update/psa

Been awhile... Ups and downs, and all is well. Radio show went well; REALLY looking forward to the big show this weekend: the 20th anniversary of the band's first club gig--an acoustic and an electric set at the now-posh club where they first played back then. Looks like we'll be recording the show with multiple tracks, so there'll be a high-quality recording of the event. And my whole family, along with most of my friends, will be in attendance. It even falls on my birthday! This is a significant event for me. Plus (and most important, really), everything is clicking with the music; it feels really together. Can't beat that.

The internet went away today, along with cable--not that I tend to watch TV during the day. I do dink around quite a bit online, however, and as I have been feeling a bit sensitive, this served as an interesting invitation to just dive in and feel, to show up rather than zoning out, as I would have preferred. In this case "showing up" meant reading, and watching a movie about Leonard Cohen. But G was out, working on his laptop from a restaurant with wifi, and somehow just this small break in my routine was all I needed to get cracked open.

I'm reading, among other things, a book kindly sent to me by an internet friend, an autobiographical work by a psychic. There are many ways to experience and practice that aspect of things, I imagine, and I am very very careful to maintain a certain detachment from others' accounts as much as possible, but certain bits of any other intuitive's story--the most spiritual elements--cut straight through to my absolute core no matter what kind of guarded I'm attempting to be. I got lanced thusly a couple of times this afternoon. But it's a good kind of (open, bleeding) wound.

And Leonard Cohen just kills me, too. I remember as a child of perhaps eleven or twelve, hearing his song "Suzanne" on one of my mother's Roberta Flack albums and being utterly arrested by the weight and depth of the words. This, I knew, was no ordinary pop song. In fact, hearing this song might have been the first time I considered Jesus in tangible, immediate, truly spiritual terms. I guess the nuns from my brief CCD [Catholic bible school] experiences did not exactly impart the sweet sadness of spirituality, and certainly not that of Jesus himself. Those teachings felt a bit more like a rat in a cage learning not to push the electrified lever. These words felt so very vast, yet so attentive and subtle:

And Jesus was a sailor when he walked upon the water
And he spent a long time watching from his lonely wooden tower
And when he knew for certain only drowning men could see him
He said, "all men will be sailors, then, until the sea shall free them"
But he himself was broken long before the sky would open
Forsaken, almost human, he sank beneath your wisdom like a stone

Yikes. Roberta Flack had changed sailors to brothers in that line with the quotation--a very seventies dilution--but even thusly adulterated the verse packed a serious wallop. My prepubescent mind reeled, and found a big piece of itself. I didn't understand it, exactly--and I still don't know if I do, or if I even agree with the theology--but I could feel and comprehend these words in a part of myself that was deeper than meaning or theology. And that's how I continue to experience much of Leonard Cohen's work. I don't know if I always agree with the guy's perspective, but the man is paying attention, and my spirit is still utterly seized by his art. And soothed. He sees so much darkness, but he seems to find beauty and light, and hope, everywhere.

And she shows you where to look, among the garbage and the flowers
There are heroes in the seaweed; there are children in the morning
They are leaning out for love, and they will lean that way forever
While Suzanne holds the mirror

I recommend the 2005 tribute concert/documentary film "I'm Your Man," by the way. Look out for Teddy Thompson's heartbreaking "Tonight Will Be Fine." I had a crying jag so intense I frightened the cats after replaying it a few times when the film was over. The song could not be more simple melodically or harmonically, but here its beauty is just transcendent. This guy's singing, and of course the words--the WORDS!--got right in there are jangled my everlovin' guts. It's interesting to me that it's ostensibly about a romantic relationship. I tend to get so bloody BORED by songs about those. But this reminds me of reading James Joyce, in a way. The characters and scenes are on many levels very common and quotidian. Most of us, most of our lives, on their faces, are! Yet in one day in Dublin, or in one love, is contained all the wonder and pain of all the world.

On to the PSA. I have discovered that a very serviceable chocolate sauce can be made by mixing a cocoa powder ("baker's" cocoa) and sugar with a little hot water. I think my proportions of cocoa to sugar are about 3 or 4 to 1 (but I like it super chocolatey and not very sweet). I stir it with a whisk to get out the lumps. You could pour this over ice cream and it would taste a bit like Hershey's Syrup, only better--and it has only three ingredients, one of which is water, and all of which tend to be around in case of chocolate emergency. LOVE IT! I personally just scoop a chocolate or strawberry whipped yogurt into the chocolate sauce bowl, and top it off with crushed granola bars. A healthy sundae! A nutritious one, anyway. And quite yummy. This makes me so happy, I do it every other day or so. Grinny face.