Good Vibrations

When people listen to music, I imagine their backs to work like tuning forks.  The vibrations hit their ears and their insides vibrate, and sometimes it works.  Sometimes it doesn't.  I figure that’s why Led Zeppelin and the Grateful Dead work so well for some, and not at all for me.  There’s a disorganized jangley-ness in the Dead that bounces my insides around in a very disorganized fashion that makes me anxious.  And Zeppelin, sorry to say, doesn't work for me either.  In my world, the drums should hit slightly ahead of the beat and the bass should lag slightly behind.  I become very uncomfortable when John Bonham and John Paul Jones do exactly the opposite. 

I am very glad to be able to identify what wasn't working for me with those bands.  I was feeling so arbitrary, contemptuous, and close minded.  “Yuck, I don’t like them.”  For the longest time, Deadheads and every guitar player in a hundred mile radius regarded me as ignorant and just plain uncool.  Now, I appreciate that it’s just me and my taste and the tuning fork in my very own back.  I've given it a chance and a lot of though and realize I can completely appreciate and enjoy Kashmir by Page and Plant to a degree I never will tolerate hearing the same song as most everyone in the world prefers it, “getting the Led out”.  It’s all me, my spine, and I own that.

What does work for me is voices.  Clear, in pitch, and powerful.   And more than that, the voice has to convey the message it’s intending and to deliver the promise of the genre it’s portraying.  The band underneath has to do the same.  I have been privileged know and have worked with a handful of people whose voices make the tuning fork hum just right. 

A powerful voice, that doesn't always mean a voice that can belt a long, high note like some American Idol diva.  No, the power is in the story the voice tells and the control the singer has over their instrument.  That’s what I want to have when I sing, the power to tell the story that’s in the song.   Can I be vulnerable when the story is tender?  Can I be aggressive when the story has an edge?  Can I belt out that long, high note when the song calls for it? 

There are a couple of artists who I want to sing like.  Their versatility and control and adaptability are exactly what I want to do and be.  Janis Siegel and Cheryl Bentyne from Manhattan Transfer can sing anything.  (Manhattan Transfer performing "Birdland". Vocally mindbending.)  Cheryl will scat in the voice of a trumpet followed by bell clarity and tender sentimentality.  Janis will rock out, gospel you to church, all edge and class.  Paul McCartney has provided the soundtrack to my life. If you listen to “The Long and Winding Road”, “Oh, Darling”, “Honey Pie”, then follow up with “Helter Skelter” you understand that he not only loves music of all types, but serves the story well and rocks harder than anyone alive.

I went to see Kenny Loggins in concert last Saturday.  Kenny has always been one of those singers I wanted to sing like.  I became at total fan as soon as I heard the album Kenny Loggins Alive.  I think what I love about him most is what could be his biggest marketing problem.  He is labeled a Soft Rock artist, but when I listen to him I hear folk, jazz, r & b, country, rock, pop…   I can just hear Simon Cowell and Randy Jackson chiding him for not knowing the kind of artist he wants to be and then praising him because he can “sing the phone book”.

On the Alive album he opens with a song he wrote that Barbara Streisand sang in A Star Is Born.  When Streisand sang “I Believe in Love”, she was probably playing it up, but she sounded out of breath like she just ran a hundred-yard dash when she sang, “I don’t want to find myself one day waking up and looking at Monday with some whats-his-name left from Sunday.  I believe in love.”  When Kenny sings it, it sounds like a dance not a race.   Not many people can blow Babs out of the water. (Check it out here)

He has a tender, beautiful falsetto for “Love Will Follow” and can rock out “Danger Zone”.  I can’t say how many hours I’ve spent listening to Return to Pooh Corner, Vox Humana and Nightwatch.  I sing along with every note, sing in harmony, and test my range.  This was going to be the third time I’ve seen him in concert.  I have to admit, when I listen to Return to Pooh Corner, I tear up on almost every song.  When I hear “Pure Imagination” and “Rainbow Connection”, I am suddenly in a place where I am little and my kids are little and everything is fun and we can wish and play.  ("Rainbow Connection" is the best song ever. Great job Paul Williams and Kermit)

So, even if my expectations before going to this concert were unspeakably high, I was not disappointed.  He was in fantastic voice.  He moved freely from “Danny’s Song” to “Your Momma Don’t Dance” to “Footloose” to “Celebrate Me Home”.  I was transported to all my old memories like looking through a found photo album.  Then, after hours of singing, he ended with the power ballad “Forever”.  I know a lot of singers.  I really know very few who can pull it all the way through and close so very strong.

I finally understood why I liked his song writing.  The realization came when I was listening to the opening band.  I have to explain about the opening band…  Blue Sky Riders is a band I will be following, and I hope they are extremely successful.  Ok, Kenny Loggins is in Blue Sky Riders, he’s one of 3 exceptional singer-song writers in the band that includes Gary Burr, formerly with Pure Prairie League, and Georgia Middleman.  Their songs have sense of positive striving, a courageous insistent optimism.  I really like that.  I realized that my favorite Kenny Loggins songs all had that same that positive energy.  Can I write like that?  That’s something to work towards.

I have to thank Georgia Middleman.  Doug and I were listening to her sing her song “Little Victories” and the song had such beautiful and positive message about endurance that he had tears streaming down his face.  I met her in the lobby during intermission when she was signing autographs and told her how Doug was on dialysis and her song touched him.  She said she had worked in a dialysis clinic and she knew it was a hard thing to go through.  I have to thank her for that moment.  Every time I hear that song, I’ll think about that moment and connecting with Georgia, Gary and Kenny as artists on a very personal level.

Funny, I am remembering accosting Manhattan Transfer at The Blue Note in Greenwich Village in New York.  They called me The Fairfield Girl.  I bet I was the loony-bird stalker they warned their security about.  Must be careful.

So, the tuning fork in my back was humming pleasantly and profoundly for several hours this weekend at the Uptown Theater in Napa.  Thank you, Doug, for playing Loggins and Messina Sittin' In on a Sunday morning, prompting me to look up tour dates.  Thank you, Blue Sky Riders, for beautiful moments of human connections and encouragement.  Thank you, Kenny Loggins, for giving me a vocal and lyrical model for my singing adventures.  All in all, a great experience.

That's How They Do It In An Ant Farm

Ants are not allowed in my house.  They do not pay rent, so they belong outside.  I think ants are great... Outside.  Inside they give me heebie geebies.  Too many bad science fiction movies with people and their skin literally crawling. Yuck.

But, put on a National Geographic documentary about how ants build and communicate, I am absorbed, fascinated.  I think the thing that gets me the most is how they communicate.  According to Wikipedia, "Ants communicate with each other using pheromones, sounds, and touch".  (Wikipedia - Ant)  What they can accomplish with their communication is amazing. 

Imagine the conversation.  Betty the Ant is walking along and meets Stacy.  They stop and knock their heads together, sniff around a bit and now Betty knows that there is a pretty sweet salami wrapper down the road.  Just follow the road that Stacy marked and bring back lunch.  Betty is on her way and tells Sally to turn around and tells Alice not to go toward the cupcake anymore, since "the hill prefers meat to sweet."  Eventually all the ants know the party is no longer at the cupcakes, but is hanging out with the salami.  SWARM!  And, on the way there, they set up an ant body bridge to ford the dishwater to get to the salami. So cool.  Kind of invisible and magical how it works.

Imagine looking at humans from an atmospheric observer's position.  We would look just like ants, except making a bit more noise.    Bumping our heads together as kisses in greetings, and our hands like antenna shake and embrace one another.  Pheromones and serotonin mixing together making connections, creating companions, getting stuff done.

I had some conversations with some friends lately that affected me deeply.  Whether it was me opening up or a friend telling me about her loneliness  there is a great relief in that contact.  How desperate we can feel but how refreshed that intimacy makes us, whether we are on the giving or receiving end. 

I wonder if ants are refreshed?  I hope they get a little anty wine and relax and just enjoy the sound of each other's squeaking and the smell of just hanging out.

If it's only pheromones and knocking heads together, that's OK.  I'd rather that than not have contact at all.

(3-2-1 Contact Song)

Hope Among the Living

I have been thinking a lot about hope.  It's a strange, elusive thing, and it is sometimes the only thing that makes things bearable.

If I really wanted to catalog all the things to be depressed about, I suppose I could.  I could list them in all their weight, and pile them high around my bed, on top of my covers.  I could paint them dull and tragic colors to give them importance and make them my focus.  Money problems, health problems, family problems, regrets.  Things I've done wrong and things I've neglected to do,  I know I could do this, because I have done this.  I know I could do this, because I continue to do this.

Piles and piles of things that need attention and juggling and action and dumping.

The real problem is that these pile on top of my bed pin me under my covers.  They hurt and keep me captive in my bed.  They add weight so heavy that I cannot breathe or sleep.  I am lonely and sad and cannot move.  This cannot be, because I am lost under everything.

That's where hope comes in.  Peeking out through the piles, a friendly face, a sunny day, a comforting verse. When I focus inward, I only see what is hard.  But, if I focus outward, I see possibility.  I see promise.  I have hope.

And that hope not only gets me out of bed, but it can get me moving and growing.  Just like riding a bike, if you look right to where your tire is rolling, you lose your balance and can fall, but if you look forward to your goal, the small bumps in the road don't matter and you can steer clear of all the big obstacles long before they become a problem.  Fear is gone and you can enjoy the breeze flowing through your hair.

So, instead of the piles, I see the blessings.  Health problems become triumphs of management.  Money problems become miracles of how I've never been without food or shelter.  These are not just Pollyanna Bright Side things.  They are real blessings I have in my life and real promises for the future.

And maybe, just maybe, if I look outward with hope, see my own blessings I'll feel like I can help support others, and they, in turn can gain courage and help others, and so on and so on

and so on....

BART Strike and Insanity

The sun gently rises and birds sing.  What a pleasure to great such an inviting day.  The smell of coffee brewing and the cool sight of morning clouds chilled and lifting to the sparkling brightness.  This is how I love to greet the early morning!  Well, intellectually, I believe in the concept of a pleasant, bracing morning, but concepts do not always equal truth.

Truth is often ugly, cranky, puffy eyed.  Clanging.  Ugg.  I did not greet the day in a pleasant manner.  I was up early, but I was not happy about it.  AT ALL.  Not enough time for a shower, sweaty from the nights of an ever pervasive heat wave, I put on the clothes I had fortunately laid out and dusted on some makeup.  Brush through the hair and teeth (different brushes chosen) and grabbed a cup of coffee.  (Thank you, Doug!) Off I went.

Michael left well before me.  We both had a difficult task before us, mine, more involved, his more arduous.

BART labor strike.  Rats.  The whole BART System is shut down, and for who knows how long?  This means that 400,000 people who usually take up one square foot of transit real estate each are now going to all be in their cars, taking up the whole stinking road and all of the parking spaces.  I have to go to Oakland from Concord and Michael has to go all the way to San Francisco.

At my office, we had a meeting to decide how do get everyone to work.  Fortunately, three of us were able to set up a carpool and adjust our start time to get us to work.  Rose Marie even has a parking space.  We started at 6 and arrived at 7:40.  I guess that's better than the trip to the city.  It's taking Michael 3 hours to get to the bridge.

I really think the union is doing a bad job in telling their story.  They kind of look greedy and petulant.  Spoiled brats holding the Bay Area hostage.  I'm sure there is more to their grievances, but really!  They should be telling their story better if they want the commuters to not be so cranky about their modified commute.

This is going on during the longest, hottest heat wave I've ever been through.  Day after day of three digit temperatures.  Cranky drivers.  Cranky people.  Sticky, itchy, not in the mood.  So how do I keep up with my exercise when I am in my car for days and it's too hot to exercise when I get home?  Leave it to Michael to come up with a solution.  He has the Insanity workout that we can do at home.  I did it.  Does that make me insane?  Ok, so I am really a wuss, and I am not buff like Shuan T. So, while I did exercise through the entire workout, I didn't do everything they told me to.  I mean really, jumping jacks with squats, push-ups while crawling like a crab across the floor, now faster, now faster, now higher, now faster.   But, I did a lot, and a lot more than I thought I could.  Lots and lots of sweat.

You know, there was a time in my life when I didn't sweat much at all.  I think I believed it was unladylike.  Maybe it is, but I am past caring.  As long as I can shower afterwards, I consider sweating is a badge of honor for courageously wearing stretch pants and making grunty faces for 45 minutes.  Yay exercise!

So Insanity at home, appointment with the trainer at the gym, weekend bike rides and hikes, all squeezed into little slots throughout the week.  Insanity feels less insane than driving to work these days.

Looking at my blog stats, I notice my views are increasing.  I am imagining someone out there is checking to see if I am writing.  My vanity wants to believe many people are out there anxiously awaiting my contributions to the literary webosphere, holding their communal breath in anticipation of some insightful view into life as I see it.

More likely, these new views are my own footprints on a desert island.  "I am not alone!  And my invisible companion has size 7 1/2 feet with high arches."

That notwithstanding, I really am in the mood to write again.  I left myself, over a year ago, tripping through Vegas.  I actually  am not still in Vegas, although lost in Vegas sounds like a fun premise.  I still have photos in my camera from the last days of my trip and the task of removing them from my camera is still on my expanding to-do list.  I think it's a "C" priority.  Nice to get it done, but not mission critical.  But blogging, that's a "B".  Important for me.  Not urgent, like if I don't write, I'll end up homeless or owing money or starving or injured or damaging relationships or missing opportunities or losing money or....  But important, because a Renaissance Woman should really be writing.

So, today is a day with a migraine headache.  I get them about once a month anymore.  I used to live in migraineland.  I do not agree with people when they say you need to suffer every once in a while to appreciate how nice it is to not suffer.  While I am in the middle of a migraine, like today, I do truly wish it was gone, and I know how good I'll feel when it's gone.  Once it is gone....  I will not dignify the whole headache process with any contemplation.  I forget I ever had them.  Not interested.  Stupid things have wasted too many years of my life to be of any importance or contemplation when they are not there.

But I am thinking, practically exclusively, of migraines today.  I have a YouTube ocean in my ears.   YouTube Ocean  .  I am wearing a baseball cap, in the dark, and I am trying desperately not to throw up.  If it weren't so stinking sunny and hot (read: Otherwise beautiful day), I'd go for a long walk in fresh air and hit the gym.  UGGH.

Ok, ok, ok....  'Nuff!!!!  So, on to my new project.  The project, as stated, is to get the fasting blood sugar down to a level that makes my doctor not say, "Humm, your fasting blood sugar is too high.  We have to watch that."  My fasting blood sugar was 101.  "Were you really fasting?" my doctor says.  I join a gym and work out 3 days a week and lose 5 pounds.  "Huh, so you started exercising to drop your fasting blood sugar?  That's funny."

"Why is that funny?" I ask.

"Because it's gone up to 104.  Were you really fasting?"

So, me, and my totally rational, reasonable terror of diabetes, are on a mission to have healthy insulin response.  That means low glycemic index food, low calorie intake, exercise, more exercise, more exercise...  I know, I know, the bottle of Coke from the Mexican restaurant was not cool, and the Snickers I am about to get is really not cool, but I have a migraine.  Stop judging....  you can be so stinking judgmental... Besides, Snickers is low glycemic.  (Look halfway down this page if you don't believe me )

Pause

(wiping chocolate from the corners of my mouth)  Well I guess I have an explanation for why it's taken an entire year to lose 20 pounds.  And I have another 20 to go.  Let's hope it doesn't take another full year to lose that.

My head hurts.  I want to cry.

Vegas, Baby, Yeah!

What does one do in a town designed for vice, when one is absolutely uninterested in gambling, clubbing, or the sex trade?  Time to get creative and look at Vegas as Disneyland for grownups.  So, we had to find the Tiki Room and Tom Sawyer's Island, and stay off of Space Mountain.  Still plenty to do, and more likely less smoking around our activities.  Still, rules will be broken.

Broken Rule #1:  Out of the hotel by 9.

Dude, we slept in.  The day before was soooo looonnnngggg.  We were in no hurry at all.  We still were on our way by 11:30, however, and wandered over to Planet Hollywood, and Cabo Wabo.  My dad recommended this as a cool way to have breakfast outside.  Too late for breakfast, and very sunny. 

Broken Rule #2:  Reasonable alcohol start time.

Even though it was almost noon when we ordered, to us it was still breakfast, and deliciously dangerous to have Breakfast Booze.  Emily had a Bloody Mary and I had a Margarita, blended with salt, promptly earning a brain freeze.  We talked to a fun drunk couple who had this suspicious indigo slurpee that I don't think was for kids.  I asked them what it was, and the way they slowly searched the inside of their eyelids for the words to describe "In the hotel lobby", convinced me completely they were avoiding a real hangover by staying completely buzzed for their whole visit.

After breakfast, we walked through an odd street fair with a band, and then to The World of Coke.  We ordered Coke Around the World, and sipped all kinds of yummy, and odd flavors.  I really don't like watermelon flavored anything.  The tamarind flavor was good though.

Then to MGM Grand.  Emily kept remembering the amusement park that was there years ago, although we knew it was closed, we walked through the casino determined to prove them liars.  I guess we didn't walk far enough, because we didn't reach the amusement park at all, but found, instead, the CSI Experience.  What a fun way to spend an hour.  There was a crime scene and a lab, and we could solve the crime.  Grissom is a good boss.  Bugs and drugs and car tread red herrings. 

After that, we participated in a TV show test.  We watched a pilot episode of a show pulled straight from Say Yes to the Dress.  It was so awesome, especially since it was with Emily.  We told those Neilson folks to put that show on, and boy will we watch it.

It was almost 5 and we wanted to regroup for the evening, so off we went back to Paris by way of the monorail.  We decided when we got there we should have dinner first, then figure out what to do.  Good decision.  The restaurant was Mon Ami Gabi.  French bistro and sidewalk cafe with a front seat view of the Bilagio fountains.  Fantastic gluten free menu too.  YUMMMMMMM.    Such a relaxing, elegant way to spend an evening.  We were so rejuvenate by dinner, we decided to wander around the strip up the other direction without going back to the room. 

We crossed the street to watch the fountains up close.  Cute ducks living in the fountains.   The lake shone like glass (quite a contrast to the stinky canal at Venice, do they make it stink for authenticity?). 

We then tried to catch the pirate show in front of Treasure Island.  It was in process when we got there.  We thought we might hang out for a bit until it was time for the next one, but we couldn't get close enough to see the schedule.  The wonders of the interweb cell phone age...  Emily called Josh back in Benica and he looked up the schedule on his google machine.  Dang...  It was going to be another hour and a half.  It was getting near the usual pumpkin hour, so we decided to go back to the hotel.

They left us such a nice note.  "Don't forget to change your clock for daylight savings time, because, if you don't, you might over sleep and check out of the hotel late.  And we wouldn't want that, would we?"  That may not be the exact words, but, that's what I got out of it.

Road Trip!

When I was a kid, we'd take vacations in the National Parks of the Southwest.  All vacations began with a nighttime trip though the desert to Vegas.  Somewhere around the Nevada border, the sky began to change with the dawn.  Adventures were to begin with the new day.

In the pursuit of recapturing the magic of that moment, we woke up at 1:30 and were on the road to Vegas.  Road Trip, Baby.  My dad was up with a cup of coffee, and we took off.  The 10 to the 210 to the 215 to the 15.  Stopped for gas, used the cruise control.  At 4:30 the sky began to brighten in the east and the mountains began to glow.  The moon was full and setting in the west and Emily acted as DJ.  My favorite songs were American Tune by Paul Simon and Old '55 by Tom Waits.  Feeling so holy....

We were still early for hotel check-in, so we went straight to Hoover Dam for the Dam Tour.  It was the best Dam Tour ever, and we saw the Dam turbines and a film about how the Dam thing was built.  The Dam Tour Guide filled the tour with Dam puns, as was appropriate.  The last time I had visited, there was a dynamic diorama that showed the impact of the Dam on the Colorado River, how it dried up just as it got to Mexico, where it used to be a fertile delta as it reached the Sea of Cortez, but for some reason, all talk about the water downstream was gone, and the emphasis was on the human achievement of the actual structure.  It is an amazing feat of civil engineering, and even the bathrooms were cool.  Terrazzo tile was everywhere, including the floor of the power plant.  Gorgeous!

Off to Vegas!  We drove through Downtown then down the Strip.  They had signs and lights from old Vegas hotels on display.  Things like the original Silver Slipper and Aladdin's Lamp.  There was a line around the block at the Silver and Gold Pawn Shop.  Yay, Pawn Stars!

Once we got to the end of the Strip, it was time to check into Paris.  Time to hit the town.  We found our way to Cesear's Palace, and practically bumped into Mesa Grill.  I was hungry and I knew Bobby Flay could cook me a great gluten free lunch. And he did.
Wandering up and down the Strip, we saw art and shops and fancy stuff, and found our way to the New York, New York piano bar.   I had fun here.  It was a neighborhood bar feeling in the middle of Vegas with sing alongs.  We jumped on the roller coaster and wandered back down the strip.  We looked at the Chihuli ceiling and suddenly realized, while looking at our hotel across the street, that although it was only around 9 pm, we had been up since 2 in the morning and were very, very, very tired.  Back to our room we went and to bed.  Welcome to Vegas!