"Never the rose, Without the prick
But tell me how do I say?, I woke up and it was yesterday.
Do I again face this night?"- Guiding Light by TelevisionI love this photo. It looks like my sister-in-law is a caterpiller, wrapped up and deciding whether or not to join the world of butterflies. In reality, she was just watching Project Runway, but I feel like how this picture looks a lot of days. Living is hard, especially when you are going through growth stages.
And while this growing never stops, some days it stops you. It makes you stop directly where you are and forces you to choose. It causes you to mourn. You feel up. You feel down. And then just as suddenly as all these emotions came, they leave. You look behind you at the wreckage and you think "Oh, that wasn't really so bad.Why did I get so worked up?" Because growing and changing and emerging ready for something new is hard fucking work.
The last 2 years of my life have felt like this every single day. I look behind me at the wreckage some days and I shudder. Other days, I refuse to look. Piece by piece I take it in, do my best to gather myself and move forward. In the process I am learning I need to forgive others more easily and need I to start forgiving myself, something I rarely do.
In the meantime there is music. Helping us to explain better who we are to the world and giving us an audible hug when we feel un-huggable. Thanks music. You're always there for me.
TODAY'S PLAYLIST:
Oh! Sweet Nuthin'
The Velvet Underground
Guiding Light
Television
Everybody
Drive-By Truckers
Hummingbird
Wilco
Nothing But Our Love
Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr.
Talk To Me
Peaches
As It Comes
Fran Healy
Me and Mr. Wolf
The Real Tuesday Weld
Devil Town
Tony Lucca
I Saw The Light
Hank Williams
My Tennessee Mountain Home
Dolly Parton
Love That Conquers
The Swell Season
Oh Happy Day
Nina Simone
Sixteen
The Heavy
"Can't give up acting tough. It's all I'm made of" - Neko Case, Middle CycloneToday I am excited to feature some work by students. I have been lucky to connect with Ian Mouser at My Voice Music. He works with kids to teach them music and how to use it to resolve conflict in their life. Lovely stuff.I also am including 2 poems created by students in the Caldera program. It is good to remember what it is like to be in middle school, to be in the process of growing. Remember how you thought it would never end? You were right. What you didn't realize is that you eventually figure out how to feel comfortable in clothes, what music you really, really like and how to take a good photo of yourself in the mirror. You eventually began to realize that everyone feels the same way you do, it just might happen on a different day.Being able to share this student work has allowed me to reflect on what I love about teaching kids ART. It is being able to experience what they create. It becomes this blessing. This little look into how their hearts are growing and how truly complicated that process is. Your heart gets big. It gets hurt. It gets small. It gets big again. Scars begin to form- some you love and some you are shamed by. And while what you feel might be temporary the effect of those feelings is not. You will always base the next love by the previous. Good or bad. (And by the way, you deserve good).Your heart will never leave you. It is permanent. You have the power to decide how your heart pumps the passion and love that naturally form within it out to the world. Protect it. But not so much you miss something, because those moments, when genius, light, love and passion form, are simply a temporary condition you must grab when you can.
PLAYLIST FOR TODAY'S SHOW:
Heartbreaker
Crazy P.
Don't Got A Lot Of Time
Cotton Jones
Today Is A New Day
My Voice Music
Three Little Birds
Bob Marley
(HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BOB!)
You're My Lover Now
Pietra Brown
Middle Cyclone
Neko Case
Come Undone
Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan
Tumble Bee
Laura Veirs
Foot Stuming
The Oreganics
Running Mod
Young Generation
Jigsaw
Shawn Lee featuring Nicole Willis
About A Girl
Nirvana
Losing Myself
Brazillian Girls and David Byrne
When We all In
Shawn Hayes featuring Frazey Ford
Periodically Double or Triple
Yo La Tengo
I Was Made To Love Her
Stevie Wonder
Starting today's set off with Soko in her sweet tone, dropping f-bombs left and right feels like a manifesto of sorts, like dresses with army boots. I feel that way sometimes, I can wear a flowery dress and show of my girly assets while still being able to be strong and frank and swear like a sailor, if that is the point I need to make. Femininity and Toughness are not mutually exclusive.
Then of course, I am also playing some old school gospel, because really, no one sings with such fierceness as Etta James speaking to her lord. I'm also throwing in some Young @ Heart choir, because it reminds me of home. If you don't know about them, learn. They are a senior citizen choir, hailing from my hometown, that sings contemporary music. You have to be 65 to join. I'm counting the days until I can get in, because really this is all temporary, a new horizon and possibility with every aspect of life. Maybe today I will learn and tomorrow I will teach or vice versa. Paint or Sing. Now I will take to the stage and tomorrow I will exit. It's all temporary.
Like ex-boyfriends you want to swear at as Soko sings about, who eventually go away and a new one steps in. You just have to hang on. As The Talking Heads say "Never for money. Always for love." Maybe that can be the permanent amongst this temporary condition of living.
PLAYLIST:
Soko: Ex-Boyfriends
Jessie Baylin: I Feel That, Too
Aloe Blacc: Green Lights
Young @ Heart Choir: Fix You
Voices of Deliverance: Power of God
Talking Heads: This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody)
Stew: Statue Song
The Spinners: O-o-h Child
Shirley Ann Lee: How Can I Lose
Roky Erikson: Goodbye Sweet Dreams
Patti Smith: Kimberly
Nina Simone: Children Go Where I Send Thee
Gil Scot-Heron: Where Did The Night Go
I Was Guided
New York Is Killing Me
Etta James: Oh Happy Day
"Never the rose, Without the prick
