A Taste for Jung

I love how like a meandering stream the path of discovery goes. And sometimes it is as gentle as that, too. That past week I have been introduced in a new way to the work of Jung, and it's a taste that I find familiar and satisfying. And so off I go walking along the water's edge to see what it looks like.

He is more than a hero

He is a god in my eyes -
the man who is allowed
to sit beside you --- he

who listens intimately
to the sweet murmur of
your voice, the enticing

laughter that makes my own
heart beat fast. If I meet
you suddenly, I can't

speak -- My tongue is broken;
a thin flame runs under
my skin; seeing nothing.

hearing only my own ears
drumming, I drip with sweat;
trembling shakes my body

and I turn paler than
dry grass. At such times
death isn't far from me.

-- Sappho


The shape of you
the way you move
the love light in
the eyes of you

I photograph
I do the math
but nothing comes
equal

To the love light
The love light

-- Heather Kropf

Love Into the Great Beyond

Last year I walked up to my house and there was a dead bird at the foot of my steps. It's the second dead bird that's appeared at the front of my house and it felt important. I buried the bird next to the tree by my sidewalk and planted Cosmos seeds. In a few weeks the flowers bloomed, reminding me daily that life comes from death, that we can honor things passing and love them into the great beyond.

At the closure of this years-long process of making my album I am exhausted. So much has changed within and surfaced without: creation from nothing, illogical attraction, dissolved relationships, feeling so much, making everything happen, surrendering, injuries, the ending of things, completions, peace.

I need rest in the way those English women in the last turn of the century would go off to Italy to regroup and regain their health and color.

But there are a few more loose ends before the travel. There are things to be said and freed. There is a house to be sold, possessions to be shed. I long to move into the great beyond of my future as a nomad. I can taste its air. The blank canvas holds the possibility of the entire cosmos; its got a magentic pull to my optimistic mind that I've never been able to really resist for too long.

But the heart needs time to feel. It needs transitions. It needs to mark the moments and honor the passing. It needs to love here and now in the void. It needs to love to know the contours of a life. I am convinced the heart needs to love more than to be loved. It's the mind that needs to be loved. To love is why I buried the bird. It is why I made my album. It is why I am slowing down and taking time to let go before I paint my future.

I am in the last few moments in my coccoon, so let me bury all the heartache in slowness and sleep deeply and when I wake let there be a bouquet of color, sun, breeze and nothing to hold me back from breaking again.

At Long Last, Music

My new album is out today!

Today is the day! I released my fourth album, Chrysalis. How does it feel? Well, pretty damn good, that's how.

I went on my morning walk with my headphones blasting the songs, waking up the day, marking the moment. It's a good record. With perspective I can honestly say that.

I never thought it would get released like this, though. I was jammin' on my to-do lists, rolling along, when 2 weeks ago I hit my head again, which re-aggravated my previous concussion from last fall. Everything stopped. I've been off work with nearly constant migraines, at points too spacey or emotional to talk, and continuing to learn how to rest, take care of myself, and let go.

In the gap amazing people have emerged. I have been working with skilled people in the healing arts and my recovery progress is steady (well, steady as it can be for a concussion). I'll be able to sing at my release party on Sunday. Who knows how I'll feel afterwards, but the party is on. It's on!

I've also gotten lost in some life decisions related to people, place, pursuits. Isn't that about all of it? I met, for a second time, with Victoria Zaitz, a rock solid psychic who offered immense clarity in her hour-long reading. I never thought much of psychics before beyond a fascination in the esoteric, but her focus on the soul is really locked in and grounded. With confirmation from intuitives like her I'm learning how to trust my own intution. I'm not wrong.

Other amazing people: volunteers who are taking the party details way beyond what I ever could conceive, coming out of the woodwork last-minute to keep me from multi-tasking and making decisions. It is better than I could even imagine.

And the musicians, what can I say? I'm beyond grateful for a chance to play these songs live with my release party band, that includes many of the core players on the project. Paul Tabachneck is opening the night and wrote a sweet blog about my music. He'll be doing some guest vocals, including the duet on Valentine. I've been an enormous fan of his voice and songs, his live performance and banter for years. I'm the lucky one to have him opening the night.

Pedal steel, guitar, vibes, bass....these are some of my favorite pop instruments. I went back to listening to Joni Mitchell's Court and Spark and I'm kind of intrigued that I've naturally gone there a little bit with my album instrumentation choices. It's not entirely obvious, but it's there informing my work at the core. And it should; that album started my entire career as a songwriter. Up until then I'd been writing a bit (aka not practicing my piano lessons. sorry mom) but I didn't know it was possible to write personal poetic songs that were pictures in sound.

Anyhow. I don't come close to Joni; she's a brilliant light. But I'd like to think I glow a bit. I'd like to think that in striving to make my own music I've put a little nightlight out there for someone else to see by. Maybe, if I'm lucky. If nothing else it's been a helluva journey and I've done a little bit of soul-saving of my own. That is worth every thrill and heartache. Every single one, and believe me, this project had many of both.

This album, for me, is where my life meets art meets life and makes things better. Have a listen. Enjoy.

Bookends

Heather Kropf - Photo by AshleyDru Photography

I let go. I trusted it would all work out. And just like that, it seems, the album is nearly done, the release party is scheduled with the core band members of my choosing, and it's all funded with my tax refund. Rather miraculously it all flowed so effortlessly. Flow is uncharacteristic for this album of chapters, learning curves, starts and stops. I'm happy for it. God knows we all need a little ease in our lives.

And it's all coming up roses except the sequencing of the tracks. One of my favorite songs is Bookends by Simon & Garfunkel. I especially like it following Old Friends on that album. There's something magical that happens with pairings and groupings of songs. The sequence matters.

I'm after some of that Bookends magic and it's so elusive. I have been trying to sequence my album's songs and it's frying my brain and testing my patience. The concussion symptoms kick up just slightly, I'm also going off my meds for the concussion so I'm a little more spacey, headachy and drugged out, and it's the bluster of spring...a confluence of volatile energy. Yesterday I was looking for a fight. I wanted to punch something (or someone) and I wanted a whiskey in my hand. I was so over it.

But I rode it out and today it all settles down a little bit. The song order is falling into place - just 4 center songs to sequence now -- the prescription detox is easing a bit, and I'm not so temperamental. It's easier to smile to myself. We (over 150 crowd funding backers, 14 musicians, 5 engineers, 4 designer/artists!) have made something that I'm so proud of. My release date and release party announcement is May 3. After many long months in metamorphosis, I'm just about ready to release Chrysalis. My love for Bookends refers to many things beyond the song.

time it was

and what a time it

it was

a time of innocence

a time of confidences

long ago it must be

I have a photograph

preserve your memory

there all that's left you

- Bookends, Simon & Garfunkel

Soul Connections

It's funny that my last post was about soul. That was before I had a cognitive understanding of what I was clearly experiencing. Soul work has been like a forgotten and favorite nutrient these days. The long gap in between that posting and this one was due to a series of neck issues, a concussion that bedded me for about 6 weeks, and then the slow recovery thereafter. The neck issues remain.

Surrendering to the experience of life continues to move me to tears of happiness, really, despite the incredible amount of pain I have experienced in the last 5 months.

I saw the Carnegie International today and there were these sublime perfect moments of connection with something truly beautiful. A sentence in a film, perhaps: Her eyes ached to see him. Or color in thick brush strokes on large canvas with absolutely exquisite composition. Or the film with the drum that moved in the light and the music like light.

And so when I was recently told of a soul connection that I have it explains so much but doesn't do anything to answer the predicament of life's experiences. Never ever having considered connections of the soul before (honestly!) I inhale articles like some long lost vitamin. But the experience remains -- the push and pull, the absence, the 'holy longing'. I am lost inside my own heart, possessed by an energy I didn't ask for. I have seen all that has kept me from advancing as a soul, an artist, a healthy human being. But I don't yet know how to get on the other side.

An understanding with my mind is simply a delay tactic, or another way to encounter it, but not the experience itself. I have started writing about it in song as a way to shape the experience into something. Otherwise I am just literally undone all day long. I have tried to escape it, and I do a pretty good job of it, too. But I know this only prolongs the new reality I never asked for in the first place. I've clearly got work to do.

And yet, even as I wish I could be beyond it, I am enormously grateful for the opportunity to heal the karma, or balance the energy, or whatever you want to call it. I'm ready for a fresh start in my life. If this is day one, bring it on.

After years of going down the rabbit hole of alternative medicine and trying to coax myself back towards myself, it's grand to have a dream again. I have wandered about trying to be content with moments in the darkness. And I am. But I always knew some broader vision existed. Other people had it. Why didn't I? What did I never know what I wanted or needed? What kept me from my own intuition, my own Self? Why did I fear its certainty?

I still have no idea what the dream will be as a literal life experience, but I can see my world is expanding. I thank this unexpected soul connection for the shift. It's like those story walls in Lascaux Caves. A connection is a flicker of light to illuminate a story that's been there for thousands of years. With a little light we can read it like a book. We can see the story and read it, or we can see it and freak out because it's too much to bear. We can blow out the candle but the story is still there.

My story starts with a woman who has centuries of baggage. She can see them now and set them down and walk away. Or that is the idea. The idea is to walk out of the cave with nothing but herself, free to move, to hunt, to love, to run, to walk without burden. That's the idea.

With some different kind of future cast in front of my eyes, I figure surrendering to the pain is a small price to pay. I'd walk through fire for that. I'd suffer exquisite 'holy longing' as long as I needed to in order to reach some kind of certain peace tomorrow.

I've been pretty good at missing things. I've been good at doing without, at letting someone else's story dictate my own. I've been good at running. For the first time in my adult life I feel like I have something that is mine and no one can fuck with it. My heart and its longings are all mine. I don't suffer because of it. I claim it as my own. I do this because I know I'm alive and I'm not alone. There is someone else doing the same thing. There are thousands.

I will turn myself inside out. Or that's the idea. If this is day one then it is a good day. We get better by accepting what is. I could go on. I hope I do.

To Hold the Stone

In times of excess energy such as these days of high summer there is nothing quite like the act of moving. And certain kinds of motion, I'm conviced, are divinity itself.

I have spent nearly every morning at a high school track I recently discovered about 8 miles from my house. I feel at home on a track. I love the meditative state it puts me in when I walk in circles. I love the sweat that drips down my stomach and dampens my whole head when I run up and down the bleachers. I love feeling spent.

I listen to things in my ear buds and inhale the scent of the pine tree grove and nearby marsh as the sun comes up. It smells green.

Today I was at the track relistening to an astrological chart reading I had in late June. This line jumped out at me: Don't make sense of it. Don't settle down. I kept walking. It was raining a little.

As I navigate the creative process of recording an album and as it spills over into my personal life, and as I make circles around the track, I'm rewinding my life back to innocence, back to remembering who I was before it got complicated and encumbered. Back to whatever God is.

We are what we are, and I've never been anything except a traveler. Motion is my currency. It is the only place that makes sense. What's changed is that I don't need to be the driver anymore. I can ride whatever is moving...the stream, the train, the creative process, a song. I'm not in control (never have been) and I know it. I welcome it now. It's strangely calming and reassuring, this letting go. What you do is pick your ride or allow your ride to pick you. That's it. And then you go.

The other day I was at a bar listening to a song that one of the band musicians had composed. The song had an exquisite motion. In some kind of nameless way I knew exactly what it was. I recognized it; I saw myself in it. There I sat, with my lips slightly parted, absolutely still transfixed by the beauty that came from and through someone's mind and made manifest through wood and metal and electricity, with hands. I felt found, and found out. It was incredibly upsetting.

The last time I had experienced this was with a movie made by a Japanese filmmaker about Gaudi.

This is what we do then. We catch glimpses of other's souls and see our own. Every so often the veil is lifted and in that direct transfer the mind is blown. Language is inadequate. I've been trying to understand it for days now with no luck. I've been trying to tuck myself back into my old form. No luck. I'm rendered silent and without edges, a ripple close to the stone but never holding it.

"Don't make sense of it. Don't settle down."

This is why I walk the track. To have a shape. To keep from spinning out inside. To rewind the bullshit. To stay with God for one moment more. I'll be there tomorrow, and the day after that, and after that. And maybe after a lifetimes of days I will hold the stone.

Sitting Still

I finally hit my first physical test during making the album. It was the moment I kind of feared.

I've been doing a lot of travel, drinking alcohol, going out late, sitting in smoky bars, and seeing friends and music and all. I knew I was feeling really good and wondering when it would end.

Looking back I see signs..the headaches, the night sweats, the sinus pressure, the afternoon fatigue, the lathargic mornings, the vocal chords that weren't there, the feeling off.

It wasn't until we had 3 strike out sessions for lead vocals that I realized I hit my wall and needed to slow down. And slowing down was something I was dreading because it meant being a little self-reflective about my life. Sometimes you don't want to think. You just want to live.

Anyhow, I tried a bunch of bodywork and it was all lovely, but by this past weekend it still bloomed into full blown illness...the weak throat, the wheezing, the incredible fatigue. And I couldn't take it. I felt like I was falling into that spiral that was all too familiar and I never wanted to experience ever again.

So thank god for the people I've worked with over the last few years. I don't have to wait and wonder and worry. I call and they take care of me.

Acupuncture was on order for today and we found lots of lung stuff going on, and after the needles I swear I haven't felt my throat and upper chest this open in a long long time. And then I get to put these herbal crystals in hot water and drink down a sugary antiviral/antibacterial tea. Yum, sugar.

It's also at this moment that the advantage of having a co-producer becomes exponentially clear. I would have tried to plow through the vocal sessions, and kept on my trend towards burn out like I had with all my past projects. But with outside ears at the vocal sessions (and really good ears) it was a no brainer to stop.

So while I allow my voice time to heal and my body time to get its mojo back, we'll excerise the bend and not the break. There is plenty to do that doesn't require my body to have my back: guitars, strings, album art, etc. Now if I can only sit still long enough.