A LOOK BACK IN TIME!

A few years ago I made a couple of DVDs of Christmas and Bailey's school musical performances and Vicki loved them. Then when Bailey was 5 we made a video for Vicki for Mother's Day. Bailey wanted the video to contain all the cool things he did outside like riding his, bike, scooter, big wheel and electric car. He also wanted to show her a few sports like the swings, basketball, and soccer. We taped all of this while Vicki was out somewhere and then I did the editing and made a DVD for Vicki! Bailey has been watching these DVDs the last few days, especially the one I have decided to post. In fact, I am posting this because of his enjoyment watching them! Keep your eye on Bailey as he encounters a few bees and struggles to make one basket while shooting basketball. The part where he can't make a basket really cracks him up today! I think he looks adorable in his hat and wish I could shrink him back to that size just once in a while! Let me know what you think....



The next song I am posting is absolutely one of my favorite Beach Boys tunes and I found this video while waiting for Bailey's video to upload.



And just because I love music and because this song is about loss I want to post Robet Plant's I believe....The song is about his son who died from a stomach infection and that led to Plant giving up drugs...I copied this bit of information...

LED ZEPPELIN frontman ROBERT PLANT ditched drugs the day his son KARAC died in 1977.

The STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN rocker became painfully aware of life's fragility when he lost his beloved six-year-old to a fatal stomach infection. Plant subsequently vowed to live more modestly and put his family first.

Plant says, "I haven't taken a drug since that day.

"I thought, 'How am I ever going to deal with the next moment and put my shoulders back and be a man?' I thought I'd better re-focus the whole deal.

"I still drink, and I don't spill much. But my days are long and they're beautiful."

I can just feel the emotion in the lyrics as could anyone who has endured great loss. These lyrics from an earlier post help me to close this one.


In the sunlight that's where I'll be
In the moon night close your eyes,
You will see me
In the sunrise in the twilight
I'll be the morning and the evening star
I will be there with you
wherever you are.

MUSE

Today I watched another movie that I have seen before but watched again, THE DOORS and of course it brings up lots of thoughts about creativity, beauty, genius, and excess. Jim Morrison was intelligent but broken. The DOORS were amazing in concert when Jim was not drunk or tripping but when he was out of it they were a disaster. Living within The Doors became like living in an alcoholic household where you never knew if it was safe! The sixties were a critical time in our culture with a whole generation of youth longing for more, knowing that much needed to be changed. The journey for expression was at times miraculous producing a golden age of music and art and at other times it was misguided and excessive. Jim Morrison sang about the beauty of the time but the hypocrisy as well, foreseeing that we may become a part of what we despise as we get older.

The old get old
And the young get stronger
May take a week
And it may take longer
They got the guns
But we got the numbers
Gonna win, yeah
We're takin' over Come on!
Yeah!
Your ballroom days are over, baby
Night is drawing near
Shadows of the evening crawl across the years
Ya walk across the floor with a flower in your hand
Trying to tell me no one understands
Trade in your hours for a handful dimes
Gonna' make it, baby, in our prime



Anyhow, (remember this is stream of conciousness writing) back to the movie! Jim's love interest is Pamela Courson played by Meg Ryan and at one point he calls her his Muse and yes she did encourage him to write his poetry. Well of course I had to do some research about Muse and yes it fits the theme of my blog with lots of syncronicity. Of course my blog emphasizes the the importance of the arts expressing meaning. I found the following excerpt from the book, The Muse of Greek Mythology, The muse phenomenon... its myth status by A.O. Kime...

According to Greek mythology there are nine muse, goddesses who inspire artists, musicians, writers and poets and that these immortal beings are the daughters of the titaness Mnemosyne who were fathered by Zeus.
For over 2,500 years and throughout western civilization, it is largely acknowledged by artists of every sort that their inspirations, creativity and incredible talent come from these muse. Yet, in this day and age of scientific thought, one would think this would be a preposterous concept for intelligent people to believe yet it remains the case. One reason, there isn’t much about the subconscious that science can explain and nothing at all about the spirit world. No matter, intuitiveness always gravitates towards the most heartfelt reason.
More endearingly, it is said the goddesses Calliope, Clio, Erato, Euterpe, Melpomene, Polymnia, Terpsichore, Thalia and Urania represent this incredible phenomenon. Although consisting of nine, a plurality, people more commonly refer to them as simply 'the muse' rather than the plural 'muses'. However, being a transcendental matter in which few people are willing to discuss, mention of the muse is rare.
So, are the muse real? Well, whether the muse are real or just effectively real makes little difference. After all, their effects are real and their 'substance' is no less than life itself. In other words, life has no substance either, yet, in effect, it's real. For those who hear them, they're considered either 'helpers' (unaffiliated) or 'angels' representing the voice of God.
However, in forever demanding perfection they're also hard-driving taskmasters. As such, it should serve as proof they speak for God. After all, beauty is the hallmark of divineness and 'perfection' is how it is achieved. Both incredible and heartwarming, the act of 'inspiring artistic genius through emanation' means a direct hard-wired connection.

I think that music, poetry and art are evidence of the vibrations that reverberate throughout the cosmos and connect is to the infinite. Art and music help to move us beyond our cultural tendency to rely only on facts just as A.O. Kime suggests in his book! Emerson said the poet turns the world to glass and is one step nearer to things! We can all be poets to our own experience and perhaps we could all be open to the Muse that lives in and around us and brings beauty, sensuality, creativity, spontaneity, melody, rhythm......aesthetic and physical pleasure.....................! I know the Muse exists in my existence!

Here is the song Jim wrote about Pamela..his Muse.....LOVE STREET...



And this song is for my Muse to hopefully continue to light a fire in me to be creative and aware of the mystery in my life. That I can see and appreciate beauty and that I can experience a natural HIGH in life!

Wherever You Are!

So, I start watching a movie that I have never seen before, SWEET NOVEMBER starring Keanu Reeves and Charlize Theron. It starts kinda funny, goofy and somewhat meaningful and then BOOM turns out she is dying. Hmmmm.....well this post will never convey the emotion I felt but I certainly understand, like the movie shows, that love changes us and it doesn't always work out the way you wish! Sometimes love requires us to say goodbye, let go and remember. We tend to concentrate on the more pleasant beginnings and then either avoid or numb ourselves to the harder endings. ENDINGS are just as meaningful as beginnings! This movie was about memory, honoring wishes and having the courage and love to let go! No one can begin to imagine the connections for me. These two songs are from the movie and....well you know how music just grabs you and provides the depth and soul of meaning!




This song, WHEREVER YOU ARE is not available on YouTube so here are the lyrics!

Time has come, what's done is done
It's time to move on
To another place, another space,
maybe circling some other sun
Don't ask why, don't ask how
I still can't explain
To say goodbye,
Goodbye for now till I see you again
In the sunlight that's where I'll be
In the moon night close your eyes,
You will see me
In the sunrise in the twilight
I'll be the morning and the evening star
I will be there with you
wherever you are
Life is strange, such joy and pain
The betrayal and the kiss
It maybe meant to be, maybe destiny
Leads us down a path like this
Child is born, true love is sworn
All the in-between
Well you just walk on, walk on until the path is gone
Learning love is the only everything
In the sunlight that's where I'll be
In the moon night close your eyes,
you will see me
In the sunrise in the twilight
I'll be the morning and the evening star
I will be there with you
wherever you are
So it's goodnight, things go wrong
but it's alright

Photo Credit: http://www.robert-e-harney.com/pictures/SomethingMissing.jpg

A Day With Witches

On Friday July 10, Bailey and I decided to take a day trip to Salem, Massachusetts to visit the Witch Museum and all the other historical sites in this old seaside city. First of all, it was an absolutely beautiful day so walking around was very pleasant. The only hard part of the day was parking, but after securing a spot we were on our way. We started with Salem Witch Village and the Bailey tried Frankenstein's laboratory just for fun ( a kind of spook house). We took a guided tour of a witch museum where a young woman dressed in period clothing took us through a dimly lit series of displays with life size figures to explain from beginning to end the witch hysteria of 1692. It was fascinating indeed. Two things that struck me were that teenage girls started the whole thing with false accusations and one outcome of the whole thing ended up being the rivalry between Harvard and Yale which I will not explain here!

I forgot my camera but luckily my new phone has a decent one.....so all the pictures are from Salem that day! Bailey outside of one of the souvenir shops. He bought a few things including a few necklaces.

The cemetery was pretty amazing!

The fake people in the historical tour were scary to say the least but we enjoyed the information.

After all that scary stuff we went out to eat and suddenly something came over Bailey! First he started behaving childishly like he was under a spell!

Even his eyes took on a spooky quality and then he put a spell on our waitress and she gave us our food for free!

When we left the restaurant without tipping this creature chased us into the parking lot! We made it out safely and so far Bailey seems back to normal!

Halloween is 3 or 4 months away but here is a song for the mood anyway!

Robert Plant

If you are going to discuss the greatest rock singers of all time there is no way you can leave Robert Plant out of the discussion. He could do so many things with his voice and of course he had such a presence live! I love this song from his solo Cd, Now and Zen! He had previously distanced himself from his Led Zeppelin past but on this Cd he samples riffs and even had Jimmy Page play on the cut, Tall Cool One! Here are the lyrics and video to Ship of Fools.....




On waves of love my heart is breaking
And stranger still my self control I can't rely on anymore.
New tide, surprise my world is changing.
Within this frame an ocean swells
Behind the smile I know it well.

Beneath a lover's moon I'm waiting
I am the pilot of the storm
Adrift in pleasure I may drown.
I built this ship it is my making
And further more my self control I can't rely on anymore.

I know why
I know why
Crazy on a ship of fools
Crazy on a ship of fools

Turn this boat around, back to my loving ground
Oh no, oh no

Who claims that no man is an island?
While I land up in jeopardy
More distant from you by degrees
I walk this shore in isolation
And at my feet eternity
Draws ever sweeter plans for me

I know why
I know why
Crazy on a ship of fools
Crazy on a ship of fools

Turn this boat around, back to my loving ground
Oh no, oh no ship of fools

Turn this boat around, back to my loving ground
Oh no.

Crazy on a ship of fools
Crazy on a ship of fools

Turn this boat around, back to my loving ground
Oh no, oh no ship of fools

This is a great song from the CD Fate of Nations.....29 Palms.. ...




Back to Now and Zen and the most obvious evidence of Plant coming to peace with his Zep past and yes it is Jimmy Page playing that great Riff. You can hear Zep stuff throughout this song so be sure to listen to the cool ending.....

Elemental!

The following post is inspired by this post at the blog... when love comes to town! Here is the link to the post http://rj-whenlovecomestotown.blogspot.com/2009/07/humility-imagination-and-laughter-as.html

Poetry in the larger sense of the word--poems, stories, myths, paintings, dances, dreams--is the most exhilarating and transporting vehicle for travel there is. More effective than space shuttles, more penetrating than warp speed starships, and more probing than Mars rovers, poetry takes us far, far away to a reality that is at once our own and absolutely alien..--Thomas Moore, Original Self....Living with Paradox and Originality

Magnificent

As I have previously mentioned I am in the process of re-ripping all of my music onto a portable hard drive. It is a lot of work but a joyous kind of work as I go back through all of my Cd's. It is kind of like a journey through time. It also why I am doing more blog entries than usual. Since I am sitting here opening CD after CD I may as well write! I am only at about 225 Cd's ripped so far.

Many times a song grabs you and you just can't stop listening to it. After a while you sort of get used some songs and while you like them they lose their luster. On the other hand some songs just never quit in their ability to grab and hold onto you. Magnificent is one of those special songs for me. Not that No Line on the Horizon isn't a great CD, because it is. This song also has lots depth truth and meaning for me......................



I recently watched a movie that I have always really liked from 1994 entitled Threesome. A great sexy, funny but meaningful movie about three college students that end up rooming together because of a bureaucratic snafu. One beautiful girl, one totally straight, typical hormone driven sex fiend, and one sexually ambivalent (probably Gay) guy explore relationships, friendship and sexuality. Anyhow it also has a great soundtrack with groups like Tears for Fears, New Order, Bryan Ferry, and Duran Duran. The best song is by U2 and a remake of a Patti Smith Tune! Great song....