In trying to consider where I might pick up my string of Blogcasts after finishing the ‘Diagnosed Mortal’ series, I decided I would tackle an audio rendition of my memoir, Different Ways, Revealing the Feminine. I’m calling this a rendition because it isn’t an actual “audio book”. The episodes will be multimedia posts based on certain chapters or excerpts from my book and they are not even in order, to make things even more confusing. I will designate which chapter or excerpt I’m referring to in the post if anyone is interested.
I decided I will do my best to read the item of interest in audio form and I will write about “the issue” or corresponding thoughts that arise about it. If the spirit moves, I will add a song as commentary as I’ve done in prior posts.
I’m doing it this way because of a current issue that rose in the US news around abortion laws. I write about my mother's experience with this regarding my birth in my book and, frankly, I want to talk about it. So I will begin there in the next episode. I anticipate posting as I have, every Tuesday and Friday. Feel free to sign up to receive a notification in your email. If you do sign up, there is a one click unsubscribe option, if email notifications become too annoying and you change your mind about it. Frankly, I'm the unsubscribe QUEEN.
Other than the above, I don’t know what will happen, if anything. I get up everyday and I ask, what do I want to do today? Because I’m privileged, blessed, and easily amused, I get up and do whatever I decide to the best of my ability. I do want to say this, however...I've said it before, many times and in many ways: I do not consider myself a "writer". I never aspired to be a writer. I never studied writing and, I will repeat: It is insulting to people who study their word craft to refer to me as a serious writer or teller of coherent prose. I'm here because the internet provides tools that allows someone with few skills and a small attention span to shout into the void. Period. I am a human first and foremost; one who chooses to maintain my humanity by using words. I use a public platform simply because I can share this way. My memoir is written within this same intention.
Thank you for your interest and your listening….
Different Ways, Introduction, pp 9-10
Music has always played a vital part in my life. I go into this in my memoir as it has played an important part repeatedly in both the joys and the sorrows in my life as I reacted to it.
It came to my attention by a person who read and listened to my Blogcast that it wasn't clear to them why I selected the music I did to go with that particular episode. They were not familiar with popular music and I realized that I have never explained this adequately to myself or to others. Why did I choose that particular song? I tried to rectify this in the Diagnosed Mortal posts. This is my attempt to examine just what happens in my personal process in hearing and identifying to a song...just how it sets up housekeeping nestled between both hemispheres of my brain and how my heart dictates its meter and resonance.
None of this has anything to do with the creation of the song or its writers beyond an occasional objective interest in their creative process in formulating a song that I like. More often than not, the songs that I respond to the most are songs that the artist just "received" like a gift. In other words, it was a channeled song as if it comes from a very refined frequency, this can bring an amazing healing resonance among people - sometimes, masses of people when it becomes popular.
Some music for me has a frequency that resonates in me and, like a dream language, it can become intensely personal in association. Sometimes it is the melody, sometimes the back beat and sometimes the lyrics that grab me and ask me to listen closer and explore my feelings around it. Sometimes it proves to be a communication from my guides who want me to pay attention to something and they reach in through time and space to use music, usually lyrics or a hook line, to try and get my attention on some matter. This is done with a fine tuning to my intuition. This should obviously be done with caution and/or counsel because as the old song states...and I lived it to be true, " traveling twice the speed of sound, it's easy to get burned." This is an idiom worth remembering with any meandering around the wooded outskirts and unlit alleyways of anyone's psyche. One needs to know oneself and to understand their inner languages and/or have guidance.
There is another kind of music experience I want to mention that is separate from listening to a recorded offering and that is live performances. Live performances are the music but on steroids because the entire body is enjoying the vibrations and the frequencies presented. Is it any wonder as humans that there is a part of us that loves to gather in this way both to witness and perform? It becomes exponentially enhanced as an experience in a crowd of humanity. Though I don't see many people actually conscious of this, still we gather in droves and some dream of influencing people this way. Sometimes in the videos I post in these Blogcasts, I will opt into using a film of a live performance of a song because there is a bit of that energy captured there.
Music: What's Going On came out when I was a teen and I recall it heralding a new level of listening for me. That opening saxophone crying!! It turned my head. Apologies for the poor video quality but the sound is good and the performance (though much of the amazing talk he added in the beginning was edited out) is spectacular. The better extended version that I intended to use of this was taken down from the internet recently, sadly. I did find this part, though.
"...Yesterday was hot; yesterday was hurting; and yesterday was the birthplace of today..."
~Marvin Gaye
I watch this in awe as Marvin Gaye was clearly a gift to us all as an artist and he has brought us all closer to something finer in ourselves with his music. Because we have the magic of technology, he still does this.
Also good viewing is this video . It's an excerpt from the 1973 Paramount Pictures documentary, "Save The Children" ( free on YouTube).
Thank you for listening. The memoir Different Ways: Revealing the Feminine can be purchased through my website using a link to Village Books at AlltheDifferentWays.com. There is also an eBook version available at Amazon.