Today’s Best 2009 prompt is: Album of the year
Oh gosh, never ask a musician to make such a choice. How much time do you have? Which genre? For the lyrics, the music, the voices?
I decided to share two of my favorites with you today.
The first one is a re-discovery. I still play CDs in my car. Whenever I hit the road for more than local errands, I grab a stack of CDs from my collection and on this last trip, I listened to James Taylor’s Hourglass. I’d forgotten how much I love that CD. Every song on it is exquisite, provocative and the entire CD is true to Taylor’s mix of loving kindness, consciousness, musicianship and mischievous humor.
The lyrics of the song “Gaia” move me as much today as they did in 1997. I especially love when he sings:
As if you were your own creation
As if you were the chosen nation
And the world around you just a rude and
Dangerous invasion
As per Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary , Gaia is the hypothesis that the living and nonliving components of earth function as a single system.
Lyrics
The sky was light and the land all dark
The sun rose up over central park
I was walking home from work
Gaia
The petal sky and the rosy dawn
The world turning on the burning sun
Sacred wet green one we live on
Gaia
Run run run run said the automobile and we ran
Run for your life take to your heels
Foolish school of fish on wheels
Gaia
Turn away from your animal kind
Try to leave your body just to live in your mind
Leave your cold cruel mother earth behind
Gaia
As if you were your own creation
As if you were the chosen nation
And the world around you just a rude and
Dangerous invasion
Gaia
Someone’s got to stop us now
Save us from us gaia
No one’s gonna stop us now
We thought we ought to walk awhile
So we left that town in a single file
Up and up and up mile after mile after mile
We reached the tree line and I dropped my pack
Sat down on my haunches and I looked back down
Over the mountain
Helpless and speechless and breathless
Gaia
Pray for the forest pray to the tree
Pray for the fish in the deep blue sea
Pray for yourself and for god’s sake
Say one for me
Poor wretched unbeliever
Someone’s got to stop us now
Save us from us gaia
No one’s gonna stop us now
The second CD I want to share with you is Reiki Whale Song by Kamal Engels. I listen to this CD or Reiki Whale Dreaming every night while I do Reiki and then drift off to sleep. I think it is one of my secrets for a good night’s rest. I love to immerse myself in the sounds of water and whales.
I’ve listened to this watching the stars out the window of the back of my VW Camper in campgrounds all over the west. I’ ve listened to it with the light of the full moon on my face. I’ve listened to it in good times and bad, through smiles and tears, at home and in strange bedrooms when I was tossing about deciding where to live after my divorce. I’m listening to it now as I write and it brings me immense peace. It is music of the heart. Whatever your heart feels will be brought to the surface and released to the ocean breezes. Now that’s music.
Here is “Whale Dreaming” from the CD Reiki Whale Song
Please share with me your favorites. I love to discover new music.
Copyright (c) December 2009, Kathy J Loh, All Rights Reserved (the lyrics and music are copyrighted by the artists)
The minute the whale song began, my big dog came into my office as if she had been called. She is currently singing with the whale, as is my spotted dog who cannot walk and so is singing from my bedroom. Isn’t there something in Whale Rider about whale dreams creating Earth?
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Hi Sally – I love that the dogs are responding. My dog used to sit next to me and howl when I practiced singing. Here’s a link for the Maori creation story. It doesn’t mention whales. http://www.indopedia.org/Maori_Creation_Story.html
The movie was wonderful wasn’t it? You have me curious now and I want to see it again. I think there are even some Native American creation stories that include whales. Research time 🙂
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Lovely! Thank you so much for sharing.
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