After falling asleep a week ago yesterday, I woke up to the sound of Alicia Keys singing about trying to sleep with a broken heart during a performance on SNL. Immediately, I was mesmerized by the Prince-inspired wall-of-pop-synth atmospherics, provocative lyrics and even Miss Keys stance as she exposed her aching heart on stage. I'll admit, I've never been smitten with Alicia Keys up to this point, perhaps because I've never given her music much attention. However, this song has been haunting me for the past seven days. Faint echoes would follow through my days. The song would play over the speakers at the coffee shop where I work from time to time. Then, two days ago as I was enjoying a bowl of cereal on the sofa before heading off to the aforementioned coffee shop, I stumbled upon the video to this song while flipping through channels in search of a rerun of "Roseanne". The visuals of this video were no less captivating than those of the performance on SNL, particularly when she knelt down before what appeared to be a wounded dog and brought it back to life. Things just got even weirder from there. Anywho, I was soon made aware that Alicia Keys is in fact a super-human or at least possesses super-human traits which probably make it difficult for her to assimilate authentically with us humans who, despite our most noble efforts, simply cannot fly or bring dead dogs back to life ala the pie maker (for those familiar with "Pushing Daisies").
Even after watching this video which is quite obviously a spin-off of Heroes, a show which managed to both win me and my wife over completely and lose our interest completely in a matter of months, it has only added to the intrigue of this song. The mere fact that Bob Dylan mentions her in the opening track "Thunder on the Mountain" from his brilliant 2006 album "Modern Times" should have given me enough reason to pay attention. Well, now you have my attention Miss Keys. Now you have my attention.
Daddy doesn't have to work today. Let's have a family day. Would you like to go to the children's museum? We'll use our pass and enjoy the carousel and all of the other attractions which tykes both young and old find appealing. What's this? So many cars lined up outside the... It's MLK day. No school could mean a whole lot of other families taking advantage with their own family day. But lookie here, the ticket counter appears to be vacant...
