Welcome to the conversation!

Where is rosepetal? I miss her poems...
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mirages I too seem to be really slow in responding... Sorry about that. I would blame it on the time difference or something, but that won't fly, cause it takes me days... I do read this thread, but it's like this: 

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Carrie Newcomer... I discovered her when she put out her album Everything is Everywhere - that's really her only album I've listened to start to finish - I love that she incorporated Indian sounds and that she tries to bring together east and west, musically and lyrically. In one song, she has a line about India, and then a line about Indiana... clever... There is also some of the Buddhist philosophy in that album. I instantly liked a song called May We Be Released. It's so simple on the one hand, and yet it has such a profound, strong message. It's like a prayer, but alongside wishing for simple things, there are some complex thoughts there that really resonated with me. For example, she says: 

Let there be no stones to throw and someone to watch your back

And some prayers be never answered for the things we think we lack


How simple the first line, and how complex the second! How often it is the case, though, that we wish for something, and then when it doesn't come true, when we don't get what we wanted, we get upset, we grow bitter... But do we ask ourselves: did I really lack this thing I wanted, did I really need it to be happy, to be fulfilled? Maybe I just thought I needed it, but I don't... In fact, there are plenty of things that we think we want or need, but when we get them they turn out to be something else and not give us what we thought we would get...

Or, there is this stanza, where again we have deep thoughts and simple, everyday things alongside each other:

May you get fed up and finish old obsessions past their prime

May you find the silent center and leave all undone behind

May there be bread and honey, may somebody love your flaws

Give a stranger your umbrella and love a grateful dog


I especially like the juxtaposition of finishing old obsessions and leaving what's not done behind... Sometimes, you need to find closure, but sometimes it's better for you if you just let it go...

Here are some other thoughts from the same song:

       When the truth catches your eye, may you have the grace to stop

(Alas, how often people just won't let go of their preconceived notions, prejudices, etc. even after they see the real truth...) 

       May you have the strength to question all the things you thought were right

(Ah, yes! Examining the things we "know" will certainly yield the conclusion that we were wrong about a lot of things. We all share that - we pick up half-truths and untruths from unreliable sources, and we just accept them without further examination. It can be something trivial, like the myth that hair and nails grow after death or something like that, but unfortunately, sometimes, people take for granted much more important stuff - they just accept it as truth and don't bother questioning it. Homophobia springs to mind as a perfect example. Most people are not ultra-rightwing extremists who want to kill gay people. Most people just believe what they were told by somebody else, that it's a disease, or a choice, or whatever, and they stop at that. Instead, they should question things they are told.)

       May you go ahead and quit what you should never have begun
(And, this may be the most difficult of all. How often do we begin something, and then - half way through - we glimpse the truth: that we shouldn't have even started it - but we supress it, because we are convinced it's only losers who give up and that we need to finish what we started, etc. But, the only thing we need is to be ourselves. That means we need to listen to our instincts and to those inner voices, which are different facets of our being.)

Happy Halloween to those who celebrate it!

In the spirit of the season, here's "The Hell of it" by Paul Williams in "The Phantom of the Paradise." Out of context this may seem pretty grim, but if you haven't seen the movie (which is awful despite the great soundtrack), it's a complete send-up and mash-up of the traditional Faust and Frankenstein stories, with Phantom of the Opera and A Star is Born thrown in for good measure. It's camp and irreverent and in this piece, Williams, who of course wrote legions of sappy sentimental megahits, takes a shot at the sentimentality that usually follows the death of a thoroughly unlikable individual. It always makes me laugh, probably because I'm one of those who usually tries to be kind and sympathetic and verges on the sentimental myself -- it reminds me a little of that "Mary Tyler Moore" episode where Mary and the crew from the TV station attend the funeral of Chuckles the Clown ... everybody else has been making bad puns all day long and Mary has been shocked and shushing them for their lack of respect for the gravity (so to speak) of the situation, and then when she gets to the funeral herself and the minister is doing a very serious eulogy for the clown who, dressed as a peanut, was crushed by an over-zealous elephant co-star, she is the one who bursts out laughing and can't stop, much to her own horror.

Listening to this soundtrack again this week in the run-up to Halloween, it struck me that this song actually works really well as an internal dialogue, where the protagonist is finally turning on the negative, joy-sucking voice in his or her own head and kicking it to the curb -- I kinda like that interpretation since I'm always in skirmishes with my inner critic when I try to produce new work.



And that led me to "Mystery Dance" by Elvis Costello for another non-sentimental take on an overly sentimental teenage death tale. I love the line, "Juliet was waiting with a safety net / He said, "Don't bury me cuz I'm not dead yet!" I think for a lot of us, it was Adam with that safety net ...

Good morning everyone, I am touched that you missed me and my poems. I am doing fine and have thought about everyone here but have had zero time . My husband has not been well for several years now, so last spring we decided he would retire at 62. We put our house up for sale and started looking for one at the lake. Perfect plan ... right... Well not so much because our house sold in 2 weeks and we couldn't find a house in that length of time. So we did the unthinkable, moved into our daughter and son in laws extra room. We all get along really well but she sure has s lot of rules !!!! So we have been housing hunting like mad people. I'll be back when I have more time thanks again for the concern.

Lol, thanks for those, toramenor -- I am trying VERY hard not to go digging through Youtube to find a clip of the dead parrot sketch in reply ... but maybe instead I'll segue over into Bruce cockburn's version of "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life" which made me smile (and still does) because Bruce has something of a rep for being the deep soulful type -- this is a nice counterpoint, from Python's "Life of Brain":




Cockburn usually does stuff like this (and aren't the paintings great,t oo?):