my therapist

I saw her last night, it was so funny. About midway through the session (I hadn't seen her for a month, went in for a "checkup") she laughed and said "well, what do you need me for?" I said "I don't know!" :) Things have been going so well lately. I mean, life is life and there are upsets, but I'm navigating the bumps in the road with more ease than ever in my life. Its wonderful.

When I got there, she told me that her album was in final mixing. This morning I saw her craigslist ad looking for band members, so I went to check out her myspace page:

http://myspace.com/kathleendunbarmusic

Very nice stuff! I'm going to get her album when its done.

She has been such a gift and a guide to me. Its so great to see this creative side of her.

On A Clear Day

PM Dawn On A Clear Day

Think I could find a better way,
find a sight to see
find a place that I...belong to
Wandering aimlessly
But I know where I can go
Somewhere across from me,
I now realize...

On a clear day, I can see
If only I could hear you
If only you could hear me
On a clear day, baby, I can see
Everything that's cosmic, but you, baby

Oh, maybe I'm just another something new
Maybe on a clear day I see you
Maybe I'm just another something new
Maybe on a clear day I see you, baby
I see you baby
I see you baby
I see you baby
I see you...baby

When you open up your eyes
What's in front of you,
Is what's supposed to be there,
Oh really?

Ask me who I am.
Ask me what you are.
One nation under God,
I'm smiling

On a clear day, baby
I can see, If only I could find you
If only you could find me(find me baby)
On a clear day, baby
I can see, Only God knows where you're going...

Open up your hearts
Open up your minds
Baby how do you feel?
Are you cold here?

Kiss me everyday,
I find another way
Brings me in the sky,
I don't know you

On a clear day, baby
I can see If only I could see you
If only you could see me
On a clear day, baby, I can see
Forever behind the horizon line

Oh, maybe I'm just another something new
Maybe on a clear day I see you
Maybe I'm just another something new
Maybe on a clear day I see you, baby
I see you baby
I see you baby
I see you baby
I see you...baby

Oh, Where was I before?
It doesn't matter now
Maybe it does sometimes...
I don't know

What do ya think of me?
What do ya think of life?
Hold me in my arms
I love you

On a clear day, baby
I can see everyone that loves you,
Everyone that loves me
On a clear day, baby, I can see
Whatever's in front of my eyes...

Oh, maybe I'm just another something new
Maybe on a clear day I see you
Maybe I'm just another something new
Maybe on a clear day I see you

Maybe I'm just another something new
Maybe on a clear day I see you
Maybe I'm just another something new
Maybe on a clear day I see you, baby
I see you baby
I see you baby
I see you baby
I see you...baby

meet Joey

First picture of my new guy. I just picked him up today. He is a little freaked out right now, but give him a week or so and I'm sure we'll be getting along just fine.

My mother used to have parakeets when she was a kid, and we had a couple when I was a kid. She taught them to talk and do tricks. So I asked her for some advice before I decided to go for it.

Its nice having a little being around, especially since Skyler is only here part time. When Skyler is gone, I felt like the house was empty, and usually stayed out of it. Now I have some company. Yay!

Toast

Toast by Tori Amos

I thought it was Easter time
The way the light rose
Rose that morning
Lately you've been on my mind
You showed me the rope
Ropes to climb
Over mountains
And to pull myself
Out of a landslide
Of a landslide

I thought it was harvest time
You always loved the smell of the wood burning
She with her honey hair
Dalhousie Castle
She would meet you there
In the winter
Butter yellow
The flames you stirred
Yes, you could stir

I raise a glass
Make a toast
A toast in your honor
I hear you laugh
And beg me not to dance
On your right standing by
Is Mr. Bojangles
With a toast he's telling me it's time
To raise a glass
Make a toast
A toast in your honor
I hear you laugh and beg me not to dance
On your right standing is
Mr. Bojangles
With a toast he's telling me it's time
To let you go
Let you go

I thought I'd see you again
You said you might do
Maybe in a carving
In a cathedral
Somewhere in Barcelona

Shadows and Memories

I listened to Sun Kil Moon on the way home from B&C's, my son in the backseat. I wanted something I could listen to that would wind down the mood. I put on Duk Koo Kim, because it was long enough to last the drive. As ever, I am gently surprised by the lyrics. I forget what they touch:

oh, come to me once more, my love
show me the love I've never known

Searching for SKM on myspace, I find a profile which has another song I love: Carry Me Ohio. And I'm drawn in again to the bittersweet lyrics, the melancholy sounds:

sorry that
i could never love you back
i could never care enough
in these last days

I'm having trouble connecting there. The words, they want to go in, but it is as if I am watching a movie about my emotions. Feelings up on the silver screen, projected ten feet tall, unrealistic. I search through half remembered dreams and hopes. Shadow loves and memories of great and undying passion.

all the lovers i've burned through
so why do i still burn for you

But I don't. I try to reach out to that self, that woman who burned, that soul that threatened to drown in a tidal wave of tears, to connect to that place inside. Its as if I am reaching, my fingertips dip into a running stream, nothing to hold onto, nothing to grasp.

Perhaps it is best. In this liminal space, far from the grasping and longing, far from the ebb and flow of the sea, I am safe.

I am content.

For B and C

This is too cute, reminding of their upcoming nuptials:

I Wanna Get Married
by Nellie McKay
(mp3)

I wanna get married
Yes, I need a spouse
I want a nice Leave it to Beaverish
Golden retriever and a little white house
I wanna get married
I need to cook meals
I wanna pack you cute little lunches
For my Brady bunches
Then read Danielle Steele
I wanna escape
This rat race I've created
I'm feelin' enervated
I don't care if I make it
I just want to bake a sugar cake for you
To take to work in the morn
And I'll stay home cleaning the dishes
And keeping your wishes all warm
I wanna get married
That's why I was born

I wanna partake in bake sales for the classroom
I wanna hear the sweet tune
Of Sally's little vroom-vroom
As she zooms around my broom
As I exhume the gloom
Of my shallow life
I wanna be simple and honest and dimpled
'cause I am your wife
I will never tarry
I'm not even torn
I wanna get married
That's why I was born

OooooOOOOoooo

Saw this on Lark in the Morning, a Burmese Temple Gong!

I looked at this a couple months back and almost bought it at twice the price. I'm so tempted... but when would I use it? I'm such a practical girl, I don't think I could get it if I couldn't justify it.

But I'm good at justifying when I want to be :)

Shiny

Operating at an even keel. Not sure what the future holds, and for once, not too worried about it. S may come out here, he may not. I send messages to random boys, sometimes getting a response, sometimes not. Mostly I'm fine where I am at. I've been working a ton, full time and freelance on the side. Trying to get the album done. Going to get the paperwork done and filed.

There is a fog in the basin below my house. The trees are particularly ghostly today, standing tall like silent spectors in the mist. The air smells of dew and wet leaves. God, I love it here. The only thing that would make it more perfect is if I were close to the ocean. But for now, this is good. More than good, it is what I need.

The universe is conspiring to give me exactly the life I want. I have faith that it is here already.

Listening to iTunes on shuffle again. Came up with the Decemberists. Very nice tune, slightly upbeat, but darker lyrics.

Shiny
by the Decemberists
(mp3)

by the bumper cars, in the pretty twining light,
i may have gone too far,
i may have gone too much, too long.
i'm a dull and witless boy.
in the after bars, think i was sullied by a dream.
in the killing jar,
you and me at war at arms
all falling in embrace.

tell me why you lied
and what it is you do to keep your eyes all shiny

a tawny gypsy girl
sleeping blanketed by stars
beneath the tilt-a-whirl
where we were coyly caught alone
all fumbling with your blouse

tell me why you lied
and what it is you do to keep your eyes all shiny

and in the rollercoaster din
by the parachutes in saddle shoes you break your shin
but i have never seen two eyes so shiny
and the sullen beery swine
try to tangle you in sullen beery balls of twine
have they ever seen two eyes so shiny?

the boys in denim vests
smoking cigarettes between their bootblack fingertips
sweetly tipsy by the half-light
the light and the half-light

tell me why you lied
and what it is you do to keep your eyes so shiny

what does it all mean?

I remember that scene in "High Fidelity" (a movie I really liked) where Catherine Zeta-Jones says "I KNEW it, you ARE having one of those 'what-does-it-all-mean' moments". Yeah I'm kinda having one of those moments now. Getting an email from S, feeling that connection, still open, I wonder what it all means.

It means nothing. It means whatever I want it to. It means whatever I need it to.

It means nothing :)

I love Prince

I FUCKING LOVE PRINCE!!! :D Ahhhh listening to Musicology and just dancing around my office/studio. I hooked up S.'s speakers through the amp to the computer. Ahhhhhh how happy music makes me!!!

And my love of Prince is solely due to C's influence in high school. She introduced me to classic Prince. She made me a mix tape, called "Negro BeBop", one side of it was Prince, and the other side was Vanity 6. YEAH!!!! :D

I remember how it started

I was thinking about my relationship to music and how it has shifted through the years. I sang a lot as a kid, like most kids did. I also was exceptionally gifted in drawing. My mother will tell you stories of me drawing all over EVERYTHING.

When I was eight years old, my family moved and thus began a very dark period in my life (for which I have recently completed two years of therapy). In that time, I closed inward, but my creative expression flourished in visual arts. I stopped talking and singing, but took refuge in my imagination and solace in the drawings I did.

In middle school, I ended up in choir, which is a shock to me, given how much I wanted to fade into the background and never be noticed. I guess part of me DID want to get noticed. When I got to high school, I didn't like the band/choral teacher, so I ditched music and took an art class. I wasn't particularly exceptional in that, except that I could reproduce almost anything with pretty good accuracy.

In college (I went away my first two years to Long Beach State) I took private voice lessons from a classical singer who had toured Europe. I told her I couldn't afford lessons, so she told me to bring her a salad (she had classes all day with no break) and that would be fine. She saw in me something exceptional, had me sing for the head of the Music department. I was terrified. His only comment was that I needed to be more expressive. My teacher gave me the single best piece of advice: your voice will change when you hit 30. You have all the time in the world to sing.

I tried to pursue music in college, then art, and my parents said no. I couldn't afford it on my own, so I ended up getting my degree in Computer Science. Although I did take several theater classes, and ended up doing several shows around the Bay Area.

Looking back now, its clear now that the creative force that moves through me would not take no for an answer. It still wont!

I think about music I listened to, throughout the years, and in the beginning most of it was popular, whether with the general populous or with my crowd. Two albums changed my relationship to music profoundly: Spirit Chaser (Dead Can Dance) and Passion (Peter Gabriel: music for The Last Tempation of Christ). In that music, I found a communion of soul, a connection to something beyond this world. I didn't realize it then, but I found meditation and spirituality. I will always remember this line "We make a road for the spirit to pass over" and see how it applied to an individual life, then to the creation of life (in my son) and then in the creation of music.

I started dating Darcy in 1995, and a little over a year into that, began another dark period in my life. Turning inward again. A trip to Burning Man brought me out of my shell creatively, and drove me to pursue more creative path in my work, leading me to the Internet, and to design.

Then about 7 years or so ago, I read the Artist's Way. About unblocking your creativity. When I picked it up, I assumed that I would get back into visual arts. I had never considered music. Then it hit me, and with outside encouragement, I was writing songs, lyrics called up from the very depths I had been trying to cover up.

Music has meant so many things to me over the years: solace, inspiration, movement, laughter, sadness, anger, relief, communion, escape, communication. I cannot imagine anything else having so varied an impact.

An interesting observation

Had dinner with R last night, she is so good for the soul! :) I'm really glad we have kept close through all this. I started to tell her about a person (newly separated: I must be a magnet for them!) who asked me if I knew how one would go about hooking up for casual sex. I then mused aloud that I had thought that I would be the one looking for that when I became single with my own place. And yet, it hadn't happened. And I'm so not interested in that. R said to me "well, you've known great love" which I was surprised to hear her say, although I'm not sure why. Yes, I have known great love, more than once, and I'm unwilling to settle for a cheap substitute. It felt good to think of it in those terms.

I have known great love. Yes.

Yesterday I was walking to BART and feeling a little lonely. This is the time where I usually start wondering how long it will be before I am with someone new, or thinking that I should start hitting the personal ads. But this time, a little voice said "You better enjoy this time you have to yourself, your own projects, because when you meet someone new, you will look back and marvel at the time you had." And that made me smile. I am enjoying this time. Not exactly liminal, because I feel I've passed through the threshold. My last therapy appointment, I pulled a card with a pregnant woman on it. That's how I feel now, like I'm gestating my future. And I feel pretty content about it.

And besides, as R said, I've proven again and again that I have no trouble finding someone when I put my mind to it ;) She thinks I won't be on the market for long.

She's probably right.

27 Jennifers

Dang it! Hahahahaha... its so funny what kind of experiences the internet enables. Case in point:

1. I see a guy on BART with a "man sack" that makes me think of Darcy
2. I remember to tell Darcy over IM and he says he still wants one.
3. I go tripping around the internet looking for "man sack"
4. I find a link to a blog entry from Mike Doughty saying he bought a one.
5. I go to his home page, where I see a promo for a new song "27 Jennifers"
6. I listen to the song on MySpace and decide to look up the lyrics.

Its just funy because my birthday is on thee 27th, and the fact that there are SO MANY (a veritable plethora!) of Jennifers.

Anyway, the song made me smile, so here are the lyrics (you can listen to the song on myspace)

27 Jennifers
by Mike Doughty

I went to school with 27 Jennifers
16 Jenns, 10 Jennies, and then there was her

It’s the sweet shine of,
Yeah, force of divine love
The blessed arrival of you

You might be the one that I’ve been seeking for
You might be the strange delightful
You might be the girly who shall end all girls
You might be the sweet unspiteful

I rode the bus with 27 Jennifers
15 Jenns, 10 Jennies disapproved of her

Yeah, get from my sight, man,
Gladness is a blight, and
Happiness stinks up the room

gearing up!

Okay I've had my new Mac desktop sitting here for weeks, finally got my Cubase LE/Mixer, waiting for my new microphone (M Audio Sputnik). Then comes the part I have NO IDEA about.. making it all work! Should keep me off the streets for a while ;)