A Crooked Crow

standing at the foot of the precipice

both our faces worn

our hearts were rough at the edges

just the passing of a storm

i am no more simple 

than the stars that shine for me

i am just a girl this time

but that’s my poetry

life was born in this valley

with sunlight looking back

over shoulders bare in a big, big sky

the poets taught her that

i am no more simple

than the stars that shine for me

i am just a girl this time

but that’s my poetry

i am only the silence

i am only the space between the words

i am only a story that you’ve heard

‘cause we’re all some kind of creature

with grass under our feet

when life first came it was stars and rain

what chance the two should meet

i am no more simple 

than the stars that shine for me

and i am just a girl this time

but that’s my poetry

i am just a girl in time

but that’s still poetry

*

i spent a long weekend this month in the west texas desert with a whole gaggle of talented songwriters and amazing people.  no phone, no internet, no room to go hide in when i got shy.  it was fantastic.  we cut up old romance novels and sci fi books, we translated poems from languages we didn’t know, we ate delicious food, cheered each other on and talked about what it means to us to be a songwriter.  

we really have to let ourselves go to find ourselves, and our true art.  one thing about art is that we always think we get the idea, rather than the idea getting us.  it just shows up, doesn’t it?  we need to take credit for taking note and persisting until we bring the idea to light, but we also need to be humble enough to know that it came through us from the big, bold, beautiful and mysterious magical energy we’ve come to know as life.  

i was asked to be on a panel about lifestyles and songwriting and what ways we have best learned to mix the two, and really what it came down to for me was that i know my muse.  i know the place where my best songs tend to come from, and that’s both a blessing and a curse.  it’s a blessing in that i know how to keep it alive and tap into it when i need to without letting it take away from or damage the life i’m so madly in love with, but a curse in that anything not coming from that place somehow doesn’t feel genuine or “true.”  it’s very hard for me to write anything that isn’t a direct translation of emotion into song.  

the song above came from a poem translated in terrible fashion from italian into a tale of a snake and the god of disease and all sorts of weird religious stuff.  i was instructed to take my silly poem and go make a song from it.  naturally, the first thing i did was slash out all of the parts that didn’t mean anything to me (i.e. snakes and gods of sickness and weird religious stuff) and suddenly a sweet song, that actually means a great deal to me, wrote itself in precisely the amount of time it took to get the words down on paper.  

i can’t believe i’d never done any of this crazy cut-up shit before.  get out of the way, there’s a whole lot more that’s trying to come through ;)

Our Own River, Our Own Light

slow down my love

this old world she ain’t running out of time

slow down my love

ain’t nobody can write what’s mine

i wrote that song because my love and connection with any music that wasn’t my own was dwindling.  it was forced and skeptical and a lonely place to be.  it was getting harder and harder to find music that touched me, that really struck a chord, that made me feel something.  and the worst part was that i just stopped looking.  i let the heavy weight settle on me that we must be running out.  i felt doomed to continuing disappointment, or if i did find an amazing song then it was just one more song that i could no longer write.  

is there a bigger picture?  ask yourself that all the time.  the world is an expanding universe.  there’s always a bigger picture, every moment.  there’s always an energy on the cutting edge that just isn’t anywhere else.  refocus on it.  it will help you see.

i have taught myself to think of creative energy as a river.  it is always flowing by, it is always accessible to me.  if i let something go by un-captured, it’s ok, because there is always more water flowing and i can’t separate one good idea out from another.  it’s all the same energy, taking on the form of the moment.

why am i afraid to surrender to magic?  why does it so often surprise me?  it’s the essence of life, and i do so love life.  i am life.  i am love.  love is magic.  magic happens.  magic is.  i'm a little ashamed to have thought such limiting things about the universe!

ain’t nobody can write what’s mine, but i can’t write something that’s someone else’s either.  we each have our own river.  we each have our own light.

A New Perspective

i recently got a new camera, after having a great one for a while and then trying to replace the great one (since three years made it SO obsolete they stopped making it) with a super duper piece of crap camera that i had dreams of throwing from tall buildings or smashing to bits with heavy blunt objects.  christmas was good to me, and i am now properly equipped with a fast-action-make-everything-look-like-a-million-bucks lens through which to see the world.  

i once wrote an email to my good friend, danny schmidt, declaring excitedly that i had finally discovered my life’s purpose.  it was around the time that i decided right before going on stage that i really didn’t enjoy performing....like, at all.  i didn’t like the jitters before playing, i usually felt nervous and clumsy when i was up there, and i didn’t like the part afterwards when i couldn’t talk to anyone without feeling like i was putting them on the spot to tell me it was a great show, and then questioning the truth of the statement and trying like to hell to learn how to take a compliment.

i wrote danny to tell him that i wanted to be a photographer, or more so, that i finally realized that’s what i was.  photography is so innocent and so pure.  photography has naught to do with ego; how could it?  it’s being a witness to life’s miracles, big and small.  nothing more and nothing less, except knowing when you see one and when to click a button.  you’re not creating anything, only sharing.  that was a tremendous relief to me at the time.  it still is.

as dramatic a moment as that was, really i was just feeling shy and scared and uncertain and noticed a whole new bright light that captivated me.  and now instead of leaving the old light behind i’ve learned to see music in much the same way.  we’re really a witness to everything, even ourselves.

a new camera feels like a new skin.  my eyes and my heart are more open.  they see things in a different light.  and they’re seeing that everything is a miracle, really.  everything is amazing.