My soundtrack for 2012...

Does each of your years have a soundtrack?
So that when you hear a song, it brings you back to that place in time where you first heard it, reviving memories you thought were long gone. It's just one of the amazing gift that music gives us. It audibly marks a place in time.
Every now and then I hear a new artist or band that just transports me – a new album that, although I’ve never heard it before, is already in my bones…like the songs were already a part of me and my whole being was just waiting for them to finally be written and played and sung.
I heard just one of this band's songs and I knew I would love them. I bought the cd without hearing another note, and I feel like these guys are old friends, (okay, young friends) who've been singing me awake for years... the beginning of my soundtrack for 2012.
And just so that you can appreciate the whole picture of how I love my music, I play it really really loud from my iPod dock and dance around my living room like I am the star in my own music video -- sometimes I even add this drum or tambourine.




Eli Young Band – Life at Best"…keep on dreamin’ even if it breaks your heart"

Some perspectives on living in the moment...

From the book Spark by Julie Berstein:

Richard Serra was freeing himself from the constraints of making art, by approaching it as play. --



"I'm interested in the notion of play; I'm not interested in the end, I'm interested in the activity itself; I'm interested in not worrying in a self-conscious way about what I have to make."



--Richard Serra, sculptor







or, as Zac Brown puts it:









"soak it all in, it's a game you can't win, enjoy the ride."

(from the song Quiet your Mind by Zac Brown Band)



The messages of process over product and living in the here and now resonate strongly with me these days.



So I'm off to live today like there's no tomorrow!

My crush "of the month"...

Okay, so it's been waaaay more than a month since I posted my last crush. In fact, it's been about two years. It's not that I haven't had any other crushes, celebrity and otherwise, I just kind of forgot this particular blog topic until the other day.

You see, early this summer, my sister Jesse asked me if I wanted to see Kenny at the NY State fair (at the end of this month), and I said sure. I actually like his music and even own a couple of his CDs. I just wasn't all crazy about him like most of his (mostly female) fans seem to be. I have, in fact, resisted the charms of this particular cowboy for more than a decade, while my sister has not missed a concert within a hundred mile radius, and owns every CD he's ever made. I must even confess that after one particularly unfortunate wardrobe choice Kenny wore to the CMA awards back in the late 90s, -- a white, sequined Elvis-style jumpsuit -- I was one of those who suspected he might be, well, a little Brokeback Mountain -- not that there's anything wrong with that,(and I now believe that I was wrong) but I teased my sister unmercifully about the fact that her favorite cowboy probably didn't like her as much as she liked him.

Anyway, a couple of weeks ago, my sister gave me this CD and I am smitten. It's a little Jimmy Buffet, perfect for summer, and I am just reggae-in' all over the place and loving this guy's mellow vocals and laid back carribean charms. After I sang Jes my best rendition of Key Lime Pie for the fourth time, and told her how I want find a way to get backstage at the concert, she finally confronted me -- " I think you have a bigger crush on Kenny than I do!"

And for this month, at least, she's right!