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.

Metal Pig

First of all, someone left me flowers at my show last night. So cool! Also, 3 women were there who I swear I've met, but I didn't realize it until they were leaving. If you're reading this, I'm so sorry I didn't say hello.

Now for the health part of this blog: I've got metal toxicity. Looks like this might be at the root of all my misery for the past 2 years. Based on my disastrous detox earlier this year which seemed to bloom an Epstein Barr viral outbreak, I'm beyond nervous about detoxing the heavy metals. What misfortunes will I have to walk through to get to the other side? I know that's a glass-half-empty mentality, but this is where I'm at today. My ears are ringing, I can't take loud noises. Even typing on this keyboard is smacking my right ear like a crashing cymbal.

But detoxing is definitely what comes next, 'cause I can't feel like crap forever. 


I'm making good on my Chinese astrological element: metal. Wish me good fortune, friends. Over and out.

The brilliance of smallness

For all my ranting about technology and what it does to human interaction, I gotta say I've discovered Netflix streaming movies on an ipod are about as close as it gets to reading a book. Since discovering this feature last Friday, I've watched 4, count 'em, 4 movies. It's a great way to keep me on the couch. The drawback is that it wrecks my vision. So, easy does it.


I've done absolutely zero songwriting in the last few weeks. Not even attempts. I had two performances which messed up my jaw pretty good. Something about the way I sit, sing and play really doesn't work from a physical standpoint. Gotta solve that one. Anyhow, here's the deal: there are some incredibly talented people out there that don't do music full time. Martha Jane is one of them.


In the DIY music community a conversation rages about the future of the industry. This has been going on for as long as I've been out there as a singer-songwriter. It's all about the role of technology and labels and stuff and everyone has an interesting and equally valid perspective.


The DIY culture really honors the entrepreneurial artist. It honors the extravert. I believe most artist are entrepreneurs, by the structure of how it works, but I also believe there are artists who have brilliance and are not entrepreneurs. They simply are good at the artist part. And that's where partnership comes it. These folks have a gift and if we're lucky enough to experience it that is in itself enough. There is greatness in smallness and not everyone who is a talented singer or songwriter needs to enter the music biz fray. There is no cultural or personal obligation. I didn't use to think that, but now I do.


The the industry is morphing and I have to agree with some folks who say we've traded quality for quantity. At some level, I think that's true, and I believe there is a deep and sacred part of our culture that's going underground because of this. That's where is makes a lot of sense to have artists partner with entrepreneurs. Like that song from the 80s, "You've got the braun, I've got the brain. Let's make lots of money." I don't mean a partnership quite like that, but some kind of pairing of gifts equals more than the sum of it's parts.


Pittsburgh, by my experience of 15 years, has almost zero support structure for DIY musicians. There's no industry here to speak of, and I think there could be. I think the culture-at-large would benefit from entrepreneurs cultivating true talent. The folks who are truly talented and charismatic are gonna be fine on their own, and I will enjoy them as much as anyone, and smile for their tremendous accomplishments. Perhaps this is the reality of the future of music and maybe I should just jump on that bandwagon without reservation.


But I have reservations, and I have to articulate them. There are gems who are quietly brilliant, who are music incarnate, and who make songwriting and singing look effortless. I'm an incredibly judgmental person when it comes to art, and these folks relax my mind and put me in my heart and I can experience music the way it's intended. In fact, I can experience humanity the way it's intended. You know these people when you see them and hear them. It's an undeniable thing, and it's not always in your face and obvious. This is the paradox, and this is our discovery to make.


Anyhow, I think lots of DIY artists end up saying you gotta embrace the new world or get out. Stop complaining because reality won't wait for you. Stuff like that. 


There's a missing piece in a statement like that, and I can't quite figure out what it is. I think it has something do with partnership and discovery and the brilliance of smallness, but I'm not sure. I do know I felt lucky to hear Martha Jane. I also know that I don't think she is required to do any more than what she's doing now. Somehow it's more our job to find the gems or something.


I guess this is an entry in my blog where I open it up to feedback. What do you think?