Happy Music

Be happy while you’re living, for you’re a long time dead. ~Scottish proverb

This week, to my delight, I signed up for Pandora and created my own Internet radio station, playing only music I love! Thanks, Dave, for introducing me to Pandora. And now I feel compelled to spread the word far and wide about this great site.

Pandora is an application of the Music Genome Project, which was begun in 2000 to “map” the attributes of songs, making it possible to match music to your particular tastes. It works!

My radio station is called “Americana Radio,” and I shared it, so you should be able to find it yourself if you’re interested. Here are the artists I entered as examples of ones I like: Bap Kennedy, Bob Dylan, Delbert McClinton, Emmylou Harris, Gillian Welch, Graham Parker, Gram Parsons, Guy Clark, Iris DeMent, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, John Fogerty, John Prine, Joy Lynn White, Kasey Chambers, Kelly Willis, Kim Richey, Lucinda Williams, Lyle Lovett, Nick Lowe, Rodney Crowell, Rosanne Cash, Steve Earle, The Beatles, Tom Petty, Traveling Wilburys, Van Morrison, Warren Zevon. Seems like it will be a great way to discover new artists, as well as listen to my favorites! Check it out…

Attention!

We create ourselves by how we invest the energy of our attention.  ~Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, from Finding Flow

Oh, dear, another book to put on my list. But what a pithy quote! (I got it from a post at Changing Places, where you can find more quotes on attention–thanks, Donna!) In spite of my desire to pay attention to my attention, I often forget how important and powerful it is–that I am literally creating myself through it.

I have paid too little attention to this blog recently, partly because of busyness, partly from avoidance. It is so much easier to play computer Scrabble against the maven or space out doing crossword puzzles. While I’m told that both of these activities are good for my brain, they feel like time-killers. How much more satisfying (albeit more difficult) it is to write something new.

I realize I need “down time,” but more attention to my down-time activities could result in choosing things that feed me, rather than numb me. A walk in the yard, a blog entry, or contact with a friend. Something that makes time expand (rather than disappear) because it requires a special kind of attention.

How do you squander your time and/or attention (if you do)? What feeds you?

Graces

It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by. How else, indeed, to clap the net over the butterfly of the moment? For the moment passes, it is forgotten; the mood is gone; life itself is gone. That is where the writer scores over his fellows: he catches the changes of his mind on the hop.  ~Vita Sackville-West

Life has been slipping by these past few days, with work-related travel, oppressive heat, visiting relatives who are not well, and general malaise. But I’m told there is at least one person who misses these blog entries when I don’t do them (besides me). So Janice, this one’s for us!

I’m behind in reading my Shambala Sun issues, so I took a half-finished copy with me on my recent trip to south Georgia. I was struck once again by how much I enjoy that magazine! I’m not sure I even consider myself a Buddhist, (although it’s probably the organized system for which I feel the most affinity), but there are always authors and articles within the Sun that inspire and teach me. So it is one thing I am grateful for today.

Another is the steadfast love of my husband waiting to greet me from my travels. There is language that enriches my life immeasurably. True friends who teach me something about the impact of my presence on earth and who want only the best for me. Yoga that helps me focus my attention on my body. Music, always music, that has the magical ability to lift my spirits and my spirit. Of course there are too many things to list here; these are just a few that grace my life.

What comes to mind when you consider life’s blessings? How does it change from day to day, month to month, year to year?

Conformity

We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves, in order to be like other people.  ~Arthur Schopenhauer

My mother used to tell a story she found amusing. It was about coming to fetch me from school in the first grade. I was standing in front of the class when she arrived, pretending not to know my colors. I don’t remember this event, but this is one of the saddest stories I’ve ever heard.

For I had been happily reading at least since age 5, had known my colors for far longer, and was academically way ahead of most of my first-grade class when I began school. But I had been admonished so strongly not to “show off,” to be like others so I would be liked, that I had hidden my abilities in the quest for acceptance.

It was many years before I was aware of my conditioning, and many more before I could move beyond it. Even still, I find myself thinking, “How will this look to others?” when I decide on a course of action. This is actually a skill that has served me well in career and political situations, but I have had to come to an understanding about the limits on its value. And I have suffered from applying it in situations where it is not needed.

I think this explains why authenticity is so very important to me now. I cannot bear to pretend any longer that I am something I am not. I actually think age is helpful in this regard, as we who are in public service approach retirement and can be whoever we are. How do you deal with this dilemma, in a political world?

The Case Against Will

When you will, make a resolution, set your jaw, you are expressing an imaginative fear that you won’t do the thing. If you knew you would do the thing, you would smile happily and set about it. 

So you see, the imagination needs moodling–long, inefficient, happy idling, dawdling and puttering.  ~Brenda Ueland, from If You Want to Write

It is easy to see why Ueland’s work is a classic and hard to believe I have not read it until now. I know already that it will be one of those I will want to reread every couple of years, as I do other books of distilled wisdom (Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet, for example).

As one who has struggled for years to will self-care, I could not agree more with Ueland’s case against will. The harder I try to force myself to eat right and exercise more, the fiercer the rebellious resistance becomes. (If I knew I would do it, I would just smile happily and set about it!) She shares what I find to be an interesting insight: “People who try to boss themselves always want (however kindly) to boss other people. They always think they know best and are so stern and resolute about it they are not very open to new and better ideas.” (God forbid.) Describing herself as “a fearful self-disciplinarian” who has learned a better way, she promotes “dreamy idleness” as a way of quietly letting in imaginative thoughts. 

The best news is that Ueland’s “moodling” is (for the most part) simply being in the present moment! She says, “…when I walk in a carefree way, without straining to get to my destination, then I am living in the present. And it is only then that the creative power flourishes.” She tells us that “…it is the way you are to feel when you are writing–happy, truthful, and free, with that wonderful contented absorption of a child stringing beads in kindergarten.”

P. S. Did Ueland coin the word “moodling?” Merriam-Webster does not know it.