Music Exposes and Heals

Yesterday I discovered that Regina Spektor released a new song. She has a new album coming out. Yea! Can’t wait. I do adore her very much. I immediately went and bought the new song and have been listening to it over and over again because that is what I do sometimes. Listen for yourself Regina Spektor – “All The Rowboats”. This song tapped into my imagination in crazy awesome ways. I felt like I was part of every visual she sang about and was lifted into that world with her. I was dancing on the waves of each vibration of sound and lyric.

Regina is very special to me, I cannot remember when exactly, but one night I was unable to sleep. I ended up watching a show that I never watch and haven’t watched since. However, in the middle of the show they played this song Fidelity. I ran to my computer and searched for the song from only a couple lyrics I had picked up. When I watched the video I cried. I loved the black-and-white (I am obsessed, yes that is the right word, with black-and-white), I loved the video because I have done that a million times — I have sang to my invisible friend.

The lyrics spoke to my heart, and at the end of the video when the colors splashed on the floor then the two of them playing in the colors was just over-the-top greatness! It was a song that reminded me of someone very dear to me, and it was joy and pain to watch. I felt too much joy to stop listening to it so I continued and listened off and on to that song along with a few others. I ended up having to stop listening because the sadness was more than joy. Then a friend reminded me of her and my joy was restored.

All of her music taps into deep parts of me, and I experience awesome visuals and feelings when I listen to her music. Some of her songs are too deep and puncture places I am not ready to go. I love finding music like that. The kind of music where the lyrics and the sound reach in and pulls things out of you that you had no idea were there. The thing about music is that it helps you realize that your heart can be broken, but out of that brokenness great beauty can manifest. But you never know that painful beauty until you allow yourself to be punctured. Music can help expose things hidden in yourself that need to be dealt with, it has power to heal, and it can be pure blissful pleasure.

My friend also sent me these interviews of Regina Spektor that revealed what a lovely soul she is, and gave me some comfort as to how I see the world as well.

Interview with Regina Spektor (1/2)

Interview with Regina Spektor (2/2)

Perfect For My Cemetery Idée Fixe

I have been thinking. Big surprise! I have a lot going on in my head so I went in search for some calmness to help me focus.

I discovered Pitchfork.tv at Green-Wood Cemetery this morning. I will not go into the details of how I got there, but it started with Pokémon and ended with Grizzly Bear on Pitchfork.tv.

I was swept away in the visuals of the chapel, and found this very calming and it made me smiley. The first song was hypnotic for me titled Foreground. The second Fix It had my drumbeats that always make me happy that is all I will say….drums. The third song I Live With You brought everything together for me. Sight-sound-emotion-happy ears and soul. I can’t explain what the sounds did for my brain — our language does not have the proper words.

Best word maybe “Hyggelig“?

I couldn’t stop my eyes from sucking in the beautiful images of the chapel. I love chapels and old churches. I could wander and wander through old churches and cemeteries. Possibly for years and years. It always makes me think of all of the people that existed before and how they connected to the world. I always wonder about what stories they created, left behind, and sent out into the cosmos for eternity. In that moment of reading their name I am part of their story and now they are part of mine. What will I do with their name? Usually I take pictures and capture their existence into my image files. I will look at them and think of them or be inspired in some way.

I would love to touch every square inch of that chapel. I would rub my fingers across the stain glass images and think of the stories from the bible that were formed into those images. I would swim in the colors and details and find a peace that I tend to lose a lot of the time. The arches, and crevasses in the stone would send me soaring into other worlds. The tiny cracks that always make me think of interlocked lives on this planet and beyond. I find peace in the not knowing, and the ever dreaming.

That is what I felt watching these three videos this morning. Joy. Comfort. Peace. Integration. Sharing a bit of warmth through the internet.

I also found this intriguing site The Situationist.

About The Situationist I guess my thoughts ended there…for a moment.

Not Enough Time…Need More Time

I have so many things swarming through my head. I really just want to sit and write. I have this entire dialogue between an owl and a raven, it is a story I have had stuck in my head for weeks now. There have been too many things popping up (my hurting shoulder has hindered me a little in writing) and I have not been able to sit down and write it. I can write poems and on my regular blogs because I do not go into a different world when I write them. Well…I do but it is not the same. The words for my stories come from a different place and require me to live in the movie in my head. Poems do this too, but they usually come out quickly and the movie is a short flick.

I need to get that story out of my head so I can focus on editing my book. I am starting to feel the characters take over in my thoughts and I cannot have these different characters jumble together and confuse the movie. Hopefully later today I will be able to get the rest of Impervious out. I use my story blog to get out these stories that help me also feel and process emotions.

Sometimes they are mine sometimes they are emotions that I have absorbed from someone else. Either way they have to be processed and dealt with so I do not get stuck on the emotion. I do not concern myself with grammar with those stories because I need them to get out of my head. I do go back sometimes and clean them up, but only if I have the time. I have to limit myself too in writing/reading the stories because it is a very happy place to me and sometimes I do not want to leave.

I needed to get this out so I could stop looping about not writing my stories. The sense of urgency can cause me to go into complete focus and cut off the rest of the world. I cannot do that right now. Maybe later today.

Some of my information consumption for this week. (Only a few )

This first one is excellent I cannot say how much it meant to me to read, especially since I had to deal with and process the acceptance of social confusion yesterday.
Navigating Competing Worlds: The Elusive Ideal of Normalcy

I LOVE THIS! This next video is only 7:36 minutes and I think it is worth the watch.

Shilo Shiv Suleman: Using tech to enable dreaming

HEINRICH RUDOLF HERTZ GOOGLE DOODLE: ‘Wavy Doodle’ proves a magnetic tribute to German physicist

 

Rooted

Rooted

gripping dwells
hard clutch
raveled through
grafted
deep soiled in souls
linked lock
extending deep wells
twisting
contorting
wringing
tangling
weaving
intertwining
blending
down
inextricable from earth or sky
combined in spirit
and in mind
calls from distant invisible vine
twined together in vaporous space
forever of time
bound in secret waves and fold
connected through solution
to the equation
firmly established
in music and lyric
cheer in my ether
we are rooted

(Lullaby)

Pondering On Friendship

I have been reflecting on the poem “Friendship” for days. I have a lot to say about it, but I cannot gather my words yet. Still connecting my dots. Henry David Thoreau 
is such an interesting soul.

I am also sharing a video below that moved me to silence even in my constantly flowing mind. AND that is hard to do! Created by Artist Aaron Leaman

Friendship ~ Henry David Thoreau 

I think awhile of Love, and while I think,
Love is to me a world,
Sole meat and sweetest drink,
And close connecting link
Tween heaven and earth.

I only know it is, not how or why,
My greatest happiness;
However hard I try,
Not if I were to die,
Can I explain.

I fain would ask my friend how it can be,
But when the time arrives,
Then Love is more lovely
Than anything to me,
And so I’m dumb.

For if the truth were known, Love cannot speak,
But only thinks and does;
Though surely out ’twill leak
Without the help of Greek,
Or any tongue.

A man may love the truth and practise it,
Beauty he may admire,
And goodness not omit,
As much as may befit
To reverence.

But only when these three together meet,
As they always incline,
And make one soul the seat,
And favorite retreat,
Of loveliness;

When under kindred shape, like loves and hates
And a kindred nature,
Proclaim us to be mates,
Exposed to equal fates
Eternally;

And each may other help, and service do,
Drawing Love’s bands more tight,
Service he ne’er shall rue
While one and one make two,
And two are one;

In such case only doth man fully prove
Fully as man can do,
What power there is in Love
His inmost soul to move
Resistlessly.

Two sturdy oaks I mean, which side by side,
Withstand the winter’s storm,
And spite of wind and tide,
Grow up the meadow’s pride,
For both are strong

Above they barely touch, but undermined
Down to their deepest source,
Admiring you shall find
Their roots are intertwined
Insep’rably.

Clocks!

I am fixated on clocks today. I love clocks. I love looking at images of clocks. I wrote a short post about clocks on my MindRetrofit blog here. I have a slideshow of many (not all) of my clock image collection. In honor of clocks I am putting up a couple songs and a short movie titled “A Clock Story” that I thought was fabulous!

I cannot stop my fingers from twirling or my body dancing when I hear this song.

My mom and I danced to this song ALL the time. She had the American Graffiti album it was regularly played every Saturday morning while cleaning when I was a little kid. She thought the movie was boring, but she loved the cars. My mom will halt at cars and airplanes. Lol!

Aww…Joy Division

Recently discovered master tapes of Joy Division and New Order has made a little stir. Joy Division is one of those bands that I had to limit my listening ears to at one time because the music stirred so many different emotions. They stirred mine and whatever emotions were put into the music when it was made. It is a strange affair to feel, see, and sometimes taste music. Welcome to synesthisia.

I have a whole era of my youth that was spent on hair bands (metal) and punk-rock. I got fixated on the Sex Pistols at one point, and read everything I could on Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen. I clutched to the book And I Don’t Want to Live This Life between 14-15 years old. I don’t know how many times I watched Sid and Nancy. All of this has its own story to tell. When I think of Joy Division it brings back that time in my life. Joy Division’s Ian Curtis touched my heart differently. I do not know how to explain it. It just felt too close to me sometimes. I do tend to be drawn to tragic stories.

It is only in the past few years that I could read about him, or listen to music like this from my past without having all of the emotions flood me. I am referring to my own emotions, other’s emotions at the time, and the musical emotions. I have always had positive feelings and connections to New Order. I was consumed by them at a time in my life that had many tragedies, but I could always dance to New Order.

I was deeply moved by the movie “Control” a few years ago. When reading about Ian Curtis I connected many autism traits to him, he also suffered from epileptic seizures. Maybe it is this connection to the traits that moves me so much. I am not saying he was on the spectrum I just see many traits. Many of his lyrics tapped into my soul as well. The titles and some of the influences behind them all contribute to me “feeling” deep connections to the music with my own experiences.

There is my rant for the day. In a way I hope they do not release the music. It seems like a buried treasure that should be hidden. Then, again music needs a new flare to riff through our vessels so maybe a blitz of old would stir the wake in some. Start a new hunger for deep authentic, emotions poured out into each lyric, note, vibration of music into our world. Not that artists do not do that, but we all could use a jolt in our emotions once in a while. Get a new taste for life, and a spin on reality. I would hope nowadays though we would learn to look deeper than how great the music sounds or feels and experience the heart of the musician without stealing the soul that was placed into it.

I guess I wasn’t finished with my rant. I hope I made sense. OH! Happy 155th Birthday Heinrich Rudolf Hertz!! I am all about electromagnetic waves.

Favorite at the club ages ago..Yes, I am dancing to New Order. 8-D

Oh! So Zoet!

I am fixated on TED today. I have tried to peel myself away from it, but I keep getting pulled into to watching the talks and consuming information. It would be ok if I only watched them. I cannot do that — I watch them and it clicks something in my mind and sends me on a journey of “connection linking”. (I think my algorithms are getting locked.) I have to forcibly limit myself and will shortly get off of the computer.

I found Inara George on TED and fell in love with the music.

Here are some TED talks I have watched recently. Ok! I did not put them all on here. I have a slight problem.

Kevin Slavin: How algorithms shape our world (I think this one was my favorite..for now. He did say Quantum Entanglement. Yea!)

Chris Bliss: Comedy is translation

Neil MacGregor: 2600 years of history in one object

Gero Miesenboeck reengineers a brain

Arthur Benjamin’s formula for changing math education

zoet (Dutch for sweet.)

 

Very Soothing

I have been listening to this song — it so calming. Just what I need. I watched the images below as I listened to the song as well. Hm…peaceful times. ( I put in some images that make me giggle and smile.)

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Finding My Freedom In Song

I discovered a post that I wrote several months ago on my other blog talking about my relationship with music. It is still in my drafts — I never published it because I felt too exposed. I may publish it soon…Basically music was ruined for me for a while, my doing along with other people. I have been gaining my love and freedom in music back in recent months. It means a lot if I share what music I am listening to because it makes me feel naked. Thank you my sweet song for bringing me back to the joy of music. I am all over the place with music today. My processing mode.

The first song reminds me of a song on the “Singles” soundtrack, but I can’t remember what it is. (An old favorite movie I haven’t seen in forever.) Aaagg! It is driving me crazy. “Dyslexic Heart”? “Waiting for Somebody” ? I played them at the same time yep, all three of them that was fun. Hey, hey, hey! “State of Love and Trust”? No… I think the song is a mix of all of them. Maybe… I just like drums. OK! I am stuck on the Singles soundtrack now. Great I am addicted to all those songs now. Screaming Trees – Nearly Lost You Yeee! I forgot how much I love this song.

Wooooo! This next song takes me to a different world. Floating by you now…..

I just found this guy today, I like him.

This picture reminded me of the “Moby – Wait For Me” because  the image on the video is the same! Look. Anyway Moby rocks!