My new favorite song writing tools

When I first started writing songs, I thought using anything besides my brain was cheating.  At some point I got stumped with lyrics and started to branch out from my melon.  Here are my current favorite song writing tools:

The first:  The Thesaurus

Or, more accurately, Thesaurus.com.  Sometimes I come up with a phrase, and I find it too common/boring/sucktastic....so I take the most common words and get the synonyms.  This doesn't always help change a specific word, sometimes the whole phrase gets changed around depending on what I read.

The second: Rhyming Dictionary

I used to think going to a rhyming dictionary was way worse than the thesaurus. It was major cheating.  Then I learned to give myself a break.....one cannot possibly come up with all ryhming words on ones own.  The thing I really love about the online rhyming dictionary RyhmeZone is this:  not ONLY will it spit out rhyming words, but it will spit out rhyming words of MULTIPLE SYLLABLES!

There are certain songs where the number of syllables in a particular line is actually more important than the rhyme, so looking at multiple syllable rhyming words gives me options to add or decrease the syllables when I need to.

That's it!  That's all I wanted to say this evening :)

(Listen to my music and find upcoming shows  here)

Sometimes I feel like a wigwam and a teepee....

I'm two tents (or, too tense)!


I have started dreading the weekends. I wake up in the mornings paralyzed because I don't know what I should do. When I eventually get out of bed, things start to flow, but for about an hour each weekend morning I'm pretty miserable.

How did I get here?

Feel it to release it?!?!?!?

I just had a profound thought that I'd like to share.

I read a book a few months ago called The Open Focus Brain, which talks about different ways of paying attention.

One part of the book discussed if you are feeling pain- physical or emotional- that it's your bodies way of communicating something, and that by paying attention to your pain, you acknowledge what your body is saying. After paying attention to the pain it often lessens or disappears.

I'm feeling sad today. Normally I try sort of ignore that sadness...I would pay attention to other things..I dig into my work.

Today I decided that it's ok to feel sad, and that in order to release it I need to FEEL it.

I then thought about other things that would hurt you if you held on to them, and came up with this analogy:

If you pick up a scalding iron, and you don't feel the pain, holding onto that iron is going to cause quite a bit of damage to your hand. BUT...if you FEEL the pain...the searing of your hand, you will let the iron go and less damage will be done to your hand then if you held on to it.

This goes back to the message of The Open Focus Brain. When I first read that part of the book, I logically understood it. But after today I GET it.

Another analogy that I thought of, but I don't know if it will hold true...

If sadness is like a sandwich, and we only allow ourselves to feel a little bit of sadness at a time (taking a nibble of the sandwich), then it's going to take a long time to finish that sandwich. It will probably start going bad and growing mold if we spread it out over weeks and months (festering emotions, anyone?!).

Perhaps if we really feel the sandwich.... if we eat the big bites in a couple of sittings, then the sandwich is eaten and gone, without the mold.

I will try not to ignore this sadness. I will acknowledge it, FEEL it, and move through it.

A thought from early this morning:

There's nothing wrong with being emotional. I've had people tell me I'm emotional like it's a bad thing. I say F**K THAT!!!! If there wasn't emotion, we wouldn't have great songs, and great art, and people that are working for change. If there wasn't emotion, we would be zombie like.

Emotion makes people uncomfortable when they see it in someone else. I'm done with living my life because things I do make people uncomfortable. It's not about you anymore. Now it's about me.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it!

Releasing the forgotten poet

I have been very quiet.

Without going into too much detail, I decided to start a blog for just my poetry.

It's been an idea I've been tossing around for a while, but never quite got around to actually doing anything about it.

I started writing poetry when I was young, and as I got older, I wrote less.

Poetry is what inspired my to learn how to play the guitar- so I could set poems to music.

Poetry was the safety release valve on emotions that I could not verbalize.

Poetry was what allowed my truth to surface, even when I was not conscious of it.

I let it be forgotten. I forgot a part of myself that was (is!) important.

So now, in the very depths of feeling very broken about one too many things, that part is bubbling up through the cracks.


Some will be new, some will be old, but all on them will contain seeds of my truth.

The Forgotten Poet

Ze Cuppy-cake es Taunting Meh!

Last night, I went over to a friends house to celebrate her birthday with Chinese take-out. Little did I know...she had bought cupcakes. Carrot cake cupcakes with a swirl of white-ish frosting and a little frosted carrot on top.

There were a total of 6. I inhaled 2 at her house, then she sent one home with me. I have been trying to avoid eating much sugar, but I have very poor self control.

I do great not buying sugar; this is my best tactic. If I don't buy sugar, then it's not in the house, and I don't eat it.

Unfortunately, I leave my house occasionally. Then shit gets real.

Fast forward to this morning:

After eating eggs and toast, my gaze happens to fall on the island counter where a plastic container holds ONE carrot cake cuppy-cake. I eye it. It sits there.

I circle the island, nonchalantly, looking like there was something I needed to be doing, all the while eying the cuppy-cake.

At this moment, the cuppy-cake represents all the to-do list items I'm dreading. In a way I'm dreading eating the cuppy-cake because I know I will pay for it later.

At some critical moment, I break. I open the container, pull the wrapper off the cuppy-cake, and proceed to devour it. DEVOUR....OM NOM NOM >:)

I don't even really know that I tasted it, just that I felt satisfied.

Now if I could only devour my to-do list....

A long slow slide

There have been several life altering events and dramatic moments in my life in the past 6 months.

I have not being fielding these things well.

A few weeks ago, I started to realize I haven't been my normal self, which was confirmed by some comments from close friends.

I'm not as optimistic or positive as I was at the beginning of the year. Lately I've been fairly moody, a little negative, and somewhat pessimistic.

This is not where I want to be.

In some ways I'm sort of giving myself permission to be this way since it's been a rough couple of months, but in other ways I beat myself up for it, thinking I should be in a better place.

I don't know how to get past where I'm at.

I'll keep your memory safe in my heart

"and I'm not quite saying goodbye
but how time does fly
and I'll keep your memory
safe in my heart
'cause were never really apart,
you're just moving on
you're just moving on"

The above is part of a song I wrote when my ferret Fiona started to get really sick over a year ago. I had to put her to sleep on memorial day of this year.

Today, my ferret Egan was diagnosed with heart disease, and was given about 1 month to live.

Before I decided to take Egan to the vet this afternoon, I was pondering gardens.
I worked from my home office today, and was specifically thinking about the garden beds that would go in under my office window.

I had decided several months ago that I was going to put an arbor up in the corner of the yard, just behind the gate. On that arbor, I decided to grow purple Clematis in honor of my grandmothers memory. When Fiona passed, I decided to make that corner of the yard a memorial garden of sorts.

Since Fiona means fair one in Gaelic, I decided that I should plant a white flowering plant for her, although I hadn't decided on a specific plant.

Unfortunately, because of the days events, I was not personally able to take Egan to the vet. Luckily, my friend and pet sitter Stacee was able to take him. At first, when she told me the diagnosis from the doctors, I think I went into shock. I was able to talk with her like a normal person, and not tear up or hyperventilate. I think I actually said to her at one point I hadn't really processed everything and that's the only reason I could really speak to her.

During our last conversation before Stacee brought Egan home, I went outside to think. It only took a few minutes for the reality of the situation to set in. I think the thing that really got the flood gates to open is when I started to think about what plant I should plant for Egan in the memorial garden.

Since his name means fire or little fire in Gaelic, I decided his plant needed to be orange-ish, and planted close to Fiona's plant.

Since the vet appointment, Egan hasn't improved much. He has fluid around his lungs and heart, and his heart is enlarged. The fluid retention in his body is causing him pant and have labored breathing. One of the medicines he was given is supposed to help drain the excess fluid out of his body, but it might not kick in for a few days.

Apparently, heart disease isn't that common in ferrets. The vet told Stacee that Egan is the oldest ferret (7 yrs) he's seen in fairly good shape, and that the reason that heart disease isn't often seen in ferrets is because most ferrets don't live long enough to develop the disease.

I hate seeing him so uncomfortable, especially when there isn't much I can do about it. Luckily I worked from home most of the day, so I was able to notice his discomfort and get him to the vet sooner rather than later.

As I've been sitting with Egan this evening, I thought about the similarities between my ferrets and flowers. Both start off from seeds, start out small, bloom, wither, and finally pass.

Another random thought I had earlier was about the signs Fiona left me when she passed. The first couple of weeks after I had to put her to sleep, I kept seeing white feathers. Now, this isn't one of those things where I looked for feathers and thought of her...they would show up in random places. The most obvious occurrence was when I was looking for something in my room, and stuck my hand under the bed to feel around. When I pulled my hand out there was a white feather stuck in between the beads on the bracelet I was wearing. That's the point at which I knew for sure Fiona was telling me that she was ok.

I wonder what signs Egan will give me when he passes. I wonder if, the first time Egan and Fiona see each other on the other side, they will wrestle and make THE ferret noise.

I know that my furkids and I are never really apart, Fiona proved that to me with her feathers. They move on, just like the rest of us will at some point.

I know the finished memorial garden will keep their memories safe in my heart.