Category: Blue, Black, Silver, Water, Moons, Death & Ghosts

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Blue, Black, Silver, Water, Moons, Death & Ghosts Hurricane, West Virginia Music & Songs Plants and the Emerald Kingdom Videos

Helicopter Video (Who will make love to me?)

This is a video James made with his helicopter. I like it because it captures the hovering feel of the song. Plus, I like the scenery of West Virginia. It is so green here that sometimes I get green overload. My new hobby is walking around parking lots, in fact, because their crisp flatness provides a nice contrast to the the crazy, plant infested hills I am usually contending with. Plus, the parking lots are beautiful, because they are surrounded by green mountains in every direction. In addition, they are interesting, because the average parking lot contains about 3 gambling establishments, all of which have names like “Nel’s Coffee” but inside they are filled with slot machines. People here like to gamble, I suppose. They also like Jesus, family, sports, guns, and exercise.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkBm59aqfhg

My favorite thing about these mountain folk is how friendly they are- it is hard to buy a bottle of shampoo without finding out what a stranger had for breakfast. And if you have anything you’d like to get off your chest, the person in front of you at the gas station will be happy to listen. If the mask of New England is to appear high-brow, moral, and intellectual, the mask of West Virginia is to appear down-home, simple, and guileless. But I have already been here long enough to realize this is just a projection- the people here have just as much guile as they do anywhere else. Sometimes, I feel truly shocked by the amount of guile humans have- would it be possible to overestimate how tricky and deceptive we are?

Just last night, for example, I discovered that a friend who died a couple year ago, actually faked his death! But why should I be shocked, when my own favorite book in high school was “How to Disappear and Never Be Found” a book about how to fake your death and assume a new identity?

It is hard to blame people for being deceptive, when it can feel like the whole world is set up to punish people for telling the truth, and to reward those people who claim to feel what they don’t feel, to think what they don’t think, and to be something they aren’t.

Do Not Trust This Man

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Blue, Black, Silver, Water, Moons, Death & Ghosts Hurricane, West Virginia Music & Songs Sky Blue, Ether, Flags, and Fairies Uncategorized

Flags on the Rail

 

A Pirate Wedding

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ok… well, I suppose this is a song about the pirate Blackbeard.

I first heard this song (in my head) five years ago while walking along the banks of the Ohio River in Owensboro, KY. But the next day I returned to Louisville and was working in my garden when I heard another song (this one about flower fairies) set to the same melody. I wasn’t sure what to do. I didn’t want to write two songs with the same melody, because I dreaded the moment someone would say, “Hey, those songs have the same melody.” I was playing open mics around Kentucky, where the presumption was that you must suck, or else you wouldn’t be playing open mics, you would be dancing on a golden stage. So, I was feeling a little sensitive, and to avoid potential criticism, the Blackbeard song was buried and forgotten.

Until yesterday, when I heard it again, and decided to write it down, because if God can write multiple songs set to the same tune, then so can I.

So this is a song about Blackbeard. I have written a number of songs about people on boats, although I don’t know why. I have no interest in boats in real life. I also write a lot of songs about soldiers, and even gay love between soldiers, although once again I have no idea why.

But, I suppose the world of the unconscious is different from this world and the meaning of things aren’t the same. In this world, my favorite activity is shopping for scented soaps, but I will probably never write a song about that. Nor would I write a song about how much I appreciate special people in my life. That would be weird and nauseating, not to mention bad luck. Songs seem to come from a world that is upside down and backwards to this one. Their ways are not our ways.

 

Download MP3: Flags on the Rail

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Blue, Black, Silver, Water, Moons, Death & Ghosts Hurricane, West Virginia Music & Songs Uncategorized

I am the bone.

 

Well, this is my first song written and recorded in West Virginia. I thought maybe I’d end up writing gospel songs, but I guess it didn’t turn out that way… And now is the hard part where I have to say something about the song I have written… so, I suppose this is a song about me… being held prisoner by a swamp monster.  What else can I say? Sometimes I find it so hard to write these posts, because I feel I lack that core identity and sense of self that makes it possible to project oneself forward into the world. When I try to search for my ego, that warm sun within, all I can find are cake crumbs in a void… as though there once was something there, but someone ate it. Which in a way is what this song is about… a person’s light and sense of self dissolving through being held prisoner too long.

But, you know what Bruce Springsteen says, “Everything that dies, someday comes back.”  If you leave it sitting on the counter long enough, a crumb WILL one day turn back into a cake.

 

Skin Man feels exuberant in his swamp, with his prisoner, beneath the moon.

 

Download MP3: I Am the Bone

 

Categories
Blue, Black, Silver, Water, Moons, Death & Ghosts Brooklyn Music & Songs

Blue Valley

 

Nude woman with a bone and a raindrop.I made this song up while being driven around the New York highways, from the edge of Brooklyn to Manhattan. The person behind the wheel (well, my ex-husband, if you need to know) always seemed to be in various stages of falling asleep while driving, which caused me great anxiety. I tended to sing and clap loudly in the vain hope that this would help him stay awake. So that is where this song comes from and why there is only clapping and no guitar.

 

 

 

 

 

Download MP3: Blue Valley

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Blue, Black, Silver, Water, Moons, Death & Ghosts Kentucky Music & Songs

Soul Baby


Nude woman with white raindrops, sitting on a log.

A song I wrote in Kentucky, at a time when I was obsessed with the color white. But not, this time, the clear icy white of the stars, but rather the thick and milky white of the moon.

During the summers I would cover myself from head to toe in the euphoric, almost dirty scent of jasmine flowers, stuffing handfuls of them in my shoes as well, and walk around for hours in the night, through the country and through the town. The moon and the humidity would mix to create a feeling of hope and possibility that soothed the despair which plagued me during the days.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Download MP3: Soul Baby

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Blue, Black, Silver, Water, Moons, Death & Ghosts Minerals, Mountains, Crystals, Ice, and White Nashville

Mister will you make love to me?

 

Brownie feeding a dog with a mysterious shadow.A song about my desperation to leave the cold world of outer space and feel earthed again. I wrote this song in Nashville. As a kid, visiting Nashville from Kentucky, I had always liked its warm, earthy vibe, like pizza cooked in a red brick oven. But when I moved there as an adult- around 2006, I think, it didn’t seem the same anymore. It had become citified, slick, black, stylish, and cold. Sure, there was country music, but there wasn’t anything country.

What is country music, anyway? To me, it would be any music inspired by a southern, rural life. It wouldn’t have to fit a certain mold- it could be strange, nonsensical, angry, dull, sad, or wild. It could express the full range of human emotions and the crazy imagination of nature. But Nashville music isn’t rooted in the country, it is rooted in the tradition of country music, which is a very different thing. It pulls its tradition from a handful of 20th century country heroes, a well that becomes more depleted with every song written. Art that draws on other art as its foundation… well, I think it can get a little inbred.  That is how we end up with blank canvases and the like hanging up in museums.

But that is just my opinion. The point is, I felt disappointed that Nashville had become more cosmopolitan than homey.  I wanted something soft, warm, and natural, but ended up with something cold, hard and plastic. It may be no coincidence that so many of the songs I wrote in Nashville relate to being lost in outer space.

Download MP3: Mister Will You Make Love to Me?

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Blue, Black, Silver, Water, Moons, Death & Ghosts Los Angeles Minerals, Mountains, Crystals, Ice, and White Music & Songs

I ain’t crying

 

This is probably the first song I wrote about the feeling of being lost in an everlasting winter, the color white…

Nude woman in water with fish inside of bubbles.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Download MP3: I Ain’t Crying

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Blue, Black, Silver, Water, Moons, Death & Ghosts Music & Songs The Odyssey Uncategorized

Black Black Hell

 

Cheetah mom with baby cheetahs at sunset.Another song from the Odyssey… Odysseus travels to Hades to seek guidance for his journey. Hell is a place we all visit at some point. Perhaps by visiting Hell while still alive we don’t have to go there when we die.

What is Hell? Hell is a place so black we can only look backwards.

A place where the light of the future has been extinguished by the shadows of the past. Suddenly we are engulfed by everything we had forgotten- lost opportunities, suppressed humiliations, mistakes we can never erase. We realize that what we thought was behind us- our past- was actually closer to us than our present- standing between us and the present like an atmosphere, a cover of clouds, and in Hell these clouds thicken and swallow us up. We are confronted with the ways we have hurt others and the ways we have hurt ourselves. We come face to face with the dark sides of those we loved, the ways they betrayed us, the love that existed only in words but not deeds. We see the ways we were overpowered by life and shaped by forces beyond our control. We realize we cannot change the past- not because it is behind us (it is not behind us at all!)-but because we never could have changed it. We did our best, but it was not enough. Our will was just a tiny candle in the big wide world, barely illuminating our own hand and bound for extinction.

Some dreams were fulfilled, but still they were hollow. Some goals were achieved, but still they led nowhere. Best friends slipped away, one by one, like sunsets. Ideals that seemed so tangible turned out to only be concepts. Right and wrong, success and failure, struggles and surrenders… in the end it all led to the same place… nowhere.

Welcome to Hell.

Download MP3: Black Black Hell

Categories
Blue, Black, Silver, Water, Moons, Death & Ghosts Music & Songs Nashville

Black Man

 

Black man flying over two shadowy figures and one saint, near a river, surrounded by flowers.I hope I don’t get sued for writing a song called “Black Man,” but the truth is I believe there are beings in every color of the rainbow who live side by side with us humans. And of these vividly colored peoples, the one I think about most frequently is the famous “Black Man,” a jet black figure about 33% larger than a regular person. I think these colored beings might show up in our lives to compensate for our weaknesses. The black man seems strong and protective to me, though also opaque and aloof. But after all he’s part of another world, and “their ways are not our ways.”

 

 

 

 

Download MP3: Black Man

Categories
Blue, Black, Silver, Water, Moons, Death & Ghosts Los Angeles Music & Songs

Murder

 

At the time I wrote this song I had a pink snake named Little Bun. She looked like a very long and thin hot dog bun. I thought having one animal from each of the animal kingdoms would bring me good luck in life. It is hard to say if it worked. I loved Little Bun but never got over the fear of her biting me. Sometimes, when entering a public situation where I felt nervous or awkward, I would take her with me and let her discreetly twine around my arm. My fear of her biting me caused my social anxieties to fade somewhat.

Oh, Lonesome me. Little Bun holds a broken mirror and crosses to the other side of the river, crying.
I painted this when Little Bun died. I like to think it is a picture of her crossing the river that leads to the next world. Goodbye Little Bun!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Download MP3: Murder