I have been hesitant to write lyrics for my songs for a while now. I did write one song with lyrics a few months ago. But usually, I can’t seem to fit what I want to convey into words.

It could be that my level of craft is not up to snuff in my use of words. Words seem too tight. They hone in on a thought. I don’t want my thoughts to be captured that way.

Feels to me like when I try to hone in on a thing, its meaning becomes more elusive. You try to pinpoint a thing and somehow the space grows around it, and it is no longer as definable as you once thought. Like particles. I never studied physics. But I have heard that if you study small “things” on a nano scale called particles, their behavior changes depending on whether they are observed or not.

Maybe it is this rational analytic process of thought which is self limiting. Maybe it just goes in circles after a while. I don’t know. How can I? I may just be going in circles myself.

So I give up. Well, part of the time, anyway. Sometimes I seem to be able to convey so much more when I wail and growl and create my own language and just send my raw emotions through that avenue.

I have a friend who is an artist who encourages me to think outside of the box in regards to my own art. At my friend’s suggestion, I went down to see an exhibition of Xu Bing’s art at the Williams Art Center at Lafayette College in Easton. There is a book there which must be a part of a work called Books from the Sky The piece was created through a long painstaking process of carving small wooden blocks with imaginary Chinese characters and using those characters to print the book I saw and a lot more. The book I saw was put together with rice paper, traditional Chinese binding and water based ink. The book is beautifully crafted, but the characters used are made up. The book does not actually say anything. There were other works there as well, and they all spoke to the relationship between meaning and language.

There seems to be a lot similarity in the different ways in which we humans express. I guess it says something about what it means to be human. Or does it? Sometimes it seems like the shape of a thing on the outside has little relationship with what is on the inside. There is so much to know. Yet, maybe silence will tell me more.

What is it about Rock and Roll? It is so much fun to play. It is so simple but packs such a wallop. I have been playing some simple bluesy rock and roll lately. That’s what has been coming out of me much of the time. Generally it is very happy music. Bluesy-happy? Somehow, yes.

I don’t know much about structure in music. I took piano lessons when I was 5 or 6 years old. I learned how to read notes then. I guess I progressed into the second book of piano music. I learned to use two hands in my playing and in interpreting the notes at the same time! I started writing songs at the same time I picked up the guitar when I was nine. My first song was called, “Oh, My Little Gerbils”.

When I was in seventh grade I had a music class where I learned that songs can be written AA BB structure, or ABAB structure. I guess I must have learned a little bit more than that, but I don’t remember now. I did apply some of what I learned to writing music.

Mostly though, I have been a real snob about learning about structure generally. I guess I gave up on “fitting in” in most ways at some point in my teenagerdom. But I realized later that I could have benefited some by learning theory. But then again, I concentrated on theory in a very general sense in college. Actually, I love theory. I want to share ideas.

When I was fourteen, someone gave me a book called Think On These Things by J. Krishnamurti. His writings had a huge effect on me. I carried that book around with me for a couple of years. I used to go walking everywhere as a young teenager with my guitar and a backpack with my journal and that book in it. It was partly through Krishnamurti’s influence that I decided to at least in some ways, rely upon my own perceptions to decide what is and is not true, and to realize the influence that the world has upon me in developing those perceptions. I decided that I wasn’t going to let anyone tell me what the truth of anything was, including any truth about music.

I guess, though, I did end up compromising myself in some ways. But now, as I have said so many times now in earlier posts, I want to learn. I want to listen. And I want to share.

I think the next time I get on stage at the Wildflower I will express my desire to learn a little about Rock and Roll. There are some amazing folks there. I would love to try to play Rock and Roll with some of them. For Fun. What better goal is there?

I spoke in an earlier post about singing through different parts of my body. I said that I discovered that the quality of the sound and the emotional content change as I explore different areas.

Since I started being more aware of my own inner processes in the past couple of years, I have learned about chakras and a little about what the meanings are in the different regions along the spine in the front and the back. The concept really isn’t that far out. It’s not unusual to hear people talk about a “gut feeling” or a “guttural sound” or “speaking from the heart”.

I think that to a large degree, people have come to judge the lower chakras, those that are more connected to the earth, as lowly and less deserving of attention. These areas are connected with basic survival instincts, security, money, home, appetites for food and sex.

These needs and instincts have been used as weaknesses; as tendencies to manipulate. We manage these needs of our own and each other with a focus other than love. We exploit ourselves and each other just as we exploit the earth itself. I want  to focus love and attention on these lower chakras especially. Maybe it is OK to be so very human. Maybe we need to accept each other’s humanness. Maybe it is OK to love and accept the very materiality of the earth. Maybe it is OK to be here, really here. Maybe here can actually be heaven.

My music is responding by coming from a gut level. It is often gravelly and very connected to my body. I can’t help but move as I play and sing. And I don’t want to intellectualize it. It is, I believe, what often is considered primitive; a wisdom that I believe is important now to offset a world which is so out of balance. The outward world seems to be based so very much on control, manipulation and exploitation. And perhaps also the inner world which has its counterpart in the control that we feel we need to exert over our bodies, seeing our bodies, and perhaps our very souls as simply objects to manage.

We need to remember that those “objects”, those bodies and souls are our very being. We really are alive. We really do exist. It is easy to lose track of our present reality when so much of our life is connected to computers, TV’s and cell phones. Maybe I can’t speak for anyone other than myself. I must open my eyes. I must do everything I can to save this thing while there is still time.

I am still so preoccupied, I spend most of my time in my brain. But I am finding my music to be an avenue which brings me back to a fuller perspective which includes my heart, my emotions and my great desire to survive.

I have a hard time putting all of this into words. I am used to using words in a narrow way. The best poetry can convey amazing depth of feeling and more. Perhaps this blog can be my practice in bringing words to that which I want to convey. What I want to convey feels so big and undefined to me, that I find it difficult to begin. My focus is general. It is both upward and downward. It reaches up to God, (and I am not even sure what I mean by that), and downward through my own body and self with all of my foibles and roots itself into the earth. I want to draw nourishment from both directions just like a plant. I feel like I have been focusing so hard lately on the sun that I have forgotten that I also need water and nutrients. The earth feels so arid right now. We need to take care of the earth.

I’ve been talking mostly about the inner world of my emotions lately on this blog. Every day for quite a while I’ve been playing my music also for at least two or three hours a day. Sometimes I feel like I am being irresponsible in this respect. I should be concentrating on how I am going to pay the mortgage next month.

In any case, as I have been feeling a shift inside of myself as I go from emergency crisis mode back into a more stable outlook, (yet an outlook which has certainly been colored by my experiences), my music has been deepening and becoming more confident in its presentation. Strange how I can feel like I am falling apart in my emotional life and yet be anchoring myself in my music.

I really enjoyed playing last week at the Wildflower, being backed up by one of the most spontaneous, fun loving young guitarists that I know there. I hope to do more of this in the future.

I also really want to make some of my music available on the web site as soon as I can. There are a few technical issues I have to approach first. When it happens you will know!

I have always thought of myself as being a giving and compassionate person. I have seen myself as a person who gives sometimes to her own detriment. I have been giving a voice to that part of myself that has been put aside for so very long. It has generally felt so wonderful that I have felt confident in simply allowing myself to go where I will, believing that it must all be for the good.

But I have continued to be self centered in this pursuit of expression. Yes, I am generally a giving compassionate person, but I am discovering that there are some boundaries between us which are necessary.

Fusing the anger that I am becoming aware of within myself with good intention is very conscious work. My life generally must now become more conscious and less random so that I will not further the anger and fear that has been placed on me over the years. It is necessary for me to be aware of my own limitations and my own potential to do harm.

This morning when I was playing and singing I found that this is already expressing itself in my music. Some of my music has been simply wailing like a wild animal. OK. That pain is real. But now what do you do with it? There is a lot of pain in the world. How do we transform that into positive action and feeling? This is my challenge. Maybe this is what beauty is about for me. I have not wanted to define what beauty is. I have not wanted anything placed upon me which would limit me. But I do have a responsibility for what I create.

Thank you all for supporting me through this difficult time.

I was noticing this morning as I was playing the guitar that when I hold my guitar in a relaxed manner, when I hold it and don’t grip it, when I pluck or strum the strings with only as much force as is necessary to bring the sound out, that sound which emerges is so much fuller and clearer than when I try to force it.

Just like the rest of my life.

Yes indeedy, yes sir ree sir! Come and see me come and read me everyone because right here today you will be transformed by being in my digital presence! Just come to www.suzemusic.net and you too can become enlightened!

Shoot. Hmmm . . . I wonder. You see folks, I am feeling a little depressed in the past couple of days. And I read my posts and I can’t help but think that I take myself a little bit too seriously some days.

True, I love music. True, I focus on spirit, (meaning, I guess, that I try to and sometimes, I believe, succeed in seeing a picture a little bit bigger than myself). But it is also true that I hope to make music and writing a way to make money. Or maybe more accurately, a livelihood. I am not sure yet how to get around the money part. But how can I put all of those things together? How do I avoid “selling out” in one way or another?

Back and forth and back and forth between depression where I don’t allow my own humanity and puffing myself up within my own mind out of a sense of insecurity; I really do want the love and approval of my fellow human beings, but I guess I need to find my own approval first.

This is a discussion that I would like to have with a bunch of you who are out there. I am feeling my way through my own process of creating, what, well, everything that I have an influence on in my life.

Maybe every moment is a piece of art. Every moment intersects form and substance; movement; being. But it usually feels like movement of substance through form to me. Sometimes it feels like form coming down on substance like an encasing prison. Other times if feels like substance freeing up and going everywhere before it settles back down again wherever it will.

I am just playing with this now. Maybe it is best that I just continue to play with it as gleefully as I can without using my serious eyes to place all of the pieces where they “should” be.

What do you all think? Or feel? Or do?

I finally wrote a song with words about two or three months ago after struggling for a really long time to commit to a particular idea. Here are the lyrics:

As a child I went out to roam and explore
Took on new inspirations, no fear in my soul
I loved to run and to sing and to dance and to give.
Like so many the years have pressed in on my soul
I have narrowed my vision to what I could hold
On the teaspoon of acceptable practical logical form.

I am free now.
I can see now.
It’s the breeze now
From the sea now.
All around me.
Come around me.
Come and hear me.
I have found thee.

Lines and measurements, gridlock to life
I am bursting through boundaries just like a knife
An explosion of pent up will and intention and love.
Please open your eyes and open your ears
I really want to calm your fears
Let the love and the light flow full force from within.

I am free now.
I can see now.
It’s the breeze now
From the sea now.
All around me
Come around me.
Come and hear me.
I have found thee, I have found thee!

Sometimes when I look at myself and what I have been doing about my own pain and need, I see myself as a psychologically challenged person who is acting out how she needs to. There may be some truth to that point of view. But if I look at that same thing from what I believe to be an even wider perspective, I think that my challenge is a shared challenge. I believe that most of us are in pain and are on a quest for finding peace within and without. Maybe if I share my perspective, however faulty and Suzielike it may be, and share it from as deep a place as I can, maybe I will provide hope and courage to someone else to take a chance also.

I find that as I go along this path that I am following I am meeting some incredible people. Now my challenge is to open myself to learning new things. I have something to say and now that I have said it, it is time for me to listen. Please folks, feel free to contribute your thoughts.

OK folks so here I am sitting at my computer. My cat Abby is on the desk in front of me waiting to be petted. My dog Dakota is on the floor hoping that sometime I’ll be done and take him out for a walk. My kids are both upstairs in their rooms with their own routines. And here I sit typing.

Yes, I love to reflect. And I love to send what’s in me out through my music. But the cat, the dog, my kids, the pile of mail on the floor, the dishes and all of that is here too. And it is as it should be. I spoke briefly in one of my entries about coming down to earth. OK. Out of my brain and into the world!

Speaking of procrastination, check this out, folks: