what we can't not listen to

I have learned this year to sing for spaces, regardless of whether or not people are listening. It's something that helps me stay in the moment. Tonight was tough. The last show of the year and I wasn't into singing to spaces because the people weren't listening. Right there, that's the drama of being a musician. My favorite story was years ago when the literacy council asked me to sing at their valentine's day party. There was a line-up of readers and the room hung on every word. I think poetry readings and my songs fit really well together so I was looking forward doing my set for this audience. I was introduced and wouldn't you know the second I opened my mouth to sing my words, people started gabbing. Like it was intermission. Like my words didn't matter and I wasn't even there. I have to admit that I was pissed.

So here I am again tonight. Part of me says well it's on me to inspire people to pay attention. But that, historically, has taken me down a pretty negative road. So, note to self: ask the booking agent whether or not it's a listening crowd before agreeing to play. Just as a head's up.

In general it's been a rough week health-wise. I am having a lot of uncomfortable symptoms of detoxing. The worst is late at night and the sound of blood wooshing through my ears is deafening. It almost drowns out the ringing. It's entirely possible that the neurological damage of my ringing ears cannot be reversed. But the wooshing and the pounding pounding blood vessels all over my body. It's intense. Someone make that go away.

Hmmmm, talk about a captive listening audience. This is one song I can't not listen to. Noisy bloody music.

now, and now

So, one of the additions to my house is a far infrared sauna (with a mini trampoline!). I've been warming myself a couple of times a week. It's weird. Sometimes it's like my body craves it, like exercise. Then, other times my head pounds and I can't stand the heat and have to leave the space well before I'm 'supposed' to.

I've been so focused on the health stuff that I've neglected the song I was working on. The muse has flown for now. I hope it won't be one of those cast-away songs because I liked the premise: the idea that in your dreams you see the truth of who someone is, the idea that when your dreams have disappeared you gravitate towards their truth because you have none of your own.

I know a thread of melancholy runs through my music. As much as I'd like it to be a thread of contentment and play, it's not that. These days I have no dreams to speak of. There is nothing that I'd like to do. So I want to write a song to grieve this loss. The gain, I suppose, is learning how to be in the moment more often. My dream -- if you can call it that -- is to feel here. The moment is extraordinary and overwhelms me. I sit in the sauna and watch the temperature light waver and the minutes count down. My only moment is to feel the sweat gather in folds of skin, on the small of my back, under my hair.

I wish I dreamed of tomorrow because that is what Americans are supposed to do. I would lean into it with everything I had, if only I had a picture of what I would do or could be. But I see no threshold to tomorrow. I just see now, and now, and now. A non-dream that will not fade.

One Lap In

Sports metaphors are a little foreign to me, just like war metaphors, but track & field is a little different. I remember being 11 and running across a field at recess and thinking, "This is what life is. This is free." I wasn't thinking in words back then. As soon as I hit 7th grade, I joined the track team. I was in track until I graduated high school. I wasn't great, but I was ok. I loved the strategy of distance running. Each lap has its own goal. The first lap is about establishing your pace.


I'm one lap in. I've started some things but I'm not yet going full throttle with the detox. I had a mini tour to contend with, which was truly a blast. I tried out some songs that'll make it to my next album and got feedback on them that makes me believe I'm finally finding my voice. Good stuff. The 4 days of travel, performances and socializing took their toll and so I got a week-long head cold as a souvenir. But I was feeling good for the tour which told me I'm doing better than I think.


Six days into the persistent head cold and a little voice in my head said, "Go get acupuncture." I can't describe how happy my body gets when it's got little needles stuck all over it. It just says a big THANK YOU over and over. Again, not in words. Day 7 and the infection sort of just melted away like spring snow in sunshine. Unbelievable.


A couple of things I notice about lap ONE: The body can adapt to probably anything (and this gives me so much hope as we head into the years of intense climate change):

• I can drink the juice of a whole lemon in a little bit of water without squishing up my nose anymore.
• I can eat a Granny Smith apple without my teeth going fuzzy.
• I'm no longer eating meat but I feel as if I have plenty of energy.
• My body sometimes craves the heat from sauna session. It's almost like a runner's high.
• I don't need to eat as much salt. I virtually eliminated it based on something a doc told me about salt being acidic (the process of detoxing involves alkalizing the body) and now I think my taste buds have changed enough that just a little salt seems like a lot of salt. Weird for the girl who used to down a bag of potato chips because she 'craved salty things'. 
• I'm starting to feel "normal" and I haven't even started the intense part of the detox yet.

In truth, I suppose it's hard to say whether or not I'm one lap in or have 1 lap to go. Life is not a 1600 meter run. We rarely know when something is over. I guess maybe that's why sports are so satisfying; the ending is known. But I think the point of living is learning to love being in the game. I'm in the game.

California Style

Ladies and Gents, it's officially begun. Well, sort of. It's a California Style start. I see the starting line and I'm in uniform and I'm backed up a few paces waiting for the gun, and I really need to pee from nerves.


I got my heavy metals detox plan from my doc last Friday, and I've begun a few things: a total organic vegetarian diet with lots of extra qualifiers -- no processed foods, no wheat, no artificial sweeteners, no dairy, etc. I've starting sucking down the juice of one whole organic lemon every morning before I break fast. I've started the vinegar baths and the sauna sessions (felt pretty crappy, but I suppose that's the idea).


Doc said don't start the heavy duty part of this detox until after my travel this weekend. Which is fine, because I don't have any money anyway to purchase said heavy duty items. Hoping to earn a few extra bucks on the road. So, I hold up my tumbler of lemon water and cheers to good performances and generous crowds!


The Lancaster, PA house concert with the charming Joy Ike is sold out. It's nice when 30 folks = sold out. :-) I'm also sharing the stage with Daryl Shawn in two cities: Bryn Mawr, PA and New York City. That's Saturday and Sunday. His acoustic guitar style has the breezes of California and Mexico blowing through, and he loves what he's doing so his performances are kind of undeniable.


I'll get to explore the wonderful world of organic vegan restaurant offerings in Philly, Lancaster and Manhattan. I'm looking forward to that. The only bit of melancholy is that my Harvest & Snow song didn't finish itself, although perhaps on the drive east tomorrow.....? I'm about 5 lines shy of the finish. And a few paces shy of the detox start.


Beginnings, completions. I'm optimistic this fall.

harvest & snow & kate bush & ponies

So here's the deal: I met with a naturopath who encouraged me to switch the phrasing in my head every time I think about my health. Apparently our bodies don't hear a negative, so a phrase like "I don't want to get sick again" becomes, to the body, "I want to get sick again." Weirdly enough, I have found I talk to myself all the time in phrases using negatives. It's been trippy to catch myself in the act and rephrase. I know this puts me on the path towards dreamy new-age get-your-attitude-right kinds of stuff, but I'll be damned if it hasn't made a little bit of a difference.


I do sort of believe most of our demons are in our minds, so to take the battle there is profound, however you choose to fight. It's only hard if you believe it's hard.


I've finally started messing around with songs again. Yay! Right now I'm on the hunt for a song called "Harvest & Snow". I hope it'll be finished in time for my November shows; it seems like the kind of song that's open to being finished soon. Not like a few others that simply elude me (you know who you are).


I've made a kind of pact with myself to write songs just for myself....again. I find that I have to forget the audience a little bit in order to be honest. After all, I'm not some enormous artistic presence or influence who has thousands of people holding their breath for what I'll say next; the soul I'm saving is mine, really. So I might as well get on with it.


I've been inspired by going back to albums I listened to when I was 17. Kate Bush's "The Sensual World" is high on my list. Holy cats, it puts me there. And so is Joni Mitchell's "Wild Things Run Fast". Yeah, I guess I was a strange 17-year-old. "It takes cheerful resignation, a heart of humility, that's what it takes, a cheerful person told me. Nobody's harder on you than you. Nobody's harder on me than me." Shouldn't I have been listening to "We are living in a material world, and I am a material girl."????


Anyhow, 17 has been on my mind and running through my veins too. I blame reading the Twilight Saga books and watching the movies. This story is like a direct conduit back to the energetic and emotional realities of being 17, even through the average writing. Enough time has passed that feeling all that isn't entirely unpleasant. I wouldn't have been able to say that 10 years ago. It's sort of a sweetly charged melancholy, newly colored by gratitude. And the leaves scrape over the sidewalks in flurries of wind, and the colors go bright to fading fast, the crows flies towards the sunset again, every evening. It's all so perfect.


Time expands. I'm restless and bored with adult living and all the familiar motions. I start my metals detox next Friday. A year of that and then let this pony out to pasture. I'm tired keeping it safe and domestic.

Dumbness of it all

When I was in high school I happened across a show on PBS that had a character who said something I've never been able to forget or shake: Sometimes we get lost in the dumbness of it all.

I've been trying so hard to listen to what my body needs, to learn about what's going on, and to find the right practitioners to help me on my path towards well-being and health. But there are so many voices and so many paths I could take. How does one know if the path is a direct course or a long and winding road?

Yeah, I stole that phrase. It's a good phrase.

I sit here at my computer at midnight with insomnia, a pounding head and a metal-tasting tongue. I met with an herbalist last week who set me on a path for 30 days to work on reducing inflammation and viruses and fungi and god knows what else. She believes the metals will resolve themselves if my systems are working.

But chicken or egg, man. Which is it? Do metals take hold because of inflammation and fungi and immune suppression, or do they cause it? Can it be both?

Is drinking half a lemon in 4 oz of water helping to move out the crap or is it making it worse (like the metallic tongue) because my body doesn't know how to move out crap right now?

I've got all these questions and no answers. And no sleep. And no food in the house because the fridge stopped working 2 days ago. And no fridge.

So, that phrase popped up in my head tonight. It's not a bouquet of roses or a thank you card or a free trip to Cancun, but it's solace of some kind. Sometimes we get lost in the dumbness of it all. Sometimes knowing we're lost is almost like being found.

We forge on

Since I've last written, a few promising things have happened. First, I've done some traveling without falling ill afterwards! On the heels of a long weekend to visit family I had another weekend of shows, three in a row. Again, no extreme fatigue! I have to mark this moment because last October at this time I was having a very different experience. It's important to acknowledge progress.


Having said that, by all accounts the metals detoxification process I'm selecting is slow, and hopefully not debilitating, and could easily take the next year of my life. I hadn't anticipated such a long term prognosis for treatment, but again what builds up over a life is not always shed in a day or a month.


I'm aware of thee things as I go forward: first, that I believe I will get better. I am admittedly terrified of the detox process based on past experience -- and metals chelation therapy can be quite dangerous --, but I truly believe this is the next course of action and it's worth it to get to the other side. I'm going to get there. Second, the cost will be substantial. Whether I go the intravenous route or the sauna and supplements route, there's no way around the fact that this process will cost thousands of dollars and consume much of my waking hours. Third, health insurance, by my early research and estimation, doesn't cover a lick of this healing process. I know there are many views on how health care should happen in our nation and I respect that quest. However, I have to say no one should be looking at a bank account statement and weighing that against how they choose to heal. This is the weirdest perversion, and anyone who doesn't understand that has never personally been sick and wondered how they will pay for their course of treatment.


I kid you not, after I've recovered from all of this I will be integrating some component of financial support for wellness into my art. I don't know how yet, but I can say that governments and companies don't have all of the answers, nor should we be held hostage to their indecision and compromises. We forge on with our own lives independent of what's around us. In my case, I will detox metals even though Allegheny County Health Department apparently can offer no help in isolating the source of this metal contamination and Highmark Health Insurance apparently can offer no coverage for my method of treatment.


So it goes.