations in it. Using rhetorical language, I could identify with them (look into Kenneth Burke's Grammar of Motives and Rhetoric of Motives for more information). I think that the idea of identification is perhaps the most important thing to happen to rhetoric since the tradition started, but I promise to say more on this topic some time in the near future. For now, the movie and the song together reflect an important part of my life. The Atlantic means more to me today than it did two weeks ago. The combination of singing by Ben Gibbard (my current favorite singer), piano (with the right amount of presence), and guitar (simple but beautiful) makes the song amazing. It would be hard for anyone to put another song after it, but it's not even at the end of the album - the next song happens to be Passenger Seat, which was one of my favorite songs of last spring.

I think it's about time for me to go ride my bike through the wind and rain to work (it's currently only windy - about 30mph, but there is a big rain storm surrounding the area, and I expect that I'll be riding my bike home in the dark, in the rain, in the wind).