Being Born Again and Again

For my birthday I received a book called "The Artist's Rule" by Christine Valters Painter. It's a 12-week course on nurturing your creative soul with monastic wisdom, meant to be done rather than read.

Almost simultaneously I embarked on my second year of FAWM, February Album Writing Month, which is a challenge to write 14 songs in the 28 days of February. As of this posting I'm off pace with only 4 songs done in 12 days. I've been stopped by the demands of living, the need to slow down, and the realization during a cellular expansion sessions that my heart energy isn't moving.

Enter the book.

When we let go of our desire to be clever or successful or to create beautiful things, we may be open to the sacred truth of our experience as it is, not how we want it to be.

I've been wondering how to activate my heart, because it bothers me that my heart energy is still, right at the point where I hope to be steadily creative. The author refers to the Beginner's Mind and Heart as the starting point, We begin again.

The first week of the 12-week journey is about establishing a creative, contemplative practice. AThomas Merton quote starts the text, "To be born again is not to become somebody else, but to become ourselves."

As someone who has always felt like I'm starting over, or relearning what I used to know, it's nice to feel as if that is a human experience and recognized sacred rite of passage. So, here I am being born again, and again.

I hope that means more songs this month, and a really beautifully performed show this Friday with my band, but I know I must let go of expectation and just be the child. Let the process change me.

40 Reasons

Today is my birthday, and here are 40 reasons...

1. Because I'm here
2. This place is unbelievable (was staring at a bouquet of purple irises for so long yesterday)
3. Kalamata olives
4. Crows fly towards the sunset in winter every night
5. Great art
6. Guilty pleasures
7. Road trips and car conversations
8. Making songs
9. Microphones
10. Led Zeppelin, Jamiroquai, Bob Marley (if you've gotta clean your house)
11. Mindy Smith, Rebecca Martin, Lizz Wright (if you've gotta update your Quicken)
12. Public Radio
13. Pets...my cats and their expressions of catness give me warm fuzzies every day
14. The science & environment sections of newspapers
15. The human body, in which I dwell, is a constant mystery, a constant conversation
16. Any system -- Enneagram, Feng Shui, Myers-Briggs, Vastu
17. Shaman
18. A really good pen
19. Funny TV (ummm, right now The New Girl is cracking me up every week)
20. Catching people in the act of kindness towards strangers
21. Puttering in the garden with my not-so-green thumb
22. Ikea diplays
23. Foot rubs
24. Pajamas
25. Being aware of how lucky I am
26. God bless probiotics
27. Entire days when there is nothing on my calendar
28. My friends
29. Sunshine, ocean breeze, the smell of cedar and pine trees
30. No matter what, we always have another chance to get it right...no matter if it's the way we expected or not
31. First love
32. There are people on the planet who created Moonstruck, Tout le Matins du Monde, Brokeback Mountain, Girl with a Pearl Earring, Being There, Waitress. Thank you.
33. Researching things....especially geneology, home histories!
34. Mosaics & ornementation
35. Gathering around a fire
36. Erte
37. To fall off the edge of earth into the sea of stars
38. To be bliss
39. To love
40. To surrender

Practicing Surrender

Sometime we just have to let things be alright. Even if they're not. Even if they are. I've been trying to open up an allow things to be easy of late. It's amazing how hard this is for me. I'm always looking for the angle, for the other shoe. It's not that I don't trust everything will work out, but I have to consciously remind myself to let go of the notion that it must be hard.

I've been trying to apply this to my creative process. It means not forcing the issue, or going after the challenge. Rather, it means doing what's easy, and natural. It means going from little bliss to little bliss, and letting the rest take care of itself.

It's the equivalent of eating your favorite part of dinner first, and then not bothering at all with the thing on the plate that you don't like. And not feeling bad about it.

I can feel myself daily, almost hourly, being sucked into wondering what's wrong, or wondering if I'm doing everything I can. Then I check myself. I find the sweet spot, and turn off the debbie downer switch, and just let it be ok. Even if it isn't. Even if it is.

Side A Starts Now

Wow, so shamanism. I learned more about the patterns of my life in 30 minutes than I have in years of journaling. From what I understand, it takes a few weeks to integrate what I've been given. While I do that I'll probably stray off-line. See you on the flip side.

The Known and Unknown

Three things have been on my mind as of late: Irish Music, Shaman truths, and Day Jobs. In an effort to keep my life from becoming stagnant I have accepted a proposal to learn some Irish & Scottish ballads in the hopes that I will be that girl singing every so often with some excellent Irish bands in the area. We'll see. I've been swimming in Irish music for the past month, trying to identify what songs will work with my voice (and, geez, can I do that little trilly thing that all the singers do???). Stay tuned. If this works out, I've just embarked on something new.

Next, Shaman truths. As it turns out, my inner work has led me to all things energetic and spiritual. The futuristic notion of Quantum healing flits at the edges of my consciousness these days. And somehow they compliment so easily the ancient arts that work with spirit and soul. I am both attracted to and freaked out by the prospects of these two worlds, and how they might collide in my life and change my future. I have no idea what this means for who I could become....hopefully something more restorative than I can even possibly imagine. Why explore this? Because it keeps coming up, that's why. It comes out of nowhere and won't get off my front page. Plus I've just had this feeling for a few months that I'm missing something, and it's not a conscious something, it's something else. I will, indeed, be meeting a shaman next week.

Then there are day jobs. God, what a weird concept, no? If I ever start a podcast or something I will interview artists about their creative process, sure, but what most fascinates me is the 'day job.' People that we just assume are working full time as artists, are they really? Or do they have a day job? Or do they have passive income, or are they living with their parents, or do they have a wealthy spouse? Much as I am grateful for the many day jobs I've had over the years, there's something about that model that has made me literally sick. I'm starting to wonder if I should just accept the fact that I don't actually work well with that model, much as I wish I did. But if not this, what?

So I've been ruminated a lot about the known and the unknown. What do I hold on to just because it's known, and where do I get the courage to push beyond that into the unknown? While I mull that over in everywhere but my mind, I shyly reach for shaman truths, and soak in Irish love songs. Maybe someday I'll shed the day job, and be an entirely new kind of snake.

Good Medicine

Honey cake for Rosh Hashana.

Been thinking about good medicine and how much we need it. Good medicine is what we do to prove we're more than what we thought we were. In my case, it's about cultivating joy. Every day I ask myself, "What is one thing I can do today that will make me ridiculously happy?"

A random list of incidental activities appear: Novels. I love to read novels. I'm reading Eat, Pray, Love, and I'm delighted by the advice of Ketut, the Indonesian healer in the story, who tells the author to "smile in your mind, smile in your liver." I've been imagining my liver smiling for days now. I have been baking foods from religious traditions I know nothing about, from ingredients I can't eat, just because I love the smell of things baking on an early autumn evening. I have been attending random community meetings just to hear people wrestle with the world, and watching episodes of Mad Men for hours, just because the fashion is sharp and the sound of drinks pouring over ice at 11 A.M. is decadent. I've been listening to new albums (Brooke Annibale, PJ Harvey, Irish music).

All of these things are unscheduled, and on a whim. Good medicine, indeed, for a gal who's life has been a strict regimen of medical routines and work, work, work. Can anyone relate?

By chance, a good friend sent me a 20-minute video of Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love author) talking about "having" a genius rather than "being" a genius. I string that happy thought like a bead on my bracelet of delights.

So, even though the adrenal fatigue has returned, I resolve to give myself a break. I resolve to prove I'm more than a herb-popping, couch-slouching woman who must languish through her condition. I resolve to find my joy, and cultivate delight, free my mind, and smile in my liver, savour my prescription of loving life on a lark. I resolve to dally a little.

What do you call good medicine? How do you shift the paradigm, and stretch your imagination? Does it work?

WHAT the---?!?!

At Googie's Lounge in NYC

Well, I'm totally floored. Two years later and I just did 5 days of travel, 3 nights of work, and more socializing than I usually cram into a month, and I came home completely healthy and non-fatigued.

I think we have a new paradigm.

So on Monday, with my willpower in tact, I started the next phase of getting well -- the dreaded parasite cleanse. I'm using a product called Parastat, tested via applied kinesiology for my correct dosage. Not that I'm done with the heavy metals detox or the modified diet or the mudpacking. Oh, no. 

So I'm keeping things low-key. This month shows are casual (radio interview, farmers market, etc.) and I'm planning to take a little break from all things music so I can enjoy the summer garden, finish some house projects, and watch how those parasites wriggle on out. So gross. 

This winter my hope is to finish those elusive songs that I want on the next album, and continue my process for finding a producer.  It's so nice to be able to make plans. I still don't take that for granted.