Category: Music

Song from the Road

In March, I had several roadtrips of great distance and short timeframes.  I generally don’t drive, thus I never really listen to the radio.  As a result, I don’t always hear new music.  These roadtrips changed that.  One of my favorite songs from the road was The Lumineers’ “Ho Hey.”  I had heard the song before but dismissed it because it sounded too hokey-country (growing up in Alabama insured that I tried to escape the country label at all times).  Yet, at some time during night driving this song came on and it sucked me in.  I later really listened to the words and it is the sweetest song ever!

Enjoy!

Haven’t Posted in a While!

Technically this doesn’t count because I’m not writing anything but I thought I would share a little Rani Taj – she’s the awesomest dhol player (actually the only one I know of, lol).  I wish I had the energy to bust a move to this one.


Favorite Flamenco Song Evah: Jesse Cook’s Rain

I was having a conversation earlier with a guitar player and mentioned my favoritest guitar (specifically flamenco guitar) performance – Rain by Jesse Cook.  I’ve posted this video in the past and want to post it again because it is my favoritest flamenco guitar performance evah.  The song inspires/inspired an immensely passionate feeling when I first heard it and each time thereafter.  The funny thing is I was at a total loss for the title of the song and the name of the artist when we were having the discussion.  Sometimes even I can be at a loss for words.  With no further delay here is Jesse Cook and Rain (again!).

 

Imagine, The Idealist’s Theme Song

This song popped in my head today and I thought I would share.  It reminded me of one Sunday when I went to a church in my neighborhood.  At the end of the service, we all held hands and sang this song.  By the time we got to the end, I was a moist mess.  I needed two tissues (or one, used in the correct order).  One to wipe the tears from my eyes, the other, to blow my nose.

No tissues today.  Just a good feeling in my heart.  Imagine that…

A Thousand Kisses Deep

A thousand kisses deep.  If one were to kiss once per day every day, Kiss 1000 would arrive around two years and nine months later.  The idea of being a thousand kisses deep into a relationship (and beyond) holds a fascination for me. 

When a relationship first starts, the intensity of feeling generally comes from the newness of it all.  The mystery that is the other person holds an infinite degree of possibility waiting to be explored.  The presence of that mystery typically coincides with “being in love.”  However, the mystery fades as the other becomes known.  Superman becomes a mortal man.  Superwoman becomes a mortal woman.  With the faded mystery often goes the feeling of being in love.  Many relationships end there.  However, it’s when you move beyond the waning feeling of being in love towards the knowing of the other that the action of loving begins.  Loving the other with full awareness of all their foibles, inadequacies, and bad habits and off moments.  Loving the other, often, in spite of themselves.  Loving the other when their present-day reality is severely diminished in comparison to the dazzle of their initial possibilities. Being in love is a feeling, a state of being.  A passive state, if you will.  However, truly loving someone is an action.  It is something that you do…

Years ago, I was a member of an old church built in 1867.  The church was located in the center of Atlanta’s historic Black community and its members were especially active during the Civil Rights Movement.  Unlike the mega-churches in Atlanta that offered prosperity preaching with a side of super-sized salvation, this church was small and simple.  It was just the right size for my people watching.  The people I watched the most?  The older couples who came to church together most Sundays.  Creatures of habit, most people sat in the same seats each week and I did the same (this goes for almost anywhere I go repeatedly).  Each Sunday, I would look forward to watching couples in their seventies and even eighties arrive together and sit for worship.  After having been together for decades, it seemed as if they were no longer two wholly separate individuals but two people who had spent the majority of their lives together to the point where they merged into a unit.  They had their own synchronized rhythms about how they entered and sat down.  Each Sunday as I sat watching the couples, I marveled at how serene and content they seemed to have been and wondered how could I ever move from being unceasingly, unrelentingly single to accomplishing that type of relationship longevity.

I still don’t absolutely have the answer (or better yet, the relationship that reveals or supports the answer).  But my guess is that along the road of their relationship they faced many types of hurdles, temptations, disappointments and setbacks.  However, looking at the couples it seemed as if the act of loving, the commitment to the act of loving, in spite of the other circumstances, carried them forward to a point where foibles, bad habits, inadequacies and off moments were small, distant blips on a long-lived love.  Truth is, no one is perfect.  Not the person with whom I may fall in love.  Nor me in the eyes of the person who may fall in love with me. 

I’ve experienced loving someone for a period long enough to know that, yes, I am capable of loving someone for who they truly are, in spite of themselves.  At a certain point, I remember making conscious decisions to remain involved with him.  I chose to continue the act of loving him.  I could have just as easily chosen not to.  At a later point, I did choose to love him differently – not in a relationship.  The love is still there, the circumstances have changed.  I’m sure the couples that I saw in church, years down the path of their relationships, had already passed the choice point(s) years ago and possibly several times but chose to remain.  My relationship was obviously not meant to be one of longevity, although we do remain in contact as friends. The lesson(s) remain with me though.  In spite of the ending and because of its occurrence, I still hold out hope for the relationship that goes “A Thousand Kisses Deep.”  And beyond.

Here is one of Leonard Cohen’s takes on the concept of a “Thousand Kisses Deep.”  This piece has been a work in progress for years so this is only one variant.  Not to be confused, he has a song with the title “A Thousand Kisses Deep” that is different from this.

Accidents and falling

Yesterday, we were on the bike pedaling to our heart’s content.  When all of a sudden, I ran into the back of my friend’s bike when he stopped.  It was almost as if I were outside of myself looking at the incident.  I never used the brakes, I just plowed into his bike from behind.  It was definitely the non-motion of his bike that stopped me.  I realized that my mind was a million miles away and it was if I were coming back to myself just in time to see the accident happen but not soon enough to prevent it.  I could not remember what preoccupied my mind so that I didn’t react to his stopping.  Ultimately, there were no injuries, no problems involved.

Then, there was this morning.  I was on my way downstairs when my foot slipped and I found myself butt-bumping my way down several stairs.  Yesterday’s good fortune didn’t shine on me this morning.  I scraped the surface layer of skin off my elbow in two small places and have aches in a couple of other places (literally, I butt-bumped my way down).  I’ve had times in the past where I’ve had serial car accidents (people running into me) and was told that somehow I needed to slow down and pay attention to life.  The Universe has a way of trying to get your attention.  It starts small (bicycle dust-up Sunday) then gets progressively bigger (butt-bumping down the stairs).  I think I’ll meditate today so that whatever it is, I can acknowledge it, do something about it if necessary and move on.  Move on accident free that is.

Number of days since last life accident:

0

In honor of my own, personal tumble down the stairs, I give you a band I saw perform in Italy some years ago, aptly named “Tumbled Down the Stairs.”  Needless to say, I much prefer their music than the literal translation of their band name…

And of course, here’s one more for the road…

On the Border – Immigration

Immigration concerns have been top of mind for me for quite a while.  I have not immigrated although I would like to some day.  I thought that day would be soon but, alas, that is not to be the case.  I have one friend who has a “to hell with papers” attitude which makes me smile.  Considering the plight of “illegal” aliens in the United States, I have no desire to have an intimate knowledge of the everyday fear that being in a country illegally entails. 

Two years ago, I was aboard a bus coming from Italy going to Paris when the bus pulled over and was boarded by border agents checking passports.  As they moved down the aisle checking passports, I thought nothing of it.  Then I saw one agent keep a passport with the promise that he would return with it.  My first thought was “uhh-ohhh, this guy must be in trouble.”  When they got to me, he kept mine as well with the promise that he would return it.  I’m sure someone behind me was thinking “uhh-ohh, she’s in trouble”.  Funny how the pendulum swings.  They then proceeded in checking IDs until they reached the back of the bus, then left the bus with the confiscated passports.  The bus sat quietly (and nervously) awaiting the return of the officers with the passports they had collected.  As the seconds turned into hours, I started getting nervous – had I done something that put me on an international watch list?  Did they know that I was THINKING of ways to smuggle Parma ham back into the US?  I didn’t have any on hand from this visit but I’ve always wondered if there is a way to smuggle my own portion of gastronomic heaven back into the country.  Did they know?  Were the passengers seated behind me staring holes in the back of my head because my presumed illegal activities were holding up the bus’s progress?  Were they trying to figure out what sin I had committed to have my passport detained for an extended period?  As sweat probably started forming on my forehead thinking of all the things that could go wrong in a 21st century database with my passport number and name in it, the officers returned to the bus.  They returned my passport and that of several others, however, the guy ahead of me – not so lucky.  They escorted him from the bus in the middle of that night.  I sat there with my passport in hand, thinking – “uhh-ohh, that guy really is in trouble”, glad that it wasn’t me.

Just this evening, I spoke to someone who is trying to arrange to visit someone she knows who has been detained for being in the country illegally.  As I listened to the ins and outs of her attempts to visit, I realized that I wouldn’t want to trade places with the detained friend at all.  I have already died a thousand deaths already from any number of things that I’ve anxiously awaited (and these were positive things), I would not want to increase that to a thousand deaths per day as I try to live an “illegal” life in a “legal” world. 

With that I leave you with my first punk rock band – Gogol Bordello.  Guitar riffs, violin and accordion.  What a combo!