Hip Hop showcase crowd....I'm in there.... Photo by Lotus Eaters Film

Whoa. I started this entry a couple days after returning home from Shambhala, but I just had to stop. Trying to sum it up was overwhelming so I took a break. I’ve accepted that I’ll never be able to explain it ALL- it’s the type of experience that you need to witness for yourself in order to absorb it. That being said, I know everyone experienced those few days differently, everyone’s got their own stories….12,000 stories at LEAST. (more…)

“Well I just got into town about an hour ago, took a look around, see which way the wind blow”…. Jim Morrison wasn’t the only one.

L.A. is one of the must-stop destinations for musicians and non-musicians alike, and I had the recent pleasure of having an excursion there for a couple of weeks.  I traveled down alone, something that always inspires me in itself. Being solitary seems to act as a wonderful connector to the world around me.  My senses are heightened. I can look around, listen and observe at a greater expanse.

Even flying in you’re struck by the sprawling nature of it.   The road system isn’t even a grid, it’s a woven freeway-mecca for the restless (trusting the restless are prepared to sit in traffic for quite a while).  Admittedly I was totally intimidated at first… Everyone that lived there was so well versed in the freeway-speak and most of the time I felt they had to talk to me like I was 5 to get directions across. You need a car. No two ways about it.  You can survive without one I suppose, but the majority of your day will be spent commuting.  While I was there I was lucky enough to visit quite a few different areas: Silver Lake, Playa Del Rey, Culver City, Montecito Heights, West Hollywood, Santa Monica, and Venice.  L.A. isn’t just one spot.  It’s built out of MANY spots, all connected by the lovely freeway system like an intricate constellation.

On the first night of having my rented car I got lost. I was trying to get from Culver City back to Silver Lake- which shouldn’t be THAT difficult, should it? I was on track, feeling good, went to take my exit to the 110 and hey! The exit was blocked off by cones.  DETOUR, the sign said. Detour? Where and how and what the hell am I doing here? Detour…. My car had no GPS (something that would have cost me an extra arm and leg at the rental place- it’s how they getcha) so I was trusting my iphone’s google map to keep me on point. At one in the morning it’s hard to drive and keep checking in with a little screen, trying to follow the blue dot of “you are here” in order to tell if and when you’ve strayed from the pathway home. I ended up on Martin Luther King Blvd. The streets were deserted. Every shred of common sense in my body was screaming, “Get the eff out of here, you stand out like a sore thumb, this is what NOT to do, don’t stop the car, you’ll get mugged or worse”.  I was panicking but I knew that wouldn’t help me…  My phone was on it’s last leg of batteries, I was on a race against time.  I mustered everything I had to keep it together, when honestly I just wanted to cry with frustration. I actually said “Don’t you dare cry” out loud. Crazy lady lost and on the move!  I knew I would eventually laugh about the situation- as long as I stayed alive, that is.  What should have taken me about half an hour tops took me about two and a half.  A million and a half wrong ways later, miraculously, I found my way back. I stopped and gave the Universe a great deal of thanks for that one. I was home, I was safe, I had survived my first “Lost in LA” experience.

Starting off the whole driving thing that way was a blessing in disguise. I never got THAT lost again for the remainder of the trip. Definite discourse was taken here and there, sure, but never as badly as that first night.  I actually began to understand the freeway system a little more, or rather I got USED to it a little more. The permanent L.A. resident must spend a LOT of time getting lost at first (at least I HOPE they do, then I wouldnt feel so bad). The first time I got from A to B without a hitch was an immense feeling of accomplishment, it makes you feel on top of things.  You just have to be alert or you’ll miss your exit.

More L.A. adventures to come…..

It happened. My newest blog was complete, I had read it through twice. Spellcheck, a few grammatical corrections, image ready to be inserted- I was in business.  My finger clicked the wrong button. BOOM. About 700 words of carefully phrased text lost in the wind. Retracing my steps was futile, no amount of backtracking or denial of what had just happened was gonna get it back. LOST IN THE WIND. Just like that.

I cried. Straight up. I know it sounds childish, but I wept like a 5 year old in frustration for those words I’d never re-utter, at least not the same way, and certainly never as eloquently as I had crafted them originally.  We’ve all been there in some form or another, and it’s certainly the nightmare-plight of every writer since the invention of computers.  Before technology there were pens and paper- I guess the biggest threat to writers then were hungry dogs and hurricane winds. I would’ve even accepted some regurgitated paragraphs at that point.  Who cares about a little saliva? As long as they were legible.

After my blubbering session, I pulled myself together.  There was no other option.  These moments prove to be incredible excercises for the Art of Letting Things Go.  FACT: the words were gone and impossible to retrieve. Embracing that rather than resisting it was the Universe’s push n’ pull way of giving me a little cuddle, and then I had to laugh. C’est la vie.

Being a documenter and a songwriter for so many years, I’ve run into varying degrees of the 1,2,3-GONE effect. You’re working out an idea on paper, you’re on a roll, you’re hot on the trail of what you think at the time is the most profound, perfectly worded phrase you’ve ever recorded to date.  It’s there in your brain, just about at your fingertips or captured in ink and POOF! It dissolves like salt in a glass of water.  Next comes that empty space in the gut, and we mourn what we may never articulate in the same way again.  It’s the unspeakable fizzling out of a firework-thought, and it happens more often than I care to remember.

Once the initial loss is grieved and accepted, there’s nothing left to do but throw up our hands and say “oh well”. Right? I mean we can’t get it back, and maybe that’s ok.  Perhaps it’s just as perfect a thought or an idea having never manifested itself in print. I like to believe that it is still floating there in suspended glory, being absorbed by the collective, forever-illuminated in the boneyard of lost words.  It makes you wonder what worlds of thought and expression have slipped through the cracks of peoples memories.  There is something beautiful in the wondering…

That being said, while writing this I’ve pressed “save draft” about eight times.  Live and learn.

Whoa. So apparently five weeks without a phone is like five years in media-time. I was off the grid there for a while. Gotta be honest- although it was frustrating to be unreachable, there was something very liberating about being free of the device that so many of us have become slaves to. Riding the bus became just that: riding the bus. Without the limitless possibilities available to me in the palm of my hand, I was free to actually be PRESENT. I could be aware of my surroundings again, look out the window, take in the immediate sensory experience without my eyes glued to a little screen. Yes, these little devices we’ve grown accustomed to are worlds in and of themselves, they open so many doors and give us access to almost anything, but they jar us out the moment.  Without my own phone to distract me, I became hyper aware of just how many people are completely wrapped up in theirs every spare moment they get. Gone are the days of just sitting at the bus stop and waiting. Now we have the opportunity to distract ourselves from the present 24 hours a day.

Don’t get me wrong- I missed my phone, particularly the first couple of weeks. I resented missing it in the same fashion I never wanted a fancy phone with a data plan. Something felt “out of touch”, which, as I type it, seems insanely comical.  Has being “in touch” really just become our presence on social media sites? Is it really just a digital this, a digital that, memes and statuses and cyber activity?  It’s bonkers. While we rely on those things for our careers, our relationships, and our ability to share things on a global scale, I think the true disconnect has occurred in our inability to be satisfied with ourselves in the present.  People have put too much of a premium on their digital lives. Attention spans are at an all time low. We live in a fast paced, instantly gratified plethora of digital mediums. Click goes the mouse, up goes an opinion, an image, a piece of information.   It’s a blessing and a curse, and we should be aware of the latter. There’s nothing wrong with our androids, our iphones, our laptops, or our what-have-yous, but we should stop and remember what life was like before they came along. We should stop, look up, look around, and check in with the world around us as it is in its natural state- it is HERE and its present, yours for FREE, each and every minute.

Thanks very much 2012, I love you but gahDAMN. So far you’ve tossed me the flu (which I lovingly refer to as the miserable quivers), strep throat, strep throat RELAPSE, and an excruciating earache that has led to my most recent upset- a ruptured eardrum. Many movies, sighs, and two rounds of antibiotics later and I’m not only exhausted but rather fed up with the walk-in-clinic system. No more!

Of all the drums I’ll ever use in my life, my eardrums are by far the most important. At the moment my right ear is virtually silent. It’s like dead air, a flatline…. VERY scary for anybody to experience, particularly when music is in every way your chosen path and passion. Luckily the hearing loss is only temporary. The eardrum is like any other drum- if there’s a tear in it, it can’t pump the sound out like its supposed to…. So I’m healing my little drum, one day at a time.

So as timing would have it (as always), the hearing issue comes at a pretty inopportune instant. Lots of shows coming up! First one being this Friday in Cumberland at the Waverly. Never performed there before but I only ever hear good things- big enthused crowds- and thats all I can hope for.  Get em’ dancin, and the night is a success in my book.  My girl Georgia Murray (with Tony Day and David Parfit), and the electric Kytami will join me, and I’ll be joined onstage for a few tracks with emcee extra-oridinaire Trevar Fox. Gonna hip hop your socks off. All with one eardrum…. fingers crossed! Pa-rum-pa-pum-pum.

“‘The thought of being a creator, of engendering, of shaping’, is nothing without its continuous great confirmation and embodiment in the world, nothing without the thousand-fold assent from Things and animals- and our enjoyment of it is so indescribably beautiful and rich only because it is full of inherited memories of the engendering and birthing of millions. In one creative thought a thousand forgotten nights of love come to life again and fill it with majesty and exaltation. And those who come together in the nights and are entwined in rocking delight perform a solemn task and gather sweetness, depth, and strength for the song of some future poet, who will appear in order to say ecstasies that are unsayable”. (more…)

Well, we survived another Christmas and made it to the other side. Nice to meetcha 2012, I’ve heard so many good things. The proverbial weather broke, a clarity of task and passion seem to meet in the middle now. Horizon is bright as ever and Im set to sink my teeth in with a full o’ vigour CHOMP.

(more…)