Both Sides Now - An ode to a life that now and then needs some repair

The world is celebrating Earth Hour right now. I am supposed to shut down all forms of life in our household that is powered by electricity. Of course that includes my computer.

But here I am - blogging. I could blog later, maybe, by midnight, but I am blogging now. Why not, peanut?

Well I know that I have done Mother Earth many worthwhile services, Thus Spake Zarathustra, I shouldn’t feel guilty about wasting a bit of energy on a very meaningful endeavor that is blogging.

It is because I have a sparkling reason why I must blog now and not later - I saw, via YouTube, a live Joni Mitchell performance of one of her most achingly beautiful songs, Both Sides Now.
Yes, the version featured in the film Love Actually, specifically in that really heartbreaking scene when Emma Thomson discovered her husband’s infidelity – well, I can relate to the situation, though not as the heartbroken one, but as the infidel.

And yes, that same song murdered by Sharon Cuneta. If it is ever true that her senator husband is having these flings here, there and everywhere, then she truly deserves the corresponding sense of neglect and insecurity if only because she grossly disrespected one of Joni Mitchell’s life-affirming life-mirroring masterpieces.

Now back to Joni Mitchell’s Both Sides Now.

Sigh.

I should have been in tears. But I was not. Not because I was not moved. I was. Completely. Insanely. It’s just that I don’t cry that easily. I mourn. I suffer. I whine. And I blog.

Sigh.

In the last few seconds of the performance, Joni Mitchell laid down her arresting passion on these humble lines: “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.”

I think only so few in this earth have humbly understood life. And for many of us, we can only stand still for just a little bit of time or take a step back and let our hearts do the thinking – our life, though it is in good disrepair, is not really that bad, it just needs some repair now and then and then and now.

My Life in Musick >> 10,000 Maniacs

These are the twists.

Think. Who is your favorite music artist?

Read. Check out questions #1 to #15.

Reflect. How do you answer the questions using the songs of your artist as the answers?

Exciting huh?

1. Are you male or female:

Gold Rush Brides
Dakota on the wall is a white-robed woman, broad yet maidenly.
Such power in her hand as she hails the wagon man’s family.
I see Indians that crawl through this mural that recalls our history.
Who were the homestead wives?
Who were the gold rush brides?
Does anybody know?

2. Describe yourself:

Peace Train Now, I've been happy lately
Thinkin' about the good things to come
And I believe it could be something good has begun
I've been smilin' lately dreamin' about the world as one
And I believe it could be, some day it's going to come







3. How do you feel about yourself:

Trouble Me
Spare? Spare me? Don't spare me anything troubling.
Trouble me... disturb me with all your cares and you worries.
Speak to me... and let our words build a shelter from the storm.
Let me... And lastly, let me know what I can mend.
There's more, honestly, than my sweet friend, you can see.
Trust is what I'm offering if you trouble me

4. Describe your ex:

Gun Shy
I don't mean to argue, they've made a decent boy of you
and I don't mean to spoil your homecoming my baby brother Jude
and I don't mean to hurt you by saying this again,
they're so good at making soldiers
but they're not so good at making men.

5. Describe your current situation:

These Are Days
These are days you’ll remember.
Never before and never since, I promise, will the whole world be warm as this.
And as you feel it, you’ll know it’s true that you are blessed and lucky.
It’s true that you are touched by something that will grow and bloom in you.

6. Describe your current location:

Because The Night
Because the night belongs to lovers
Because the night belongs to us
With love we sleep
With doubt the vicious circle
Turns and burns
Without you I cannot live
Forgive, the yearning burning
I believe it’s time to heal to feel
So take me now, take me now, take me now



7. Describe where you want to be:

Eden
All in time, but the clock is another demon that devours our time in eden, in our paradise.
Will our eyes see well beneath us, flowers all divine?
Is there still time?
If we wake and discover in life a precious love, will that waking become more heavenly?

8. Your best friend is:

Like The Weather
Do I need someone here to scold me
or do I need someone who'll grab and pull me out of
four poster dull torpor pulling downward.
For it's such a long time since my better days.
I say my prayers nightly this will pass away.

9. Your favorite color is:

Grey Victory
Too few hands
Many wounds for closing
Marred by
Thirsting
Anguish
Fear lamenting
Here we stand
At the door to gold atomic age
Don't spoil your face with worry
Trust in
Earth bound kingdom come

10. You know that:

Candy Everybody Wants
If lust and hate is the candy,
If blood and love tastes so sweet,
Then we give ’em what they want.
So their eyes are growing hazy ’cos they wanna turn it on,
So their minds are soft and lazy.
Well... who do you wanna blame?

11. What’s the weather like:

What’s The Matter Here?
I'm tired of the excuses
Everybody uses

12. If your life was a television show it would be called:

Noah’s Dove
In your reckless mind,
You act as if you’ve got more lives.
In your reckless eyes, it’s never too late
For a chance to seize some
Final breath of freedom

13. What is life to you:

If You Intend
If you intend to live again,
Then take the outstreched hand of the one that needs you.
It’s been so long, we’ve missed you.
Why do you intend to speed your end?
Lie in the dark and let your limbs grow weaker, sinking low then deeper.
How can you be so near and not see everything?

14. What is the best advice you have to give:

Few And Far Between
’till you make your peace with yesterday, you’ll never build a future.
I swear by what I say.
Whatever penance you do, decide what it’s worth to you and then respect it.
However long it will take to weather your mistakes, why not accept it?

15. If you could change your name, you would change it to:

Jezebel
I’m not saying I’m replacing love for some other word to describe the sacred tie that bound me to you.
I’m not saying love’s a plaything.
No, it’s a powerful word, inspired by strong desire to bind myself to you.
How I wish that we never had tried to be man and his wife, to weave our lives into a blindfold over both our eyes.

The power of certainty

It has been said, time and again, that we can only appreciate, and selflessly value, the beauty of our life’s blessings once those blessings are gone.

They are gone maybe because we have taken them for granted.

They are no longer within our grasp maybe because those blessings were never ours to begin with – they just exist to humble us, inspire us to keep on dreaming, remind us of our humanity, and tell us that our own time in Eden will unfold in its own fine hour.

Or maybe they are gone - for us to reclaim.

The truest moment of realization – that the one thing we hold sacred, divine, is gone – happens when one hits rock bottom. We have to hit rock bottom. We have to hit rock bottom not for the selfish goal of throwing ourselves into our foolish desires, but so we may be pushed to spiral our way up to the undefeatable heavens.

But hitting rock bottom is not a way of life – it is not a road that must be taken. When we hit the floor of the black hole, we have none but ourselves to point fingers at.

But during the moment of simple, uncomplicated, virgin realization, one thing will always remain - the certainty.

The certainty to be honest with oneself and follow one’s heart.

The certainty to cross boundaries, to territories never before touched, only imagined.

The certainty to shed layers of pride and come out with nothing but passion, devotion, kindness, humility, and fierce, unconditional love.

The certainty to win. The certainty to someday not regret.

There will be no more apologies. The future won't even give its promise.

And you only have this simple, honest, uncompromising, powerful, humbling certainty to get you through the years and its seasons.

The greatest hits of my life Part 1

Music. Music makes the people come together. Music makes the bourgeoisie and the rebel.

Of course that was just the lyrics of Madonna’s party song. I gave a short homage to it, actually just pasted it, for the lack of better introduction to this post. Not that there are no better intros, it’s just that my mind is not exactly sane right now - because my life has recently been bamboozled by many dramas and I only slept for just five hours or less last night.

So you might ask, why are you blogging now if your mind is not up to it? The blogosphere is much too polluted with citizens who don’t really have anything redeeming to say, and here you are, Jessie, with your uninspired spark of wisdom?

It is because my mind is full to the brim with complications brought by acts committed that were tantamount to reckless imprudence and I need to compose my thoughts, organize them in a nice clean line, like, say, an elementary school’s flag ceremony or more ambitiously, a West Point military academy graduation.

But then again, my thoughts - the emotional faculties of my mind - have never ever been in order. I can make some semblance of organization in my work but never in my personal life, there are always bits and pieces here, there and everywhere, making each day of the year, oops, now I am doing a reckless improvisation of the Beatles classic.

But the point is I am trying to organize my thoughts and yeah, its emotions. Never mind that I haven’t been successful at it. The point is I am trying. So don’t just pester me now with your boring principles on modern day blogging, as if there was such a thing as Medieval Age blogging. I am just organizing my thoughts, and again, yeah, its emotions.

Now, back to the original purpose of this post – music. You see, I tend to wander in the caverns, in the canyon and I excavate for a mine, before I proceed to my original intentions, in this case, music. I am just being me, and by the way, this charming insanity of mine have earned some rave reviews and cult followings, even love affairs that disintegrate instantly once my groupie has realized that he has mistakenly fallen for a bag lady disguised as Marilyn Monroe.

Now, music. Music has been and always will be my willing companion. I remember in high school and college that I always exhaust the tape head of the cassette deck and my walkman because of my non-stop playbacks. There will always be a song, a voice or a record relevant to almost all moments or circumstances of my life. Well, almost only, because once in a while we need to switch off the worldly sounds to listen to the voices in our head. You know - those voices that sometimes push people to hang themselves. Hahahaha.

But I don’t just dwell on songs, or the hits, instead I always have this attachment to the entire record album, the whole package including the inlay and the jewel case. Even to this day when I download MP3’s, I am still obsessive about arranging tracks #1 to #infinity as originally intended by the artist, and oh well, the profit-driven producers. The songs in an album, if it is a good one, are like brothers and sisters, and, if it is a bad one, casual partners in a sophisticated orgy. Bottom line, record albums must be appreciated for the intimate relationships of its songs, and each song’s brilliant thread in the album’s magical or depressing tapestry. Thus Spake Zarathustra, I sum up my day’s whining with this 15-disc soundtrack - the greatest hits of my life:


1. This Fire. Paula Cole.
Me>> And it's me who's too weak, it's me who's too shy to ask for the thing that I love. But I love.






2. Fumbling Toward Ecstasy. Sarah McLachlan.
Fumbling Towards Ecstasy>> And if I shed a tear I won't cage it. I won't fear love. And if I feel a rage I won't deny it. I won't fear love.





3. New Beginning. Tracy Chapman.
The Promise>> If you wait for me then Ill come for you. Although Ive traveled far, I always hold a place for you in my heart. If you think of me, if you miss me once in awhile, Then Ill return to you. Ill return and fill that space in your heart.

4. Tapestry. Carole King.
Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow>> Tonight with words unspoken, you'll say that I'm the only one. But will my heart be broken when the night meets the morning sun?

5. Little Earthquakes. Tori Amos.
Tear In Your Hand >> All the world is. All I am. The black of the the blackest ocean. And that tear in your hand. All the world is danglin danglin danglin for me darlin. You dont know the power that you have with that Tear in your hand.





6. From The Choirgirl Hotel. Tori Amos.
Spark>> You say you dont want it again. And again but you dont dont really mean it. You say you dont want it. This circus were in. But you dont you dont really mean it you dont really mean it.





7. Our Time In Eden. 10,000 Maniacs.
Eden>> If we wake and discover in life a precious love, will that waking become more heavenly?




8. O. Damien Rice.
Blowers Daughter>> And so it is. Just like you said it would be. Life goes easy on me. Most of the time.





9. Blue. Joni Mitchell.
A Case Of You>> I remember that time that you told me, you said, Love is touching souls. Surely you touched mine. Cause part of you pours out of me. In these lines from time to time.




10. Madonna. Something To Remember.
This Used To Be My Playground>> Live and learn. Well the years they flew. And we never knew. We were foolish then. We would never tire. And that little fire. Is still alive in me. It will never go away. Cant say goodbye to yesterday.



11. Baduizm. Erykah Badu.
Otherside Of The Game>> Summer came around and the flowers bloomed. He became the sun. I became the moon. Precious gifts that we both received. Or could this be make believe?




12. Butterfly. Mariah Carey.
The Roof>> Every time I feel the need. I envision you caressing me. And go back in time. To relieve the splendor of you and I. On the rooftop that rainy night






13. Dummy. Portishead.
Glory Box>> From this time, unchained. Were all looking at a different picture. Thru this new frame of mind. A thousand flowers could bloom. Move over, and give us some room. Give me a reason to love you.









14. The Globe Sessions. Sheryl Crow.
My Favorite Mistake>> Did you know when you go its the perfect ending. To the bad day I was just beginning. When you go all I know is you're my favorite mistake.





15. Spirit. Jewel.
Absence Of Fear>> Inside my skin. There is this space. It twists and turns. It bleeds and aches.
Inside my heart. Theres an empty room. Its waiting for lightning. Its waiting for you.