Love, Actually

I always cry at the end when Colin Firth proposes to the Portuguese girl in the restaurant. The light is beautiful and the gravity of what he's clumsily yet endearingly saying to her has everyone in the place spellbound. Just to be close to that, just to be in the same room as something like that, that's good enough for me. I just want to be one of the people in the restaurant who happen to be there when he walks in and makes his speech to her. Love is all around me, in all its forms, and it's okay if someone else doesn't need me the way I think I need them, at the same time, in the same place. It's okay.

I love Love, and it's okay if it doesn't love me back the way I think I want it to. I love Love just the way it is, even though it's tired of me mishandling it every time it comes around, and even though Love has been cruel to me at times, too. Love is pretty much done with me, but is willing to just be friends. We crossed the line too many times and it just didn't work out. It's all water under the bridge now though, and we're cool. It really isn't too weird. I'll always care about Love, but it belongs with someone else.

Love and me, we weren't meant to be.

NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTION

I didn't make a resolution for 2008. It was crap, I said, why is this day any more important than any other day, I asked? Why couldn't you state some unrealistic goal you'd stick to for maybe three weeks on March 29st, for instance?

And what of these traditions we have of staying up late, getting wasted, and thinking we need a kiss at midnight for good luck? Lame! The only one I can get in to is eating black eyed peas on New Year's Day and watching lots and lots of football.

December 31st came, I watched a little football, and was in bed asleep by 10:30. Just like any other day. So far as I can tell, 2008 wasn't better or worse than any other time, it just was a discrete period of time neatly divided into twelve smaller units we can hang on a wall. Just like any other year.

Now before I say 'bah humbug" and poopoo on what our society considers "normal", I will admit that I have a resolution for 2009 based on lessons learned from 2008. I am banning romantic love from my life, which shouldn't be too hard. I'll just take the commitment phobia I already have and kick it up a notch, turn it into a point of focus. This will eliminate my tendency to objectify men and make room for more important concerns. THERE'S MORE TO LIFE THAN LOVE BETWEEN A WOMAN AND A MAN and I'm sick of getting caught up in our society's tradition of pressuring people into thinking we aren't ccomplete human beings without a mate.

I already zone out when I hear "when you find the right person", "It'll happen when you aren't looking". LISTEN LADIES, there ain't no right person to deal with me, and I have been actively not looking for years, avoiding any such unrealistic expectations. The times I have stumbled into some romantic entanglement, nothing but chaos results. I have the capacity to feel more deeply than most people, well outside three standard deviations on either side of the bell curve. I have loved that deeply and made that love known and it drove someone to the point of insanity. As intensely as it burned at the time, it streaked across the summer sky like a giant meteor everyone could see for miles, and then burned up in the atmosphere and vanished. I think I know myself well enough by now to know that avoiding romantic situations is the most considerate thing I can do, knowing that just as I can feel love to its ultimate heights, I can also feel anger.

Don't argue with me. I know me better than you and have seen firsthand the destructive power of feeling the depth of emotion I can feel. This is every bit me doing a favor for the world as planting a tree on Arbor Day and every bit as good for me as losing 30 pounds. I'm sure I'll still have crushes or pleasant moments with a young man, but I refuse to cross the line ever again. I felt it, it was great, i'm done. Happy New Year.

Insanity is defined by the majority, by the way, one big stupid mob.

Light

What I think of as Light
is nothing but a reflection.

The beacon's halo is so admirable 

from a distance,
so seemingly pure.
The light on someone's face,
making them shine in your sky,
is but energy from another source
bouncing back at you.

Light.

We hold it up,
are drawn to it,
follow it,
seek its source.

But we can't ever see the Light itself;
the surroundings it illuminates
are the proverbial trees obstructing the forest.

Stars shining on the stillness of the Bay at night
show only themselves against a smooth surface,
obscuring the life brimming beneath it.

I can't see the Light.
I can only see the things basking in it.

It's Here

The winter of my discontent. Or the discontent of my winter.

F. Scott Fitzgerald said, "In a real dark night of the soul it is always three o'clock in the morning, day after day." If a year were a day, the winter would be 3am for me, day after day.

It's cold, cold to the marrow of my bones. And I live in Florida! That's how big a wuss I am when it gets under 50 degrees. I tell myself to "suck it up and be a man", but the cold does something to me, deeper than the shivers. My feet and hands get so cold, and it's hard to think when my brain has icicles hanging from its wrinkles. My senior year of college, when I lived in an old house without central air or heat, I remember being certain I'd never really feel warm again.

But I did. Hemingway has a great quote about springtime in Paris, that winter lasts so long that you almost become afraid that spring won't make it. You begin to think that it won't happen, but one night you wake up and see the blossoms on the trees brought on by a warm wind in the night. Suddenly, when things are green again, I realize that I've thawed out completely before I knew I'd even begun to defrost.

So I have that hope to look forward to. Until then, it's cold. There are certain wintertime comforts, like family holidays, fireplaces and football that cheer me, but UGH, it's COLD. It gets colder after the World Series, and the absence of baseball exacerbates this feeling.

But it's still winter, and it's just beginning. My pre-New Year's resolution will be to seek every wintertime silver lining I can, to not just view it as the frozen hell I have to pass through before I get to the heaven of spring, but its own special time. Somehow, I may even come to embrace the low temperature and ignore the physiological effects it has on my body.

In the immortal words of Brett Favre, "It's mind over matter; if you don't mind, it don't matter."

My "Rights"

Revolution is in the air. Yay.

Someone, who isn't ashamed to say he is "very liberal" (thank you facebook for allowing us to properly label ourselves), made this statement to people who make a salary over a certain amount - "hush up... you owe us!" Um, yeah. Let me just show the whole thing so you can get an idea of the ridiculousness of this, not to make him look bad, but it saddens me that the majority of Americans agree with him.

(P.S. What pisses me off about these "open-minded" liberals is that you can't disagree with them at all or they'll label you a homophobic capitalist Jesus freak, or some other such nonsense")

I am not entitled to ANYTHING. I'm not entitled to freedom of speech or the right to bear arms - I'm not even entitled to sound mind and body! People who are born with no arms, did they have the right to a full set of limbs? Why is it, that just because I'm AMERICAN, I should feel like I have allllll these "rights"? Hey man, I've been to a 3rd world country where they don't have the right to police or infrastructure (how bout walking 3 miles on broken mountain roads to get to church?) .

NO ONE OWES ME ANYTHING. We don't have rights, we have blessings. We have grace. That's all. None of us deserves crap, but the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. He makes it rain on the just and the unjust. Time and chance happen to us all.

Don't confuse me with being ungrateful, I'm not taking any of this for granted at all. I'd like to thank the people who play Lotto for my education. I'd like to thank the people who buy gasoline for the roads I drive on. Oh yeah, my mom bought my car with the money her mother left her when she died. The police? Hey man, I run from them just like evvvverybody else.

Just read this crap, it blew my mind. Whatever, I have to go to orientation for community service. I told the judge I'd rather pay rent than my traffic ticket so she's mandating my benevolence toward our fair city, God bless her.



Eric is quite sure that you will receive the lion's share of whatever wealth Barack proposes to share so calm down. If you are above the $ line hush up, you owe us! 10:35pm - 5 Comments
Haylee Slaughter at 8:43am October 29
I couldn't disagree with you more, and I'm young and poor. Rich people don't owe me anything.
Eric at 11:12am October 29
well then thank the poor tax paying people who paid for your education, pay for your roads, your police, your firefighters, your hospitals. I guess you think that they owe you everything because they have given it to you.
Haylee Slaughter at 3:26pm October 29
I never said I was ungrateful for any of that, nor did I imply that "poor tax-paying people" didn't have anything to do with the creature comforts that all Americans enjoy. I just meant to say that I refuse to feel entitled for any of it.
Eric at 3:43pm October 29
you are not entitled to infrastructure? to security? to education? you want to get everything for yourself that the government provides now? You are entitled to these things because we are part of a society, something folks on the right have never figured out. The idea that any of these people made it without help is ridiculous. while you think you are not entitled to any of it Wall Street has no trouble taking money off my table for their excesses and criminal mismanagement. Maybe that is the way to keep people down, don't let them think they deserve anything and keep it for the top.
Haylee Slaughter at 9:50am November 1
Eh, I'd rather pull a Henry David Thoreau. When this country finally destroys itself it'll be a survival-of-the-fittest scenario, and I'll be ready for "stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center" and I'll "wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life" and "climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Tower." and look down and "see tiny figures pounding corn, laying strips of venison on the empty car pool lane of some abandoned superhighway." But as for now, I'm happy to have been born in a country where we take "givens" like infrastructure and education for granted rather than one of the 3rd world ones we feel so obligated to take care of. I'm obviously not into politics and don't claim to know what I'm talking about, but not being required to have a strong opinion either way is one of the things I value most about being an American.

I Have No Idea

I had somewhat of a Tyler Durden experience this summer: Suddenly I woke up and realized how much destruction I'd caused while I thought I was dreaming and rushed around at the end to make things right and still ended up watching the buildings crumble.

The technical term for it is "maniac."

I acted on impulse, motivated by strong emotions I no longer feel and it severely impacted a near stranger in a very negative way. And now I have an enemy.

Yay.

The bigger shame isn't me having an enemy, but how it affected this kid. He has evvvvvery right to say the hateful things he keeps saying about me, and I don't blame him for not being over it yet. I compleeeetely understand if he decides to hate me forever because the things I said and did to him are pretty much unforgivable to anybody but Jesus. He said some awwwwful things to me as well, but it's immaterial.

I thought I was in love and wrote a lot of inspired, heart-felt stuff about it (anything you see on this blog written in Hindu was about him), but that just goes to show how deceitful the heart is, because I honestly feel nothing but sympathy for him now. That may sound even worse, but it's so odd to see someone (all the freaking time) I barely spent much time with and know that my mere existence hurts him and pisses him off. He's like a ghost that I can't really look at or touch or speak to but the tension and anger is almost tangible. It's confusing too because my heart's memory of it is gone and I have to remind myself why I get such dirty looks from him. I am disturbed when I compare how convinced I was about how I felt for him and now, when it feels like it just switched off. It makes me think I shouldn't ever trust my own feelings again.

It was CRAZY. IIIIII was crazy (a "maniac"). There's a lot of things I could say that I "know" from what he told me about himself and from my own personal experience of getting screwed over similar to his (but not nearly as extreme), and maybe I'd be right about those things, but just analyzing the data yields this: someone I barely know hates my guts, and I gave him every right to do that.

I wish I could take it all back - not because I cared so much about him once, but because he's a human being. I tried to apologize and he wouldn't accept and I tried to call a truce for rugby's sake (the reason we still see each other all the time) and he wouldn't acknowledge that either, so technically my hands are clean. I forgive me and God forgives me, and this kid's resentment toward me is ultimately his choice. I can honestly say I'd rather we never met at all that have it be like it is now, but I have to remember that it is the way it is now for a reason. I thought I understood why back when I thought I loved him but it's all a foggy blur now. However I'm confident I'll come to understand what the situation means for my life and that he'll come to understand it for himself and have some peace about it as well. In 8 or 9 years...

Is It Enough?

Me: "Hold on, I want to give you this CD to remember me by."
Mordus: "Won't the memories be enough?"

Hmmm. This boy raised a good point. We had a memorable time together and I've looked back on it fondly a lot lately since most of my recent memories with boys are not so good. I think of him when I watch Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom ("boy Haylee, you sure know how to pick out a good couples movie") or whenever someone mentions the Cape Fear 7's tournament (where we met).

But I don't have anything I can hold in my hands and close my eyes and sigh and let the mental images of us together take over my brain for a few seconds. And that's probably a good thing. He was hard enough to let go when I left, because his armor never tarnished for me since our time together was so brief. Plus he was just sweet. It didn't seem real at the time, even though I was more present in the moment with him than I ever had been with anyone else, no doubt because we knew the moment wouldn't last long at all. Having tangible evidence of the experience would confirm its realness for me I think, but why justify it when the memories should be enough?

Perhaps the bigger question is why I wanted him to remember me. I know that my main "love language" is gifts (the others being acts of service, words of affirmation, physical touch and quality time), so it was a token of affection. But I think deeper than that, and darker, I wanted to ingratiate myself in this boy's mind, and he isn't the only one. Artists and writers produce works to leave behind, maybe to validate themselves as worthy of being remembered. All artists are insecure about their art at times and I am no different. The songs I've written about boys are more about me than them if that makes any sense. Even when I thought I loved someone and had their best interests in mind, my motives were still somewhat selfish. Maybe I'm being too self-critical, I have a tendency to do that, but STILL. Ultimately I feel I wanted him to remember me because I knew I wouldn't forget him.

Anyhow, I do have some mementos that comfort me in this way: the afghan my great-grandmother Irene crocheted for me. My dad's old baseball glove I used in Little League that I still have. The Florida Cup trophy we won in 2002 reminds me of the glory days in college. All my old journals help me remember who I was and how far I've come and give me a glimpse into the workings of my twisted mind on a certain date. My rugby ball reminds me of my wonderful teammates in Raleigh.

Memories are good, but I don't want to live them again. I want to make new ones. But I'll wrap myself in my afghan and feel safe and loved just like when Grandmother was here, and be thankful that I have pleasant things to look back on. And if I ever finish one of the four or five songs I started to write about Mordus, I'll have that too.

WORLD SERIES!!

Okay, so I'm stoked because I just got back from watching the Phillies beat the bandwagon-Rays with my old college coaches (who're both from Philadelphia).

But I'm sad too: the World Series is the most intense sporting event imaginable (HEY - for you morons who say that baseball is "boring", you've failed to consider the fact that they're playing chess at 90 mph), but it marks the true end of summer. Baseball is so pure and beautiful in the hearts of Americans (who don't suck) because it reminds them of childhood and freshly-cut grass and playing catch in the yard with your dad and hot dogs and peanuts and lemonade and skinned knees. SIGH!

I just love baseball so much. When it goes, my heart grows cold like the rest of the winter world. Part of me hibernates until spring training. My Seasonal Affective Disorder has less to do with a lack of sunlight than it does a lack of baseball.

So I will relish this series! I am rooting for the Phillies because of my devotion to Kerri O'Malley and Gage Miller AND because I am a National League girl. HEY, I said I love purity, and the designated hitter is about as pure as a frat boy. The winter has its football and basketball, but baseball owns my heart, so excuse me if I'm blue until late February when pitchers and catchers report in the Grapefruit and Cactus Leagues.

But I HAVE THE WORLD SERIES RIGHT NOW!!!! And this moment is my life, so I will thank God for every pitch of my favorite game until the final out and wait as patiently as a child on a roadtrip for next year.

Dance With Me

I went to :08 several Thursdays ago and it reminded me of college when I used to dance there with my guy friends from the rugby team, like Pikachu, John Marvel, Diesel, and so forth. I loved it! They all made sure to dip me at least once because that's my faaaaavorite thing and I insisted on it. My favorite partner was Christian, an Australian #8 who said things to me like, "You're such a champion! You just get better with age!" He twirled me around like it was second nature to him - so much fun! He was a great dancer because he didn't take himself seriously at all and he clearly enjoyed himself.

Here's the best thing about dancing: it's 100% acceptable and expected to 100% submit to where the man decides to lead you, and that's the only way to do it properly. I loved in The Bell Jar where she gets kind of drunk and this "woman-hater" wants to dance with her and she says she doesn't know how, so he just throws her arms around him and says "pretend that you are drowning". It's not exactly like that, but to really dance with a man, a woman has to do the same thing Ted Williams said you had to do to hit .400 - "you gotta stay loose". Now "loose" has its unseemly connotation and all, but you just gotta relaaaax.

That said, let me emphasize that I am talking about ballroom-style dancing to old standards sung by Nat or Frank, not using music as an excuse to dry-hump in public. Just wanted to make that clear.

Here's the hardest thing about dancing to a slow song with someone you really dig: getting through the whole song without kissing! It's neat when the song is over and you stop moving and you're looking up at him and he's looking down at you and you both know you want to swap spit but inevitably the next song is obnoxious and ruins the mood. But you both still know. And OHHHH, having your cheek against his cheek and feeling your hand in his hand. So rare. That completely does it for me.

I've been listening to "Slow Dancing In a Burning Room" off of John Mayer's Continuum album, and OH it's so sexy! I hope my next romantic experience involves dancing to that song, or at least having it played in the background. Haha, I would say that, considering the fact that the song is about the last stage of a relationship before a break-up.

Comfort Food

Aaaahhhhhh. We all have our choice.

For some, it is mac and cheese. When it's made just right, with the noodles all plump and covered with a layer of almost burnt cheese on top at a church potluck, I could go for that.
For others, it's chicken pot pie. Now I gotta tell ya, I had some homemade CPP at my old coach's house and his wife Miss Stevie, an authentic British lass served it up, OH MY GOSH, I had some for lunch the next day.
For others still, it's cake. Gross.

But my FAVORITE comfort food EVER will always be ramen noodles. Yeah yeah, say what you will, $.17 a pack, but WHATEVER! It's good and consistent and warm and quick. I like to dress it up: a little chopped celery and onion, lots of black pepper (to counteract the ridiculous amount of sodium in the flavor packet), maybe some fresh cilantro if I have it (haven't for a while since the little plant I got at Ward's died. oh well).

OH how I love ramen noodles! I like to pronounce it "ray-men". There's all sorts of flavors out now but I like the classic chicken variety. I'm eating some right now, in fact! Got home from a hard night at work (playing music at my weekly gig at Calico jack's, ohhh such a strain!) and watching the Red Sox WIN WIN WIN Game 5 by scoring 8 runs in the last three innings (!!!!!). It seemed the perfect way to cap a perfectly exciting baseball game.

And watch STAR WARS!!!!! For whatever reason I was in the mood for Episode IV, maybe because I'm new to refereeing and feel like young Skywalker:
"But I was going to Toshi Station to get some power converters!" -Luke
Eh, I'm not as much a whiner, but he's my role model just the same.
Has anyone else noticed that cremation is the burial method of choice in the Star Wars trilogy?
Jedi Mind Tricks are so cool. Obi-wan's all cutting that smash-nose guy's arm off and looks around like "who else wants some of my light saber skills?"

ANYWAY, why do people eat comfort food? Why is it comforting to eat something that makes you feel like crap an hour later? We tend to go after this stuff in the winter months, and I understand the "waaa I'm cold" factor, but HMMMM, allow me to stretch to make a connection.

We all have a void to fill, right? In my humble opinion, I think God made a God-shaped hole in all of us and we attempt to fill it with all sorts of shiny things: pancakes, Sam Adams, credit cards, or in my case, boys. We never get satisfied because we're trying to fill it with junk instead of what it was meant to be filled with. See, I'm a line-walker. I like talking to cute boys, admiring my own reflection in their eyes and all, talk a good game, and then when it comes down to it, I always go home alone because I KNOW it isn't worth it. Ohhh but I teeeeeter on that line, and sometimes I actually consider doing something stupid (a kiss is stupid enough to stir things up), but remember how not worth it it would be. But man, when a kid gives me his attention and laughs at my ridiculous negative-game charm, I get my ego stroked. I'm not gonna lie, it's that simple.

Does this mean I'm seeking the male version of ramen noodles? "Good and consistent and warm and quick" that I can "dress up"? Uuuhhhhh... Well, I dunno if I want something I could get a dozen a dollar for. Then again that pretty much describes the boys I generally hit on. But I obviously don't want to eat ramen noodles everyday for the rest of my life!

I dunno, who cares? I'm tempted to draw a metaphor back to relationship crap because I'm a living organism like everything else crawling on this planet and I have a biological imperative like everyone else and my programming leads me to connect that with monogamy. Whatever. As weird as I am, I'm still a human being.

I want a light saber.

The Digging-Younger-Guys Thing

I think I'm just trying to hold onto my youth.

Moments

To continue my theme of "a song is just itself", so also is a moment:

moment
noun
1. a particular point in time; "the moment he arrived the party began"
2. an indefinitely short time; "wait just a moment"; "in a mo"; "it only takes a minute"; "in just a bit"

A moment is like a song, because it isn't meant to last forever, but it lingers long after the final chords fade.

Moments become memories. We become attached to these memories and want more, more MORE so we seek more moments through which we can attain more memories. We get greedy about our moments.

Oh but Haylee, what about being in the moment itself?? When THIS MOMENT is HERE AND NOW?? The here and now is where we all should be, all the time. If we did that, we wouldn't have need for the word "moment" at all.

When's the last time you recognized "a moment" in THAT moment? "By the time I recognize this moment, this moment will be gone." I'm so caught up in it it's nearly impossible to be objective and view myself in a detached way. But if I did that, the spell would be broken. But ohhhh to breathe in and out and just reflect on the nowness of the time and space in which you stand is pure bliss sometimes. To honestly say, "there's no place else I'd rather be" is bliss.

But then it's Over. Done. "A moment is all you can ever expect of perfection." -Fight Club

Case in point: When the Gators score a big touchdown and the crowd jumps up and cheers in unison! You can't get that back, it'll never be exactly the same again. Different receiver, different part of the end zone, different crowd, different opponent, different weather, different game, etc.

Or, closer to my heart, a romantic one. Sigh! (After years of denial I've come to the conclusion that I'm just this side of being a hopeless romantic) I had a very nice moment with a boy recently and I can tell you, it's very tempting to be greedy about obtaining another moment with him, to attempt to force it to linger on, to stretch the moment... to make it something it was never meant to be! My time with this young man was surprisingly pleasant. And I address him as such because I actually respect him. I didn't expect to respect him (he's good-looking - I always assume the cute ones are slutbags), but he earned it. But it wasn't necessarily romantic, it was just me and him, surrounded by other people, but it was special, because that sort of pure, unassuming connection is very rare. BUT, for me to project some huge expectation because of this pleasant moment would be unfair to both of us. I HATE being disappointed, so why set myself up for it by expecting something out of a moment, which, by definition, is never going to happen again - it was perfect...in that moment. And of course, in moments following this one, I said or did something weird/stupid to defeat myself for having another one with him anyway, so I'm just gonna be happy for the one moment I got and treat it like what it is: a solitary occurrence that will with 98% certainty will never ever happen again, ever, everrrr. The longer I live, the more I realize how good I am at being single. When it seems like everyone else is in a rush to "fall in love" and lose themselves in somebody else, I'm pretty much content by myself with my couch, a guitar, and a baseball game. Haha, that is if your idea of being "good at being single" is having negative game with the fellas - NO ONE can wreck a promising opportunity or conversation like me. I'm the most self-cockblocking person on the planet. But hey! Maybe that's just to make sure no one bothers me when I'm at home on my couch playing my guitar while watching a baseball game! Because that is my idea of Bliss.

C.S. Lewis said (in Mere Christianity), "We must get over wanting to be needed: in some goodish people, specially women, that is the hardest of all temptations to resist." I need to get over that, because I want that - I want someone to wake up and think about me, to need to see me, to need to hold my hand, to need me in all the ways I need them. I've never, ever, everrrr experienced that before. Ever. So I was riding my bike home last night and tossing this around, as objectively as possible, and I found that I've been trying to fill my void with a relationship, or a song I'm writing, or freaking facebook (which I quit by the way, ugh, it started to weird me out in a Matrix kind of way), and it was just so obvious that I need to be filling my moments with God. Those are eternal moments. He's the only thing that's perfect, he's the only thing that lasts. God needs me to need Him; he created me to need him. And I do.

He gives us these "moments" - glimpses of heaven. Now I love my heavenly, mountain top moments, don't get me wrong, but I wouldn't be able to recognize them when I'm up there if I didn't have the valley to compare it to. No one likes valleys, but I just tread through one, which I think will make the view from the peak look even better. Then again, any moment can feel like the summit if we just breathe and reflect and be grateful to have the self-awareness to recognize how special life is.

Because this moment, right now, this moment is your life.

What People Don't Get

I'm a songwriter. It's what I do. I have to. It's not a "hey, that sounds like a neat job!" thing. It's a, "If I didn't, I wouldn't know who I am" thing.

So anyhow, here's what people don't get:

MY SONGS ARE NOT ME. I AM NOT ANY ONE SONG (except maybe Optimism). IT'S NOT ALL NECESSARILY FACT. (it's called artistic license).

See, a song is just itself. Yes, it came from the writer, and maybe the writer can say "this sums me up", but once you release it, it doesn't belong to you anymore. Yes, I own it, I make money from it, but that's not what I mean. I mean you give it away to every ear who hears it, and it becomes theirs too. The only way to keep a song, to make it be completely You, is to never play it for anyone else.

I sort of realized this just now from an earlier act of bravery. I played this sweet song for some people at Cafe Gardens Sunday afternoon and they seemed all touched by it (oh my gosh it's beautiful), and I told them "I just realized that I'd never played that song in public before, so y'all are the first ever to hear it!" and they thought that was cute.

SO AT THAT MOMENT, THE SONG WAS NO LONGER IN MY POSSESSION. Humanity owns it, basically I guess.

I keep hearing this word "courage", as in, "Haylee, it takes a lot of courage to go out there and play your own songs, or to even open up your voice and hands to people." Uh, okay. It just seems like that's what I'm supposed to do. If you do something well, like perform surgery, fix a car, teach kids math, play rugby, YOU DO IT. Why is it so courageous to perform the role you naturally fill?

So there you go along, doing what what you do, and hey! the world is full of people all around you! Hi there, People! So you interact and make friends and so forth, but we all also have jobs to contribute to this greater whole we call "society", of which we are all a member, right? Cause if each person didn't do their job, it wouldn't work, right? Each of us holds up our end.

My end is the music one. All of our roles perform a function for everybody else. I like my thing that I do because it helps people feel. My best buddy Allison told me once, about which song I don't recall, "Hales, the lyrics of that song just lift out of my bones the feeling I'd never be able to say out loud."

Wow. Holy crap, I did that? I was just talking to myself at the time! I wrote that song about ME, and about THAT KID, and at the fresh time I wrote it, I felt it all the way every time I played it. So years pass, other stuff happens with other kids, and the songs still apply. THAT'S WHEN YOU KNOW THE SONG/BIRD HAS LEFT ITS MAMA'S NEST and flies around by itself singing to anyone but no one in particular, just to get out what's been trapped inside itself.

Other people take ownership of your song. It's called "interpretation". I've been told that my older, less mature songs (haha written about a very immature subject) are too specific, that writing a song should be mechanized and generalized enough so more people will buy into that because that's how you make money at songwriting! PUUUUUUUKKE! HUUUUWAAAAAHHH! COUGH COUGH COUGH. But somehow, they reach other people who say to me, "that song sums up my entire love life". Wow.

Listen man, I do it because I have to. I once asked my favorite artist of all-time, Audrey Owens, former roommate and best bud since freshman year at Jennings ground floor, why she did her art stuff. (she did drawings of lizards, birds, taught me how to put a collage together, built furniture with her dad, I mean if you can imagine some sort of far out way to spend an afternoon creating something she did it). She kind of laughed and sort of pondered the question, and said, "I do it because it pleases me, I guess. It's a really selfish thing for me, I just do it because I like doing it."

Wow.

That was a turning point for me. Someone else did her thing because she WANTED to do it, while I did what I did because I HAD to do it. WOW, it never occurred to me that I could LIKE doing it. Maybe because the stuff I wrote songs about was painful to me. I wrote songs to release pain about these feelings in my bones I couldn't get out of my mouth, just like Allison said.

So when you are good at something, and you like doing it, you're more inclined to share it. So I give it away to other people, but I don't expect everyone to be "pleased" by it. If I'm pleased, that's all there is to it. Because I know that God is pleased because THIS IS WHAT HE CREATED ME TO DO. And I'm only being true to it. And he's sent people who like what I do to reinforce this fact.

I've been in and out of love with making music soooo many times. But I guess I was ready now. Wow. I just realized the last big thing I wrote songs about was the first time I'd ever been completely open to feeling love. And ooooh I felt it, all the way. And it was great, it's been great, and will continue to be great for me, because I'm experiencing a side of love I hadn't ever seen before. My songs would be boring if I kept viewing the muse from the same old angle over and over again. And I wrote a lot of songs about it. And I think Carlie Simon was right when she said "You're so vain/you probably think this song is about you". And yeah, from a certain point of view, it is. But, I WROTE IT FOR ME. M.E. Haylee Ugh Slaughter. It was a selfish act, something I had to do for myself. It just so happens the songs are pretty dad gum good and other people like them a lot. And I keep on writing, but it's evolving, and different feelings emerge now when I play them, just like songs I wrote six years ago have turned the tables on me. I am now the jerk, the You the Singer sings to, the beguiling a-hole who carelessly broke a heart. And that's fine. I learned something. I wrote something.

BUT THOSE SONGS ARE NOT ME. And they are not about that kid anymore. Because since other people have heard them, they are about a number of people. I played "The One Comes of Age" at my BFF Dennis' Good-Luck-At-Tulane-Law-School party, and Chad & his bf laughed when I sang the line "the one you thought was smart but couldn't comprehend your famous monologues" (because Chad will go off on a tangent sometimes and his boy is all, um yeah left field). (the chorus is: "I want the One who'll take me to the sea and swim out as far as he can with me/I want the One who'll take me to the edge" So when I finished the song, Chad just said "Wow" and something about never being happier that he knows me than he did right then. I almost fell over. My highly personal song, which I wrote as generally as possible so it could be appreciated by as many people as possible (see, I still know how to craft sometimes), knocked him over.

And it is a beautiful song. :) And I honestly wrote it for other people, not just for myself. I THANK GOD for the experiences, even the ones when you publicly humiliate the One you found to love because he's just like you and he ends up rejecting you, hating your guts, sending vitriolic emails, telling everyone you're insane and a bad rugby player and intimidating his friends not to associate with you, BECAUSE THESE EXPERIENCES HAVE BROUGHT ME CLOSER TO GOD.

CLOSER TO LOVE. Because I have seen 1 Corinthians 13 with my own eyes. I know how to agape. I heard from a really neat boy I met this past weekend that love is cool, but being IN love is complete and utter B.S. He felt very strongly about this. But I said hey man, the Greeks had FOUR WORDS TO DESCRIBE LOVE, and our culture has boiled it down to one four-letter word that has this HUGE meaning - the Bible said GOD IS LOVE, and what the heck is bigger than GOD HIMSELF? Jeez. So I told him, the highest form of love is AGAPE, brotherly love, as in wishing someone well, even if they hate you, even if you've never met them and they live on the other side of the world, YOU AGAPE/LOVE THAT PERSON AND HOPE GOOD THINGS FOR THEM. BECAUSE THAT IS HOW GOD LOVES US. So that is anything but B.S. And he had to agree.

So I've been kicking around these four basic motivations we all have thing that I heard about from Kerri O'Malley, my college rugby coach/current coach of the Gainesville Hogs. She said we all do everything we do for one or more of the following: POWER, FUN, FREEDOM, OR LOVE.

I've seen my rugby career follow this pattern. Now, I see my evolution as a songwriter go this way as well.

Binary

I’ve never really wanted to be a satellite, a supernova, or the worst, the sun of someone’s solar system; a distant, consistent repetition, never getting closer, an inevitable black hole, or never seeing my reflection off his atmosphere for my own heat, respectively. No, my ideal celestial situation would be as exactly one half of a binary star system, with each as brilliant as the other. Not shadowing or obscuring, but enhancing each other’s brightness, intensifying our collective power to shine our light that much further across the galaxy for gazing eyes to wish upon.

Beach Angel Quotes

Debbie Summers. What a woman. I never would've met her had I not left my cigarettes in my car at Matty's house.


"Sometimes God has to close our ears so we can hear our own minds."

"God will give you the shoes, but he ain't gonna tie your shoelaces."

"Her words are saying one thing but her eyes say something else."

"I believed in discipline by embarrassment."

(To me): "You just wanna control the Universe!"

"God's voice is so soft you can only hear it with your Soul."

"Barn swallow nests look like apartment complexes."

"Jesus fought like the boys (troops) are doing over there (in Iraq): To give us the freedom to choose to accept Him or not."

"Free Will is a bad idea!"

"Do not lie to me! And I'll decide who to lie to!"

"My kids tell me, 'You are not a tree-huggin' hippie anymore Mom!' and I say 'Yes I am, shut up!'"

"Have you ever wished on a shooting star and then realized it was an airplane?"

Debbie: I'm not trying to be gross but you have an incredible body.
Me: Well I work out like a maniac like everyday.
Debbie: Yeah I did that once, I think it was a Tuesday in 1984.

To any man she meets in a bar:
"I'm not even talking to you because I won't have a war with an unarmed man!"

On her son, Derek Scott, who died on his 21st birthday 5 years ago in a one-car accident:
"I always wanted to find a starfish on the beach, and one day shortly after he died I found a live starfish. It moved in my hand and I felt God say, "It was never yours to begin with", just like Derek. So I let it go in the water."
"I can't carry his corpse around, but his Spirit is always with me."


Amen.

The First Time

THE FIRST TIME Lyrics and Music by Haylee Slaughter

Copyright 2007 Haylee Slaughter Music

Written during the worst period of writer's block in my life on Gage's couch! :)


You’ve come so far / you think you’re done

Well bless your heart / we’ve only just begun

Oh darlin’, how can it be?

Still lots to prove / more ground to cover

More rocks to move / from one pile to the other

Oh darlin’, is this happenin’ to me?


You’re so humble / you democrat

Pride makes you stumble / a clumsy acrobat

Oh darlin’, why would that be?

Familiar voices / you turn and squint

Unwise choices / they found your fingerprints

Oh darlin’, is this happenin’ to me?


And I just saw the end of my nose for the first time

And I’m just now feelin’ the warmth of the sunshine

And it looks so good to me

And it feels so good to me

To me

To me


Let’s get to learnin’ / activity

My ears are burnin’ with compulsivity

Oh darlin’, why would that be?

Try to behave / and join the chorus

Echoes the cave / where I lost my thesaurus

Oh darlin’, why’d that happen to me?


And I just saw the end of my nose for the first time

And I’m just now feelin’ the warmth of the sunshine

And it looks so good to me

And it feels so good to me

To me

To me


Cause real life / ain’t on a station

He spoke my name / the hour of my creation

Oh darlin’, how could that be?

I’m getting old / my bones are brittle

It was foretold / I’d die in a hospital

Oh darlin’, will it happen to me?


And I just saw the end of my nose for the first time

And I’m just now feelin’ the warmth of the sunshine

And it looks so good to me

And it feels so good to me

To me

To me

C2007 HAYLEE SLAUGHTER MUSIC

Mondnacht - from Liederkreis, opus 39 by Robert Schumann (1810-1856), written 1840

Uuugggghhhhhhhh. :) These are the lyrics to my favorite piece by Schumann, SO BEAUTIFUL, the music is even more so than the words, because, not in spite of, its simplicity. Please excuse the fact that I don't have German keys on my keyboard (well I probably do but don't know how to use them).

Sometimes, when I'm really still, looking heavenward, my soul recites this in its original translation, in the hand it was written.


Zart, heimlich.
Es war, als butt - der Himmel die Erde stilt ge kusst, dass sie im Bluthenschinimer von ihmi nur traumen musst'.
Die Luft gimg darch die Felder, die Achren wrogten nacht, es rauschten leis'-die Walder, so sternklar war - die Nacht. Und meine See - le apannte weit ihre Flugel aus - flogdureb die stillen Land de als floge - sie mach Hous.

Secretly, tenderly.

-Moonlight.

It was as if the heavens had silently kissed the earth so that the earth had only to dream of it in shiny blooms. The air ran though the fields, the rows of wheat were gently rollling, the trees were gently rustling; thus the night was clear as stars. And my soul expanded its wings, through quiet lands, as if it were flying home.

Fin.

Things Daddy Taught Me

1) how to field and squarely hit a baseball
2) how to clean a chicken breast (this didn't really take, I still just eat it with my hands)
3) how to LOVE music, down to allowing it to power the ATP that powers the cells in my body
4) how to do cool backflips and dangerous dives into a swimming pool
5) to love books
6) how to bait a hook with a good old-fashioned worm
7) how to pass out in a chair
8) how to decide to not let stuff bother me so much
9) how to spit - one day he said, "Did I ever teach you how to spit?" and made sure I had the proper technique (get the loogie on the tip of your tongue and flick and blow at the same time)
10) how to spit out of a car window moving very fast (still mess this one up sometimes!)
11) why everything should have its place to stay organized
12) to appreciate my athletic achievements and to never take my ability for granted (cuz he never realized his potential, which is why the Natural still makes him cry)
13) that it's okay to cry!!!
14) to love playing with little kids and how to hold a baby
15) to use music as an outlet (I'll never forget the day he brought home my first guitar!)
16) how to give sincerely heart-felt hugs
17) that it's okay to have a boyfriend - "No sense in wasting your time if you know he won't be The One."
18) loyalty
19) integrity
20) to be generous whenever possible
21) to not take crap off of anyone
22) to remember that he loves me no matter what
23) that a Gator football loss really isn't a life-or-death situation
24) financial responsibility
25) to never forget who I am or where I came from, because I am Sam Jr, and wherever he is is home.

I LOVE MY DADDY!!!

Philadelphia

Here for the first time. Just got back from dinner at Bookbinder's (very fancy place in "Social Circle"...yeah). It was quite good, had the blackened swordfish. It had better'a been good, my friend Mark was 1.5 hours late! :) It's all good, I've known that kid since I was 15! He's an ER doc at Albert Einstein hospital up here now. His girlfriend (a trauma surgeon) Susan is pretty cool too. Caught up on old times. As luck would have it, my phone ran out of power just as I was passing the sports complex! I could've gotten a shot of where the Phillies and Eagles play! Oh welllss.

So it's late. All the other girls in the room are asleep (two Jenns and a Venessa) - I'm that kid who can't sleep for nerves. Touch-judging tomorrow at Pumpkinfest. IN THE RAIN! Woo hoo Hanna!

I dunno. I took 27 pages of notes about referee-ing today. This stuff is pretty hardcore. It's not even about right and wrong; continuity is paramount. Kinda like life. You can dwell on this great thing you're doing or how wrong someone did you, but are you still moving forward?

That is the question of the day. I want to always be moving forward (north and south!) and provide support for my teammates. What else is there?

My Perfect Storm

Heavenly Father
Here, in the midst of my Perfect Storm, I will breathe and look up to the hills and remember to be still and know that You are God:


Ecclesiastes 9:11 (KJV)
11 I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.

1 John 5:14-15 (Amplififed)
14 And this is the confidence (the assurance, the privilege of boldness) which we have in Him: [we are sure] that if we ask anything (make any request) according to His will (in agreement with His own plan), He listens to and hears us.
15 And if (since) we [positively] know that He listens to us in whatever we ask, we also know [with settled and absolute knowledge] that we have [granted us as our present possessions] the requests made of Him.

Jeremiah 29:11 (NCV)
11 I say this because I know what I am planning for you," says the Lord. "I have good plans for you, not plans to hurt you. I will give you hope and a good future.

2 Timothy 2:3-7 (NAS)
3 Suffer hardship with me, as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. 4 No soldier in active service entangles himself in the affairs of everyday life, so that he may please the one who enlisted him as a soldier. 5 Also if anyone competes as an athlete, he does not win the prize unless he competes according to the rules. 6 The hard-working farmer ought to be the first to receive his share of the crops. 7 Consider what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in everything.


John 15:1-17 (ESV)
1 "I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. 2 Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. 3 Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. 4 Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. 5 I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. 6 If anyone does not abide in me he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. 7 If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. 8 By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples. 9 As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. 10 If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. 11 These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.
12 "This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command you. 15 No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. 16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. 17 These things I command you, so that you will love one another.


Amen.

Making Lemonade

There is much to be learned from conflict and trial. After all, it’s very high pressure that produces diamonds, right? It might not please you to look ahead and see a few dreams, but after THIS DAY is all over you will be a better person for them. Not every day can be a breeze, and going through a rough patch will make you all the more appreciative when you encounter smooth waters once again. Ride out the problems, and it will be smooth sailing sooner than you think.

“Victimism gives your future away.”

ETHOS – model trustworthiness (establish credibility)

PATHOS – seek first to understand (empathize, listen)

LOGOS – then to be understood (presentation and persuasion)

You can’t control life.

But you can control how you deal with it.

“The first step to getting the things you want out of life is this:

Decide what you want.”

-Ben Stein

There’s only us; there’s only this.

Forget regret or life is yours to miss.

No other road, no other way,

NO DAY BUT TODAY!

-RENT

Slaughter Family Gator Football Pre-Game

This was taken from a facebook message I wrote to Meckley yesterday. He's a hardcore Gator, too! IN ALL KINDS OF WEATHER WE ALL STICK TOGETHER FOR F-L-O-R-I-D-A!!! (deffffinitely the BEST tradition in alllll of college football!)


Em and I have actually been sitting in seats 19-22 since we were two years old (or "old enough to sit up" by ourselves). Seat 19 was always where Papa sat. He had a routine for EVERYTHING. We'd leave Oxford around 5 hours prior to kick-off, head up to the Best Ville on 301/441, park around the Union (there were only 2 or 3 lots he was comfortable with), then we'd go eat at Wendy's, where he'd ALWAYS get a chicken sandwich, fries and sweet tea, then go get a chocolate chip cookie at Subway (maaaajor chocoholic). Then we'd sit (with Aunt Ann and Uncle Doug cause they were usually there by then) in the corner on the 1st floor where those comfy couches used to be under that neat sculpture (that's still there, just moved over to the left behind the info desk). Then around 1.5-2 hours prior to kick off we'd go over to the Bookstore (Hub) and sit out in front and wait for the band to go by, which was ADORABLE! and BAD ASS! they do the coolest lil' breakdown man. So then we'd usually follow them into the stadium and sit in the hot fucking sun and watch the team warm up and stretch and evvvverrry pre-game activity. Of course Mr. 2-Bits was the best!!! and, inevitably, every single time, Emmy and I would both BURST into tears when the Gators broke the plane and ran out onto the field...hhheeeeEEEEEEEEERRRRRRRRRRRREEEEE COME THE GATORS!!!! and then we'd hug and laugh at ourselves for being so sweet and sentimental.

And that's been our pre-game since we were old enough to sit up by ourselves. (not that we necessarily follow it to the letter anymore, haha, there's generally a stop by a certain Norman tailgate as of late...)

Willard

Willard isn't a good story, he didn't end well. He was already screwed up by the war before he was given the mission to assassinate Kurtz. Even though he didn't succumb to the same influences that Kurtz did, he certainly felt them and understood the path Kurtz took on his way to insanity/enlightenmnet. Ultimately, he slaughtered Kurtz like a stockyard animal. You are left not knowing if he did it to take Kurtz' place or complete the assigned mission. Reject the system (kill Kurtz and replace him) or abide by the system (kill Kurtz and leave); his only two choices. Either way, he had no where to go, no place he felt he belonged, so perhaps it really didn't matter. Maybe it was this helplessness that tormented him, that he couldn't choose his own path. You aren't given that information in the movie, and there isn't a character similar to Willard in /Heart of Darkness/, at least not in enough detail to make a ready comparison.

Don't be Willard.

Exerpt from email from Lee Brewster

Gotta Recognize...

So I've been ungrateful to my Creator lately. The one who made me, who stitched me together, who holds me in His hand and guides me through this life so that one day I can be home with Him on high. Gotta recognize allllllll the blessings:

-how easily yahoo and MelbourneIT let me unlock my domain and transfer control to my webmaster Mark Stringfellow (this guy and his partner Ouida were angels sent by God to make my life better)
-he guided us to a championship at Todd Miller last weekend
-he gave us rain Tuesday and led me through the funnest rugby practice of my life
-gave me an amazing job I love
-gave me music!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
-allows me to be physically active and good at athletics with properly working hands, legs, arms, feet (even though I have to tape each individual toe and ankle now...), eyes, ears, and INSTINCTS
-the best friends in the whole world who make real life better than TV
-an amazing family who has always supported me and let me do my thing
-Gator football!!
-Gator basketball!!!
-GATOR RUGBY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
-the ability to telescope ideas and pen cool lines that sum it all up and match with a catchy melody
-all that sweet wisdom in the Good Book
-an incredibly loving church family at University City Church of Christ in Gainesville
-the 12 Steps
-those years I lived away from home up in North Carolina...pure gold
-Bob Dylan
-magazines by the toilet!! :)
-my Aunt Ann, the sweetest lady in the wide world. I was created to be her baby.
-my stellar seasons playing in the back row for the Raleigh Venom
-playing all 80 minutes of the national championship match down in Naples when we defeated defending-champions Detroit 8-6 (8-6!!!!!!!!!)
-that summer I worked watermelons
-my turntable and vinyl collection
-fishing with Daddy on Salt Creek
-the years I had with my weimaraner angel Kay Kay
-how he waited until precisely the exact moment when I truly gave up, broken and defeated, to give me everything I asked for and more

.........I'll be adding to this list for the rest of my life but this is good for now... :)



PSALM 46
1God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.
2Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea;
3Though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof. Selah.
4There is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God, the holy place of the tabernacles of the most High.
5God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved: God shall help her, and that right early.
6The heathen raged, the kingdoms were moved: he uttered his voice, the earth melted.
7The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah.
8Come, behold the works of the LORD, what desolations he hath made in the earth.
9He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth; he breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder; he burneth the chariot in the fire.
10Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth.
11The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah.

Punk Song for Dmitriy

So last night after my show, Dmitriy and his girl and buds stuck around and helped me take my equipment to my car. We went over to Nate's place where I continued to play guitar (In Dreams from the UGH (self-titled) album came out, sigh!). We ordered pizza (Dmitriy thought he was getting Hungry Howie's but accidentally called Five Star instead, HAHA) I tried to throw money in but he said I could help myself if I'd write a song for him.

So here it is! I wrote it this morning during Sunday School! Hey, God knows I was paying attention to the lesson too! Let me tell you, this song ROCKS - I'm soooooooo playing it at Satchel's. :)



Dmitriy!
Dmitriy!
Dmitriy!
Dmitriy!

He's the coolest kid around
I'm so glad he stayed in town
He's gotta be my favorite clown.
He was there when it allllll went down.

Dmitiry!
Dmitiry!
Dmitriy!
Dmitriy!

He helped carry stuff to my car
He cheered for me like I'm a star
Three car bombs and then Five-Star!
Dmitriy is a Russian tsar!

Now he's got a foxy girl
Coolest chick in the frickin' world
They see fun and give it a whirl
Dmitriy and his foxy girl

Dmitriy!
Dmitriy!
Dmitriy!
Dmitriy!

He goes to jail
In underwear
He jumps off the roof
He doesn't care

He's about hooliganism
But he don't do no communism
This kid rocks neoclassicism
And now for the apocalypticism:

I LOVE THE SMELL OF NAPALM IN THE MORNING!!!!!!!!!

Dmitriy!
Dmitriy!
Dmitriy!
Dmitriy!
Dmitriy!
Dmitriy!
Dmitriy!
Dmitriy!!!


Lyrics and Music by Haylee Brooke Slaughter
c2008 Haylee Slaughter Music
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

JULY 5 2008 BROPHY'S SET LIST

Set One:
COME ON BABY
SPLIT MY TIME
FAITH (George Michael)
BLACKBIRD (Beatles)
SHADOWBOXER (Fiona Apple)
NATURAL WOMAN (Carol King/Aretha)
THE FIRST TIME
TRUE LOVE WILL FIND YOU IN THE END (Daniel Johnston)
GO (Daniel Johnston)
SCARLETT
STRONG ENOUGH (Sheryl Crow)
JUST LEAVE ME BE
was gonna play a new mandolin song, CHANGE MY NAME, but left the paper towel I wrote the lyrics on at home
HAIRSHIRT (REM)
IF YOU DON'T MIND
CAN'T EVER GET ENOUGH
HEY JUDE (Beatles)

Set Two:
OPTIMISM
OVER
HEMINGWAY
WHERE ARE YOU GOING (Dave Matthews Band)
L-O-V-E (Nat King Cole)
SLOW DANCING IN A BURNING ROOM (John Mayer - impromptu - sung to my rugby ball to express undying devotion)
COMFORTABLE (John Mayer)
SAVANNAH
HOW LONG
I HAVEN'T HAD SEX
COLORBLIND (Counting Crows)
THE LOWS

Here's where I think I diverted from the set set list: (I was being filmed!)

IF I AIN'T GOT YOU (Alicia Keys)
YOU'VE LOST THAT LOVIN' FEELIN' (Righteous Brothers)
THE FIRST TIME
MEN OF MY LIFE
OPTIMISM
something something something
I WALK THE LINE (Johnny Cash)

Thanks to everyone who came, you made it a great show. I've decided three-hour sets aren't long enough.

Set List!

So I'm crafting the set list for the first gig I've had since May of 2007. I'd forgotten how hard it is! Gotta balance enough covers (ugh) with originals, which originals to play, the proper order, playing certain songs of a certain tuning together, etc. Then it's about what you're going to say. It can be a diary that you're opening up for everyone there to hear you read word for word. If they're reading between the lines, anyway. I don't mind playing covers, but I don't really play ones everyone wants to hear because I like deep album cuts (Hairshirt from Green by REM, Breakaway by John Mayer, Planet Telex by Radiohead, Pale September by Fiona Apple - not that any of these are necessarily on the set list!) It's one thing when you're singing in a romantic restaurant filled with old people you're hoping will tip you so you sing what you think they want to hear (what I refer to as "whoring"). Industry rule number 4,081 (4,080 is record company people are shadyyyy!) - if you want to make it, you have to compromise your heart, soul, mind, strength, and (of course) body. Ugh. But I say screw it, I'm going to play what I feel like playing for my own reasons and if that's good enough for you bring $2 and prepare to have your mind covered in Napalm.

One thing that is FO SHO FACT - if you plan on singing to someone in particular, they aren't going to com. Like Nuke Laloosh said, "Sometimes you win; sometimes you lose; sometimes it rains." I mean I guess you could say "hey dude, I'm gonna serenade you Saturday night so I suggest you show up" but jeez boys scare easier than bunnies with a heart condition! So planning to sing songs thinking Mr. Inspiration will be in the audience and planning to use the force of that chemical reaction between you to propel the set is kind of pointless. I reckon it's like most everything else - better left to fate to decide. Good ol' fate.

That's another thing - the element of surprise. There's nothing greater than dedicating a song to someone who loves it and never saw it coming. I did that to Jess Elf a few years ago when I played 32 Flavors (but then of course Drunk Jodi went over and was all blablabla during the song she could barely enjoy it, but whatev. Drunk obnoxious show go-ers is another blog entirely). I can't tell anyone what I'm going to play! That would totally take away my powerful position up there! And boy is it powerful! Heh heh heh.

So once I finish the set list I'm gonna try to find some body guards, a la Kevin Costner. I was actually telling a couple guys (Gabe and Serge) after church this morning that I need a few big guys I can trust to keep my stalkers away from me that night. Gabe was all, "you have stalkers? that's awesome!" and I said "man I can't even tell you how NOT awesome it is". And they laughed. They've obviously never had a stalker! UGH! :(

But! Be there Saturday night! It's a surprise! With shiny wrapping paper and bows and it smells like home and true love and Ben Hill Griffin Stadium on game day, all in one perfect little package.

Audrey said just the other day...

"Oh Haylee! Don't overthink it!"

Man she knows me! My dawg! Hey remember when we were at the John Mayer show and we stopped and peed in that dirt-road, forest-y driveway and the people came home and we were still mid-stream with our pants down?!?!?? ... and he played Not Myself and we had arms intwined in one of the greatest friendship moments of all time! You're my favorite artist, by the way. And my favorite herpetologist! :)

But yes, as I was saying, don't over think it, especially the future. Focus on now. Right now. That breath you just took, the light of the sun reflecting off those trees coming into your eyes, your muscles sore and ready for some rugby action!

They that observe lying vanities forsake their own mercy. Jonah 2:8 (KJV)

And hey Audrey, remember when I was with you and Michelle (Cohen) in downtown Athens shopping a couple years ago and I came across that magnet that said,
“Be happy for this moment is your life” – Omar Khayyam
but I was too cheap to spend $5 on it and I've thought about it almost every day ever since? Oh the irony!

But yes, I must remember to Be Happy For This Moment (RIGHT STINKING NOW), This Moment Is My Life.


(so I'm going to get off the computer now and do something vintage)

I Am Truly An Artist:

I was just so focused I forgot to eat the dinner I'd just cooked!

Telescope

I think God made me a songwriter to give me a way to figure out what I'm feeling. It wasn't until recently that I accepted that I possess these feeling things and it's perfectly normal, even if I'm not. Funneling and filtering all these experiences, observations and imaginings down into something catchy and clever is the creative focus of each present moment I remember to truly live.

There's no way I could say it better than Bob Dylan did in his book, Chronicles, Volume 1:

"If anything, I wanted to understand things and then be free of them. Things were too big to see all at once, like all the books in the library - everything laying around on all the tables. I needed to learn how to telescope things, ideas. You might be able to put it all into one paragraph or into one verse of a song if you could get it right." ... "A song is like a dream, and you try to make it come true."

My college-years journals have lately been opened more and more in my quiet time and it's funny - all the lines I wrote back when I thought I had no clue what was going on were pretty accurate descriptions of that particular reality.

I look at what I'm writing today, which I'm now able to do from different perspectives or from outside myself entirely, and maybe I can draw the same conclusion -

There's my self-deprecating side:
This is such a metaphor/deja vu, seen it before/such ironic play on words/white and black come back for thirds/here I go but I digress/it's so silly but I must confess/it's my quest to impress someone else without sounding like I'm pleased myself.

My old guy sitting in a rocking chair outside the barber shop chewing bahaya grass with his hat tipped and arms crossed side:
Sow your oats before you come back home cause oats don't grow down here.

And I have my cynical, defeated side:
I don't care/but I could/I'm willing to see/if I would/but in all likelihood/he won't be anything to me.


?

Label Whore

Hi my name's Haylee, and I'm a Label Whore. ("Hi, Haylee")...

Was practicing (on my Martin D-18) guitar last night and decided to upgrade my yellow guitar-string-and-body Fender fleece wiper rag up to Gucci (the big one with the fabulous colorful bugs design I bought on sale, 40% off, at Saks last year for $97.50 in white - and just HAD to buy Audrey the one in black) Then thought, or maybe Pucci (a blue and yellow classic pattern bandana that Dennis bought me for my birthday). Went and got the Gucci.

This is coming from the same person who cut things off with a guy because his driveway went Porsche, Tahoe, Mercedes and he had too many fireplaces. That kind of materialism really turns me off. :)

My List of Reasons Not to Like Him grew so long I had to start another page!

Have spent more time reading old journals lately, and last night found The List that got me through the worst heart break of my life (which, as I've said before, was also the most valuable experience I've ever had). Was having trouble getting over the douchebag I guess (for the record, we're buds now), so began jotting down all the bad things he'd done to me and general flaws to help me stop focusing on the way he looked at me, the way he looked in rugby shorts, etc. HAHA. The List began with things like this:

1. doesn't like baseball
2. chews gum
3. sometimes acts 12

But with time, it got much more substantial:

1. slept with one of my teammates (apparently I "drove him to it", according to one of his friends. huh)
2. not all about his truck
3. chews gum (for some reason it's okay for me to chew gum in athletic situations but it looks stupid when guys do it)
4. doesn't like baseball (this is still a big deal, it's basically like not having a soul)
5. ripped my heart out ON PURPOSE (in fairness, I was trying to do the same thing to him the whole time - oh the maturity!)
7. brought another girl to a party at my house (this was his checkmate move - just didn't have anymore countermoves left in me at that point, jeeeeez this was SUCH an F-ed up situation)
9. he'll be fat and ugly when he gets old
14. sometimes acts 12
15. never said he was sorry (not that I had either...)
16. not as good at music as me (this one isn't really fair, haha)
17. ruined several great songs for me (such as Comfortable, which we never were, but "ruined" came to mean that the situation helped me experience some songs on a deeper plane, like Don't Think Twice, It's Alright)
18. BAD dancer (you have no idea)
19. he's ANNOYING (this might go back to the "sometimes acts 12" one - and boy did it annoy me that I couldn't stop thinking about someone who annoyed me so much...)
21. doesn't get it (I was expecting a 22-year-old male to "get it"! - what was I thinking?!?!?)
25. HE MADE ME HATE HIM (this was probably the nicest thing he couldn't done at that time)
26. we brought out the worst in each other

So yeah, I left some out, but you get the general idea. This is another one of those many things you want a lobotomy for but laugh like crazy about it down the road. But this wasn't the last time I employed this tactic! There was another dude I'd crushed on forevah and wanted to cut him out of my head/heart like a tumor, so I made The List for him too:

1. lives far away
2. alcoholic, or getting there fast
3. has potential to get fat
4. has probably slept with lots of hos
5. not a Christian

As you can see, I'm still kind of shallow (look, I don't want to wake up next to a fat guy when I'm 60), but whatever works! He ain't the right one, so whatever I can do for self-preservation's sake, I'll do, because the subject my consciousness devotes time to had better be more valuable than some clueless slag in little shorts. Thus, The List of Reasons Not To Like Him has been very helpful for me with that whole moving on bit, and consequently getting back into fruitful thought processes, so I highly recommend it! If you ever find yourself liking someone you don't want to like, just grab a pad and pen and focus on their flaws - be brutal!

myspace boycott

I HATE myspace. I used to have an account but canceled it, mostly because I was a musician on there and couldn't ever get my songs to play correctly and I got tired of people posting on my wall "did you know your songs won't play? I can't hear them!" Oh thanks for the info! I'd never heard that before!!

My friends were all, "dude, you canceled your myspace account, is everything okay?" Yeah, I'm freaking fine. Oh excuse me, I'm less of a person now that I don't live my life through freaking myspace! I hardly even exist anymore!

Facebook is bad enough, but there's enough people I care about with whom I'd never stay in touch if not for that website. When facebook started it was this elite cult thing solely for college students. Now everyone can join, even pimply-faced high school creeps. But it's still classier than myspace, with all its advertisements and pedophiles. Ugh.

I'm getting to the age where I'm rejecting new technologies like iPods (which I'd probably enjoy if I weren't too cheap to buy one), iPhones, Wiis, Blackberries, and other freaking nonsense we're conditioned to believe we "need", such as new-skool communication methods like social networking. Kids don't talk to each other or even make eye contact for long because they're too busy watching their stupid cell phones for updates on how one of their 673 "friends" they've never actually met had her relationship status downgrade to "it's complicated".

It's just like Jessica said about computers in Kissing Jessica Stein: "They're numbing and obscuring our humanity." Not to mention turning everyone's grammar into CRAP with their freaking texting language - 2=to, u=you. I guess when you're trying to save time and space phone-to-phone it makes sense, but hells bells! I've seen these shortcuts show up in letters to the editor in newspapers and on blog posts and so forth. If you've ever read 1984 by George Orwell, you'd know that one way Big Brother maintained control was by reducing language people used ("doubleplus ungood") to deplete their ability to articulate thoughts and express themselves.

Alright, maybe I'm paranoid, but these are just a few reasons why I HATE myspace.

Prolificity

pro·lif·ic Pronunciation[pruh-lif-ik]
–adjective
1. producing offspring, young, fruit, etc., abundantly; highly fruitful: a prolific pear tree.
2. producing in large quantities or with great frequency; highly productive: a prolific writer.
3. profusely productive or fruitful (often fol. by in or of): a bequest prolific of litigations.
4. characterized by abundant production: a prolific year for tomatoes.
[Origin: 1640–50; < ML prōlificus fertile. See prolicide, -fic]

My creativity tends to ebb and flow with the seasons. It's surging right now and it's almost freaky. In the past a wave like this would be a side effect of serious neurotransmitter party and I'm almost surprised that it's happening now that I'm taking balance pills. But I'll take it! I got really scared the other night but a calm voice inside my head (it's always nice when the kind voices speak up, haha) gave me a pep talk, told me not to second-guess myself and let me know it's okay because this is what God stitched me together to do! It's natural. It doesn't make me cocky as long as I acknowledge that the songs are gifts from God and just a method of telescoping ideas and feelings into something other people can enjoy.

Last night I finished a song I wrote the chorus for at least three years ago. Then I just started playing a new chord progression that I might match up to old lyrics or make new ones for. I don't know - that's the cool thing. I'm going through my old journals and have found at least 10 songs that are 75-90% finished and just need for me to pick up my guitar or sit down at the piano with a fresh, blank mind and play through to decide how it'll be. I try to let the song decide what it'll sound like in the final analysis. I hate for anything to be too crafted or contrived.

The last thing a songwriter wants is to fall into a rut of writing with the same meter or theme. I'm writing a song making fun of myself how I always try to be ironic and clever in all my lyrics. A songwriter's greatest fear is having the well run dry and thinking "is this all I've got?" Hemingway commented on that in A Moveable Feast:
"It was wonderful to walk down the long flights of stairs knowing that I'd had good luck working. I always worked until I had something done and I always stopped when I knew what was going to happen next. That way I could be sure of going on the next day. But sometimes when I was starting a new story and I could not get it going, I would sit in front of the fire and squeeze the peel of the little oranges into the edge of the flame and watch the sputter of blue that they made. I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, 'Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.' So finally I would write one true sentence, and then go on from there. . . . If I started to write elaborately . . . I found that I could cut that scrollwork or ornament out and throw it away and start with the first true simple declarative sentence I had written. Up in that room I decided that I would write one story about each thing that I knew about. I was trying to do this all the time I was writing, and it was good and severe discipline."

In a conversation about being creative with someone who doesn't have it in him, I said an artist can't help it. You don't have a choice. You create whatever it is because you have to because it's what and who you are. So call me crazy - I'll never be normal by any conventional standard so I'm just rolling with it.

It's getting to be studio time again. I almost have to lay it down and then memorize it from there because I'm not one of those poets who go around with the ability to spout their own crap from memory unless I've been playing it for years. But it'll be my fourth record and I'm looking forward to it.

Boy Hall of Fame

I'm less and less impressed by the boys I meet. No one stands out against the members of my Boy Hall of Fame, which goes like this (for now, it could change in twenty minutes - it actually just changed four times as I was typing it):

1. Bobby Hill
2. The C-Word
3. Lloyd Dobbler/Dreamboat (Tie)
5. Chicken Legs

You could actually hear the clicking sound of the bar being raised when I hung out with these kids. Some have similar characteristics - sincerity in sweetness, long legs and brains, an air of mystery, three of the five wear glasses, and all but the Dreamboat are rugby players. I dunno. Maybe if I analyzed it more deeply I could identify a pattern. Whatever.

I haven't really dated much but realize that the whole process of elimination we go through to find a mate is basically just trial and error. So it isn't a complete waste of time. These jewels of experience produce memories that I hold close in the back of my mind. And I can honestly say that if I don't find one that outshines all of them, I'm satiated.

I Guess It's What You'd Call Maturity...

It's ironic - as I'm getting older and my biological clock is ticking, I feel less urgency to get with someone than I was back in my prime!

One thing I've noticed lately about my prowess with the fellas is that I don't require immediate gratification anymore. Man, back in the day, I'd be burning up to get next to somebody and it was considered a failed play if I didn't get to right then and there. These days I'd rather wait it out to see if the dude is worthy of spending time even talking to.

Maybe that's arrogant. Yeah, it probably is. But the most precious thing we have in this life is TIME, and the last thing I want to do is waste it. So I guess on one hand you could say "I may never see this kid again! Carpe diem!" and on the other, when you aren't sure if he's boyfriend material but has potential, you just kinda get set on offense, make plays on defense, and let the game come to you. I prefer the latter these days and am just less aggressive in general than I used to be.

So I reckon it's safe to say I'm getting further down the road on the way to Grown-Up Town, which is probably a good thing.

You Were But a Dream

I lie awake and reckon
Where you might be
Who you might be with
If you're thinking about me
I hug my pillow close
And pray you're safe and warm
Turn over to the window
And listen to the storm

Nights like this together
We'd fill the air with words
And begin to notice sunlight
And hear the song of birds
Been so long since we spoke
I wonder if you sound the same
But it all runs like water
Down my windowpane

Cause here alone in the dark
I can't escape my thoughts
Counting old regrets
I claimed long ago forgot
I could try to win you back
But would not know where to start
Don't know where you are out there
But still feel you in my heart

Even if I drifted off
Sleep wouldn't be serene
So I stare into the darkness
And wonder what it all could mean
I'll be fine come morning
In my daily routine
I'll act as if we never happened
And you were but a dream


This is probably the best of my unfinished songs. Gotta get on it! It's so sweet. It's not really about anybody, never had the experience of spending loads of time with someone, staying up late talking, not getting sick of them. It'd be cool though, to lose if I got to love first. Actually, this song sort of came true 1.5 years to the day after I finished writing it, so maybe I shouldn't write songs of imagined pain lest they become self-fulfilling prophesies. (The only other time this has happened (I think) was a song about drinking wine with this dreamboat I had a crush on forever, and the experience turned out to be like something out of a movie, really neat!) Whatever, Faulkner said (this was actually quoted by Mary Carillo during the French Open men's final broadcast this past Sunday morning), "Between grief and nothing, I'll take grief." Totallah.

Choice

I'd rather be the mule than the racehorse.
The privilege of a thoroughbred to be choosing
Is offset by the loneliness of the track,
Where mules never face the prospect of losing

Gatorade poem

I rode up to work one day
at The Stadium
on my bike
And came up on a TV crew.

I said, "What's going on here?"
He said
"Filming a Gatorade commercial,
if that's alright with you."

The Lords of Discipline

My second favorite book by Pat Conroy, after My Losing Season.

Here are the lines that stood out to me when I read it last summer while I was volunteering in Alabama:


"helpless to translate the murmurings of the inarticulate lover I felt screaming from within."

"Honor is the presence of God in man."

"...stars spoke the language of light years"

"There's this delayed reaction for all my emotions."

"I will speak from memory - my memory - a memory that is all refracting light slanting through prisms and dreams, a shifting, troubled riot of electrons charged with pain and wonder. My memory often seems like a city of exiled poets afire with the astonishment of language, each believing in the integrity of his own witness, each with a separate version of culture and history, and the divine essential fire that is poetry itself."

"We came...from cruciform towns with a single intersection..."

"...it was obvious that they loved each other very much. It was good to be around them, and I studied how people were required to act when they were in love so I would know the forms and nuances of that sweet delirium if and when it happened to me."

"Do everything well...leave nothing to chance. There was no such thing as an insignificant detail, and everything has a name."

"Athletes have a strange but genuine compulsion to touch each other's asses."

"But it was my destiny and my character not to be able to recall the exact feeling, the exact one, of those brief seconds."

"You had to decide what was estimable and precious in your life and set out to find it. The objects you valued defined you. So did this quest."

Vamos Rafa!

Soy loca para el campeo'n guapo Rafael Nadal.

Over the weekend, he routed - I mean SMEARED - world #1 Roger Federer 6-1, 6-3, 6-0 in the men's French Open Final, making him the first since the great Bjorn Borg to win four in a row at Roland Garros. The 22-year-old from Manacor, Spain on the island of Mallorca is 28-0 at the French Open and shows no signs of slowing down on clay. He'll attempt to take this momentum into Wimbledon and make the transition from his favorite surface to grass in three weeks to be ready for his first round match at the All-England Club on June 28th.

Yeah, all that's pretty cool, but did I mention this kid is smooookingly HOTTTTT? I normally don't dig the ones with long hair, but it just adds to his European flavor. As I previously mentioned, he's 22, which is even cooler. AND, he's RIPPPPPPED - probably the most impressive physical specimen in all of men's tennis. All tan and has dimples and dark eyes and dark hair and whenever he wins a trophy he always poses with it in his mouth and a big grin on his face - UUUUGGGHHHHHHH! Sign me up!

So yeah, it's love.

What Does Prayer Do?

Obviously, a lot of things. Serves many purposes.

But it occurred to me to pray about a situation to give myself a future frame of reference around which to learn the lesson. It's an avenue to allow divine guidance to your growth.

Prayer probably isn't a strength of mine. Okay, it's not. I do pray, usually at lunch time when I go for a walk to enjoy some sunlight. It's usually about small things, but I guess if that's what's worrying me at the time, it's the perfect thing to pray about at that moment. I pray at night when I'm trying to fall asleep. Hmmm, it just now occurs to me that if I actually set aside purposefully wakeful time to pray about whatever, I might be able to lay down and not have scattered, bounding thoughts about randomly stupid things and actually sleep.

(By the way, have I mentioned that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different resullt?)

ANYWAYS...

It seems another chapter is to be written for a book my mind's been working on for at least three years now. I'd be more specific but there's some dirty laundry I like to leave in the hamper.

So it seems prayer is a good answer to everything. I'm gonna go try to pass out - Lord willing it shouldn't take more than half an hour! :)

The Perfect Analogy

Baseball.

You can compare it to anything, and it makes perfect sense.
It can be life, love, or war simultaneously - or it can just be the perfect, pure game you played as a young'en that your daddy taught you to adore.

Today, we shall examine the classic Running-the-Bases as levels of intimacy. Debate exists over what each base actually represents (with 1st generally being a kiss):

1ST base is kissing.
2ND base is heavy petting (although with my version a double includes getting thrown out by the catcher via backslap for putting a hand near my midsection)
3RD base spreads just as much disease as...
Home Run - no explanation necessary. It's such a big deal it's only intended for married people, and if you ask me, NOTHING is worth that crap!!!!

I've even heard a different NUMBER of bases -

At work one day (when I was employed by The White Devil), Meegs (my favorite teammate from when I was privileged to play with the Raleigh Venom) and I were discussing this subject related to gayness. I said something along the lines of lesbians only having three bases, she said "Nuh uh man, we have like, twelve." It was funny of course, only because I'd been exposed to the complexity of seeing emotional involvement between my teammates (I love you, I hate you, we're friends with benefits, we're best friends, etc., within a month of meeting...)

(Just to interject, I'm watching Rachael Ray (yes, Rachael Ray) because I usually do and was sick and tired of hearing about freaking Paul Pierce, and as luck would have it, she's having a baseball-theme episode! Of course including hot dogs and slaw. It's a sign - wow I'm actually starting to like her a lot more hearing her rave about my favorite sport using the same points I do)

I'm really into chastity, okay? Sue me. Not that I don't feel like not every once in a while, but 11 months out of 12, the rare thought of intercourse is shrouded in those tempting fantasies about getting married, and if you know me at all you know I equate marriage with a form of death (not the ultimate, damning death of raising children). Ergo, I am extremely conservative. I've never been a joiner.

So, my RTB analogy goes like this:

First Base = An intelligent, flirty conversation rife with eye contact.
Second Base = Holding Hands
Third Base = To quote Crash Davis, "long, slow, deep, soft wet kisses that last three days."
Home Run = I dunno. Not sex. That's like MLB on steroids. (notice my clever simile? just proves my point). Probably, since I'm a "grown-up" now, I'd have to say the birth of a real relationship.

Therefore, I am a virgin!

If's, And's, and Man-I-Wish-I-Was-That-Good's

If Momma hadn't grown up in an ultra-conservative household where she was told that landscape architecture was "a good avocation, but not a good occupation" for a woman, she wouldn't have gone into the traditionally female field of nursing. If my mom hadn’t been working as a nurse at the hospital in Clermont and taking care of a friend of my dad’s who'd been in a car wreck, they wouldn’t have gotten together. If they hadn’t gotten married, I wouldn’t have the hella-cool last name of “Slaughter”. If I hadn’t been born a Slaughter, chances are I wouldn’t have been brought up as a die-hard Gator. If I hadn’t been born a Gator, it wouldn’t have been my life’s goal to attend UF. If I hadn’t attended UF, I wouldn’t have expanded my mind with highly stimulating courses like Anatomy. If I hadn’t taken Anatomy my sophomore year, I never would’ve heard about the women’s rugby team at UF. If I hadn’t played rugby for UF, I wouldn’t have gone to the 2000 Mardi Gras tournament in New Orleans. If our coach hadn’t dropped the ball and had actually officially signed us up to play at the tournament, I never would’ve picked up with the North Carolina girls. If I’d never met the UNC rugby girls, I never would’ve lived in Chapel Hill. If it weren’t for living in Chapel Hill, I never would’ve heard of “Love, Actually”. If I hadn’t bought the “Love, Actually” DVD for my sister and watched the bonus interview with the director, I wouldn’t have noticed “Both Sides Now” being played during the scene where Emma Thompson realizes her husband has been having a mental affair with his secretary. If I’d never discovered “Both Sides Now”, I probably wouldn’t have been as humbled as a songwriter as I was when I found out Joni Mitchell wrote this song when she was 21 years old!

Twenty-one just happens to be the age when I really started crunching out songs, but they sure as heck weren’t as insightful and universal as this one:

Joni Mitchell

Both Sides Now


Rows and floes of angel hair
And ice cream castles in the air
And feather canyons everywhere
I’ve looked at clouds that way
But now they only block the sun
They rain and snow on everyone
So many things I would have done
But clouds got in my way

I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now
From up and down, and still somehow
Its cloud illusions I recall
I really don’t know clouds at all

Moons and Junes and ferris wheels
The dizzy dancing way you feel
As every fairy tale comes real
I’ve looked at love that way
But now its just another show
You leave ‘em laughing when you go
And if you care, don’t let them know
Don’t give yourself away

I’ve looked at love from both sides now
From give and take, and still somehow
Its loves illusions I recall
I really don’t know love at all

Tears and fears and feeling proud
To say I love you right out loud
Dreams and schemes and circus crowds
I’ve looked at life that way
But now old friends are acting strange
They shake their heads, they say I’ve changed
Well something’s lost, but something’s gained
In living every day

I’ve looked at life from both sides now
From win and lose and still somehow
Its life’s illusions I recall
I really don’t know life at all
I’ve looked at life from both sides now
From up and down, and still somehow
Its life’s illusions I recall
I really don’t know life at all


Holy crap. Should every up-and-coming female singer-songwriter measure herself against this standard? Yes. Is it fair? Yes. Because there’s already too much overly-specific garbage out there about getting hurt by some guy or unrequited love or some other such BS. And yes, those are the kinds of songs I wrote when I was 21. But if you settle for creating trite junk just to make yourself feel better, don't expect to ever be considered great. I just wasn’t as smart or as talented as Joni Mitchell! Why God, why!??!!??? Well, because there can only be, like, ten in a million great singer-songwriters every generation. We can all get better the more we do anything, but some of us have a little bit extra, kind of like an athlete who has an extra gear no one else seems to have. That isn't to say that there aren't people (e.g. friends and family) who will appreciate or even enjoy your pain-driven musical memoirs, in the same way that even a mediocre athlete has fans rooting him on. But if you're gonna do anything, why settle for being just okay?

What makes a great song? First of all, the melody. It has to be catchy and stick in the listener's head. The lyrics have to be poignant and relevant in at least some small way to anyone who hears it.

Have I written any great songs? I can name one, called "Optimism". However, it is instrumental. It's the purest thing to ever come out of me; I wrote it for this kid I thought I was in love with in college (maybe I was, who knows?). I still get this soaring sentiment whenever I play it. So no lyrics - it was never intended to have lyrics because what I felt couldn't be articulated and to attempt to do that would only water it down.

But I digress. If I'd never played rugby, I never would've met the Men of My Life (a song title from my first record, Several Realizations Ago) who inspired my preferred art form. If I'd never gotten into writing songs, I'd probably be in a mental institution.

What does all this mean? I have no freaking idea.