Angel Dream No. 4 (Tom Petty)

From today's Writer's Almanac:

It's the birthday of Vietnamese monk, writer, and activist Thich Nhat Hanh, born in 1926 in Tha Tien, Vietnam. He became a Buddhist monk when he was 16 years old. During the Vietnam War, he decided that monks shouldn't just stay in monasteries and meditate all day long while a war was going on. So he founded an organization that helped rebuild bombed villages, set up schools and medical centers, and organize agricultural cooperatives. He traveled to the United States to urge the American government to withdraw its troops, and he persuaded Martin Luther King Jr. to publicly oppose the Vietnam War. But both the non-Communist and Communist governments banned him from Vietnam in 1966, and it was just a few years ago, in 2005, that he was finally allowed to return for a visit. Since he was banned from Vietnam, he set up a monastic community in southern France, called Plum Village.

Thich Nhat Hanh has published more than 100 books, books of poetry and Buddhist thought. About 40 of them are in English, and many of those have been best-sellers, including Peace Is Every Step (1991), Call Me by My True Names (1993), and Living Buddha, Living Christ (1995).

P.S. Thanks to Sam Pacetti for the inspiration, and dedication, of today's song... <3

SONG: Angel Dream No. 4 by Tom Petty

BOOK: Thich Nhat Hanh: Essential Writings by Thich Nhat Hanh, Robert Ellsberg (editor)

POEM: Call Me by My True Names by Thich Nhat Hanh

Do not say that I'll depart tomorrow

because even today I still arrive.

Look deeply: I arrive in every second

to be a bud on a spring branch,

to be a tiny bird, with wings still fragile,

learning to sing in my new nest,

to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower,

to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.

I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry,

in order to fear and to hope.

The rhythm of my heart is the birth and

death of all that are alive.

I am the mayfly metamorphosing on the surface of the river,

and I am the bird which, when spring comes, arrives in time

to eat the mayfly.

I am the frog swimming happily in the clear pond,

and I am also the grass-snake who, approaching in silence,

feeds itself on the frog.

I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,

my legs as thin as bamboo sticks,

and I am the arms merchant, selling deadly weapons to

Uganda.

I am the twelve-year-old girl, refugee on a small boat,

who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea

pirate,

and I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and

loving.

I am a member of the politburo, with plenty of power in my

hands,

and I am the man who has to pay his "debt of blood" to, my

people,

dying slowly in a forced labor camp.

My joy is like spring, so warm it makes flowers bloom in all

walks of life.

My pain if like a river of tears, so full it fills the four oceans.

Please call me by my true names,

so I can hear all my cries and laughs at once,

so I can see that my joy and pain are one.

Please call me by my true names,

so I can wake up,

and so the door of my heart can be left open,

the door of compassion.

QUOTE: "My actions are my only true belongings. I cannot escape the consequences of my actions. My actions are the ground upon which I stand." ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

There (Michael Smith)

I am presenting the extremely talented and very dear Sam Pacetti at my concert series this evening - Sam's personal and musical experiences in the last decade have only served to make his music that much more soulful and heartfelt. In the words of Andrew Calhoun:

"Sam Pacetti's first CD, Solitary Travel, was released nearly ten years ago, when he was 22. It got airplay on NPR, Sam was voted best new artist at the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival, everything was in place for a grander success, and... Pacetti disappeared. Well, not if you lived in St. Augustine, Florida, where he performs Monday nights at the Mill Top Tavern, and there was an occasional Southern festival gig. He hung some drywall and did some surfing, but the real journey involves the simple truth that no matter how much the world loves you, if you don't love yourself you have no home. His latest recording [Union, with Gabe Valla] reflects that journey, through loss and rapture and loves too fragile to survive, all the more passionately embraced... stating so elegantly that all we need for love and wonder is already in our hands. Yes, indeed. And welcome home."

Sam does a stunning version of my blog-titled song, and I intend to request it this evening - I made a compilation CD for my husband on our 27 (or 28th) wedding anniversary of love songs... not the typical "moon/spoon/June" variety but more like the "it ain't easy, baby, but it's ours" philosophy of Brian Joseph's Cal's Chevy (also on the mix).

Included too is Johnsmith's Iris Blue, which I've always related to since our anniversary is in September as well, and my favorite flowers are daisies (not roses) - on a related note, John wrote an incredible song for/about Dave Carter, not too long after Dave's death, and I requested it last night. He said he'd recently been performing it as a spoken word piece so as to focus on the lyrics - I told him that, although I'd always liked the melody, I truly thought it was more powerful without (who knew?... :-)

John also shared a very cool story with me - last year he played a house concert series in Lawrence, Kansas and the hosts told him that one of the locals asked if she could come by and visit with John alone before the concert. Turned out it was Elise (Dave Carter's sister), who said she wanted to meet and thank him for the loving tribute to her brother - she gifted John with a beautiful Buddhist bell that had belonged to Dave... and they both cried...

So much live music, so little time - love, in all its diverse and delightful incarnations, abounds...

SONG: There by Michael Smith

BOOK: The Truth About Love: The Highs, the Lows, and How You Can Make It Last Forever by Dr. Patricia Love

POEM: Scraps of Moon by Denise Levertov

Scraps of moon

bobbing discarded on broken water

but sky-moon

complete, transcending

all violation

Here she seems to be talking to herself about

the shape of a life:

Only Once

All which, because it was

flame and song and granted us

joy, we thought we'd do, be, revisit,

turns out to have been what it was

that once, only; every invitation

did not begin

a series, a build-up: the marvelous

did not happen in our lives, our stories

are not drab with its absence: but don't

expect to return for more. Whatever more

there will be will be

unique as those were unique. Try

to acknowledge the next

song in its body-halo of flames as utterly

present, as now or never.

QUOTE: "Infatuation is when you think he's as sexy as Robert Redford, as smart as Henry Kissinger, as noble as Ralph Nader, as funny as Woody Allen, and as athletic as Jimmy Conners. Love is when you realize that he's as sexy as Woody Allen, as smart as Jimmy Connors, as funny as Ralph Nader, as athletic as Henry Kissinger and nothing like Robert Redford - but you'll take him anyway." ~ Judith Viorst

Language or the Kiss (The Indigo Girls)

Still feeling overwhelmed and less verbal than usual - the best cure for that is live music, and I'm headed down to a local coffeehouse to hear the most amazing Sam Pacetti (video above)...

The following appeared in my inbox today - the title is The Music of Language... but I believe the converse is true as well ("and music was my church" indeed... :-)

P.S. It's midnight and I'm just back from seeing Sam - I apparently conjured the song in the video this evening, as it was his first set opener, without any prompting from me - he began the second set with This Shirt, one of my favorite Mary Chapin Carpenter tunes. The remainder of Sam's repertoire was magical, ranging from other eclectic covers (Tom Petty, Greg Brown and Bob Marley) to his stunning originals - plus... he's a guitar wizard with an incredibly captivating voice. Sam feeds my soul, not only with his music but with his spirit as well - I come away from his concerts (and after-show conversations) feeling equally blissed out and regenerated...

Today's DailyOM
November 2, 2007
The Music Of Language
Words Are Energy

When we speak or write, we use the vehicles of words to carry meaning, as well as energy, from ourselves to another person or group of people. We may be speaking to our baby, our boss, or to an audience of 500 people. We may be writing a love letter, a work-related memo, or an entry in our own diary. Whatever the case, each word we speak or write has a life of its own, a vibratory signature that creates waves in the same way that a note of music creates waves. And like musical notes, our words live in communities of other words and change in relation to the words that surround them. When we are conscious of the energy behind our words, we become capable of making beautiful music in the world. If we are unconscious of the power of words, we run the risk of creating a noisy disturbance.

Some of us know this instinctively, while others come to this understanding slowly. Most of us, though, speak without thinking at least some of the time, blurting out our feelings and thoughts without much regard for the words we choose to express them. When we remind ourselves that our words have an impact on the world at the level of energy, we may find within ourselves the desire to be more aware of our use of language.

A fun way to increase our sensitivity to the power of words is to simply make a list of our favorite words and notice the energy they contain. We can write them down and post them where we can see them, or we can speak them aloud, feeling them reverberate in our bodies and in the air around us. This is like learning to consciously play an instrument that we have been playing unconsciously for most of our lives, and the effect can be startling and delightful. As we grow more comfortable and confident playing the instrument of language, we will begin to compose beautiful messages, creating positive energy every time we write or speak.

SONG: Language or the Kiss by The Indigo Girls

BOOK: Musical Languages by Joseph P. Swain

POEM: Prefix: Finding the Measure by Robert Kelly

Finding the measure is finding the mantram,
is finding the moon, as index of measure,
is finding the moon's source;
if that source
is Sun, finding the measure is finding
the natural articulation of ideas.

The organism
of the macrocosm, the organism of language,
the organism of I combine in ceaseless naturing
to propagate a fourth,
the poem,
from their trinity.

Style is death. Finding the measure is finding
a freedom from that death, a way out, a movement
forward.
Finding the measure is finding the
specific music of the hour,
the synchronous
consequence of the motion of the whole world.

QUOTE: "Language is the blood of the soul into which thoughts run and out of which they grow." ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes