A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

  © 2025 Alex Diaz-Granados 🎧 The Soundtrack of Stillness — Music as Memory in Comings and Goings What if a mixtape could hold a heartbeat? In Comings and Goings – The Art of Being Seen , music is neither garnish nor nostalgia-bait—it’s emotional brushwork. Each track, from the thundering bravado of Twisted Sister to the trembling quiet of Beethoven’s Adagio cantabile , is chosen with surgical tenderness. Not to dazzle, but to reveal . Eric Carmen’s “Never Gonna Fall in Love Again” , hiding Rachmaninoff like a bruise beneath silk, becomes a turning point—not for plot, but for perception. Kelly hears what others miss. And that’s how we know she sees Jim too. Billy Joel’s “This Night” doesn’t seduce the moment—it steadies it. It enters like a held breath and leaves like a trace of skin on cotton. There’s a stripped-down elegance to the aesthetic curation here: each piece of music echoes a kind of duality. Pop songs with classical skeletons. Ballads that hum with memory. The mus...

 One of my favorite songs of all time is "All the Things You Are" by composer Jerome Kern and lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II. Written in 1939 for the musical "Very Warm for May," it quickly became a popular standard of the Big Band era. Many singers, instrumentalists, and orchestras of the period did covers; Frank Sinatra, Jo Stafford, Artie Shaw, Helen Forrest, Charlie Parker, Judy Garland, and Glenn Miller surely did back in the days of World War II and shortly after. Like other classics from the 1930s and 1940s - think "Moonlight Serenade" or "The Nearness of You" - "All the Things You Are" continues to captivate both singers and listeners, as new generations discover the charms of Kern's romantic melody and Hammerstein's poetic lyrics. The array of singers who have covered "All the Things You Are" is dizzying; it includes Ella Fitzgerald, Rebecca Luker, Renee Fleming, Johnny Mathis, Fred Waring and His Pennsylvanian...

Part One: Lost in Let's Remember, or How I Became a Billy Joel Fan Without Really Trying.... Although my taste leans heavily toward the classical/symphonic end of the musical spectrum, there are a few other genres that I like to visit from time to time, and pop/rock is one of them. Granted, I  am  a bit narrow-minded when it comes to rock; I tend to meander about in the softer, more sentimental stylings of early rock 'n' roll from the Fifties and early Sixties, preferring to listen to the Platters, the Skyliners, the Beach Boys, and the Beatles rather than to KISS, Metallica, or Alice Cooper. Hell, I'll even try listening to Alan Jackson or Garth Brooks if given a good incentive...say, a romantic evening with someone special who likes those singers and will be patient and loving enough to play me her favorite songs by those country singers to share part of herself  with me. I've learned, from personal experience, that a positive introduction to unfamiliar musical st...

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, the evolutionary, nay, revolutionary 1967 album by The Beatles, is one of the best, if not THE best, rock recordings ever. From the fantastic and iconic cover art by Peter Blake to the interesting idea of the "concept album," Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band broke away from The Beatles' previous "I Want To Hold Your Hand"-styled songs and took the Fab Four into new musical territory. According to the liner notes included with the booklet, the conceit of the album was that The Beatles had morphed into an entirely new and different band, hence the title "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." Geoff Emerick, the group's recording engineer, explains: "The Beatles insisted that everything be different, so everything was either distorted, limited, heavily compressed or treated with excessive equalization." This pure "studio album" was definitely avant garde for its mid-1960s e...