I know it.

I know it

For it is coming

The way it flipped my life down

I thought then it could only go up

The only truth you could have gotten

was in me

You have a relationship with false

Ins't shocking

Now the day almost fall upon you

You think you will see me 

I think I could even remember what yours looks like

The way you wore your Black Keys t-shirt

You silently remember me

How could you forget?
The lessons you gave me 

Would't make me love you even if I could.

The directions  

Our paths crossed 

Only roads to change us

Be better

Stronger

More full of light

More hungry for love 

Sometimes it did, most times it did not. 

I would change nothing about it

For I know one thing and one thing only

For it is coming 

that I know

The Moment.

I think its all about the tiny little moments, they all add up.  Being present completely and not anticipating the moment but being there as it happens.  Watch it unfold because it was the first time and your only time.  Routine and time work to control but how much of life actually can be under that.  I see moments, these tiny little moments and without them my story would be different.

Meditation being the strongest force that holds me true to reality, it allows me to only see the moment.  Sparkly and clear, brand new.  Our life is made of this.  Tiny dots waiting for you to connect.  This might be easier said then done but let me tell you, its worth it.  Theres a lesson in everything, you wont know unless you do.  Its not enough to say you want something.

Moments, down to the second.  Make sure in your life you stop and smell the roses.  You realize what you have done and in that moment it was your best.  Your very best, so there is no regret and no need to do it any differently.  You always knew.

And then you get to learn something new!

-D

danierinmusic.com

Persistance.

Persistance.  A word I have used, not just said but felt.  We use words all the time but to apply it to your life is different.  Its climbing up an imaginary mountain, with many drops along the way.  If you hold dear to this word it will pull you along especially when the doubt sets in.  Doubt will challenge, fear will inevitably set in.  Am I doing the right thing?  Am I following the right path?  Should I turn around to grounds that are more familiar?  Fear brought on by doubt is persistance's welcomed enemy.  Both are trying to prove something very important.  They are both trying to see if this is what you really want.  You need both in order to be genuin.

Persistance lessens the blow that fear can have in your life.  Fear can take your hand and lead you into what feels like circles.  It has a deathlike grip.  I have felt it and no matter how I breathe I still feel like Im suffocating.  I have learned to make friends with it though.  No matter how hard it gets sometimes I feel the fear and know its there because thats what makes me human.  Makes us all human.  For it is not sad but it is life and fear makes us authentic.  We are still that 3 year old scared that there might be monsters under the bed.  Its something that visits me often.  I think too often we glamorize a life's  journey and rarely speak of the moments that make us realize persistance.  Because where there is fear, there is fear's alter ego, persistance.  And thats the difference between letting fear control you and you making friends with fear and carrying on.  The bigger the risk, the stronger the fear.  The more genuin the life story the stronger the persistance. And they play a beautiful dance.  I have seen it.  They both know each others part, both understand why they are there.  I know persistance will always win so fears short stay is not something I fight.

We have become a society of fast things, instant everything. I have seen that authenticity is something that grows like a seed in the ground. The real things take time.  All the time they may need.  Nothing good happens overnight.  I think its persistance that keeps that seed in the ground, continuing to grow not trading the process in for something faster.  I know that if you have persistance on your side you can do it all.  If you feel it, like truly feel it you can continue on and when something like fear comes in you take it by the hand and show it perseverance, the sister to persistance.

My Parents Dock.

I remember sitting on my parents dock, right at the very end of it.  The melting colors of a days work slowly getting swallowed by the night.  I had at this point of my life, nothing.  Even though I felt like I wasn't empty where it mattered.  It was on my last few days of living in Minnesota right before I moved by myself to Manhattan for a second time.  I looked to the sky and said these fateful words "I surrender to any experience you are willing to show me, I give in to your direction and I trust what you have in store for me."  We all have moments in our life that become game changers, this was one of mine.  I can close my eyes and remember it as if it happened yesterday.  I wasn't talking to god, but something changed that day that forever released me from conformity or routine.  My life had just begun, I started living. This is not always going to be easy nor will it be instant.

Forward 2 years later from my time on my parents dock.  Such beautiful moments of constant life lessons, most not all that pretty and some sparkle forever in my memory.  Isn't that worth living?  Life is a combination of all sorts. Its phase by phase.  Its riding with all the chaos and not fighting it. Embracing fear and then letting it go.  Laughing when your heart aches because you realize how much you truly love your family and hate being away from them.  If you choose to go down a path that comes without a drivers manual, you most certainly will fail more times then you win.  But then you will win little lessons along the way, the failing isn't all that bad.  You get good at that too.  I couldn't go back now even if I tried.  When you trust in something and declare it, you see all the many ways in which it helped and protected you.

I am not saying this is for everyone.  Im not saying its glamorous in any way but when you get to express art that is genuin it feeds something bigger then yourself.  When you get to have these very rare moments, you know that life is one big rubix's cube.  We aren't cookie cutter, we are not one size fits all.  Some venture, some stay and each are beautiful and tragic at times.

Im still excited as I was on my parents dock.  I like creating something from nothing and I hope if you are sitting at a crossroads that you will trust in your direction.  Like a captain on a ship.  You got this. We need more people willing to follow their own path, not one that was decided by someone else.  

I close my eyes and remember what it looks like and feels like to be on the edge of my parents dock.

Ego.

Strange times
Lead by ego minds
No heart
Hardly a Soul
Do they know they have already lost?
A lot already
I know nothing of it
The Good prevails
but often will fall
Only to get back to it
The thing that makes one burn
When you know its honest
You except no other kind
Small children
They become
A fight for the next word
The dust will settle
it always does
And when it calms
The Good will prevail
The Ego will coward
What will be
Will be.

The fight is always
Worth the victory.

Music

danierinmusic.com

2 years, a bad heartbreak, the journey of my life and this is what I found.  ACTUALLY this is what transformed.

The Three Angels

I remember how I felt when I first heard Ray Charles. Like the real Ray, not the most popular songs but the real ones.  The tracks when he was new at Atlantic Records.  The ones where if you listen, like really listen you can hear pages turn.  If you listen, really become the song you could hear his voice break.  Break just a little, the pain ever so bending his vocal chords.  And the best part was you could feel it.  Every bit of it.  Thats what I love.  I would put on my headphones and become lost in a world of no time.   Its a beautiful time when there is no time at all.  I would stay up and be shocked that I went so long without him.  I remember the day, I remember smoking pot on the porch of my old place in Minnesota nursing a bruised heart and the biggest life hangover no pill could cure and then I had Ray.  Not only did I have Ray but I also had pot and a giant marker.  Oh and giant paper boards.  I must have looked like a crazy because for awhile there I would have headphones on and be writing on these giant boards, high.  And they were pink of all colors.  I would sit and be consumed with such creative energy I thought I knew it all.   I took my beat up heart and it fell in love with this man.  It started then.  

Then Ray somehow lead me to Billie Holiday and I remember hearing her voice on vinyl and thats when I knew.  It was so completely heartbreaking and honest it it it..changed me.  It wasn't the most perfect voice but it told a story.  When a man teaches you that your heart can in fact break, Billie came in at the most perfect of times.  It was the moment my heart shattered and my reality then switched.   All the pain, emotion that overwhelmed a swelling heart was somehow soothed by a voice that had seen and heard it all.  I always want more, but when you come out of depression from a heartache then Billie isn't the pill you take.  If you swallow to much of her greatness it keeps a dark cloud a tad too close. I also know my voice better, it needs some no nonsense wont be taken your shit kind of approach.  I did in fact leave a man in London after all.  I packed my 2 suitcases up and left his poor pathetic soul across the pond.  I needed Etta.  Etta could now suit how pissed I was allowing the power to come in.  Either way I learned punctuality and quality of lyrics from both.

https://soundcloud.com/daniellemueller/billie-holiday-ill-be-seeing

The way Etta hangs on every note, I just melt every song to every word to every switch.  The blues, but the biggest thing is the power.  The complete power.  I never do want a song to end.  You feel every word, she makes you listen to every fucking word.  Instead of buying one or two songs from this woman you buy a whole record.  None stands before or really after this woman.  Its exactly what you need when your ready and if you can handle it.  Its exactly what you need when your ready, a true blessing that I got and more importantly understood her. Its a blessing.

https://soundcloud.com/daniellemueller/blues-to-the-one-only-ms-etta

To all 3, my greats.  The angels from 2 years ago that open up doors to me.  That have made seasoned New York musicians understand my style.  That has developed Dani, that has made me well me.  A more honest me.  In order to become a musician you do need to understand the greats.  I am lucky to have been touched by these 3 and many more.  But the books, vinyle and CD's (yes I still play CD's) overflow after all this time with them.  I am grateful.