Roses in the Rain

2011 has been the year of music. Many of my favorite bands and artists released new albums....I went to some awesome shows this summer. Spotify came out and changed the world of music. That is one topic that deserves it's own entry. I won't even try to sum up or put into words how much Spotify has enhanced my relationship with music.....its amazing to say the least.

With the use of Spotify, I have been able to discover some incredible bands and artists I didn't even know existed. Each time I discover something or someone new, I learn. My appreciation broadens and my spectrum of preference grows. I kind of see it as I have this heart, and every time I find a new music I love, it grows. I am open to seeing the world through the perspective of an artist and sometimes by listening to their work, I learn things about the world and myself I never knew before. It can be a very enlightening and gratifying experience.

I discovered this band that I will write about once I finish all of their albums. I basically started the process ass backwards by listening to their most recent album first and the only one I have yet to listen to is their first album. The thing with this band is each album is different from the other and the listener really needs time to sit with each album and experience it in its entirety. I kind of view it as having a torrid love affair in which you need to have your way with and bask in it's glory before you can move onto the next.  Each album is a concept and has meaning behind it,  however it can been seen differently by one individual to the next. If I never looked up  about the artist I wouldn't have known what the actual meanings are because it's all relative. It's life. It means something to me.....it means something to you. We all have our differences yet we still feel the same things.

MYLO XYLOTO....yes, Coldplay's latest album. I'm obsessed.  Have you listened to it yet? If you haven't, then you should. It is completely different from all their previous albums....the sound, the energy, it's different; yet the core of it still them....you still feel WHO they are. When bands are around for a long time, it is hard for them not to experiment and try new things.....hell, I think they SHOULD and not get criticized for it. Life happens and those experiences change and add more to who you are. We grow up....we continue to grow up until the day our lives end. I am a different person from when I was 21, versus 24, versus 27. It's not just the number of years you are that changes, it what has happened during those years that affect and mold who you are today.

I first connected with Coldplay my freshman year of college with A Rush of Blood to the Head. That album is very melancholy and exudes heartbreak.  At that time,  my boyfriend broke up with me and it was the perfect album to listen to because each song pretty much describes the pain of missing and/or losing someone. That was the first time I ever experienced pain and heartache like that and it was also one of the first times I connected with music that on level. You know, when you hear it and think, "Oh my gosh! This is exactly how I feel. These words were written for me."  I know,  I know, I was 18...give me a break. I liked  all the other albums Coldplay continued to make, but I didn't connect with them like I did with A Rush of Blood to the Head. I heard they were coming out with a new album and some people were pissing themselves in excitement.  I thought, big freaking deal, who gives a shit. Actually, I forgot they were even coming out with the new album until Monday morning it was buzzing all over FB. I decided to give it a whirl and I was pleasantly suprirsed. They teamed up with the ever most talented Brian Eno and hit it out of the park. The ambient flow of deep beats, string instruments and a strong bass rocks to your core.

I've done a lot of changing and growing from the first time I connected with Coldplay. I don't know if the person I was when I was 18 would have liked this particular album so that is what I am trying to convey here: growth. No one stays the same. Just because you are 30 or 40 doesn't mean you are done growing up. Just because Chris Martin peaked and became a multi-Grammy winner at whatever age doesn't mean his talent has stopped growing. As I mentioned before we grown until the day we die. By discovering new music and broadening my spectrum I learn more about who I am and what I really like. I'm not saying I don't like what I liked before....I do. My heart just keeps growing and my love just keeps spreading. I can only imagine what in a few years it will be like to read this. I know I am not done discovering. I'm not done growing. I'm not done getting better at who I am and living a life I love. With each new thing that comes our way, we have the chance to see the beauty in life like we never saw it before. We have the chance to be better....to learn and become more of who we are.

That was winded....I was on a roll this Friday afternoon. Alright, I'll leave you with a few songs from Mylo Xyloto that kind of embody the feel of the album. It's good fucking shit.

 

Turning thunder into grace

GOSPEL SALT

  by Andrea Gibson

Sometimes I get so nervous when I speak

I can feel my heartbeat in my tongue.

And my heartbeat talks faster than an auctioneer

but this is the last place

I would ever try to sell you something from.

When I get really scared

I imagine my grandmother

is standing behind me

with her pipe-organ arms

hugged tight around my chest.

She says, “Listen, I know you run your mouth

so your mind can rest.”

Now rest

is no broken levy staring up at the water.

It is the bite marks a mother leaves on the hurricane

while her daughter climbs to the 9^th ward rooftop

to spray paint, “We are still here.”

Yes we are.

While some days we will barely get our feet wet

most of the time we’ll have to wake

and shake the tidal wave off our music stands

to make space for the notes

of a brass-knuckled saxophone

carrying the tattered hope

of the ocean’s prayer.

All these words

are just paper boats praying they can get there.

Tell me we will get there

before we come up broke,

believing that people, like levies

have to hold themselves together

when often it’s the falling apart

that gives them grace

that ensures no one ever

builds a condo over their open hearts.

Three years after Katrina

I found a sea shell

beneath an oak tree in New Orleans City Park.
I can still hold it to my ear

and hear the song the folk singer sang

the night she left so much blood on her guitar strings

and I knew I have never been touched right,

knew we could be instruments

if we could just let our kite strings

be turned by the lightning.

Tune me to the thunder.

I am already shaking like a matador’s hands

like California shook in the 1906 earthquake

when 28,000 building fell

and the people said, “When 28,000 buildings fall

do you know how many walls are no longer there?”

All that was left between them

was the gospel salt of their sweat

as the carried each other from the rubble to the street

where each night they carried the piano

to be played by a new refugee.

Some wishes can only be made on the stars’ dust.

I know most of the time my shine

cannot hold a match to my rust.

So ask me about the rain.

I’ll tell you my mother says, “The thing

about wheelchairs is they keep you looking up.”

Says, “Forests may be gorgeous

but there’s nothing more alive than a tree

that learns how to grow in a cemetery.”

So when my grandmother died

I started wearing her thimbles on my fingers

when I’d type out poems,

hoping every key I’d type

would sound like a footstep of someone coming home,

the way my friend came home from Iraq

and named his baby daughter Viva.

We have all fought for our lives

more than we know,

survived our own questions.

How does one grieve a poisoned sea, a bleeding gulf?

can even the moon handle the kind of gravity,

that pull to surrender?

I say science can spit an atom.

But what if Eve could put Adam back together

by reminding him the garden is just a seed

sometimes so small it can fit on the tip of your tongue?

Say, “flint.”

Say, “spark.”

Say this is me hitchhiking with a green thumb,

hoping to grow something in the trust

of someone picking me up

on a day I have fallen for the wreckage.

Remind me

that the most fertile lands were built by the fires of volcanoes.

Plant my feet in the one thing that flowers

when everything else erupts. Usman,

an immigrant from Pakistan,

could not stop saying, “Brother, Brother, Brother,”

to the Jewish man whose hand he held

down ninety-eight flights of stairs

to escape the fall of the Twin Towers.

That is the only hour I can set my heart to.

The moment we realize sometimes

it is the metal in the wind chimes that reminds us

how soft the breeze is.

And maybe my grandmother only believed in Jesus

because she believed He came back

wearing that whip on his back like a halo.

Either way, this world

has picked me enough times for the madness vase

for me to know sanity is not

running from the window when the lightning comes.

It’s turning the thunder into grace,

knowing sometimes the break in your heart

is like the hole in the flute.

Sometimes it’s the place

where the music comes through.

I finally see it

Today is unique. It has never occurred before and it will never be repeated. At midnight it will end, quietly, suddenly, totally. Forever. But the hours between now and then are opportunities with eternal possibilities.

-Charles R. Swindoll

Extend your arms into the future

The best is yet to be. Wise words from Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J. Today was the opening Mass for the 19th Annotation Retreat I will be doing for the next 32 weeks. Below is the second reading, which was quite perfect for the occasion. As I sat there and listened, something deep inside of was very moved and inspired. I'm not really sure what to expect during the next 32 weeks, but I am looking forward to whatever may come and what I may feel. All I can do is keep and open mind and an open heart...let God's grace work in and through me and to trust it.

Have no anxiety at all, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God.  Then the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely,  whatever is gracious, whatever is admirable—if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise—think about these things. Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. Then the God of peace will be with you.

-Philippians 4: 6-9

*Love alone is capable of uniting living beings in such a way as to complete and fulfill them, for it alone takes them and joins them by what is deepest in themselves*

-Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J.