Category: Music

Thoughts, Words and Actions

In my last post I gave you a glimpse of how I manage my life. I didn’t quite describe it as “life management,” but you get it.

So if life is a composition, then what are the notes?

Thoughts, words and actions are the notes. They are the power in the music. Thoughts, words and actions will determine the beauty or the ugliness of the composition. Even more importantly, the hearer will be influenced. Daunting.

I’m always floored when I think of how many people manage life by accident. The jumping from thing to thing, just to land in a place I don’t recognize doesn’t appeal to me. I want to make deposits into eternity.

Considering that more than a few people have seen me as a man from mars, for putting so much emphasis on the composition, explains a lot.

I’ve made some mistakes with my choice of notes. I sometimes tried to play a dance song, when I should have played a ballad. I sometimes had the volume too loud, when a soft melody would have sufficed. Just the same, I keep practicing. I keep practicing because I want my life to sound something like this:

The Pass

Lyrics for your Friday.

The Pass

Proud swagger out of the school yard
Waiting for the world’s applause
Rebel without a conscience
Martyr without a causeStatic on your frequency
Electrical storm in your veins
Raging at unreachable glory
Straining at invisible chains

And now you’re trembling on a rocky ledge
Staring down into a heartless sea
Can’t face life on a razor’s edge
Nothing’s what you thought it would be

All of us get lost in the darkness
Dreamers learn to steer by the stars
All of us do time in the gutter
Dreamers turn to look at the cars
Turn around and turn around and turn around
Turn around and walk the razor’s edge
Don’t turn your back
And slam the door on me

It’s not as if this barricade
Blocks the only road
It’s not as if you’re all alone
In wanting to explode

Someone set a bad example
Made surrender seem all right
The act of a noble warrior
Who lost the will to fight

And now you’re trembling on a rocky ledge
Staring down into a heartless sea
Done with life on a razor’s edge
Nothing’s what you thought it would be

No hero in your tragedy
No daring in your escape
No salutes for your surrender
Nothing noble in your fate
Christ, what have you done?

 

 

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Steering by the Stars
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Living Music

My friend, Marc, shared this performance by Carlos Santana and Wayne Shorter with me and it truly inspired. Instrumental music has always created space in my head to dream, write and most importantly live freely. The genre of jazz has always struck me as a living music as well. The movement, the improvisation, the unexpected beauty.

I hope you enjoy the video as much as I have.

 

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A Favorite Song

Just felt this was important to post for me today. Hope you feel the same.

Time Stand Still

I turn my back to the wind
To catch my breath
Before I start off again.
Driven on without a moment to spend
To pass an evening with a drink and a friend

I let my skin get too thin
I'd like to pause
No matter what I pretend
Like some pilgrim
Who learns to transcend
Learns to live as if each step was the end

(Time stand still)
I'm not looking back
But I want to look around me now
(Time stand still)
See more of the people and the places that surround me now
Freeze this moment a little bit longer
Make each sensation a little bit stronger
Experience slips away
Experience slips away

I turn my face to the sun
Close my eyes
Let my defences down
All those wounds that I can't get unwound

I let my past go too fast
No time to pause
If I could slow it all down
Like some captain, whose ship runs aground
I can wait until the tide comes around

(Time stand still)
I'm not looking back
But I want to look around me now
(Time stand still)
See more of the people and the places that surround me now
Freeze this moment a little bit longer
Make each impression a little bit stronger
Freeze this motion a little bit longer
The innocence slips away
The innocence slips away…

Summer's going fast, nights growing colder
Children growing up, old friends growing older
Freeze this moment a little bit longer
Make each sensation a little bit stronger
Experience slips away
Experience slips away…
The innocence slips away

Lyrics by Neil Peart

Music That Inspires My Writing

When I write I need music flowing through my ears, to my heart and then to my head.  For example, I listened to a lot of jazz when I wrote Waking Up in Corporate America.  Some have told me that silence works best whey they write, but for me music is the needed writing soundtrack.


The following is a list of some music (artists, individual compositions and complete volumes) that I have used to make my writing soundtrack inspiring:

  1. Pat Metheny – just about anything he does, but especially his work on movie soundtracks
  2. Miles Davis – Miles Ahead, Sketches of Spain and Kind of Blue
  3. Michael Franks – Abandoned Garden
  4. David Sanborn – Closer
  5. Peter Gabriel – Us
  6. Bill Evans – Sunday at the Village Vanguard and Waltz for Debby
  7. John McLauglin – Brise De Coeur
  8. Sting – A Thousand Years, The Book of My Life, and the soundtrack to Leaving Las Vegas
  9. Puccini- Madame Butterfly
  10. Larry Carlton – Emotions Wound Us So and For Love Alone

Beautiful Music, Beautiful Day

Just so you know, I post on music because it is the language of the soul.  Has a lot to do with life, no?

Here’s a beautiful gift on a beautiful day:

The piece is titled; Brise De Coeur and the performance is by John McLaughlin and Katia Labeque.

I hope you enjoy…

A Voice Close to Heaven

Some years ago I had a chance to tell the person below that I felt heaven in his voice.

The song Pedro Aznar is singing is titled Setiembre (September).  The lyrics and music are from the great Brazilian artist Ivan Lins.  What a beautiful voice…heavenly.

I hope you enjoy.