What a Week / Month / Year

Things have been slowly coming down a few notches on the intensity scale this week... but it has definitely been a really rough 2010 so far.

A beloved friend gave me this song on one of his CD's yesterday and I don't know how I have never heard of this woman before. Her voice is hauntingly beautiful and plucks all the right heart strings.

Enjoy.

Just One More Time

This song is playing on repeat until further notice. I'm listening from my studio's thinking chair.

The song is "armchair" by Andrew Bird... Lyrics:

I dreamed you were a cosmonaut
of the space between our chairs
And I was a cartographer
of the tangles in your hair

I sang the song that silence sings
It's the one that everybody knows, everybody knows
The song that silence sings
And this is how it goes

These looms that weave apocrypha
they're hanging from a strand
The dark and empty rooms were full
of incandescent hands

The awkward pause
The fatal flaw
Time, it's a crooked bow
Time is a crooked bow

In time you need to learn, to love
The ebb just like the flow
Grab hold of your bootstraps, and pull like hell
until gravity feels sorry for you, and lets you go
As if you lack the proper chemicals to know
the way it felt the last time you let yourself fall this low

Time's a crooked bow
Time's a crooked bow
Time, it's a crooked bow

Fifty-five and three-eighths years later
At the bottom of a gigantic crater
An armchair calls to you
Yeah, and armchair calls to you
It says, someday, we'll get back at them all
With epoxy and a pair of pliers
As ancient sea slugs begin to crawl
through the ragweed and barbed wire

You didn't write
You didn't call
It didn't cross your mind at all
Through the waves
waves of hay and straw
You couldn't feel a thing at all
Fifty-five and three-eighths
Time
Fifty-five and three-eighths
Time
Time

Slapping myself for not flying to see him in February.

Thank god for music. Thank god for Andrew Bird.

Absorbed

I recognize the fact that I get a bit OCD when it comes to music... well I guess that applies to visual art as well... and maybe a few other things... but that's not the point I'm trying to make here.

This week I got completely absorbed by a song. I heard it for the first time last sunday morning. I listened to the album on repeat for the majority of a twelve hour drive, taking breaks to listen only to an audio book (4 hrs worth)... no other music. I pulled up this track at least two or three times every album play-through and haven't gotten it out of my head ever since. I looked up a lot of live versions, but still seem to like this recorded version best, which is a first for an Andrew Bird song.

Just for fun... here's a few other songs that have held that status with me... in the last month or two...

And just for good measure... one of my ALL TIME favorites... this one never ceases to absolutely amaze me.

Living in Integrity

Life is full of so many twists and turns. It's so easy to get lost in thoughts of the future... to make plans based on the events of a week... of a day... and then to have those plans change in the time of an instant. The question is: Do we embrace the change... or do we resist it? And it all boils down to one fact:

It's a personal choice.

The more important question then is...

Is your choice full of integrity? Is it kind?

The world is quickly changing, and that fact is reflected in the obscure nature of each and every individual's personal lives. What is happening on the macro level is happening everywhere on micro levels all over the planet, everyday.

We must choose kindness and integrity as a way of life. If we do not choose acceptance, forgiveness, peace, and unconditional love in our personal lives... it will never happen on a global scale. We make the global scale. As above, so below... and more importantly and seldom quoted... as below, so above.

We have to let go of expectations. All we have is the current moment. That current moment offers us the salvation we are seeking... through acceptance of what is... through acceptance of what may come... because we'll never know.

Sometimes I Feel Really Impulsive

Yesterday my friend Johnny pitched an idea for a trip to me.

Today I bought tickets.

May 4 : Seattle to LA

Objective: See Jazmine!

May 6: LA to Miami

Objective: Meet up with Johnny

That Night: Miami to Nicaragua

Objective: Surf Nicaragua and Fly Fish in Belize

May 22: Nicaragua to London

Objective: Hike and Sail the UK, France, and Greece

June 4: London to NYC

Objective: Fun in the city for a weekend. Find Amber, Dozer, and Art.

June 6: NYC to DC

Objective: Train ride decompression zone. Serious girl time with my long lost sister.

June 9: DC back to the Blessed Coast.

Stoked. Finally shaking this funk I've been in...

I wonder if I'll ever be comfortable sitting still?

(It was the god damn cherry blossoms again.)

Sometimes I Feel Like Stabbing My Painting With the End of My Paintbrush

Tonight's studio time was so horrible I resorted to looking up painting lessons online from my thinking chair.

Yes...

I was that desperate.

This video made me feel SOOO much better...

it was like he was speaking directly to me... particularly the bit about being afraid of the paint.

Enjoy.