Straight from the Heart

I was walking out of work toward my bike this afternoon when my inner dj decided to reach back a few decades and pull out a ballad from my youth:

You say it's easy but who's to say
That we'd be able to keep it this way
But it's easier
Straight from the heart

Straight from the heart
Tell me we can make one more start
You know I'll never go
As long as I know
It's coming straight from the heart

Here's a crowd-pleasing version of an older Bryan in concert -- I think I like the sound of his voice more there than I do in the back-in-the-day ripped-up-shirt and rolled-up-jeans version -- even if the latter was the voice I came of age with -- coming into my bedroom through my clock radio.

As cheesy as he is, he speaks the truth. And as heartbreaking as being a teenager can be, it really can't touch the pain involved in breaking up a marriage, especially one that includes kids. I took my kids to see the documentary Babies tonight, and in the opening sequences with the pregnant women, I just started to cry. I'm not sure there's any time more full of expectation (literally and figuratively) than in the latter stages of pregnancy, and I remember that feeling so well. I remember sharing it with their Dad, too, but now we share custody and variable expenses instead of hopes and dreams. That's not true -- we still share hopes and dreams -- for our children's future. And in many ways, we are making another start, as coparents. It can be a rocky road, but it's a road I'm walking down with my heart open. We weren't able to keep it that way (see first verse above), and we're all happier having admitted that and moved on.

I'm with you Bryan -- straight from the heart -- that's the only way I know how to tell it. And who knows? I think there may be another baby in my future, maybe even in my belly -- born(e) out of a different set of hopes and dreams with another man.

Can't Get You Out of my Head

Tonight I have ipod shuffle to thank for bringing me a song, and what a song it is. Wow. I know I've heard Kylie Minogue, the original artist, sing it before, but I don't think I've ever heard the Flaming Lips cover, at least not the way I'm hearing it tonight. So. Incredibly. Powerful. Have a listen to this studio performance or this live footage of the Flaming Lips singing:

Can't get you out of my head -- boy, your love is all I think about.

I can't get this song out of my head and I don't want to -- think I'll just put it on repeat as I go off to sleep tonight. As for the meaning behind the music, I have been grappling a bit of late with my tendency to obsess about men. Listening to this song tonight, what struck me is that it isn't anyone's love that I can't get out of my head -- because I haven't ever really experienced the love that I hear him singing about. I've never been able to let myself be that vulnerable -- so instead, it's the potential that I see in men to give me this love and the potential I have to love them that I can't get out of my head.

I think it's high time to change all that. Potential doesn't keep me warm at night, and I want the kind of love I hear in Wayne Coyne's voice.

Ok, so Chris Martin doesn't keep me warm at night either, and I don't think Coldplay works the same magic with this song that the Flaming Lips do, but my God, he is beautiful...

la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la

Sarah , Sarah

Tomorrow my first love will celebrate his 40th birthday. It seems impossible that it was 20 years ago that we met, and yet, we've both lived a lot of life since that summer, marked in part by the three children (one for him, two for me) that we've added to the planet. A score of years later, both single and more (financially and emotionally) capable of bridging the distance between us (he lives in England, I live in the US) we are going to have the opportunity to do something that I daresay few people get to do: spend 10 days together, reacquainting ourselves with each other and with the selves we were back then.

We met at a camp for inner-city kids from Chicago -- and the campers used to sing this song to us all the time that summer. After he went back to England, I listened to it, and the many other songs we shared, and cried, cried, cried. Here are some of my favorite lyrics:

I see the more things change
The more they stay the same
Thought I was past the pain
But one thought of you and it's back again

Sarah Sarah
What happened to you and I?
Sarah, Sarah Sarah
How did the fire die? (Yeah girl)

How could we watch our dreams crumble into dust?
Baby, there's so much more life has in store for the two of us...

...I must admit, baby, that love never died
Deep in my heart, girl
A bit of you still survives

There's been a lot of healing -- I no longer feel pain when I think of him or of us or of what could have been. I recognize now what I couldn't have seen then -- that life did have a lot more in store for the two of us, even if we aren't together. And the love definitely hasn't died -- I don't believe that love ever does. As for the fire dying, I'm guessing it hasn't, but I won't know that for sure until after his visit in August!

After the Goldrush

Some days I find the songs, and some days they find me. The former happens because I'm feeling something and I know of a song that echoes the feeling, and so I seek it out, and playing it acts as a salve of some sort. The latter sometimes happens because I turn on the radio or put the ipod on shuffle, but sometimes it is a little more mysterious than that. My personal soundtrack just starts to play a song, as it did while I was sitting at my desk today:

I was lying in a burned out basement
With the full moon in my eyes
I was hoping for a replacement
When the sun burst through the sky
There was a band playing in my head (I guess Neil has his own personal soundtrack too!)
And I felt like getting high
Thinking about what a friend had said
I was hoping it was a lie

Until I found it again on my beloved youtube just now, I hadn't heard this song in a long time. My ex-husband was a big Neil Young fan, so it was during that part of my life when I came to really appreciate his music. When I moved out, Neil didn't come with me, and I haven't gotten around to adding him back to my music library. Hearing Neil sing this beautiful song now though, it isn't bringing up any feelings about the ex. Instead, there are three parts of it that are really resonating today:

1) I was just talking to a friend this morning about the power of dreams -- how satisfying and unsettling they can be and what they have to tell us -- and hearing Neil sing "all in a dream," makes me wonder further about the line between dreams and waking consciousness.

2) The line about hoping what he heard a friend say was a lie has me thinking about how much power we give to things that people say and do that may or may not actually have the meaning that we attach to them.

3) The beating that Mother Nature is taking courtesy of BP here in the 21st century.

On that last one, I also found a Dolly Parton cover on youtube, which seemed really incongruous to me at first, until I listened to it, and she had changed some of the lyrics, including:

Look at Mother Nature on the run in the 21st century (instead of in the 1970's in Neil's version).

This weekend on State St. my kids and I saw a bunch of naked and semi-naked people riding their bikes in a protest of the oil spill. Many of them had written "nude not crude" on their bodies. I'm not sure exactly what they accomplished other than raising awareness, giving some a thrill (me), and mortifying others (my 10 year old) , but I have a feeling Neil and his hippie buddies would approve...

Like a Rose

Summer is my favorite season, and today, on this first day of summer, something in me is determined to make the year's longest day even longer. I woke this morning before the sun with this palpable feeling in my chest that I was carrying something. Not something that was crushing me -- like the things I was carrying around in the latter part of my marriage -- but something a little heavier than anything I really need or want to carry these days. It's a good thing I have a lot of practice with letting go, because my heart is definitely tempted to hold onto this one with all my strength. I could do that, but it would sap my own energy, which wouldn't serve me or this big green world.

Thankfully, a song appeared that is already helping me lift this weight: Like A Rose by Lucinda Williams. The only online version of this affecting song that I could find accompanies some scenes from the movie Transamerica. If you're feeling anything like me on this day when so much is so young, you might want to have some kleenex handy when you listen to it:

It's ok, you don't have to be afraid
There's nothing to worry about cause we've got it made
It's just a simple matter of letting me into your love
If you let that feeling come over you
Then there's nothing more that you can do
Just let it go
Let it go

If it's love you want
Hold out your arms
It's alright here, it's safe and warm
It's ok to feel good
That's the way it should be
Everything we have is fresh and new
I will open myself up to you like a rose.

Even with so much growing going on inside and outside this time of year, I can't quite seem to find the space she sings about in those last two lines. So for now, I'm going to see if I can get back to sleep, trusting that my time with fresh and new is coming.

Black Hole Sun

It's a funny thing living and raising my kids in the city where I went to college. For the most part I like it -- I get to be one of the people who is here to bear witness as institutions where my friends and I wiled away countless hours close their doors -- and in this era of cell phones and Facebook, it is really easy for those of us who are here to share these passings with friends further afield.

Being here also allows me to stay connected to my youth and therefore more compassionate about some of the less attractive features of the excesses of youth. Riding our bikes downtown to the Farmer's Market, my kids and I saw a series of piles of puke, about which I said "looks like somebody had too much to drink last night" without judgment. This is important, this lack of judgment, and it's an important thing to teach kids. I've seen what happens when we try to teach kids things in a really black and white way that aren't necessarily black and white -- take smoking for an example. I so often hear kids vehemently repeating what they have heard their parents say within earshot of a smoker: "That's bad for you! Why is he doing that? Isn't that bad for you? Smoking can kill you!" The parent is usually quietly embarrassed and I always feel bad for the smoker. Downtown after our puke-paved ride, we saw someone smoking. My daughter quietly asked me after we'd passed him: "Isn't smoking bad for you, Mom?" And I answered: "It definitely is not a healthy thing to put into your body." And so she asked: "Then why is he doing it?" and I had the opportunity to explain that for some people it also feels really good (stopping short of calling it a "serious buzz enhancer" as I've been known to do) and that sometimes we make choices based on what's best for our body and sometimes we don't. I told her I used to smoke, and part of the reason I smoked was because I liked the feeling I got from it, but I ultimately quit because it didn't feel good in my body.

There are so many songs related to my own time of excess, but the one that has been coming to me recently is Soundgarden's Black Hole Sun. One not-unusual night in the early 90's, I had enough to drink at a frat party that I really wasn't sure exactly what had transpired. I was left in the morning to piece together the evidence: I had a hangover and a Soundgarden CD that I hadn't had going into the night. Hmmmm...

Long after that hangover faded, I listened to this song over and over and over again (the excess wasn't limited to booze and cigs). The video accompanying that last link is pretty goofy; approaching 40 now, I'm more inclined to watch this acoustic version of Chris Cornell, who I think is really sexy in his flip-flops.

Black Hole Sun won't you come and wash away the rain...

You're gonna make me lonesome when you go

This morning at a coffee shop I had the good fortune of sitting next to two awesome women who quickly became friends -- we bonded over the psychological hazing that is the process of getting a Ph.D. (they are in progress, and I have some trade secrets about how I got mine done) and the many forms of heartache we'd all experienced. Though two of us are currently dating men and one of us women, we found that the experience of putting yourself out there only to find that in some way it didn't do it for you or it didn't do it for the other person (at least not enough of the time) or the timing wasn't right because the wounds were too raw or SOMETHING didn't work was universal -- sexual preference didn't matter. There are things that help -- being clear about what you want and speaking your mind -- but even still, it's tough being out there. The night doesn't always end the way you want it to -- and sometimes no matter how it ends it is the fact that it ends at all that's hard. The separation.

Alas, this is the song that popped into my head as I dealt with the separation tonight, and as I searched for a version on you tube and listened to the lyrics, I found great satisfaction in all of the apparent contradictions in the first verse:

I've seen love go by my door
It's never been this close before
It's never been so easy or so slow
I've been living in the dark too long
When something's not right it must be wrong
You're gonna make me lonesome when you go.

They continue throughout the song, but rather than reading them all, you can listen to Bob singing it live in 1976 or a pretty sweet cover by Shawn Colvin. I'm off to bed. Alone.

Funky Cold Medina

I woke up feeling sad this morning, my own weather system matching the rainy day outside. To attend to these feelings, I dialed up some Tom Waits on the old ipod, (my trusty partner in crime when I want to do some wallowing), had some tears, and got in the car to go to yoga class. It didn't take breathing or postures today to break the funk, however -- the second I started up the car and heard Tone Loc rap his Funky Cold Medina my mood started to brighten. I love me some Tom Waits, but today something a little lighter was just what the doctor ordered.

With My Own Two Hands

I first heard this song sung by my kids and their classmates at a school program. It brought tears to my eyes then, and has since become a source of inspiration for me as I pursue my path of using the power of yoga to help transform our education system.

On Monday afternoons, when I remember (can't believe I forgot last week!), I have the opportunity to work with an autistic kid in a yoga therapy program called Spectrum Yoga Therapy. He's 14, speaks without using words that you or I would recognize, and gets really excited a lot. Working with him today, I was able to feel the power of my own two hands in a really tangible way. Giving him a foot massage, he was able to fully relax and lay there smiling blissfully, giving me the other foot whenever I stopped working with one. I think he would've loved to have the foot massage take up the full hour, but we were able to find the same relaxed calm in other poses as well. Afterward, I felt grateful to him for reminding me of what I whole-heartedly believe:

I can change the world
With my own two hands
Make it a better place
With my own two hands
Make it a kinder place
With my own two hands, with my own, with my own two hands.

I can make peace on earth
With my own two hands
I can clean up the earth
With my own two hands
I can reach out to you
With my own two hands, with my own, with my own two hands.

I'm going to make it a brighter place
With my own two hands
I'm going to make it a safer place
With my own two hands
I'm going to help the human race
With my own two hands, with my own, with my own two hands.

I can hold you in my own two hands.
And I can comfort you, with my own two hands.
But you've got to use, use your own two hands.
Use your own, use your own two hands.

You can hear Jack Johnson and Ben Harper singing this song here.

Let it Be

I've had the goal of a regular meditation practice for a few years now, but I'm still finding it elusive. I recently discovered some guided meditations by Jack Kornfield and I'm finding that somehow, when Jack is guiding me, I can more easily go to that place that is equal parts insight and release. One of the six meditations on the CD is called Buddha transforms difficulties. Basically, he guides you back into a difficult experience, and a wise, compassionate figure shows you another way to be in the same situation. The compassionate figures that show up for me tend to be Buddha, Jesus and Mother Mary, and today it was Mother Mary.

Then tonight, when I was putting my daughter to sleep, I sang her a little song that went something like "I love you --- you're the most beautiful daughter in the world." And she said is that a real song? And I asked her what she meant and she said -- you know, like the Beatles? And then I started to sing Let it Be, and as I did, I realized that the song told the story of my meditation practice hours before:

When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me
Speaking words of wisdom: let it be.
And in my hour of darkness she is standing right in front of me
Speaking words of wisdom: let it be.

Love these synchronicities that pop up in life when we pay attention!

Here are the Beatles with their own brand of zen, back in the day.

Make me a pallet on your floor

Today is the anniversary of the birth of someone who has been really important to my post-divorce growth. Our relationship was intense, flawed, beautiful, lonely and amazing all at the same time. One of the many things we shared during the time we spent together was music. It was tough to pick one song, because there were so many, but this one won for three reasons: 1) he introduced me to Gillian Welch (and she's now a fave), 2) being at his house was such a powerful experience and 3) in many ways these lyrics (particularly with my minor alteration) describe what he gave me:

Make me down a pallet on your floor
Make me down a pallet on your floor
Make me down a pallet soft and low
When I'm broke(n) and I've got nowhere to go

It's hard to even put words to the level of pain I felt both in being alone after my divorce and equally, in being with someone new. His making me down a pallet on his floor (ok it was an exercise mat -- but close enough!), on his bed, on his butcher block counter -- supported me, held me, renewed me in ways for which I will always be grateful. The last time I was at his house, while he slept, I curled up in the fetal position on the butcher block counter and cried. I think I knew I'd never be back there, at least not in the same way.

This haunting song just may transport you to a time when you felt something akin to this. And in my opinion, the cover by Gillian Welch is far superior to the original by Doc Watson.

Forever Young

I went to the graduation ceremony of my kids' school today, which is always a great reminder of why we send our kids to Wingra school. At this school, teachers have the luxury of really recognizing and reinforcing each child. With no scripted curriculum and no standardized tests, teachers can focus on allowing the child to blossom and following the kids' lead in terms of what they want to learn about. Who knows if they'll really be prepared for high school or college, but they are held, and that counts for a lot.

Anyway, at the ceremony the head of school read the words to the Bob Dylan song Forever Young. My god that man is a poet. It confounds me that he dismissed people's claims that he was the voice of a generation. I wish I could have these words playing in my head every day as a super long mantra:

May god bless and keep you always
May your wishes all come true
May you always do for others
And let others do for you

May you build a ladder to the stars
and climb on every rung
and may you stay forever young

May you grow up to be righteous
May you grow up to be true
May you always see the truth
And see the light surrounding you

May you always be courageous
Stand upright and be strong
And may you stay forever young

May your hands always be busy
May your feet always be swift
May you have a firm foundation
When the winds a changin' shift

May your heart always be joyful
May your song always be sung
and may you stay forever young

There are a lot of great stanzas there, but I think my favorite might be "May you always do for others and let others do for you." Now that I'm exploring a new relationship, I've been thinking a lot lately about giving and receiving, and how much harder it is to receive. One of the wisest women in my life said that's because we control what we give, but we give up some control when we decide to make ourselves vulnerable to receive. Ah, the control issue rears its enormous head once again...

I can't find a recording of the poet himself singing the original, but do not despair: this is quite possibly the most covered song ever -- including versions from Neil Young and the Grateful Dead, Johnny Cash, Joan Baez, and Eddie Vedder. Which is your favorite cover? I'm once again weak in the knees listening to the voice of that last one!

Man in the Mirror

Last night I took a step toward realizing my dream of bringing yoga to teachers in schools where, for various reasons, teachers are stressed and not always open and receptive to all of their students. Teaching is such an incredibly difficult job, and so incredibly important -- the connections with kids that teachers have the opportunity to make every single day are critical to the students' developing sense of self. My belief is that offering yoga in schools will reduce teacher stress and increase their openness and receptivity to all students. Part of this path involves asking teachers to start with the (wo)man in the mirror and examine long held assumptions of which they may not even be aware. These beliefs, though often subconscious, can adversely affect teachers' ability to connect with students and the ability of students to connect with the material they are intended to learn. Often there are issues of racial bias that need to be uncovered, examined, and released, making room for an affirmation that we are all one.

I presented my idea at a school board meeting last night. Another group also made a presentation, and used this song as their final inspiring message. I've always loved this song, but I've never thought about how interesting Michael Jackson is as the carrier of this message -- a man whose reflection in the mirror got less and less black over the course of his life. I think there's a difference between changing your ways and changing your appearance, and I think the changing of his appearance is really about a lack of self-acceptance and about his (real or perceived) belief that somehow having lighter skin was preferable. I have no doubt that growing up, he received that message repeatedly and felt he had the power to change it. Sadly, in the end, after sharing so many amazing aspects of himself with the world, he seemed to leave it almost as a result of never having come to terms with the man in the mirror.

Here's Michael singing Man in the Mirror in 1988, after he'd pretty significantly cosmetically altered the man in the mirror. In my own life, practicing yoga with specific attention paid to cultivating awareness, acceptance and non-judgment has helped me more fully appreciate my own reflection, and coming from that place, I can more easily see the beauty in others. This is the power of yoga that I hope to bring to teachers.

At Last

This amazing song was the one that my ex and I used, 12 years ago today, to mark our wedding day. Listening to it now, and hearing these words:

"At last my love has come along
My lonely days are over
And life is like a song"

I recognize that my love did come along, and we shared a lot of love and created two beautiful children together before things went sour.

And I recognize that although my lonely days are not over, life is indeed like a song. Today's song was once, for me, a super romantic my-heart-is-filled-with-love song, and now it's a bittersweet and heartbreaking song, but I know that tomorrow there'll be another song, or a different spin on an old one.

You can listen here to Etta belt out the original, or you can watch the incredible beauty Beyonce doing a cover. Enjoy!

Throw Your Arms Around Me

Is that so much to ask?

I don't think it is.

Should I have to ask?

I don't think I should, and I don't want to.

I heard this song earlier today (it's on a disc of old faves that my friend made from our days in Oz).

This is how I want a romance to feel, except for the "and we may never meet again" part. I refuse to believe that is essential to the equation. I'm banking on finding the throw your arms around me feeling that lasts...

I want it to last the way my crush on Eddie Vedder has -- which is still going strong after 20 years (considerably more steadfast than my first marriage, the would-be 12th anniversary of which is tomorrow, but we didn't quite make it to 11. I say first because I know there will be another one, not because I've been married more than once).

Anyway, I don't think I ever knew that Eddie covered this song -- oh the treasures one can find on youtube!

Paradise City

I remember this song from when I was in high school -- we used to listen to G N'R constantly on long bus rides to away track meets. Some of the guys on the team even had their own Medfordized version of the lyrics (original lyrics in parentheses):

Take me down to the Paradise City where the grass is (green) free and the girls are (pretty) come on!

The Medford boys were singing about pot and easy women - which is one of the reasons it still makes me smile to hear this song, as we did sitting in J.'s car after enjoying an evening in our own paradise city -- Madison in the summertime at the Terrace. At one point we looked out at the water with all the boats and it was so beautiful it didn't even look real -- it looked like the set of a movie. But it was real, and for me, it's soaking up these summer nights that makes it possible to get through the long winter. There's a lot of the year where I wouldn't call Madison the Paradise City, but this time of year, it's so incredible it doesn't feel like a stretch to think it's exactly what makes Axl bang his long red locks: Take. Me. Home.

Here's Axl in all his glory.

I Want You

Ah, dating in the age of the text. For me, it can be both a disappointing (no voice or touch) way to connect and totally titillating, and after some of the former variety earlier in the week, we had some of the latter last night. Which was followed by some satisfying in-person interaction, and although we didn't have the good fortune of Bob crooning in the background last night, this morning as I was thinking about a song to sum up the parts of yesterday we shared, I could find none better than Bob Dylan's "I want you." Maybe I'm just in classic rock mode at the moment, but as sexed up as some of the rap songs we did hear were, they just don't capture the feeling in the same way.

Here's a link to a clip from the movie I'm not there -- a sexy scene in which the beautiful Heath Ledger is playing Bob Dylan and you can hear Bob singing in the background.