Ramble On

I'm on a roll, folks. I may just get this post completed before another year passes! Panajachel sunrise I've detached from old rhythms and really lots of things over the last couple years, but I think I'm finally able to start thinking about some (the good ones?) again.  I had to put down this kind of writing for a while and I've missed it.  It feels so good to be writing about music again. 2019 was a banner year.  I traveled to 6 countries and 9 states, redesigned a website, finished a graduate program, led another Camino pilgrimage, three reading groups, read lots of books, went to not as many concerts, and fell in love ... with my brother's rescue dog .  I feel like in some ways I am coming back to myself, or a renewed version of myself that is more me than I've ever been. And the best way I know to tell you about it is to let others sing you the story. As usual, they are arranged thematically. Also standard operating procedure: not all the son...

The year started out a blur, trying to dismantle a household built over 4 decades.  Trying to get my head around the fact that I even had to do it and why. I tried so many times to write this post, but every time I would pick it up I just wanted to throw it away.  So now, at the end of 2019, with a little time on my hands, I picked up the question of writing it again. I managed to complete 2017's entry a few months ago.  And then it only seemed right to complete this one.  The playlist was there, and I kept thinking about what I would write if I ever got around to it.  And now, I think it's time to face the music (ha!). So, here it is.  My songs of 2018 with all the beloved color commentary and neuroses you've come to expect from me below the playlist in case you'd like some context for the choices.  Enjoy, friends! What I Needed to Hear... " I Know A Place" - MUNA I so needed a place like is being described in this song in 2018.  I li...

I did a lot of writing in 2017 but none of it was for public consumption (except for the stuff for Coracle , my side-hustle). It is an understatement to say that 2017 was a rough year.  And I believe that most of the world would agree with me.  So much loss and mayhem, personally and globally, including the sudden and tragic death of my father, I can't make sense of this year fully. I will say that my watchword for 2018 (while 2017's was "faith") will be hope.  I am chaining myself to hope for more and better, despite and resulting from the wreckage of 2017.  And I hope this not only for myself and my family, but for the world. Despite the colorless debris I continue to sort through, there remains in it a strong sense of invitation that I cannot ignore. It is an ominous beginning to the 2017 playlist for sure.  Some of the selections are actually fun, I promise.  Because that also reflects what this year has been.  I traveled all over, including Is...

When I was a sophomore in college, I visited one of my best friends who was in school at Loyola New Orleans. I made sure to time my visit to him during Mardi Gras because I wanted to see what all the fuss was about.  I can't think of worse accomodations I have experienced.  They were cheap, because I was just a guest of my friend, but I was in suite-style dorm room of 4 college guys who lived in various states of filth.  My friend, Brian, fortunately, had a girlfriend at the time so I got to sleep in his bed and he would stay with her.  And he had a fairly clean room.  But the common areas were...not great. What follows are bullet points I wrote down during the trip and I will try to piece together memories and stories from these bullet points and expand on them as I'm able to, decades later. Day 1  I arrive in New Orleans and take a cab from the airport.  We all meet at Brian's dorm and hang out for a bit. Two other girls who we knew from hig...

I've had the opportunity of late for a lot of conversations with my cognitively challenged mother. She's 70 and she was diagnosed with M.S. over 30 years ago.  It has affected her more cognitively than physically, although her balance is bad, and she can't walk very well.  Talking to her is like talking to a precocious grade schooler.  Anything she thinks, she says. She has favorite stories that she likes to hear over and over, and tell over and over. She gets very excited about her favorite food and likes to have her things around her all the time. Environments and changes are bad for her. Anyway, we were at a gas station and while filling up the car, she mentioned to me that as a child she used to love the smell of gas.  And she observed aloud that that probably meant she was a very strange child.  I told her I wasn't so sure that's true.  She sat back for a second and then she said, yeah, maybe I was just extremely normal. That made me laugh a lot at...

Here we go again.  I've been curating my playlist for this post since January 1, and now we're already in 2017! We've come a long way, 2016. The songs of this year fell pretty easily into clear categories.  I don't know if my year could be categorized so easily, or even into the same categories, but it was helpful to see how these themes just naturally came forth when I started taking a hard look at this year's selections.  And some of them are pretty accurate reflections of my thoughts about what the year has led me through. I've culled this list WAY down from 79 songs, so count yourselves lucky.  I could have written about all 79 of them, and many of the ones I cut appear on my " Albums of 2016 " list, which, I fully admit, is sort of cheating.  I tried, really tried, to get it down to 25 songs.  But I just couldn't do it. In many ways, this list serves as an archive of my memories for the year, so if a song has a specific memory tied to it, ...