If life had background music playing your song

So Amanda tagged me in her blog to reveal ten random facts about myself...not that I play my cards close to my chest, so it's quite possible everyone already knows these ten facts.

Considering my love for music...I thought I'd let some song lyrics express my random thoughts.

She's the vinyl queen, of my surfers dream
Miss Delaney, Jack's Mannequin
1. I first fell for a surfer boy at the young and impressionable age of 14. I wore roxy clothes and surfer boys could still make me weak at 26. But it wasn't until I was 25 that I got on a board--and loved it, just like I knew I would. So now I'm pushing myself through swimming laps in the hopes that I'll be surfing in July.

Ay Nicaragua, Nicaraguita, la flor mas linda de mi querer
Nicaragua, Nicaraguita, Carlos Mejia Godoy
2. Almost anyone who knows me at all knows that I love Nicaragua. I never knew it was possible to feel love for a place until I found Nica. Thinking about it makes my heart hurt and my stomach ache, in the same way that being in a long distance relationship can do.

I wanna live where the green grass grows, watching my corn pop up in rows
Where the Green Grass Grows, Tim McGraw
3. Yes, I like a few country songs. This quote reveals that yes, I harbor a secret desire to farm. The more I learn about sustainable agriculture, the more I want to grow things.

Maybe it's time I put a profile up of who I want to be, fool everyone I could start over clean
Oceans, The Format
4. I read a post secret once about how someone put up a facebook profile not of who she was but of who she wanted to be. Sometimes I feel like that, that my profiles are less me and more of who I want the world to see of me. I also wonder who's looking at them.

I need relevance, intelligence, a new tattoo...
All For You, Our Lady Peace
5. I have two tattoos, and it's true what they say--either you hate the first and regret it or you just want more. I'm ready for the third if I could just figure out the exact design.

Hold that smile, you’ve got style, they can’t take that away
Sway Your Head, We Shot the Moon
6. Style--I'm just coming into mine. It's important to me, and I like having style icons. I think the world dresses too sloppily and I think that saying "I shouldn't be judged on my appearance" is a cop-out. Appearance shouldn't be the only thing, but it shows that you care for yourself, that you have attention to detail and can show a good face to the world.

I love the sound of rain on tin
Briefly, Better than Ezra
7. BTE was my first introduction to the romance of New Orleans and the words of the songs continue to capture this city for me. When it rains here, it's almost amplified, and all I want to do is lie in bed and listen to the sound.

You know the nightlife is just not for me, cause all you really need are a few good friends
The First Single, The Format
8. I'm not a night person--if I go to bed at 9pm or at 2am, I'm still up by 7am. I've tried to be a night person, tried to enjoy going out and all those things, but unless it's a concert I'd rather be home with friends, cooking, watching DVDs or playing board games.

Faith left me staring at the ceiling through the night
Control Freak, Copeland
9. Faith, to me, is so much more complex than just saying "let it be so." I think that doubt and faith are inextricably linked, which is why this line is so perfect to me.

I feel that when I'm old, I'll look at you and know the world was beautiful
Polaris, Jimmy Eat World
10. I try hard to create beauty. There's so much ugly, so much scary, in this world. So much of what I do and think about and write about focuses on those almost-unfixable problems. I try my best to find things that are beautiful and take the time to be amazed at silly little things.

So this only took hours...
I tag my family. Aunties and cousins. Go!


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Now playing: Sherwood - Alley Cat
via FoxyTunes

on a river laden up with prayer and doubt and dreams

I'm not going to use a sojo quote this week as my "get myself in the CG mindset" inspiration. Instead I'd like to use my traditional song lyric inspirations because these few choice melodic expressions continue to stand out.

So save your prayers, for when you’re really gonna need them
Zero, Smashing Pumpkins

I traveled back to high school today in honor of the fact that Smashing Pumpkins will be at Voodoo Fest next week and I wanted to remember how much I love their songs. Now, Billy Corrigan is quite a God-pessimist, so it does not surprise me in the least that he includes this lyric. After all, this is the same song that notes, “God is empty, just like me.” Yet those of us that do believe in God often seem to follow this advice, as though God can only take so many prayers before he’s tapped out.

To go along with this quote, a lyric that always, no matter how many times I listen to the song, stands out with incredible clarity:

I finally feel strong enough to pray
Maybe Tonight, William Tell

Again…this seems to be the opposite of what is necessary, although in a way I understand the sentiment. William thanks God in the linar notes so I don’t think he’s trying to be flippant, rather just articulating something that happens to all of us. We want to be able to do it on our own. We want to come to God clean, whole, and strong. But we can’t get there—God comes to us.

And finally we have:

So self-absorbed you've seemed to ignore the prayers that have already come about
The Unwinding Cable Car, Anberlin

There’s so much in this short statement from Stephen Christian, who insists that his band is not a “Christian band,” but that his faith impacts every aspect of his life. First, how often do we forget to take the time to say thanks (whether it’s to God or to the people in our life)? We’re so involved in ourselves that we just leap from thought to thought, demanding more, not realizing when a desire that we have has been granted. Also, when we become so focused on ourselves and our needs, we forget that we have already had so many of our needs met. When all we think of is ourselves and how to make ourselves happy—when we’re self-absorbed—it’s easy to ignore that God has answered our prayers, because all we’re focused on is the new prayers that we want answered. And of course we want them answered in the way that we desire…

In short.
You can’t pray too much.
Praying when weak isn’t only acceptable, it’s encouraged. And necessary if you’re anything like me.
Take a moment to say thanks.
Don’t be so busy wanting that you forget what you’ve got.

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Now playing: Anberlin - There Is No Mathematics To Love And Loss
via FoxyTunes

When The Melody Has Nothing To Hold

May the God of our Lord the Almighty Father
Give you wisdom and peace his comforting spirit
That you may know his hope
And you may know his wisdom
And you may know his mighty strength

Last night at community group this chorus came into my head and has been re-entering my thoughts again and again in the past eighteen hours. I’m not sure what brought it on, as we were discussing salt and light, but these words retain the same calming effect they had when I was young and I would tap out the melodic line on with my right hand as I attempted to hit the high notes with my childish little whine.

All these years and I still don’t know how to put a bass line beneath a melody. I don’t know how to surround the beautiful with the contrast, with the support that it needs to stay afloat, to keep lingering in the air long after the actual notes have died away. I still want to let my right hand dance and not take the trouble to learn how to work the left hand.

The left hand signifies so much in this example, so much that I wasn’t even thinking about before I remembered singing this song and only knowing the right hand piano part. The left hand is the support that I forget that I have from family and friends. I am so busy worrying about how they might perceive me that I don’t let them inside, but yet expect them to understand my feelings. The left hand is studying for an epidemiology test rather than assuming I can wing it like I’ve done for the past 20 years of my life. The left hand is knowing that there are rough patches in relationships and that they’ll be there whether you choose the evil you know or the evil you’ve yet to see. The melody dies away without support, whether that support is a listening ear, an ability to garner information, or the strength of knowing that tension can provide cohesion.

But of course the left hand is God, and although I can say that this is the one left hand that I never forget, that doesn’t mean that I don’t forget what is given to me through my faith. I’m given hope. Wisdom. Strength.

And peace. Peace is so hard to find when I want to do it all myself, when I want to create a beautiful song and have it reach others ears. I become so frustrated when I want so badly to have something turn out right and it crashes down…usually due to my own ability to have patience, to have peace, to simply wait.

I think I’ve reached a point where it’s finally all I can do…rely on the knowledge of peace.

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Now playing: Jars Of Clay - Collide
via FoxyTunes

You're A Long Walk In A Rainstorm

Sorry for the double post...my mom sounded sad that I hadn't updated. Mom, if you comment, then I know you actually read the blogs!

Candle light
Ceiling fan
Curtains blow away and back again
Back again
Don't wake me, I think I'm in a dream

I know that I've used these lyrics before, but only in the past few weeks have I really come to know what they mean. Being here is like being in a dream, like living in a movie set, like walking the streets of a novel or living inside the lyrics to a song.

Calling back and forth through heavy air
The barges sound their warnings in the dark
Peace comes like a trusted friend
As it starts to rain again fall away
Fall away

The rain is pounding over my wrought iron balcony. The ceiling fan doesn't move noiselessly, but rather creaks as it moves the humid air through the bedroom. The candles I've lit are a poor substitute for Louisiana air as it rains, but without screens I can't let the breeze in. Instead the flames dance in the path of the fan's blades.

Let go of your fear, let's grow old together
Find a place along the way
Let's reel through the years
Each makes the other better

It's as though New Orleans makes everything right. It puts us at peace, knowing that we belong here. Knowing we can stick it out together, even if we are both too scared to admit it at times. The peace is in the old man sitting on the front porch of the house being rebuilt across the way. It's the way the live oaks drape their limbs across the streets and meet in the middle. It's the fact that everyone you pass on the street smiles and says hello.
Others may think that we're all crazy to live here. It's hectic, it's dirty, it's noisy and smelly and impoverished and, well, about to be washed out to sea. But when you find peace, it's hard to let it go.

WWOZ's on in stereo...

It's on in the kitchen, in the shower and in the hallway. It's life. It's a song come to life and I'm finally living out a song.