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Walk Like an Egyptian

Walk Like an Egyptian

Song of the Day… I feel like I’m walking…

“Walk Like an Egyptian” by The Bangles, 1986

All the old paintings on the tombs
They do the sand dance don’t you know
If they move too quick (oh wayy oh)
They’re falling down like a domino

All the bazaar men by the Nile
They got the money on a bet
Gold crocodiles (oh wayy oh)
They snap their teeth on your cigarette

Foreign types with the hookah pipes say
Ayy oh wayy oh, ayy oh wayy oh
Walk like an Egyptian

The blonde waitresses take their trays
They spin around and they cross the floor
They’ve got the moves (oh wayy oh)
You drop your drink then they bring you more

All the school kids so sick of books
They like the punk and the metal band
When the buzzer rings (oh wayy oh)
They’re walking like an Egyptian

All the kids in the marketplace say
Ayy oh wayy oh, ayy oh wayy oh
Walk like an Egyptian

Slide your feet up the street bend your back
Shift your arm then you pull it back
Life’s hard you know (oh whey oh)
So strike a pose on a Cadillac

If you want to find all the cops
They’re hanging out in the donut shop
They sing and dance (oh wayy oh)
Spin the clubs, cruise down the block

All the Japanese with their yen
The party boys call the Kremlin
And the Chinese know (oh wayy oh)
They walk the line like Egyptian

All the cops in the donut shops say
Ayy oh wayy oh, ayy oh wayy oh
Walk like an Egyptian
Walk like an Egyptian

Imitation, Mitosis, Osmosis

Imitation, Mitosis, Osmosis

“Imitosis” – Andrew Bird

He’s keeping busy
Yeah he’s bleeding stones
With his machinations and his palindromes
It was anything but hear the voice
anything but hear the voice
It was anything but hear the voice
That says that we’re all basically alone

Poor Professor Pynchon had only good intentions
When he put his Bunsen burners all away
And turning to a playground in a Petri dish
Where single cells would swing their fists
At anything that looks like easy prey
In this nature show that rages every day
It was then he heard his intuition say

We were all basically alone
And despite what all his studies had shown
That what’s mistaken for closeness
Is just a case for mitosis
And why do some show no mercy
While others are painfully shy
Tell me doctor can you quantify
He just wants to know the reason, the reason why

Why do they congregate in groups of four
Scatter like a billion spores
And let the wind just carry them away?
How can kids be so mean?
Our famous doctor tried to glean
As he went home at the end of the day
In this nature show that rages every day
It was then he heard his intuition say

We were all basically alone
Despite what all his studies had shown
That what’s mistaken for closeness
Is just a case of mitosis
Sure fatal doses of malcontent through osmosis
And why do some show no mercy
While others are painfully shy
Tell me doctor, can you quantify
The reason why


Song of the Day: Sunday Morning Yellow Sky

Song of the Day: Sunday Morning Yellow Sky

Sunday Morning Yellow Sky by October Project

When the darkness falls like a curtain
And the night ahead is a long and uncertain dream
Beyond the loss and the hope of redemption

At the broken heart of the city
Where the hollow light of day never reaches in
A man can break down and fall into pieces
He will fall asleep like a baby
And the unforgiving arms of the cradle
Rock as hard as the face of the city pavement
Hide your eyes
Hide your eyes

He can see the face of a lover
In the lonely face of the angel above him
Carved into the stone that is changing around him
He can feel her breathing inside him
And the unforgiving visions deny him
Life can only be what a man can make it
Hide your eyes
Hide your eyes

Sunday morning
Yellow sky
The sun is floating diamond high
Hours passing
A baby cries
In the arms of someone you imagine
Close your eyes
This is your lullaby
Close your eyes
This is your lullaby

He can feel his skin like a prison
Like a dying cage he struggles to live inside
He tries to call out but nobody hears him
At the ragged edge of the silence
In the calm that only comes with the violent sleep
Inside the heart and the hope of redemption
Hide your eyes
Hide your eyes

In the heart of someone you imagine
Close your eyes
This is your lullaby
Close your eyes
This is your lullaby

Down, down, down
Would the fall never come to an end?
Wonder how many miles I’ve fallen
Must be somewhere near the centre of the earth
How funny it will seem to come out among the people
Who walk with their heads downwards
Down, down, down
Down, down, down
Would the fall never come to an end?

Grief for a View of the God-Character

Grief for a View of the God-Character

I remember the primal anguish that is born out of the belief that God is the source of both love and pain.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve observed that the feeling toward the universe it engendered is very similar to that of a hostage, a victim of abuse, a prisoner. Instead of creating a subjectivity of love in freedom, of caritas and kindness, and peace, it seemed to create an obsessive and paradoxical longing and fear that felt so meaningful that it was difficult to release.

The first stage of exit was pure rage, in my case perhaps only because of some hard-wired sense of self-preservation. If I hadn’t become angry enough, I never would have left. Yes, I also wouldn’t have spent years in college, or racked up student loans, or seen my career path veer off into something I never expected, but I also wouldn’t have had anywhere to stand, wouldn’t have slowly reconstructed a space in which I could live.

I’ve been thinking about the pathological aspects of religion for many years now. Talking with others who left the Jehovah’s Witnesses has been very healing, and I’m so very happy that such discussions have been made available. I was alone, it seemed, at first. As much as our conversations mutually heal, there are still times when the raw feelings burst through. Yes, even now when it seems that early experience shouldn’t matter anymore, I look around at our cultural landscape and see all the similarities to the dynamics that I felt way back then. The stated arguments, then the cruelties beneath them. It’s part of the reason that I follow politics so closely.

When you’ve lived in a space where justice is proclaimed, but unkindness rules, you feel things. I’ve always been too sensitive to that difference, to the unfairness, and it’s only expanded into more understanding of structural, institutionalized unfairness. For that reason, I was never able to reach that enlightenment space that some highly-evolved religious people sometimes reach, where you’re in tune with the love of the cosmos and shine out in peace and love because of that.

I am amazed at people who first question God because of logical arguments – it’s why I was first interested in philosophy and theology. I never expected answers, I was just fascinated that anyone could ever manage to think clearly about an embedded belief system. For me, the questions just keep getting better and better.

But first, I had to step away from the thing that felt so inherent to my soul. It helped and hurt that I was a woman, and one gifted with both imagination and intelligence. I was rewriting stories all the time.

Throwback moments are still powerful because I still recognize them. If they ring true, they can almost call me back. Some versions of religion look nice, but they don’t address this hard-core total involvement of the person. The pathological edges of religion do – and this, I think is both their advantage and their biggest threat. They encourage power distortions – masochism and sadism, entwined, enthrallment and rebellion, entwined. Fanaticism has incredible payoffs. I understand.

When I saw the song below performed, I didn’t know the words. I didn’t have to know them, although they do fit (a bit strangely so).

What I saw was a priestess exorcising her demon. It was so powerful that I was shaken for the rest of the night.

Every time I hear it, like I accidentally did over my morning coffee, I feel it punch the solar plexus of my soul. I cry every time, and I always remember, I remember how it felt.

This was how I felt about God.

Although I haven’t been in that particular space for many years, it still has a power, and as much as I remind myself of the path of forgiveness and kindness and peace, as much as I am more lovingly attuned now, I still lack the total transformation that would make this song just a song like any other.

Music is a personal thing. Everyone projects onto music to some extent. This is not meant to be a song about God, but it resonates there for me.

For you. In remembrance, in grief. To sing, to exorcise your demons, and perhaps to be able to voice some aspect of the experience that conversation can’t really ever address. But, lovelies, sing something sweet afterward… If you can grok it, this one takes strength to hear.

Alanis Morissette, “Sympathetic Character”

I was afraid you’d hit me if I’d spoken up
I was afraid of your physical strength
I was afraid you’d hit below the belt
I was afraid of your sucker punch
I was afraid of your reducing me
I was afraid of your alcohol breath
I was afraid of your complete disregard for me
I was afraid of your temper
I was afraid of handles being flown off of
I was afraid of holes being punched into walls
I was afraid of your testosterone

I have as much rage as you have
I have as much pain as you do
I’ve lived as much hell as you have
and I’ve kept mine bubbling under for you

You were my best friend
You were my lover
You were my mentor
You were my brother
You were my partner
You were my teacher
You were my very own sympathetic character

I was afraid of verbal daggers
I was afraid of the calm before the storm
I was afraid for my own bones
I was afraid of your seduction
I was afraid of your coercion
I was afraid of your rejection
I was afraid of your intimidation
I was afraid of your punishment
I was afraid of your icy silences
I was afraid of your volume
I was afraid of your manipulation
I was afraid of your explosions
I have as much rage as you have
I have as much pain as you do
I’ve lived as much hell as you have
and I’ve kept mine bubbling under for you
(repeat 2 x)

You were my keeper
You were my anchor
You were my family
You were my saviour
and therein lay the issue
and therein lay the problem

Songbird

Songbird

“Where words fail, music speaks.” ~ Hans Christian Anderson

Those of you who know me or have followed this blog at all know that singing is a great love of mine. I sing out on the deck, sometimes softly and sometimes quite loudly. I beg forgiveness of my neighbors, but it’s necessary for my sanity that I do this. I’ve tried to limit this activity to the car, but I really need to be free to move, and to direct an imaginary orchestra, and to close my eyes. Sometimes, like tonight, I sing for a little too long and I find that I have become exhausted, but it’s always worth it.

Here is the complete list, generated by a random shuffling of my singing playlist on the iPod. I love to adjust to the changes of voice and genre, but I can’t sing all of the music that I like to hear.

I Want You – Rachel Yamagata
Waiting for the Night – Depeche Mode
Perfect – Alanis Morissette
I Am the Walrus – The Beatles
Closed Circuits – Laurie Anderson
Come Together – The Beatles
Don’t Stand So Close to Me – The Police
Black Horse and the Cherry Tree – K.T. Tunstall
Rain – The Beatles
Angie Baby – Helen Reddy
Rainy Days and Mondays – Carpenters
Turn Back, O Man – (Godspell)
Trouble – Over the Rhine
Cornflake Girl – Tori Amos
Come Along – Titiyo
All I Have to Do is Dream – The Everly Brothers
American Idiot – Green Day
Walk Like an Egyptian – The Bangles
Mama Help Me – Edie Brickell
Kiss Moi – Sportes
Ashes on Your Eyes – Deb Talan
God – Tori Amos
Piss on the Wall – J. Geils Band
Leather – Tori Amos
Dreamland – B-52s
Venus – Shocking Blue
Violently Happy – Bjork
Insatiable – Lily Frost
Touch-A, Touch-A, Touch Me – Susan Sarandon (Rocky Horror)
Money – Pink Floyd
Hushabye Mountain – cover by Stacy Kent (Chitty Chitty Bang Bang)
The Eagle and the Hawk – John Denver
Comfort – Deb Talan
Big Wheel – Tori Amos
In the Deep – Bird York
Julia – cover by Sean Lennon (The Beatles)
All I Really Want – Alanis Morissette
Velvet Revolution – Tori Amos
Science Fiction, Double Feature – Richard O’Brien (Rocky Horror)
Sister Moon – Thomas Hellman
Drink Me – Anna Nalick
White Rabbit – cover by Austin Lounge Lizards
Killer Queen – Queen
Strawberry Fields – cover by Cyndy Lauper (The Beatles)
Night and Day – cover by U2
Revolution – The Beatles
Trouble – Cat Stevens
Green Eyed Lady – Sugarloaf
I Don’t Want to Talk About It – Rod Stewart
The Longing – Eels
Without a Word – Yes But
Money for Nothing – Dire Straits
Missionary Man – Eurythmics
The Wrong Band – Tori Amos
Love Me Two Times – The Doors
So Alive – Love and Rockets
Alas for You – (Godspell)
Sweet Transvestite – Tim Curry (Rocky Horror)
Gimme Some Truth – John Lennon
Bloodletting (The Vampire Song) – Concrete Blonde
When Will I Be Loved – Linda Ronstadt
What’s New Pussycat? – Tom Jones
Hallelujah – cover by John Cale (Leonard Cohen)
Willkommen – Joel Grey
All for the Best – (Godspell)
The Meaning of Life – Monty Python
Marlene on the Wall – Suzanne Vega
I Am a Rock – Simon & Garfunkel
Dear Prudence – cover by Alanis Morissette (The Beatles)
The Only Exception – Paramore
Sweet the Sting – Tori Amos
Nowhere Man – cover by Natalie Merchant (The Beatles)
Save the People – (Godspell)
Those Were the Days – Mary Hopkin
In the Summertime – Roger Miller
Raise the Veil – Lily Frost
Diamonds and Rust – Joan Baez
The Future – Leonard Cohen
Sick of You – Lou Reed
God Put a Smile upon Your Face – Coldplay
Comfortably Numb – cover by Dar Williams (Pink Floyd)
Possession – Sarah McLachlan
I’ve Just Seen a Face – cover by Holly Cole (The Beatles)
Sensitive Artist – King Missile
Mother’s Little Helper – Rolling Stones
Wild Horse – Deb Talan
Goodnight Moon – Shivaree

That seemed like a good place to stop. Wow – no wonder I’m tired, that’s a lot. This week was full of ups and downs, but now I feel grounded again.

One Saturday Night Some Lyrics

One Saturday Night Some Lyrics

Once in a while, I let it go. I have to, or my thoughts would consume me. Instead, I unhitch a million threads, and float… and drift.

Before too long, a path waves toward me, but I prefer to explore. For that you need a dose of the random. Open possibility is too vertiginous, but play is a vector of freedom. Only a judicious, homeopathic dose of the random…such is the contemporary life.

Why not play in a field of the familiar, rearranging my prejudices and laughing through the cut and paste method? A little homage, a little pattern recognition, and a little selection by will or inclination.

Spin the dial on the ipod; it’s as good as a tarot deck or a casting of the lots. Better, because there’s a context of every song, a layering of experience, the roads of habitual thought – all put into abeyance and at the same time summoned. A combinatorial sequencing, a dna-imaged lyrical selection – inherently the stuff of thought.

The focus then – would it be on the subtexts as they are woven? Or does the focus go to the rhythms of genre and mood? Will it be a ungainly monster, or will something be de-monstrated?

There is no predicting the outcome, and yet it all unfolds within a specific space. The space of multiple association, but in this you’ll miss the sound. Will you know any of these?

What meaning is made? What is accomplished with such cherry-picked flotsam ? Nothing. And this is good, because as with so much else, what matters is the journey.

Let’s see, then, what resonates now. Random song, chosen lyric… Three, two one…

rolling the ball rolling the ball
rolling the ball to me

I’m locked in tight I’m out of range
I used to care, but things have changed

all we do crumbles to the ground
though we refuse to see

temples are greying
and teeth are decaying
and creditors weighing your purse

broccoli feed your head
their ideas are fried in fat

come dance with the west wind
and touch all the mountaintops

check my vital signs and
no I’m still alive

and the world spins madly on

cellophane flowers of yellow and green
towering over your head

raining in my head like a tragedy
tearing me apart like a new emotion

blossoms that fall from the trees so tall
that falling is floating in heaven for hours

the winds of night so softly are sighing
soon they will fly your troubles to sea

it don’t make no difference to me
everybody has to fight to be free

is that you, mo-dean
is that you, mo-dean

be well you children of the land
of all the dying beauties

shall crime bring crime forever
strength aiding still the strong

I’m waiting for the night to fall
when everything is bearable

blue for the tears
black for the night spheres

now they know how many holes
it takes to fill the Albert Hall

all the crocodiles – ohh-ayy-ohh –
they snap their teeth on your cigarette

for millions this life
is a sad vale of tears

preserve your memories
they’re all that’s left you

I am just simply an old tired poet
waiting for the apple to drop tonight

I thought I heard somebody calling
in the dark I thought I heard somebody call

listening to my breath
falling from the edge

there’s no way of turning more than this

and the storm keeps blowing the angel backwards
into the future

and then she said both those words are dead
that’s the story of my life

had it been another day
I might have looked the other way
and I’d have never been aware

leave the shadows dancing
dancing on their own
let the moment free you

our breath comes out white clouds
mingles and hangs in the air

how I’m moved how you move me
with your beauty’s potency

’cause every time it rains
you’re here in my head
like the sun coming out

while the wide arc of the globe is turning
we feel it moving through the dark

whispering lingering
’till the sting of dawn

recurring dreams of minor chords
metered time muted chimes find the beat

and from the dark secluded valleys
I heard the ancient sighs of sadness

winds are whipping waves up
like sky scrapers
and the harder they hit me
the less I seem to bruise

so I got me some horses
to ride on to ride on

take my hand as the sun descends
they can’t hurt you now

speak softly love
so no one hears us but the sky

can I meet you in between
will you be there
let me hold you sight unseen
still in the air

your enchanting light is leaving
silver haze is leaving

windswept lady
moves the night the waves the sand

I am falling down the stairs
I am skipping on the sidewalk
I am thrown against the sky

prends moi
je suis a toi
mea culpa

limitless undying love
which shines around me like a million suns
and calls me on and on
across the universe

dry your wings in the sun
you have only begun to understand