New Year

'Don't let me into this year with an empty heart, with an empty heart. Don't let me into this year with an empty heart...'

November

Mr Novembers themselves, The National -

November sadness -

Hunter's Moon

 

If ever there was a moon to howl at, this'd be  it: October's Full Moon, known as the Hunter Moon (occuring 17-18th October) 

These songs remind me of this moon - i.e empowerment, self-realisation, and an unveiling of potential ~ 

Autumn Aware

La Rocca are the band I associate most with this time of year. The leaving, letting go, and moving on. The rustling copper leaves and their breezy burnished beats go together, like a freshening wind, blowing the previous season's accumulations away and preparing the way for a big significant change. 

'Non-Believer', by the way, one of my favourite ever songs. Play it loud and often to change your life. 

'Do you take the non-believers? Cause I'm a non-believer...'

'Make a friend of who you are....the future's getting brighter...'

'Cause I know a place I'm going to like nowhere that you've been....'

Fake Empire

I can't believe I haven't posted The National here yet, my favourite modern band.

Morose and miserable, they describe disillusion (and everything starting with 'dis') like no one else. Into the winter season we go:

Sing to the Moon

This is just amazing...

Music/Musing for a New Season

Learning to adapt to and accept a new season...

This is equivalent to being smacked in the face and embracing a ten-force wind of change! It'll blow the cobwebs right off:

September Sadness

I don't like September. Don't like the seasonal change. Lots of other changes. And the darkness coming in fast.

If Only

'It made me think of you, it made me think of you...'

If only sometimes, we could do the thing we really wanted to do, recognised the moment for what it was - an opportunity, a flight path -  used our wings instead of wishing for them.

Then we wouldn't be haunted by regret (and a fear of flying)

La Vie en Rose

 

Is there any song more beautiful, more magical than this one ~  (or any idea either: that love makes life rose-tinted) 

 

Stars & Lullabies

Band of Horses: Rainy summer night listening. Melancholy and stars. Lullaby and longing. Sorrow and sweetness:

Backwards Walk

Trying to forget about someone, to retreat from all your feelings for them, is like trying to walk backwards... A difficult thing to learn.

Up, Over & Beyond

Let the sunshine carry you up, over, and beyond all that would try to keep you down.
Or - how a keen and sudden realisation is equal to wings; strength, resolve, independence, ~ freedom.

'I will not be a victim of romance, I will not be a victim of circumstance, or chance...'

Love is a Losing Game

Yes, I'm beginning to think it is.

But somehow, melancholy like this, is always softened through song. Yes, love sucks, losing in love sucks, but doesn't this song serve as a lullaby to it somehow? Doesn't it make it - better - somehow? It gets it. It understands. It listens to us, as we listen to it.

You Are My Sunshine

Notice how many songs there are that describe the feeling of being in love to being in the sun? The beloved to glorious sunshine?And love to the sun that brightens our days beautifully. So many! And, so true, the perfect comparison.

Here's a few of my favourites:

The highs of shiny summer love: ~ 'You shine like silver in the sunlight, you light up my cold heart...'

All sparkled awe at new love!: ~ 'I'm yours and suddenly you're mine and it's brighter than sunshine...'

The hesitant fear but over-riding happiness of going from dark to light - uncertainty, pain, longing to - love, sunny love: ~  'I cross the shadow and step into your sun...' 

Underneath the Stars

The Heart and Soul Nebula

'I defy you stars!....' ~ Romeo - Romeo & Juliet, William Shakespeare

If there's any sound for the pain of forbidden love, with all its soaring and falling, joy and despair, it's this one:

Songs for a Rainy Day

Awake

Some days it's hard to keep awake. Not physically awake, but every other kind.

And what's worse, it feels like everyone else is sleeping too. And each hour is a tiresome trek.

But still, I keep myself awake. Do you? We have to.

Love Will Tear Us Apart... or Not?

This song is a strange one. With every listen, its meaning seems to morph and change.

With its upbeat tones, it seems optimistic. Accepting. Affirmative. Love will tear us apart, yep, but that's ok. We get it. That's the way things are meant to be. (~ Original version)

Then, at other times it seems more morbid. Sad. Fated to sorrow and not willing to fight it. Defeatist. Tragic. Doomed. (The cover version really brings this out)

But both, striking so. 

Summer Kick-Start

Oh, the highs of sunny summer mornings, feeling free and easy, and the anticipation of the get-up-and-go the season has in store sounds something like this:

Possibilities

 

Maybe my favourite song ever!

This is what possibility sounds like, flaring and sparking like fireworks on the horizon. Possibility - impossible to ignore, impossible to resist.

This song is shot through with adrenaline, rising hope and all the dizzying heady heights of what could be, what should be.

And how it's all down to us, to ourselves, to get up and go after what we want in this life, to light the spark of our own possibilities and follow through the flame - 'if we don't make it/ nothing changes'

Emotional Excess

You know those songs you hear playing at critical emotional climax moments in TV programmes - songs that accentuate the feelings in a particular scene, songs that seem to plant an amp beneath the emotions of the scene and blast their magnitude at you until you can feel it resonate with you so much your eardrums tingle and some complex feeling of your own - previously wordless, shapeless, soundless - suddenly shifts itself into a legible luminous clarity and you feel immersed, for that few seconds, in a personal epiphany of huge proportions?

Yeah? Well, here's one of them. Emotional extraordinaire, The Cary Brothers: 

Gatsby

I love The Great Gatsby, one of my all-time favourite books.

I think this song from the Baz Luhrmann film, sums up the story best, captures all the conviction and hope that Gatsby had in his heart, which turned out to be all for nothing in the end, and thus, tragic.
A heart breaks worse the more hope it has it seems. That green light ~ a blessing and a curse.

Bluebird

Bluebirds are not just a symbol of happiness it seems, but bitterweet sorrow too:

Good Kind of Crazy

'Don't lose sight of your original mind...'

It's ok to make mistakes. We're all learning. We're all trying. We're all hurting. We're all just going on our way. And it's good to question things. And it's okay to feel lost at times too. 

Well, that's what this song seems to say anyway. And maybe something about realisation and acceptance too. And the universality of being an individual. And, getting free. 

Sensitive

Although it has its bad points, overall, it's good to be sensitive. To be able to really feel things. To know what alive is.

It calls for a celebration infact ~

Let Me Breathe

'It's better to jump overboard
before this ship starts sinking...'

Sometimes you just have to say out the things you feel. If you don't, you may just suffocate.

And it's necessary, if you want to 'shine, not just exist.'

Sunday Sorrow

I can feel myself turning into dust...

Sometimes, pain dilutes the world to a rainy day view. And things disintegrate so much, lose their meaning, their hold, that you begin to feel like you're disentegrating too.

Come On

Sometimes, you just have to be yourself. Do what you want to do. Go where you want to go. To a person, to a place. Go for it.

Come out of whatever place you've been hiding in and - be.

Fade Out

Moping and miserable...

And this song has multiple fitting shades of grey...

Hush Now, Hear

The quiet hush of a Sunday evening. And thoughts that always swing towards someone special. A love as fragile as a spider-web, and as strong. A delicate melancholy madness. A musing. The thrumming heartbeat-hum of quiet, desperate, realisation -

Between Two Lungs

What happens if we tell the truth? Reveal that which lies at the bottom of our hearts? All the good that huddles there, the flowers, the love? To finally release it?

I imagine it would sound something like this:

Feel Again

When feeling flares again, everything takes on a new light. And its pulsing tempo makes you almost want to burst into colour.

And sometimes, of course, it's all down to one spectacular person. (Smile).

ie. April

Well it's April  and I think I may just have to post a Ryan Adams song every day for the whole month!

Why? - His southern country-twang music is all sunny days  and open highways and mottled sunspot evenings; on-the-road open wanderings, with the smell of summer on a green horizon and all around, all along, the acoustic trickling of soaring and dipping notes of feelings, like swallows, against a big blue new sky.

- ie, April.

Fear

Fear is there for us to conquer. Fear adds an importance to things. Fear tests us. Fear, ultimately, makes us strong. Fear makes us grow.

But to be fearless, is our greatest challenge.And the rewards, infinite.

The Deep

Sometimes emotions can be overwhelming, can swallow you whole like the ocean depths. Sometimes you float and sometimes you sink. And sometimes, you drown.

Elusive, Ethereal

Quiet teardrop acoustics on a clear-eyed day...

Forays

These soft gentle first few days/forays of Spring sound something like this: -

Now is the Start

Oooh, Spring is the air, new beginnings are starting to hum and sing...!
Can't you feel it? Can't you feel the world tilting on its axis? The light coming back? 

And It's Such a Drag

Monday, Monday...

By Starlight

Melancholy... musing... starlight... 'dead eyes, are you just like me?'

With Wings

 'I walk in a field with wings...'

Cold, cold frosty blue day today. Everything silver. Walking in it feels like this song:

A Lack of Colour

Exactly what January is like; especially with frost and snow. 

Acceptance...

I waited for something
and something died
So I waited for nothing
and nothing arrived...

New Year

It's a New Year... and life is out there waiting.

And my gosh, it really is wonderful and beautiful and glorious, just look!

And living is superlative.