A Playlist for the Journey Moon

New Journey Moon 

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It is the Journey Moon, the time when summer is here and living is easy. People set out to seek their fortune in the world and have adventures. That is very much what the Journey Moon is like for me this year, and I need some good traveling music. Luckily, I was given an iPod touch for my birthday last year and have been making great use of it. 

Last winter I mostly listened to podcasts like On Being, Radio Lab and Snap Judgement. I find the stories told in these kinds of programs to be amazingly inspiring and I learn something new every time I listen. This spring, however, I noticed a shift in my habits. All of a sudden I was listening to music again. Being the analytical girl I am, I of course have some theories about why this might be. It has been an amazing emotional journey lately, and I really felt my focus shifting down a few chakras as the days got longer this spring. On days when I am feeling comfortable in my emotions, or enjoying manipulating them I listen to music. Other days I want to retreat back to the cool comfort of my intellect and I queue up Jad and Robert over at Radio Lab. It has been an interesting journey into previously uncharted territory this spring. And it has had an awesome soundtrack.

Here is the final version of my epic Grabbing the Tiger By the Tail 2012 Mix. I've provided links to videos for the songs wherever I can and if you need more information about any of them, let me know. Allons-y!

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• I Won't Back Down - Johnny Cash 

      A solid pump me up, Grab the Tiger By the Tail kinda song sung by a solid, Grab the Tiger by the Tail kinda guy. "Well I know what's right. I've got just one life in a world that keeps on pushing me aroud but I'll stand my ground. I won't back down."

• Human Touch - Bruce Springsteen

     "So you've been broken and youve been hurt, Show me somebody who ain't. eah, I know I ain't nobodys bargain, but, hell, a little touch up and a little paint... I just want something to hold on to.

And a little of that human touch." Bruce explains it all, again.

• Faster Horses (The Cowboy and the Poet) - Tom T. Hall

     What's important in life? Faster horses, younger women, older whiskey and more money. Don't believe me? Ask Tom T. Hall. 

• St Elmo's Fire (Man in Motion) - John Parr

     Every mix needs a 1980s power theme, right? Well, here's this one. "I can climb the highest mountain, cross the wildest sea, I can feel St. Elmo's Fire burnin' in me." Also, 21 year old Rob Lowe with this hair cut. Yes please.

• What would Brain Boitano Do - Southpark Soundtrack

     A question to ask in every situation. The answer will always be helpful. (Note: the video link above is from the Southpark movie and so is not entirely safe for work, small children or your grandmother. Unless you're grandmother is really, really cool.) And for some totally gratuitous fandom, check out this video of this song, with a Doctor Who video montage. Be still my beating heart. 

• If I had a Million Dollars - Bare Naked Ladies

    It was sweet in 1992 and it is sweet in 2012. Haven't you always wanted a monkey? 

• Birdhouse in your Soul - They Might Be Giants

     In the mid 1980s They Might Be Giants began recording songs, fake advertisements and other bits of joy onto an answering machine cassette and publishing the number in local New York papers like the Village Voice. By 2008 they had recorded over 500 distinct songs for what they called Dial-a-Song and have become kind of a big deal, if I do say so myself. "Not to put to fine a point on it, say I'm the only bee in your bonnet. Make a little birdhouse in your soul."

• Hakuna Matata- The Lion King Soundtrack

     "Hakuna matata, what a wonderful phrase. Hakuna matata, ain't no passing craze. It means no worries for the rest of our days!"  Actually inserted right here on the play list is Tenacious D's F&#k her Gently. It is not safe for work, children, grandmothers or most people with a sense of decency. But it's on my playlist and you might think it's funny. 

• Bad Romance - Lady Gaga

     Another one I love to sing along to very loudly. "I want your love and I want your revenge. I want you love, I don't want to be friends." The link above is to the Oregon State men's acapella group singing the song, but if you haven't seen the original video, go here.

• Nowhere Fast - Fire, Inc.

     The 1984 cult classic "rock n roll fable" movie Streets of Fire is like a strange ghost from my childhood. For years I wasn't sure if it was a figment of my imagination, but the soundtrack was there in my dad's cassette tape collection. This one, produced by the same guy who produced Meat Loaf's 1992 Bat Out of Hell II album, is one of the greatest rock n roll songs ever written. "Everybody's going nowhere slowly, they're only fighting for the chance to be last. There's nothing wrong with going nowhere baby. But we should be going nowhere fast."

• I Want it All or Nothing at All - Bruce Springsteen

    Bruce Springsteen lays it out in black and white. Thanks, Bruce. Also, imagine what trouble the guy who shot this video went though to get this footage in 1992. Thanks, man.  

• What Makes you Beautiful - One Direction

     Boy bands are great summer fare, right? This is my Driving to Meet a First Date, Pump Me Up For Anything song right now. For the proper experience, sing this at full volume with all your windows down while driving through a really hipstery neighborhood. Then listen to the song a second time. That's the way I do it these days. You might appreciate this amazing parody. I do. 

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 What music have you been listening to? Do you make mixes or playlists? What are important elements for you in a good mix? What journeys are you undertaking this summer? 

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New Journey Moon 2011: Perseus and the Journey Moon

New Journey Moon 2010: Journey Moon is New

New Journey Moon 2009: Journey Moon - it's always interesting to look back and see synchronicity between the years in a given season. The anxiety and restlessness I describe in this post feels very current, though our weather is much better this year  :)

Magic

February First

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If you are a dreamer, come in,

If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar,

A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer...

If you're a pretender, come sit by my fire

For we have some flax-golden tales to spin.

Come in!

Come in!

It is that time of year again, the subtley sparkley days in late winter when the first hints of spring start showing themselves. The days are getting longer a couple minutes at a time and some very adventurous plants are even starting to sprout or bud. There's a bit of a pinkish and greenish tinge to the world, rather than just January grey.

Aurora Borealis in Alaska by well_lucio

The holy day marking this point in the wheel of the year is is February First, also known as Brigid, or Candlemas, Imbolc or Groundhog Day. Brigid was a goddess in Ireland before she became the Christian saint and in both (or all?) of her aspects she is the patron of blacksmithing, weaving, healing, poetry and prophecy. At first, these seem like a strange jumble of things and activities to preside over, but a second look shows something in common - these are all elements of magic. Prophecy and poetry are the magic of turning words from nonsense into meaning, healing is the magic of turning illness into health and weaving and blacksmithing are the magic of turning raw materials into useful objects. In a pre industrial world, blacksmithing was just as much magic as healing and both were at least as important as prophecy.

But I don't live in a pre industrial world. In fact, I live in a post industrial, post modernist, 21st century world where even the word magic is a bit dirty, provincial or naive. Materialists insist that everything that happens has a material cause. Perhaps things look magical, but we just havent' seen the cause. Christians know that something non-material can be a cause of material things, but they dismiss magic as either occult or prideful. Dabbling in magic either puts you in league with the devil or full of pride, thinking that you can do something beyond or outside of god's will. I am not a materialist, or a Christian, though, and so I wonder... what do I think about magic?

As you know, I'm a fan of young adult fantasy and other science fiction. Last week I read the first four books in the The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel series, one of those "regular kids get sucked into a world where everything they believed to be true is wrong... and have adventures!" kind of books. In these stories, gods and 

Aurora Borealis in Norway by Tor Even Mathiesen

mythological characters are real, some people can become immortal and even more people can awaken to their true abilities and powers, becoming magical. Characters learn magic in all kinds of ways, but the end results are usually of the spectacular, laws-of-physics-do-not-apply-here kind. At one point, the children call the water out of the earth, causing a muddy pool to swallow a particularly scary monster, and in another scene someone tracks people across Paris by the trail their aura leaves behind. At other times, characters cast spells by putting certain runes or symbols in certain patterns, or by combining special potions or words.

I don't really use magic like that. I don't say I don't ever, because, well, sometimes I say a special ritual phrase or choose symbols, images or colors for specific meanings both in my daily life and in my "religious" life of my nature table, bedroom altar or other special events or objects. I certainly played around with these kinds of magical correspondences, rituals and spells as I explored earth based religion in my 20s but have really never gotten deep into working magic. As I developed a much more panentheistic sense of the divine (that god is both omnipresent in the physical universe and also exists beyond it, as opposed to the theism of Christianity of the polytheism of many Pagan theologies) I have really moved away from these kinds of symbolic gestures. A few remain - I have a charm in my car and say a special verse while rubbing it for luck and safety - but the Quaker sensibilities of both being wary 

Aurora Australis from the International Space Station

of outward symbols and of trusting god in all things, have really taken over my spiritual life. 

But I do know that I have power in this world. I do know that I can make things happen the way I want them to happen and that words and symbols have great, great power. Am I rejecting this knowledge by rejecting magik the way it is practiced by wiccans and some other Pagans? Is it the power of prayer and god's omnipotent will that makes these unexplained, magical seeming things happen? I do not believe in a purely material universe, so why not work with the web of energy that I know connects us? Sometimes I think that the answer to that question is a humble one of not being willing to take on that kind of power, and sometimes I think I am ducking a potential responsibility.

Ultimately, the query I am sitting with in regards to magic is this, an adaptation of a query my pastor asked recently; to what extent do we create magic and to what extent do we merely uncover the magic that already exists? But then again, this is the query I sit with about god in general. What is the answer to life, the universe, and everything?  :)

What does magic mean to you? Have you ever worked magic with spells or magical objects? Do you believe that we have a supernatural influence on the workings of the world through our own work or through petition to a diety? Or do you think this is all a bunch of codwollop? Have you ever experienced anything magical?

Magic

Sandra’s seen a leprechaun,

Eddie touched a troll,

Laurie danced with witches once,

Charlie found some goblins gold.

Donald heard a mermaid sing,

Susy spied an elf,

But all the magic I have known

I've had to make myself.

If you didn't know... both poems are from Shel Silverstein in Where the Sidewalk Ends. The photos are of aurora, one of the more blatently magical things I can think of. Click the links below the pictures to be taken to the photographers' Flickr pages and see more of their phenomenal work.

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February First 2009: February the First

February First 2010: Lovely Luz and Sweet Bridgit This happens to be my all time favorite post from all two plus years of blogging. Please go check it out. 

Feburary First 2011: Brigid - The Goddess of Poetry

February First 2012: Brigid's Red Soup