Wow! What started on a whim one Sunday night when this workaholic had a fried brain and was disinterested in CNN's special magazine story on "porn" (really, nothing has changed much in thousands of years other than its generalized acceptance and proliferation via the internet. Good for you, porn! Now, if only it would actually serve to honor the value of sex, instead of present a shallow definition..... i.e., sexy, for me, is so much more than the veneer of porno-sheen that seems to be taking the country by Hiltonian storm..... and the pendulum swings.) has turned into a strange commitment, an exercise in writing and creativity that I have actually started setting aside time to do!!!
And, not, today's challenge is not about porn. While I can't say I'm for or against it, (depends on my mood. hahaha. What!? I'm just saying what everybody thinks.) it doesn't mean as much to me as the following!!!.....
Day 26 - A picture of something that means a lot to you
....... I have a bipolar relationship with sleep.
You see, don't hate me for my Aries moon, but I have boundless energy. And when I get excited about a project.... well.... I just can't sleep. Last night I was so excited about something I've discovered, I had to put myself to bed, finally, at 2 am. And then I relied upon my discipline in meditation to get myself to sleep.
And quite honestly, there are only two reasons I really understand WHY I need to sleep as much as possible every day:
1. As a singer, it makes ALL the difference in the world with my voice. I have overcome so pretty nasty vocal nodes and bad habits and am just NOT uncovering some of the habits I developed early on in singing that have really caused mis-health (I cannot quite say dis-ease) in my voice. But that said, it's a sensitive instrument and proper rest makes a BILLION times difference.
But.
Reason Number Two....
2. To sleep, perchance to dream.....
I mean this singularly here, not the way Hamlet meant it... although, that, too.
You see, my dreams are magical, fantastical, vivid, healing. They are not separate from my waking life but like two sides of the mobius strip, they turn out to actually be one continuous highway of life experience.
And I Love Them.
I have long had some amazing dreams. I have serial dreams... I have one -offs that are incredible. I often blog about my dreams because they are amazing adventures. My favorites are the serial dreams about the pirate ship (In one dream life, I am a pirate Queen who, urged by Sting [it's my dream life. Shush.] stopped pirating souls for selling in Tripoli and started healing dolphins.) How that informs my waking [sic] life? a. Sting, in my dreams, gives me lots of advice as a singer and songwriter. b. I have had a number of song ideas and story ideas from these pirate dreams. c. they're AMAZING fun not just for me but to share at dinner parties, etc. I mean, come ON! Pirate Queen!
My favorite dreams are usually about my grandmothers, who have both LONG since passed from this earth. These days they come rarely to my dreams, but sometimes. Always they are guides for me, generally towards wisdom. With my mother's Mother, Grandma Winnick, she guides me also in the direction of FUN.
My friend Rebecca, renowned psychic, told me that whenever I see dimes on the street or randomly anywhere, it's a sign from that Grandmother that she's with me, she's supporting me. Well, I just realized last week, two years after she said that, in conversation with a friend abut the Game Show Wheel of Fortune, that when I was a little girl, Grandma and I used to play Wheel of Fortune and we'd place bets, of course. We'd play for DIMES.
p.s. I never did beat her. She was tough.
One of my all time favorite dreams is about my sister. I had this dream when I was probably about 21, I think....
Laura and I were walking through an endless desert. We were at once in ancient dunes as well as we were in modern times, i.e., we were in timelessness. The sun was high above our heads and before us lay the ebbs and tides of sand in various shades of camel and ecru.
Deep silence, only the resounding ring between our ears, and a strange wind that would pick up from our feet and bend the wave of sand from tidal to valley.
Then, from nowhere, a BOOM and a screech. A shadow just to our right, coming from behind. We turned to look.
A trail of six dragons, connected nose to tail, flew in a line in the sky, at first bending and waving like a squiggle but once they smelled our blood, they became focused as one system. Some were strictly dragons, and some where gryphons. They were not benign creatures. They were headed straight for us, hawk-eyed and fast.
I turned to Laura but suddenly she was far, far away from me. I looked back to the creatures in the sky, hungry for our hearts, and I knew I had to get to her before they did. With all the might I could muster, I ran as fast as I could and just as they were about to devour Laura, I reached her. I threw myself in front of her and threw my arms out wide to my sides. As each dragon hit my heart, he turned into a beautiful man in a suit, and, smiling toward heaven, ascended to the deep blue sky. One, two, three, four, five, six.
Then I awoke.
That is one of my favorite dreams of all time and I remember every moment, every grain of sand, every whisper beneath the earth.
That is why sleep means so much to me, even if it's a discipline for me, even if, at times, it is hard to come by.........
I'll leave you with a few lines from a new song.
Nighttime dreaming, softly we... I awakened from a dream-
to a shade of moonlight drawn on your face.
Gently, your eyes opening.
"Oh, I was just dreaming...
...I was stranded on the beach, yet here on bed within your reach-
somehow I was in both places at once:
The World of Dreams,
an this sweet moment here
you and me.
...And at the sea:
the sea tide was low and the water was warm
like that day last year in Carlsbad- do you recall?
A thousand miles away you were,
and I couldn't get to you,
yet I felt your heart.
...In a flash, you were here:
Your eyes! The light-
Your lips On mine...
...breathing you in me....
...."
Morning dreaming, softly me.
All alone but for the dream,
and a ray of sunlight upon my face.
Gently, my eyes opening-
awakening
from the dream.
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
On Love, and LIVING while you're alive....
Day 24 - A picture of something you wish you could change
Okay...... getting a little personal.... I wrote this morning's journal before I knew what today's challenge was!!!! But it's perfect. Here it is (with a few edits made to protect the.... can't say innocent.... but those who did not sign a disclosure on being my friend! hahahaha.)
I have spent a lot of time considering this man woman relationship thing. A lot of people ask me why I'm STILL SINGLE. Oh my god, I'm an old maid. And for a while this question bugged me, because, really, why am I? Mostly, I cite the need for extreme freedom to run around and do my thing. Guys can be... so... needy. None of the ones I've dated (insert sarcastic laugh here) and since like attracts like, I know I resemble that comment. I mean, let's check out my dating history and we know, my best relationships seem to be the ones that were clandestine, forbidden, secret, boundary crossing.... god. My life is like a Russian novel. And so, since I no longer want "crazy" as a way of life, and since I am a recovered Drama Queen, answer part two about why I'm not married is because I don't know, or haven't known yet, how to get into relationships with men who are creative AND independent AND smart AND fun AND also not possessive and not obsessive and not nuts. So, the following logical answer is: I don't want to be in a relationship. I'd say this is pretty spot on. They take a lot of work and it takes a very strong man to be able to stand next to a very strong woman. And a lot of the time I'm too busy having fun to notice the great guys all around me. So, a combination of rotten luck historically (bad picker), being fiercely independent, and, oh!
The really important one:
not really buying into our cultural concept of "dating," "hanging out," "relationships," "marriage," etc.
It seems like so much of the time, whether you are male or female, straight or gay, it seems to not matter gender or orientation on this one: dating is a series of needs and fears covered over by "getting the other person to like me" whether or not "I actually like them" and then suddenly one or both has been talked into a relationship by the other and no one really is sure it's a good idea, but damnit, I guess it's better than being alone.
Then, there is the Erin style, wait until you meet some crazy amazing prince who sweeps you off your feet and then notice they are a drug cartel leader, not a revolutionary poet. Dang CIA is STILL calling me about that one.
Okay, then there are the inspirational ones. My parents have been together 40 years. My brother and sister in law have been together for, um, ever, I guess, and I see them in love, and then working with each other, and dedicated to each other and their lives together. That's amazing.
But mostly.... mostly..... I see..... a bunch of expectations so high they can never be met based on an idea that has nothing to do with who the person actually is in his or her heart, because..... he or she doesn't actually even know who he or she is.....
Lots of hope and fear.
I am done with fear. I am done with people who hold me back. I am done with ideas that suck me dry. I am done with hope and I am on to faith.
And so, until then......
What I wish I could change, and what I am changing about me, is my relationship to SELF and, specifically, to SELF AS WOMAN. I am changing my attitude about glorious womanhood, so that I may change my relationship to YUMMY MANHOOD.
Interestingly, I spent a little time with an old guy friend yesterday. He's lonely, and I know he'd like girls either for getting laid and maybe more (no judgment, I feel the same way) and.... he has no problem "getting" girls, but does he actually want them the WAY he can get them? I share his dilemma..... but on the opposite side of the gender coin.... apparently, we are Artemis and Apollo here.... he doesn't actually want to get into a relationship for whatever reason, just as I'm not sure I want to either......
And, I think so much of it has to do with how much we, as a society, as a culture, have been perverting and deviating our faith in our masculine and feminine energies...... Just as women are taught to be thinner, to be more perfect, to be the sexiest according to an IDEA outside of self, instead of WITHIN..... These guys just don't believe in their manhood. And why should they? They have not been celebrated for it. They have had to buy into a series of cultural rules and laws that are conflicting and yet stoic patterns and methods of behavior that are mean, unjust, unmanly, fucked up, and so they saw the bullshit but were born into this society just like I was, and, having no tools and no way in and no way out, decided to start drinking or drugging or TV-ing or eating or smoking or work-aholicking or lying or cheating or prolong the intimacy game or cutting off or masking or lying to self or distracting self from the no choice wallowing of modern society--- at the urging of their fellows who were receiving, at least, some relief from the ordeal of being alive--- and suddenly they were sucked into a game of treachery, lies and deceit- against the self- with little chance of freedom.
....Now, they have been given a glimpse of a diamond, and they know they can crawl out of the dirt to grasp that diamond, but the path is full of old regrets and lost chances and pain and sorrow and misery, until they see the opportunity of possibility, the chance at "me" and then.... then........ when they can be okay with the worms and the fungus and the dirt and the muck, be in joy because they be, then they can be men. But how do you say that to a man? You don't.... I don't..... Because guess what?
I'm going through the same thing as a woman.
So, I write this instead..... I celebrate them in moments and instances for being men. I let them take care of me. I let them hold me. I champion them not just as a friend but as a mother, as a lover, as whatever woman figure is needed in this moment. Kwan Yin, Mother Mary.... Lakshmi, Aphrodite, Freya..... Athena, Hera, Maeve.... Durga, Kali...... Venus, Isis... Tara..... I become that with which you need, as you need, to be of service to you, and no with disregard for me, but with the highest integrity of my being, the highest integrity of my soul, for I am a woman, and I know that ONLY against the backdrop of your manhood. i.e., I'm not turning my back on feminism. I know what those women did for me, for us. I would not be writing this today if it weren't for my ladies of history who FOUGHT for this right.
Only, I wish to invite a sort of balancing of the energies into our world. As we begin to see that we need to tend and turn more and more to our mother, earth.... I aspire to practice my own behaviors as such. I wish to BE NATURAL, not mimic nature. Why? Because I'm part of the natural world, too. I'm a monkey, I'm a rose, I'm a river.
And when, in this parceled out, sanitized modern society, when do we truly get to be women, truly receiving our men? And I am not talking about gender roles, I hope we all know I am meaning also the true center of self and energy feminine or masculine, be you man, woman, or something else. I mean, when does feminine TRULY get heard, allowed, received, given to in this society in which we mostly just make jokes about women drivers while emasculating our men? My god. How many more women need to have eating disorders through their dying day? How many more instances of rape and pillage must we pretend are happening to some person OVER THERE? How long will we allow this game to continue until we crumble, a species that could have been? The Holy Grail is right here! Take it. Drink from it. Be here.
Well, for me, the time is now. Done. I was born. I made it onto earth. I'm alive. So I'm here and let's play!
I'm into life. Not my idea of life. Not my philosophy of life. Not any rules or laws "I'd" like to see about life.
But being alive while I'm living.
What would I like to change?
I want for every person, man, woman, child, otherwise (why not!?) To have the freedom to be ALIVE while they are living.
xxoxxoxxoxxoxoxoxoxooxoxoxoxoxooxoxoxoxox
with love of the deepest sort,
Erin
Okay...... getting a little personal.... I wrote this morning's journal before I knew what today's challenge was!!!! But it's perfect. Here it is (with a few edits made to protect the.... can't say innocent.... but those who did not sign a disclosure on being my friend! hahahaha.)
I have spent a lot of time considering this man woman relationship thing. A lot of people ask me why I'm STILL SINGLE. Oh my god, I'm an old maid. And for a while this question bugged me, because, really, why am I? Mostly, I cite the need for extreme freedom to run around and do my thing. Guys can be... so... needy. None of the ones I've dated (insert sarcastic laugh here) and since like attracts like, I know I resemble that comment. I mean, let's check out my dating history and we know, my best relationships seem to be the ones that were clandestine, forbidden, secret, boundary crossing.... god. My life is like a Russian novel. And so, since I no longer want "crazy" as a way of life, and since I am a recovered Drama Queen, answer part two about why I'm not married is because I don't know, or haven't known yet, how to get into relationships with men who are creative AND independent AND smart AND fun AND also not possessive and not obsessive and not nuts. So, the following logical answer is: I don't want to be in a relationship. I'd say this is pretty spot on. They take a lot of work and it takes a very strong man to be able to stand next to a very strong woman. And a lot of the time I'm too busy having fun to notice the great guys all around me. So, a combination of rotten luck historically (bad picker), being fiercely independent, and, oh!
The really important one:
not really buying into our cultural concept of "dating," "hanging out," "relationships," "marriage," etc.
It seems like so much of the time, whether you are male or female, straight or gay, it seems to not matter gender or orientation on this one: dating is a series of needs and fears covered over by "getting the other person to like me" whether or not "I actually like them" and then suddenly one or both has been talked into a relationship by the other and no one really is sure it's a good idea, but damnit, I guess it's better than being alone.
Then, there is the Erin style, wait until you meet some crazy amazing prince who sweeps you off your feet and then notice they are a drug cartel leader, not a revolutionary poet. Dang CIA is STILL calling me about that one.
Okay, then there are the inspirational ones. My parents have been together 40 years. My brother and sister in law have been together for, um, ever, I guess, and I see them in love, and then working with each other, and dedicated to each other and their lives together. That's amazing.
But mostly.... mostly..... I see..... a bunch of expectations so high they can never be met based on an idea that has nothing to do with who the person actually is in his or her heart, because..... he or she doesn't actually even know who he or she is.....
Lots of hope and fear.
I am done with fear. I am done with people who hold me back. I am done with ideas that suck me dry. I am done with hope and I am on to faith.
And so, until then......
What I wish I could change, and what I am changing about me, is my relationship to SELF and, specifically, to SELF AS WOMAN. I am changing my attitude about glorious womanhood, so that I may change my relationship to YUMMY MANHOOD.
Interestingly, I spent a little time with an old guy friend yesterday. He's lonely, and I know he'd like girls either for getting laid and maybe more (no judgment, I feel the same way) and.... he has no problem "getting" girls, but does he actually want them the WAY he can get them? I share his dilemma..... but on the opposite side of the gender coin.... apparently, we are Artemis and Apollo here.... he doesn't actually want to get into a relationship for whatever reason, just as I'm not sure I want to either......
And, I think so much of it has to do with how much we, as a society, as a culture, have been perverting and deviating our faith in our masculine and feminine energies...... Just as women are taught to be thinner, to be more perfect, to be the sexiest according to an IDEA outside of self, instead of WITHIN..... These guys just don't believe in their manhood. And why should they? They have not been celebrated for it. They have had to buy into a series of cultural rules and laws that are conflicting and yet stoic patterns and methods of behavior that are mean, unjust, unmanly, fucked up, and so they saw the bullshit but were born into this society just like I was, and, having no tools and no way in and no way out, decided to start drinking or drugging or TV-ing or eating or smoking or work-aholicking or lying or cheating or prolong the intimacy game or cutting off or masking or lying to self or distracting self from the no choice wallowing of modern society--- at the urging of their fellows who were receiving, at least, some relief from the ordeal of being alive--- and suddenly they were sucked into a game of treachery, lies and deceit- against the self- with little chance of freedom.
....Now, they have been given a glimpse of a diamond, and they know they can crawl out of the dirt to grasp that diamond, but the path is full of old regrets and lost chances and pain and sorrow and misery, until they see the opportunity of possibility, the chance at "me" and then.... then........ when they can be okay with the worms and the fungus and the dirt and the muck, be in joy because they be, then they can be men. But how do you say that to a man? You don't.... I don't..... Because guess what?
I'm going through the same thing as a woman.
So, I write this instead..... I celebrate them in moments and instances for being men. I let them take care of me. I let them hold me. I champion them not just as a friend but as a mother, as a lover, as whatever woman figure is needed in this moment. Kwan Yin, Mother Mary.... Lakshmi, Aphrodite, Freya..... Athena, Hera, Maeve.... Durga, Kali...... Venus, Isis... Tara..... I become that with which you need, as you need, to be of service to you, and no with disregard for me, but with the highest integrity of my being, the highest integrity of my soul, for I am a woman, and I know that ONLY against the backdrop of your manhood. i.e., I'm not turning my back on feminism. I know what those women did for me, for us. I would not be writing this today if it weren't for my ladies of history who FOUGHT for this right.
Only, I wish to invite a sort of balancing of the energies into our world. As we begin to see that we need to tend and turn more and more to our mother, earth.... I aspire to practice my own behaviors as such. I wish to BE NATURAL, not mimic nature. Why? Because I'm part of the natural world, too. I'm a monkey, I'm a rose, I'm a river.
And when, in this parceled out, sanitized modern society, when do we truly get to be women, truly receiving our men? And I am not talking about gender roles, I hope we all know I am meaning also the true center of self and energy feminine or masculine, be you man, woman, or something else. I mean, when does feminine TRULY get heard, allowed, received, given to in this society in which we mostly just make jokes about women drivers while emasculating our men? My god. How many more women need to have eating disorders through their dying day? How many more instances of rape and pillage must we pretend are happening to some person OVER THERE? How long will we allow this game to continue until we crumble, a species that could have been? The Holy Grail is right here! Take it. Drink from it. Be here.
Well, for me, the time is now. Done. I was born. I made it onto earth. I'm alive. So I'm here and let's play!
I'm into life. Not my idea of life. Not my philosophy of life. Not any rules or laws "I'd" like to see about life.
But being alive while I'm living.
What would I like to change?
I want for every person, man, woman, child, otherwise (why not!?) To have the freedom to be ALIVE while they are living.
xxoxxoxxoxxoxoxoxoxooxoxoxoxoxooxoxoxoxox
with love of the deepest sort,
Erin
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
» No one is going to play Elizabeth Taylor, but Elizabeth Taylor herself.
Liz Taylor died .... and at first, reading her bio, I was so jealous. I always wanted to move here when I was a little girl. I wanted to be a child movie star who moved into becoming a screen icon. Look, I might as well admit it. I'm a grown up woman now, but it took me years to find the courage to truly begin following my dreams and heart. And when I was little, my parents and family lovingly thought that I was just being a kid with a kid's fantasies. Of course these dreams of being an artist would pass. Of course they would. Right?
Nope.
Flash forward to high school, and I wanted to be a performer. I was offered scholarships to NYU and USC. I was ready to go. And what happened? I chickened out.
Oh, I went to a very, very fine school. And then another and another and another, always choosing majors that were one or two steps away from what I actually wanted. I dropped out, joined a rock band, went to massage school. EVERYTHING BUT my dreams: I wanted to be a singing Liz Taylor. I wanted to be Bette Midler an Lily Tomlin an Barbra. mostly I wanted to be Barbra because she also wrote and directed her own movies. But I kept choosing something one step away....
And then I started getting bold. I started writing my own plays, directing my own films, touring with my own music. I had finally started stepping into my own life. And, like any good artist human person, famous or not, I began finding fulfillment, followed by fear, followed by desire, followed by action or non action in response to fear, followed by fulfillment and let down and.... the cycle of creation: creation, maintenance, destruction. The circle of life.
And travel, and love, and it all entered my life as an artist.... just like, if I had been a teacher, or a minister, or a chiropractor.... whether or not it would have been totally expressed to the public, it would have informed that life.
Well, flash forward years later, I am pursuing my dreams whole-heartedly. I don't care if I'm famous or not famous. I love my life and I use my abilities to be of service to the world around me. But I still sometimes pine... I pine.... and then I remind myself that I have an amazing life I love, and that all artists become dissatisfied because it is part of being an artist. You can always make the line more poetic, the note more pure, and then there are those times the world goes white and you're soaring. And THAT is what my life is all about....
THAT
And
SERVICE.
So back to Liz Taylor.
I love her Piscean ways. I have long been a fan of hers, not just for her work as an actress who had many men (so very Pisces) but also for her courage in standing up to a world full of opinions that may or may not have been appropriate, true, loving or correct. She stood up and did activist work for AIDS... she worked for many humanitarian efforts... she defended her friends in a time of mass hysteria and confusion an spoke "her" truth about it. (Michael Jackson.)
And this morning I began reading an article about her final tweets:
Here are a flurry from July 22:
» Every breath you take today should be with someone else in mind. I love you.
» Because then it becomes about yourself...which is wrong. Giving is to give to God. Helping is to help others.
» That is the thing that will give back to you all the rewards that there are. Don't do it for yourself, because then it becomes selfish.
» Give. Remember always to give. That is the thing that will make you grow.
» You are who you are. All you can do in this world is help others to be who they are and better themselves and those around them.
» Never let yourself think beyond your means...mental, emotional or any otherwise.
» I would like to add something to my earlier tweet. Always keep love and humility in your heart.
» Hold your horses world. I've been hearing all kinds of rumours about someone being cast to play me in a film about Richard and myself.
» No one is going to play Elizabeth Taylor, but Elizabeth Taylor herself.
» Not at least until I'm dead, and at the moment I'm having too much fun being alive...and I plan on staying that way. Happiness to all.
ALL IN ONE DAY!?!?!?
I like it also because she reminds me of who IIIII am, then. Or, rather, who I aspire to be. A woman who, no matter what, lives her life to the fullest with a goal of helping others toward happiness and joy.... bliss...
Of course, she has just died, so we are talking about the glory and the beauty...... as we should. We should more often focus on the positive, I believe.....To the end, she was a woman of service. I find it so amazing. And inspiring to me to want to continue my life committing acts of kindness every time possible...
Nope.
Flash forward to high school, and I wanted to be a performer. I was offered scholarships to NYU and USC. I was ready to go. And what happened? I chickened out.
Oh, I went to a very, very fine school. And then another and another and another, always choosing majors that were one or two steps away from what I actually wanted. I dropped out, joined a rock band, went to massage school. EVERYTHING BUT my dreams: I wanted to be a singing Liz Taylor. I wanted to be Bette Midler an Lily Tomlin an Barbra. mostly I wanted to be Barbra because she also wrote and directed her own movies. But I kept choosing something one step away....
And then I started getting bold. I started writing my own plays, directing my own films, touring with my own music. I had finally started stepping into my own life. And, like any good artist human person, famous or not, I began finding fulfillment, followed by fear, followed by desire, followed by action or non action in response to fear, followed by fulfillment and let down and.... the cycle of creation: creation, maintenance, destruction. The circle of life.
And travel, and love, and it all entered my life as an artist.... just like, if I had been a teacher, or a minister, or a chiropractor.... whether or not it would have been totally expressed to the public, it would have informed that life.
Well, flash forward years later, I am pursuing my dreams whole-heartedly. I don't care if I'm famous or not famous. I love my life and I use my abilities to be of service to the world around me. But I still sometimes pine... I pine.... and then I remind myself that I have an amazing life I love, and that all artists become dissatisfied because it is part of being an artist. You can always make the line more poetic, the note more pure, and then there are those times the world goes white and you're soaring. And THAT is what my life is all about....
THAT
And
SERVICE.
So back to Liz Taylor.
I love her Piscean ways. I have long been a fan of hers, not just for her work as an actress who had many men (so very Pisces) but also for her courage in standing up to a world full of opinions that may or may not have been appropriate, true, loving or correct. She stood up and did activist work for AIDS... she worked for many humanitarian efforts... she defended her friends in a time of mass hysteria and confusion an spoke "her" truth about it. (Michael Jackson.)
And this morning I began reading an article about her final tweets:
Here are a flurry from July 22:
» Every breath you take today should be with someone else in mind. I love you.
» Because then it becomes about yourself...which is wrong. Giving is to give to God. Helping is to help others.
» That is the thing that will give back to you all the rewards that there are. Don't do it for yourself, because then it becomes selfish.
» Give. Remember always to give. That is the thing that will make you grow.
» You are who you are. All you can do in this world is help others to be who they are and better themselves and those around them.
» Never let yourself think beyond your means...mental, emotional or any otherwise.
» I would like to add something to my earlier tweet. Always keep love and humility in your heart.
» Hold your horses world. I've been hearing all kinds of rumours about someone being cast to play me in a film about Richard and myself.
» No one is going to play Elizabeth Taylor, but Elizabeth Taylor herself.
» Not at least until I'm dead, and at the moment I'm having too much fun being alive...and I plan on staying that way. Happiness to all.
ALL IN ONE DAY!?!?!?
I like it also because she reminds me of who IIIII am, then. Or, rather, who I aspire to be. A woman who, no matter what, lives her life to the fullest with a goal of helping others toward happiness and joy.... bliss...
Of course, she has just died, so we are talking about the glory and the beauty...... as we should. We should more often focus on the positive, I believe.....To the end, she was a woman of service. I find it so amazing. And inspiring to me to want to continue my life committing acts of kindness every time possible...
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
by way of the phoenix
Recently.... possibly always.....
Let's face it. I'm doing a one woman show here in Los Angeles that I will tour around the country and for which I am writing a companion book about this-
this thing that has made a huge impact on my life....
http://www.facebook.com/note.php?created&¬e_id=10150464534310122#!/notes/erin-elizabeth-muir/thirty-day-challenge-day-17/10150464534310122
What has truly made the hugest impact on my life?
For what have I traveled the mountains and skies and seas, in search of, in escape of, in ignorance of, in hopes of? Running away from, forgetting that our globe, at this time, is, well, a globe, so I just come back to the beginning time and time again?
And in what have I finally begun discovering my own secret true self?
But I grow old.... I grow old....
You see, I am beginning to see so much deeper (than all roses, yes, and than my own ideas, and than my own experiences that drop me even deeper through the tectonic shifting of human magnetic reverberation expanding heart energy throughout each others' worlds and the intracellular response and the outer waves of recognition of something so much more than all that I just implied suggested incepted in a run on poetic sentence that to some makes no sense but to Joyce and the crow and the seed are obvious no words words....)
We have just gotten it wrong for so long
but not because the opposite of what we
(me) (I) (you?)
have been doing is right.
But because we have been using the mask to indicate the emotion instead of
allowing
something
more powerful than
that to take us
and not in a way like what we mean in the 20th century addicted way
but by way of the phoenix.
You see, I can only speak in poetry and images to tell you all what I want to say!
Confounding, this language,
exciting, this puzzle.
My teacher Candace says that the greatest love stories, the true true true truest love stories, in THIS world, THIS world NOW, almost never happen because the stakes are too high.
I see that. I see where I have blown things with my own stakes.
But I forgive myself, because, you see, I'm still standing, and I am still here, Erin with her heart, with her love, with her offerings.
And, well, the funny parts are all in my show, and a soon to come accompanying book. And this 30 day challenge is not for me to reveal your own love story, or mine, or where it has been amazing and worked, and where it has not.... I have no wisdom to offer other than my own experiences and observations. But I have my own revelation...... that....
....the idea of "THE ONE"
is so much more different than what we thought it would be.....
And for me, it is not about this idea of THE ONE. It is the act of loving in and of itself that is the gift. And true love applies to everybody, it does, it does.
I offer you a few suggestions......
And an invitation to your own heart.
And a love deeper than your ideas of romance.
And a life greater than you ever dreamed possible.
And I wish you much, much more than luck.
I wish you Life.
I love you.
Let's face it. I'm doing a one woman show here in Los Angeles that I will tour around the country and for which I am writing a companion book about this-
this thing that has made a huge impact on my life....
http://www.facebook.com/note.php?created&¬e_id=10150464534310122#!/notes/erin-elizabeth-muir/thirty-day-challenge-day-17/10150464534310122
What has truly made the hugest impact on my life?
For what have I traveled the mountains and skies and seas, in search of, in escape of, in ignorance of, in hopes of? Running away from, forgetting that our globe, at this time, is, well, a globe, so I just come back to the beginning time and time again?
And in what have I finally begun discovering my own secret true self?
But I grow old.... I grow old....
You see, I am beginning to see so much deeper (than all roses, yes, and than my own ideas, and than my own experiences that drop me even deeper through the tectonic shifting of human magnetic reverberation expanding heart energy throughout each others' worlds and the intracellular response and the outer waves of recognition of something so much more than all that I just implied suggested incepted in a run on poetic sentence that to some makes no sense but to Joyce and the crow and the seed are obvious no words words....)
We have just gotten it wrong for so long
but not because the opposite of what we
(me) (I) (you?)
have been doing is right.
But because we have been using the mask to indicate the emotion instead of
allowing
something
more powerful than
that to take us
and not in a way like what we mean in the 20th century addicted way
but by way of the phoenix.
You see, I can only speak in poetry and images to tell you all what I want to say!
Confounding, this language,
exciting, this puzzle.
My teacher Candace says that the greatest love stories, the true true true truest love stories, in THIS world, THIS world NOW, almost never happen because the stakes are too high.
I see that. I see where I have blown things with my own stakes.
But I forgive myself, because, you see, I'm still standing, and I am still here, Erin with her heart, with her love, with her offerings.
And, well, the funny parts are all in my show, and a soon to come accompanying book. And this 30 day challenge is not for me to reveal your own love story, or mine, or where it has been amazing and worked, and where it has not.... I have no wisdom to offer other than my own experiences and observations. But I have my own revelation...... that....
....the idea of "THE ONE"
is so much more different than what we thought it would be.....
And for me, it is not about this idea of THE ONE. It is the act of loving in and of itself that is the gift. And true love applies to everybody, it does, it does.
I offer you a few suggestions......
And an invitation to your own heart.
And a love deeper than your ideas of romance.
And a life greater than you ever dreamed possible.
And I wish you much, much more than luck.
I wish you Life.
I love you.
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Magicians Do Not Exist and Comedy is No Laughing Matter
Magicians Do Not Exist
and
Comedy is No Laughing Matter
Last night, I went with my friend Alison to see L'Illusionniste (The Illusionist) at the Los Feliz 3 movie theater. This was made by the people who did "The Triplets of Belleville." I LOVE this particular aesthetic, and so I was so excited when Alison said she'd go see the film with me.
It was a rainy night here in the city of Angels. I love when it rains in LA, the city takes on, for me, a more cautious, thoughtful tone. No one knows how to drive in the rain or get wet, it seems, and so the poetry rises up from the streets as the lights shine down upon the pools of water where once there were potholes and cracks from an ever churning city of transience.
Vermont and the Los Feliz neighborhood is an area of town I LOVE when it rains because it becomes like New York, or like Uptown in my hometown city of Minneapolis: artsy, urban in a strange bohemian sophistique, almost literary.
We got there so early (Alison's influence, trust me, not mine!! LOL) and bought our tickets. They wouldn't let us hang inside the theater so we walked across to Fred 62 for a cappucino and cup of coffee, (me and Alison, respectively). There was a CUTE guy sitting at the other end of the counter eating soup. He looked like an ex-boyfriend of mine and I just quietly checked in for a moment to make sure it wasn't him. I don't think it was, but he certainly was listening to everything Alison and I were saying. Isn't it interesting how that amends your speech? Like, I knew he was listening and I continued my conversation with A and yet I sort of amended my own speech- why? I didn't even know this person and would probably never see him again, but he reminded me of someone that I know and so....
Well.
We walked back to catch our movie and entered the sweet little theater on the left. I love this little movie theater where they have a curtain they pull up and down like the gathers of a petticoat. The cute guy from Fred 62 was sitting just in front of me. I sat in the one strange aisle that darts across the entire theater (almost) in the middle and therefore sat in the very best seat in the house, halfway back (there are only about 20 rows) and smack dab in the center.
As the film began, a family consisting of about 6 children ran in, shouting "Maman! Maman!" They couldn't decide if they would sit way up front or way in back, and after testing all the seats decided upon way in front.
"COMEDY IS NO LAUGHING MATTER."
My acting coach, Candace, is the daughter of one of the American Comedic geniuses, Phil Silvers. He coined that phrase, and the more I work with her and study with her, the more deeply I see the truth of that statement. Now, first of all, I am a comedic actress, and I am performing a one woman comedic cabaret about my love life. I decided to do this because whenever I tell people about my dating experiences and love life, they laugh and laugh and laugh! The more painful the experience for me, the more deeply people laugh and must think I'm kidding. In all honesty, I'm funniest when I am not trying but am merely being my sensitive little melancholy self. yes, I do have a very positive attitude, but it is a muscle i have developed and continue to develop to overcome my shyness, my nerdiness, my awkwardness, my sorrow. It's like running, for me. I don't actually like it until after I have done it, but I know what it does for me, and so I keep, well, trying, anyway.
So I recall once watching "The Pink Panther" at the Aero in Santa Monica with Alison and our mutual friend Chris. Everyone howled and HOWLED at Peter Sellers and his antics, but all I could see was how desperately he longed to hold his wife, make love to her, have her return his love in truth and reality instead of in presentation and lies and fakeness, and the pain of that caused him to cover with oafishness. I saw that CLEARLY. I suggested it to someone after the fact and they said, "No! He's just being funny." But I saw it.
A TRIBUTE TO JACQUES TATI
The film, L'Illusionniste,is based on a screenplay that the French actor and comedic great, Jacques Tati, wrote, apparently intending it to be a love letter from father to daughter.The film becomes increasingly self-referential (as it should), even featuring a live action sequence from "Mon Oncle." Wonderful. I love that sort of thing, and, one thing I believe about animators (having once dated one for a few years) is that they LOVE to hide more and more and more and more secrets and references and homages in everything they do. I bet I could see this film time and time again and just begin to see the world of the filmmakers.
Now.
About L'ILLUSIONNISTE.
This film would have broken my heart
if it weren't already broken.
Me heart, yes, it has been
Broken open-
but broken.
Thank god because the piercing sadness
set against the whimsy and beauty of the film-
a series of stunning moments (potentially family-phagic rabbit stew, useless clowns committing suicide, alcoholic ventriloquists left rotting in alley-ways after devoting their lives to a dying art)-
I watched the film and instead of slinking slowly into my usual Piscean wallow over the sorrow and pain that the world of the losing live in,
I looked instead for the life and the recovery and the forward movement,
so as to not render the lives of the dying pointless,
but meaningful.
In the tale, the magician and the performers of his era- vaudeville performers, acrobats, ventriloquists, clowns- are being replaced by pop singers and rock bands and TVs and Radios (it is set in the 1950s and 60s in France and Scotland......) He is forced to find work performing in remote villages for small crowds and in one small village in Scotland, he meets a simple village girl who is dazed by his magic. He knows they are mere sleight of hand tricks, but she begins to believe that he can magically create anything and make all her dreams come true. So, without asking, she follows him to Edinburgh and he runs himself into the ground continuing to try and create magic for her as her desires grow more and more worldly. At the same time, she is blossoming into womanhood and is beginning to notice young men her own age. Of course.....
Her innocence dooms the Illusionist, wounds him at the heart, when her actions seem to run right over his tenderness. At the same time, I began to see how her unknowing, pigheaded demands for more things, more, more..... actually save him from the fate of so many of his fellow performers of the dying ilk. While his peers are drinking themselves to death, he is having to reinvent himself and move with the energy of the world instead of insist that it should be different than it is.
Of course, eventually, she grows into a woman, and naturally, falls in love with a young man who can give her the next portion of her life.
And so, the magician has nothing left to give her, but his truth.
SPOILER
SPOILER
SPOILER
He leaves her, in secret, and leaves Edinburgh, to return to Paris (one assumes), having renounced all tools of his trade- his top hat, his scarves, and even setting his rabbit free- and leaves her with the last of his cash and a cookbook and some trinkets and a note that says, simply,
"Magicians Do Not Exist."
Neither do we, do we?
No, not really.
I suppose magicians do exist, but only in the moment of the act of committing magic.
I am only a singer when I am singing.
I am only a human being, when I am being.
Eventually, my body will die, and my ashes scattered, and those who remember me, will keep their idea of me and the energy of Erin alive, until eventually, they no longer need it..... and I was just some long forgotten memory of an energy that once lived, and loved, and blogged, and drank coffee, and got teary-eyed over aging vaudeville performers as I sat in a dark theater one night as the rain beat hard against the brick and mortar of a town built on fault lines, disrupted by earthquakes, over a planet filled with lava, circling some ball of fire in the sky, twisting and turning and spinning throughout some idea I might have and energy may carry of a universe of countless countless stars falling like my tears.
And even the legends, eventually, die out.
And although I am sad that the Magician ceased to exist as a magician-
For I do not believe him, that MAGICIANS DO NOT EXIST
For right now, right now, right here, right now,
I EXIST
I AM
I CRIED
I AM
SAID I.
But only in the moment.
Only in the moment.
The beauty- deep deep beauty-
is that he did not hold on to his idea of
I AM.
Rather than take it personally,
(as he watched his friend the ventriloquist take it personally, whither and die without his dummy, drunk on the street, forgotten, eventually, even by the Illusionist himself....)
instead, he
lets life continue
tells the truth
and takes the journey to some next step in his life.
As he rides the train, and still remembers his habits- contemplating performing a small bit of magic so as to charm a child, but then deciding not to-
there is a continuing glimpse at the beauty
of the sun rise and set over a lush earth, alive with movement,
and he settles into himself, heartbroken, but having lived.
And through the city and over the hills,
the wind sweeps away the debris.
Let it sweep away your pain, and your tears, and let the sun find you fresh and full of life, no matter who or where or what you are in this moment.
and
Comedy is No Laughing Matter
Last night, I went with my friend Alison to see L'Illusionniste (The Illusionist) at the Los Feliz 3 movie theater. This was made by the people who did "The Triplets of Belleville." I LOVE this particular aesthetic, and so I was so excited when Alison said she'd go see the film with me.
It was a rainy night here in the city of Angels. I love when it rains in LA, the city takes on, for me, a more cautious, thoughtful tone. No one knows how to drive in the rain or get wet, it seems, and so the poetry rises up from the streets as the lights shine down upon the pools of water where once there were potholes and cracks from an ever churning city of transience.
Vermont and the Los Feliz neighborhood is an area of town I LOVE when it rains because it becomes like New York, or like Uptown in my hometown city of Minneapolis: artsy, urban in a strange bohemian sophistique, almost literary.
We got there so early (Alison's influence, trust me, not mine!! LOL) and bought our tickets. They wouldn't let us hang inside the theater so we walked across to Fred 62 for a cappucino and cup of coffee, (me and Alison, respectively). There was a CUTE guy sitting at the other end of the counter eating soup. He looked like an ex-boyfriend of mine and I just quietly checked in for a moment to make sure it wasn't him. I don't think it was, but he certainly was listening to everything Alison and I were saying. Isn't it interesting how that amends your speech? Like, I knew he was listening and I continued my conversation with A and yet I sort of amended my own speech- why? I didn't even know this person and would probably never see him again, but he reminded me of someone that I know and so....
Well.
We walked back to catch our movie and entered the sweet little theater on the left. I love this little movie theater where they have a curtain they pull up and down like the gathers of a petticoat. The cute guy from Fred 62 was sitting just in front of me. I sat in the one strange aisle that darts across the entire theater (almost) in the middle and therefore sat in the very best seat in the house, halfway back (there are only about 20 rows) and smack dab in the center.
As the film began, a family consisting of about 6 children ran in, shouting "Maman! Maman!" They couldn't decide if they would sit way up front or way in back, and after testing all the seats decided upon way in front.
"COMEDY IS NO LAUGHING MATTER."
My acting coach, Candace, is the daughter of one of the American Comedic geniuses, Phil Silvers. He coined that phrase, and the more I work with her and study with her, the more deeply I see the truth of that statement. Now, first of all, I am a comedic actress, and I am performing a one woman comedic cabaret about my love life. I decided to do this because whenever I tell people about my dating experiences and love life, they laugh and laugh and laugh! The more painful the experience for me, the more deeply people laugh and must think I'm kidding. In all honesty, I'm funniest when I am not trying but am merely being my sensitive little melancholy self. yes, I do have a very positive attitude, but it is a muscle i have developed and continue to develop to overcome my shyness, my nerdiness, my awkwardness, my sorrow. It's like running, for me. I don't actually like it until after I have done it, but I know what it does for me, and so I keep, well, trying, anyway.
So I recall once watching "The Pink Panther" at the Aero in Santa Monica with Alison and our mutual friend Chris. Everyone howled and HOWLED at Peter Sellers and his antics, but all I could see was how desperately he longed to hold his wife, make love to her, have her return his love in truth and reality instead of in presentation and lies and fakeness, and the pain of that caused him to cover with oafishness. I saw that CLEARLY. I suggested it to someone after the fact and they said, "No! He's just being funny." But I saw it.
A TRIBUTE TO JACQUES TATI
The film, L'Illusionniste,is based on a screenplay that the French actor and comedic great, Jacques Tati, wrote, apparently intending it to be a love letter from father to daughter.The film becomes increasingly self-referential (as it should), even featuring a live action sequence from "Mon Oncle." Wonderful. I love that sort of thing, and, one thing I believe about animators (having once dated one for a few years) is that they LOVE to hide more and more and more and more secrets and references and homages in everything they do. I bet I could see this film time and time again and just begin to see the world of the filmmakers.
Now.
About L'ILLUSIONNISTE.
This film would have broken my heart
if it weren't already broken.
Me heart, yes, it has been
Broken open-
but broken.
Thank god because the piercing sadness
set against the whimsy and beauty of the film-
a series of stunning moments (potentially family-phagic rabbit stew, useless clowns committing suicide, alcoholic ventriloquists left rotting in alley-ways after devoting their lives to a dying art)-
I watched the film and instead of slinking slowly into my usual Piscean wallow over the sorrow and pain that the world of the losing live in,
I looked instead for the life and the recovery and the forward movement,
so as to not render the lives of the dying pointless,
but meaningful.
In the tale, the magician and the performers of his era- vaudeville performers, acrobats, ventriloquists, clowns- are being replaced by pop singers and rock bands and TVs and Radios (it is set in the 1950s and 60s in France and Scotland......) He is forced to find work performing in remote villages for small crowds and in one small village in Scotland, he meets a simple village girl who is dazed by his magic. He knows they are mere sleight of hand tricks, but she begins to believe that he can magically create anything and make all her dreams come true. So, without asking, she follows him to Edinburgh and he runs himself into the ground continuing to try and create magic for her as her desires grow more and more worldly. At the same time, she is blossoming into womanhood and is beginning to notice young men her own age. Of course.....
Her innocence dooms the Illusionist, wounds him at the heart, when her actions seem to run right over his tenderness. At the same time, I began to see how her unknowing, pigheaded demands for more things, more, more..... actually save him from the fate of so many of his fellow performers of the dying ilk. While his peers are drinking themselves to death, he is having to reinvent himself and move with the energy of the world instead of insist that it should be different than it is.
Of course, eventually, she grows into a woman, and naturally, falls in love with a young man who can give her the next portion of her life.
And so, the magician has nothing left to give her, but his truth.
SPOILER
SPOILER
SPOILER
He leaves her, in secret, and leaves Edinburgh, to return to Paris (one assumes), having renounced all tools of his trade- his top hat, his scarves, and even setting his rabbit free- and leaves her with the last of his cash and a cookbook and some trinkets and a note that says, simply,
"Magicians Do Not Exist."
Neither do we, do we?
No, not really.
I suppose magicians do exist, but only in the moment of the act of committing magic.
I am only a singer when I am singing.
I am only a human being, when I am being.
Eventually, my body will die, and my ashes scattered, and those who remember me, will keep their idea of me and the energy of Erin alive, until eventually, they no longer need it..... and I was just some long forgotten memory of an energy that once lived, and loved, and blogged, and drank coffee, and got teary-eyed over aging vaudeville performers as I sat in a dark theater one night as the rain beat hard against the brick and mortar of a town built on fault lines, disrupted by earthquakes, over a planet filled with lava, circling some ball of fire in the sky, twisting and turning and spinning throughout some idea I might have and energy may carry of a universe of countless countless stars falling like my tears.
And even the legends, eventually, die out.
And although I am sad that the Magician ceased to exist as a magician-
For I do not believe him, that MAGICIANS DO NOT EXIST
For right now, right now, right here, right now,
I EXIST
I AM
I CRIED
I AM
SAID I.
But only in the moment.
Only in the moment.
The beauty- deep deep beauty-
is that he did not hold on to his idea of
I AM.
Rather than take it personally,
(as he watched his friend the ventriloquist take it personally, whither and die without his dummy, drunk on the street, forgotten, eventually, even by the Illusionist himself....)
instead, he
lets life continue
tells the truth
and takes the journey to some next step in his life.
As he rides the train, and still remembers his habits- contemplating performing a small bit of magic so as to charm a child, but then deciding not to-
there is a continuing glimpse at the beauty
of the sun rise and set over a lush earth, alive with movement,
and he settles into himself, heartbroken, but having lived.
And through the city and over the hills,
the wind sweeps away the debris.
Let it sweep away your pain, and your tears, and let the sun find you fresh and full of life, no matter who or where or what you are in this moment.
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Beyond the Roots
Beyond the Roots
I gratefully attended a killer event last night. The music was. Yes. My favorite FAVORITE was Chaka Khan. Whatta voice.
I also had the pleasure of observing both self and others in the Hollywood setting.
I love my city of angels, and I love my Hollywood, but damn. We can be full of shit.
So this morning when I awakened (late) (and finally, thanks to Liz for calling me to get my sleepy head roused from bed!) I was writing morning pages about it and it turned into this song:
Parading, and masquerading,
as a guru and an angel
but you ain't got no-
no you ain't got no-
peace in your heart.
Flying and multoplying
all over this girl
oozing honey
But you got flies babe
in your stream of words
you pour down on me.
I don't see everything either
But I see you're a wheeler dealer
And I got big compassion
For whatever
led you
to become
the jive talker
you are today
it's okay...
Oh, oh, oh....
Hiding and colliding
the tears you keep just
behind your snake eyes
you're made of so much
more than your words
and yet you pay the game
But I don't buy it
So I while I tried it
I need a man who opens up his heart
Wide as the sky
For that man
I would try
anything-
But you don't really know what I mean....
I don't see everything either
But I see you're a wheeler dealer
And I got big compassion
For whatever
led you
to become
the jive talker
you are today
it's okay...
I love you!
Just in my way.
Hey...
It's okay.
Oh, oh, oh....
I gratefully attended a killer event last night. The music was. Yes. My favorite FAVORITE was Chaka Khan. Whatta voice.
I also had the pleasure of observing both self and others in the Hollywood setting.
I love my city of angels, and I love my Hollywood, but damn. We can be full of shit.
So this morning when I awakened (late) (and finally, thanks to Liz for calling me to get my sleepy head roused from bed!) I was writing morning pages about it and it turned into this song:
Parading, and masquerading,
as a guru and an angel
but you ain't got no-
no you ain't got no-
peace in your heart.
Flying and multoplying
all over this girl
oozing honey
But you got flies babe
in your stream of words
you pour down on me.
I don't see everything either
But I see you're a wheeler dealer
And I got big compassion
For whatever
led you
to become
the jive talker
you are today
it's okay...
Oh, oh, oh....
Hiding and colliding
the tears you keep just
behind your snake eyes
you're made of so much
more than your words
and yet you pay the game
But I don't buy it
So I while I tried it
I need a man who opens up his heart
Wide as the sky
For that man
I would try
anything-
But you don't really know what I mean....
I don't see everything either
But I see you're a wheeler dealer
And I got big compassion
For whatever
led you
to become
the jive talker
you are today
it's okay...
I love you!
Just in my way.
Hey...
It's okay.
Oh, oh, oh....
Friday, January 28, 2011
UNDER THE DOGHOUSE
http://underthedoghouse.com/?p=135
New blogs will be coming soon. I've been busy writing a one woman show, singing, working with my acting and vocal coaches here in Los Angeles, getting ready for album 2, and today I shot for this fun new web series, UNDER THE DOGHOUSE! Check out their website HERE:
http://underthedoghouse.com/?p=135
New blogs will be coming soon. I've been busy writing a one woman show, singing, working with my acting and vocal coaches here in Los Angeles, getting ready for album 2, and today I shot for this fun new web series, UNDER THE DOGHOUSE! Check out their website HERE:
http://underthedoghouse.com/?p=135
Sunday, January 2, 2011
Check out this video from my recent video shoot!
http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=1695003727816&bcode=DAXnl
Check out this video from my recent video shoot!
Check out this video from my recent video shoot!
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THE USUAL (An abstract sound meets iambic pentameter work)
The Usual The stink. The plink and clink, so rinky-dink, Our winkless cries went down the kitch’n sink. Oh, strum und drang. D’you k...
-
The Usual The stink. The plink and clink, so rinky-dink, Our winkless cries went down the kitch’n sink. Oh, strum und drang. D’you k...
-
A brief pause on writing about Henry to let you all know that.... I am so excited that I can finally announce this! Last summer I had a majo...



