Big Mama Thornton

So this couldn't have worked out any better, while capturing my music vision/dream I stumble on exactly what I'm supposed to.  Let me backtrack a bit, I am in the research process for my new music project and I entered the Electric Fetus not really sure what to look for.  This research is to conceptualize the overall sound I'm recreating so that all my musicians are on the same page.  Without missing a beat, there she was all 300 pounds this is when I met Ms. Big Mama Thornton.  My game changer and if you don't know her soon you will.  If you know of Elvis then you should know of this fantastic woman, after-all most of his idea's came from her.  

This is my tribute blog to say thank you for leading me to her music, I have never felt so inspired and relieved to have such a clear musical vision.  Big Mama I'm going to do you some justice.

Don't know who she is?  Copy and paste link below and you will soon understand..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XUAg1_A7IE

So much more to come!!

Ready to Fall

I was taking the bike around the beautiful Minnesota lakes and there it was, it almost shocked me as if I have been so consumed by my current project I hadn't even realized it.  Half of a perfectly green tree was  turning.  The pinks, oranges and bright yellows made me stop and get off my bike and pluck a maturing leaf.  It's funny when your 'in' something, life is always continuing in it's beautiful repetition.  It made me stop, breath and marvel in the amazingly perfect colors of fall.   

Slowly the mornings are getting crisper, an extra blanket is pulled out of storage and a light jacket feels just right.  Cinnamon, cardamon and nutmeg are the warm flavors making a steady comeback like they do every year.  What a great time for change, some don't welcome it because the harsh cold is right around the corner but for right now I can't help to not think of how perfect it is.  We survived the humidity and now we sleep with the windows open. 

Instead of cruising on auto-pilot through this change and bitching about the winter that hasn't come yet I encourage you to walk anywhere in Minnesota right now and see all the colors around you.  It only lasts for just a little bit and right now it's in the beginning stage of digression.  Half summer green and the other half natures colors marking an end.  What a beautifully symbolic thing.  I say welcome fall with open arms and it couldn't mark a better change for me and my upcoming journey.  I can't wait to see Manhattan during this time even if it's at the tail-end of fall.  

Fall I missed you, welcome back and please do stay as long as you want I welcome you.  No better time then right now.

My Stage

In this story we start with a stage, not just any stage but the platform I hold with the upmost protection in my mind.  When I stand on it I sometimes feel like I'm going to fall off the edge.  I sense the coolness of a slight breeze, the energy is unbelievably intoxicating.  The lights are warm and bright and beads of sweat drip down the back of my neck.   I can see faces not any that I can make out, I know they are there, watching and waiting.  The anticipation of them fuels my slight nervousness mostly caused by adrenal pumping through my veins.  I have arrived, I am home.  I am in no better place then in the center, band behind me.  I am doing this and it all feels a tad surreal and every fiber of my being knows that this is me.  Its always been me, it's always followed as sure as the shadow I cast.  Doesn't matter the distractions that seem to push it aside it always remains there.

There is no more important time then right now.  As I sit everyday conceptualizing my new project that is 100% mine,  I have become like a proud mommy protecting my newborn child.  Although it is in it's infancy, I write today while building on this new project at an incredible rate.   Never have I been so influenced, never has it felt so right.  The idea's flow like a raging river filling the holes I once couldn't see or possibly wasn't open to seeing.  The doors keep opening, where I don't have an answer suddenly an answer comes days later.  This new process couldn't have come at a better time and for once there is one thing thats not following me;

Doubt:  To fear, distrust, uncertain, is considered questionable or unlikely and a hesitation to believe.  

I threw my hands up in the air months ago and although I didn't have the answer when I wanted it, each day brings new enlightenment.  There is much to come, so many changes and this new adventure was supposed to happen regardless of how I got here.  Creating out of thin air removes doubt and fear and for that I am forever grateful as none has followed me.  Trusting the process is crucial even through the unanswered questions.

The world is my stage, the stage is my home.

The Chivalrous Man

Things are making a come back, we can't all really buy into the fact that this is all working.  Sometimes progression is good other times maybe not so much.  Within the dynamics of a relationship where I once thought chivalry was dead, I am here to say its not.  Woman shouldn't expect it, its the way in which one holds themselves to receive it.   

While being monogamous the chivalry obviously died overtime but now that I'm single I see it everyday, in fact I can't get away from it.  The man that opens the door, carries the groceries and lights a cigarette he's all around me.  This chivalrous man that had a good mother and possibly sisters understand the soft nature of a woman no matter how hard the exterior.  The more hurt the harder the wall and the deeper the layers.  Monogamy works, high expectations does not.  I believe it won't be full-fledged 1950's but I think the common man is starting to realize that there is some sustainable thoughtfulness that needs to happen and woman are taking guards down to receive it.  

The games have become to difficult and blurry to read and follow, that I'm pretty sure we are all sick of them to a certain degree.  The harder a game we play the further away from love we become and the less we understand about one another.  

Lets look at this even further shall we.  For every 100 single woman there are 88 unmarried men out there.  43% of people over the age of 18 are single.  Whats going on?  Are we not understanding each other or projecting too much on one another?  I have watched successful couples and I see the secrets that make them work like a well oiled machines.  I am happy to see this kind of man back into my life, ladies it is what you see out of it and a standard that you hold them accountable for while ALWAYS REMAINING INDEPENDENT...(yah I missed that one in the last marry-go-round, lesson learned).  

Start looking around you and allow the chivalry to happen for you, open yourself up to it..sure some guys try hard but don't shut them down they are engrained to try, to court and be thoughtful.  Let it happen.  To the men I see with chivalry, I commend your bravery and say thank you for always opening up the door for me.  

There's something happening, don't believe me?  Read this:

http://articles.cnn.com/2010-08-19/living/single.in.america_1_single-fathers-single-mothers-single-parents?_s=PM:LIVING

Dear New York City and Myself

This journey has given me so much both high's and lows however my proudest moment was moving to the Lower East Side, Manhattan.  On January 2 of this year I packed up my things and drove from Minnesota to a giant monster of a city.  I recall not thinking much about it until I was white knuckling the steering wheel.  When I read my Breaking Manhattan blog I am reminded of how amazing that opportunity was for me.  For that I am grateful because I will be making the move again on Oct.16th of this year however this time by plane and this time all by myself.   

I may not of moved by myself so the greatest blessing was moving there with someone and this time will be even better because I will be doing it alone.  No crutch this time.   My way, my journey and not for someone else's career. I felt such a sadness leaving the first time to do yet another move and this time I will be staying.  Hitting the ground running..

I see Manhattan as this massive ball of yarn, intermixed with opportunity and despair.  Its dark and hopeful, unforgiving yet welcoming..easy yet complicated.  I feel like from a distance I am a bird flying over the top of it wondering how to become it, conquer it and find my place within it.  My blessing is this vision I have been having and it's up to me to weed through 8 million people, find the right ones to make it my reality.  

When I first moved back from London, every fiber of my being said "this is your home but not your place in this world"  I then received a phone call and a spot had opened up for me in the LES (lower east side) I knew this was fate knocking.  I answered it and now I sit with just months away from yet another move.  

I am writing to you to share this experience however this is also a letter to myself.  To remind myself to stay above water because Manhattan is many wonderful things its also harsh and sometimes cruel.  This is to remind myself of perseverance and persistence, trusting my instinct and taking my journey one step at a time.  I always want to see New York as my opportunity, rejection is only part of the game.  Patience and gratitude and holding oneself with grace and forgiveness. When Manhattan seems heavy make light out of it.  Become the streets, many great things came from Bleecker, Houston and of course Park Ave.   Stay in but don't be afraid to go outward.  Meet people, eat great food and when things get hard call your family first.  

If only before every journey we could write a letter to oneself... 

Table for One Please

The constant need for the presence of another person at all times is a screaming desire to not be alone.  It masks itself, act's as a quilt always hiding your layers of discontent within yourself.  It feeds on having someone, anyone by your side and it will make you settle and left with a lingering discontent that will surface overtime.  Your always searching for more and you will never know that you in fact had it all.  You have yourself.

I sat on the waters edge, alone.  I walked barefoot on the beach sand between my toes and felt my presence which was all I needed.  It wouldn't be fair to be with someone right now and to me even though my bed (sorry couch) seems cold I am quickly reminded that I'm my own best friend.  Its not a impulsive neediness inflicted on someone else, its a calm place that takes time to get to.  I still feel it sometimes but not enough to run to someone else.  These things must be felt or they will become masked only creating an even colder heart.  You create walls and will eventually turn on your new replacement.  Overtime this is the cycle.  I watch it, I see it and I don't admire those that are on the constant search because little do they know it actually starts with them.  You can't have 2 without 1, you can't love 2 without loving 1..you see how people skip the first step.  

So your alone perhaps after a divorce or a messy breakup, you feel every string of your heart play.  You have been so used to someone that you find yourself still setting 2 places at the table..thats the feeling that makes you move to someone else.  It sometimes is unbearable, nasty hole in your gut.  The air doesn't smell the same, food has no taste and the colors of your world are black and white.  Your bored with yourself, sick of the feeling of your perceived aloneness. You search for a replacement, anything will do and that you will find.

 The overall definition of need is delusional in this matter.  We need water to live, we need food to survive and sun to cultivate life.  We don't need love we only want love and if we don't get it, it turns into a neediness for love.

NEED-I-NESS:  Privation, a state of extreme poverty.

Is that anyway to blossom love or relationship?  In order to grow the real kind of love not the fake stuff, all conditions have to be right.  The seed has to be whole, the water from a pure source.  There are many generic wannabes with love.  Don't be fooled, in fact you won't be as humans we can sense the unconditional love when we see it.  Its when my dad wakes up 30 minutes before my mom and makes her coffee and starts her car.  Its seeing my grandfather bring flowers to my grandmothers grave.  Its in the way my brother rubs her pregnant belly.  Its when I see an old couple split a coffee and sit in silence.
It's simple not complicated.  The complicated stuff is the step brother of love, a fake.  The drama is fake, the hate turned against one another is fake. Fighting is fake.  Leaving someone for greener grass, is fake.

But then again there are many bad seeds out there, be choosy whom you grow love with.  For now I choose the high road and say a table for one please.

Summer Tomato

Have you ever tasted a summer tomato?  Ripe, red, juicy summer sun kissed goodness.  Umm there is nothing like it.  Not in winter, spring or fall only a summer tomato tastes as pure from the earth as soil itself.  You can just taste the golden sun and breeze dancing romantically with your taste buds.  Its saying yah this Earth is pretty bad ass, it can grow a summer tomato.  Only it can harvest the most decedent sugary berries and only it can grow the coveted summer tomato.  Whatever happened to keeping our fair Fruit and Veg pure because when we really taste something in its purest form why would we except anything less.  Everything else can progress but why does the energy we put into ourselves have to change, be altered or messed with?  I want my summer tomato year round  but its never the same.  My pico never tastes the same, my tomato sauce isn't right and I have ruined too many Caprese Salads.  So why make a second runner up tomato?  You know the flimsy tomato on your sad Subway sandwich, the one that looks light pink and almost see-threw? Ya thats the one.  Its like summer tomato's second cousin but yet we still think their eatable and ask for extra's.

Then there's the apple, only 4 TIMES ITS SIZE.  Sorry didn't mean to do cap's but my fat apple was weighing my hand down.  Clunk Clunk, just dropped it on the floor.  This can't be right, no one can think this is right..But yet we eat all of it, all 4 servings of it.  Have you ever compared a store bought strawberry to one straight from the berry patch?  I did it this summer and let me tell you my Driscoll's looked like it had 2 heads and an ass.  But we think it's ok and continue to buy them.  I mean overtime it goes to show that "things" progress but why alter nature, its already perfect.

We mess with seeds already evolved past perfection.  We think it's ours to mess with, like an experiment.  We are the 5 year old with a magnifier and the seed is the ant and here come's some light.  I know its human nature to evolve but I think somethings should remain sacred, coveted or better yet protected.

Why do we conform to this,? Why do we say this is going to work for us? When obesity rates are at its high we collectedly still buy the produce we know isn't real.  Farmers markets could be our grocery store and our summer tomato would be ripe and juicy instead of limp and see-threw.

Just sayen..