You are currently browsing the monthly archive for June 2010.
Oh yeah, the dreaded p-word. We have a long and complicated relationship, procrastination and I do. Apparently it moved in for the month of June and I didn’t even notice! But here’s what I do notice: I have been letting other voices become my music. Hm…probably the result of too much media making my head busy with the chatter of others. Hence, I have been avoiding writing blog posts because I can’t hear myself well enough to write anything down. So I’m writing this down instead.
When I created my first few songs, I had to stop listening to music – any music – for about a week before I could hear my own melodies and let them come through. I had to get out all the Joni Mitchell and Dar Williams and Jonatha Brooke and all the other women whose music I thought, “I wish I could write like that”. Turns out I just had to write like me.
Tomorrow I begin the Artist’s Way week 4 assignment that I have been a-a-avoiding since week 4, which was over a week ago – the dreaded media diet. It’s officially a reading diet, but I don’t really read all that much truth be told. I do watch way too many DVD’s of Charmed (don’t judge), surf the internet, listen to music and podcasts and even the radio (when I must listen to something and don’t have anything else to listen to). And I have to stop doing it. Oy – it’s hard! Well, no it’s not, actually. To quote the team at Whole 9 (a fitness blog that intrigues and frightens me) and regain some perspective: “It is not hard. Don’t you dare tell us this is hard. Giving up heroin is hard. Beating cancer is hard. Drinking your coffee black [or turning off the damn iPod]. Is. Not. Hard.” And yet I actually felt the anxiety creep in this afternoon when I’d had too much quiet. But it must be done. It must, I say! Then maybe I can hear the blog posts and other creative juices that are waiting to be drawn out.
In other news…home in five days!!! Yippee!!!! Get ready for the love, Sacramento, ’cause it’s comin’ your way. I will miss the glorious skies here, though. Here’s a taste (made a weence more dramatic by the Hipstamatic-ness).
Lens: Roboto Glitter
Film: Ina’s 1969
dear God I never know you so surely
as when I’m in a shaded wood
drawn into the numinous dusk of that leafy canopy
asphalt hides you from me, city drains me too quickly
but hit the dirt and I can go for miles
treading the soil, crunching the leaves of life coming full circle
dear God, I will capitalize your name and thank you
when the frogs symphonize in the half-light
and the drowned pond stirs alive with song
yes God, I will look up from my myopic daze, my narrow depression
to see how the white oak shelters the robin
and the magnolia stretches her glossy thickness across my shady path
yes I will know you when the brook
careens along the slippered river rock
and tickles my ragged toes
how can I fear man when I see you everywhere
in the moss, in the bricks
in the eyes of my leftside stranger or the laughter of a child at play
dear God, rouse me from the human dreams
of fear and greed and hate
rock my shoulder and bring me back
to the water
the wind
the shelter of an ancient elm
lay me down in fields of green
as fireflies alight on the thick night air
and guide me home
