Alexandersmap

    Category: Music

    • The Schooner Ardelle on a Celtic Sunset Cruise

      These summer clouds she sets for sail,
      The sun is her masthead light,
      She tows the moon like a pinnace frail
      Where her phosphor wake churns bright.
      Now hid, now looming clear,
      On the face of the dangerous blue
      The star fleets tack and wheel and veer,
      But on, but on does the old earth steer
      As if her port she knew.
      — William Vaughn Moody, Gloucester Moors

      We know when we are in the midst of something extraordinary. Anticipation creeps up on us as the minutes pass by, awaiting our participation. Awareness floods in as the magic unfolds. Joy and gratitude edge in, provoking other emotions. There comes a time when we must simply put away the camera, stop searching for just the right word or phrase, and simply be a part of all that is happening around us.

      Gloucester, Massachusetts has a long history with the sea. Its famous harbor has long welcomed home fisherman and sailors from passages as far and wide as the ocean’s reach. One feels the history sailing in this harbor, and you play some small part in the play for having been here at all. The fleets of old are mostly all gone now, ghosts of what once was. But there are a few holdouts, and newcomers built in the traditional way, to offer some hint of what it was like long ago.

      Harold Burnham has built several schooners in the traditional fashion. For a couple of centuries the Burnham’s have built ships in Essex, Massachusetts. Two of his schooners are harbored in nearby Gloucester, and Harold himself captains sunset cruises. You simply have to put yourself in the way of beauty and sign up to participate. And if you’re especially fortunate, you may join on a night of Celtic music to offer a proper soundtrack for a September night when the clouds are just so to harness a bit of heavenly magic.

      Maritime Heritage Charters offers many opportunities to learn and experience a few hours on a schooner sailing in Gloucester Harbor. One not to miss is the Celtic Music Sunset Sail with Michael O’Leary & Friends cruise, when traditional music and song fill the heart and soul as you slip past history and witness the divine dance of fading light. The experience is one that will stay with you forever.

      The Schooner Ardelle, Gloucester, Massachusetts

    • Step Out

      Now I’m thinkin’ about her everyday
      On my mind, atypical way
      Are you a life force?
      — Caamp, By and By

      It must be the cold air in the dark hours. September offers more dark hours, and thus more cold air, than the preceding months. When we walk out into colder air, we feel we’re walking out into something. We learn to brace for it. We come to love it.

      As we pull on an extra layer and step out from the walls that surround us into the infinite truth, what comes to mind? For me, the music on my mind is seasonal. Just as I have my summer soundtrack, I have a soundtrack for autumn. It’s like welcoming an old friend back. Here we are again. So much has changed but we still have this.

      Are you a life force? In these angry, divisive and violent times, just what do we stand for? What walls currently surround us, holding us back from something infinitely larger than who we are? Step out and find the truth.

    • Release the Dancers

      “He was weary of himself, of cold thoughts and intellectual dreams. Life a poem! Not when you perpetually went around inventing your life instead of living it. How meaningless it was, empty, empty, empty. This hunting for yourself, slyly observing your own tracks—in a circle, of course; this pretending to throw yourself into the stream of life and then at the same time sitting and angling for yourself and fishing yourself up in some peculiar disguise! If only it would seize him: life, love, passion—so that he wouldn’t be able to invent it, but so that it would invent him.”
      — Jens Peter Jacobsen, Niels Lyhne

      There’s a fine line between imagination and invention. We dream big dreams, or perhaps simply a wee wish or two, and they each dance about happily in our imagination until we do the work to realize them or eventually get sick of being teased by the dancers and find something else with which to fancy for awhile. Life isn’t meant to be a dream, it’s meant to be a gradual realization of our potential. It’s a matter of turning imagination into reality through deliberate and purposeful work. That line is crossed through action.

      “Decide what to be and go be it.”… —The Avett Brothers lyric that lives rent free in my head.

      Incremental experience—the experience that Jacobsen’s character Niels is pining for—in turn forever reinvents us. The person we’ve become is far more capable of doing this next thing than the person we were then. We imagine possibilities we couldn’t imagine from our previous vantage point, and we move along a timeline of steady progression.

      It’s natural to chafe at the limitations of our current level of experience. This discomfort is a catalyst for change—if we allow it to be anyway. Unless we’re forever paralyzed by inaction and low agency. We must develop our voice over time and learn to use it to realize possibility:

      Alas for those that never sing,
      But die with all their music in them!
      — Oliver Wendell Holmes, The Voiceless

      We are forever inventing ourselves or settling into the stasis of an under-developed character. We must raise our voice and sing! This life is flying along with or without our active participation. By all means, step away from the mirage of dreams and do something with this day. Release the dancers!

    • Drive

      So if I decide to waiver my
      Chance to be one of the hive
      Will I choose water over wine
      And hold my own and drive?
      Oh
      It’s driven me before
      And it seems to be the way, that everyone else gets around
      But lately I’m
      Beginning to find that when I drive myself, my light is found
      Whatever tomorrow brings I’ll be there
      With open arms and open eyes, yeah
      Whatever tomorrow brings I’ll be there
      I’ll be there
      — Incubus, Drive

      When we finally step away from the endless loop of habit, when we break free of that relentless and pervasive collective belief about who we are and what we ought to be doing with our lives, we may be surprised at the character who emerges. There’s much more to us than the stories we’ve told ourselves. Identity is honed one choice at a time.

      Since completing a summer of transformative action, I gave myself a break. Easing off the twice a day workouts, having some carbs with that protein (or skipping the protein for carbs), and perhaps the most transformative thing of all, indulging in a few drinks to mark the occasion(s). A few days of that will inform pretty quickly. We can easily slide back into who we once were, or we can decide that there’s no going back and reset our days accordingly. It’s like moving back home after college—we’re different people than we were before, and those old rules don’t apply quite the same way.

      Choosing water over wine more often than the other way around profoundly impacts wellness. This is not much of a secret, but it isn’t something we like to think about when we’re deep in the cycle of having a glass of wine with dinner, and another to cap off the evening. I’ve found that my sleep score is greatly improved when I don’t drink. Deep, restorative rest is more important than ever for me. Is our sleep pattern the foundation of wellness? Ask someone who doesn’t sleep well. How’s your sleep? What ought to change to improve it?

      My answer to making significant changes in my life is to choose big goals but the smallest possible increments with which to move the chains. I have a big round number birthday coming up in the spring, and there are a few things I’d like to be when I get there. Healthy and fit, for starters. But also more informed than I am now by continuing on a path of learning that is accretive. And of course, this writing path has a natural milestone that must be crossed eventually.

      Each of us has a vision of who we’d like to be at some point in our lives. We forget that time is flying along (tempus fugit) and we’re quickly running out of runway to take off. Applying a bit of lift each day is the only way to ever get off the ground. Sure, light is where we find it—gratitude and awareness of who we are today is as essential to our wellness as sleep, diet or exercise, but rising to an ever-higher level of illumination optimizes who we will be when we get there. Growth is by its very nature expansive, even as it remains deeply rooted in identity.

      Whatever tomorrow brings, surely we hope to be there. Just who do we want to be when we arrive? There’s no time to waste now, friend. Drive.

    • Things We’ll Remember

      These are the days you might fill with laughter until you break
      These days you might feel a shaft of light
      Make its way across your face
      And when you do you’ll know how it was meant to be
      See the signs and know their meaning
      It’s true
      You’ll know how it was meant to be
      Hear the signs and know they’re speaking to you, to you
      — 10,000 Maniacs, These Are Days

      Life seems far bigger and more monumental in some phases than in others. This applies equally to joyous moments and to the occasionally devastating. We might move through months without much of note happening save the change of the seasons, and then everything seems to happen at once. Things we’ll remember for the rest of our lives happen in clusters, and then suddenly everything grows quiet again for a short time. Life is full of ebbs and flows, and sometimes the wind blows just enough to compress everything into a mad jumble. We ought to remember in such moments that we don’t get rainbows without a little rain.

      Awareness is seeing the signs all around us and embracing life as it comes to us. This may be a joyful exercise or cynical, but our experience is usually a direct reflection of what we are projecting to the universe. We all know people who light up a room when they walk into it, and people who similarly bring a room down. Which do we want to be?

    • One Dance Left

      This whole damn world could fall apart
      You’ll be okay, follow your heart
      You’re in harm’s way, I’m right behind
      Now say you’re mine
      You’ve got the music in you
      Don’t let go
      You’ve got the music in you
      One dance left
      This world is gonna pull through
      Don’t give up
      You’ve got a reason to live
      Can’t forget
      We only get what we give
      — New Radicals, You Get What You Give

      You Get What You Give was released in 1998, which was surely a monumental year in my life. After this weekend, I’ll always think of the song differently, yet just the same. It neatly bookends a few chapters in this epic we’re collectively writing in our lives, and maybe you strongly associate it with a few moments in your own life too. Some songs seem to stir up emotion and magic in just the right way. Thank the DJ for spinning the playlist so breathtakingly right.

      And after the music stops, after the guests have all gone home, what then? Look around. There’s so much more to do. We can’t give it all up now, friend. For life is about momentum. It’s the Jim Collins analogy about pushing the flywheel: It wasn’t any one push, it was pushing every day that built all that we have in our lives. Momentum works for or against us. A little rest and recovery is necessary, but we must know when to rise back up to meet the next moment.

      And that moment? Here it comes, ready or not. Best to be prepared to meet it, don’t you think? After all, we only get what we give.

    • Be a Part

      Look around you, look up here
      Take time to make time, make time to be there
      Look around, be a part
      Feel for the winter, but don’t have a cold heart
      — Little River Band, Lady

      After a summer of vigorous discipline, immediately followed by a week of frenzied activity leading up to a major family event, bookended by even more significant events, I can feel that it’s just about time to look around and figure out where to set the compass next. Our cadence of living changes as we say yes to so many things. This is the price of a full, expansive life. We may welcome all that it brings while still recognizing the need to take a breather now and then.

      Living in the moment demands a level of awareness and participation higher than the average. We are here and present, and also in the act of being fully alive. Really, it can be quite exhausting. And fighting the desire to simply veg out for awhile is ever more challenging. We must take time to be there, but also to not be there now and then. Awareness includes knowing when to say enough is enough. Maybe the answer is, enough of those things, let’s try these other things instead. We know when we get there what is right for us right now.

      The U.S. Army had a slogan used to recruit more ambitious candidates: Be all you can be. I think it’s appropriate to adopt this slogan for our own standard of living, even for those of us who opt for the civilian life instead. Being is participatory. We have a shelf life for personal excellence (arete) and the clock is ticking. Breathe in, breathe out, and move on to the next great adventure. We have the opportunity to be a part of it. Seize it.

    • Boundless As the Elements

      “There is no theory. You have only to listen. Pleasure is the law. I love music passionately. And because l love it, I try to free it from barren traditions that stifle it. It is a free art gushing forth — an open-air art, boundless as the elements, the wind, the sky, the sea. It must never be shut in and become an academic art.”
      ― Claude Debussy

      Listen to Clair de Lune again, having read Debussy’s purpose for writing music. There’s magic in the music, released to dance in the moonlight—and with our imagination. It’s a breathtaking journey taken five minutes at a time. Sometimes I’ll simply play it on repeat and write, that I may reach the places the piece will take me to. May we all reach that level of mastery in our own work.

      Debussy was inspired to write Clair de Lune by a poem of the same name, written by Paul Verlaine. The poem is breathtaking in it’s own right, and one can see why Debussy drew inspiration from it. We in turn may draw inspiration from each ourselves. L’amour vainqueur et la vie opportune…

      Below is a wonderful translation of it by Chris Routledge in The Reader:

      Votre âme est un paysage choisi
      Que vont charmant masques et bergamasques
      Jouant du luth et dansant et quasi
      Tristes sous leurs déguisements fantasques.

      Tout en chantant sur le mode mineur
      L’amour vainqueur et la vie opportune,
      Ils n’ont pas l’air de croire à leur bonheur
      Et leur chanson se mêle au clair de lune,

      Au calme clair de lune triste et beau,
      Qui fait rêver les oiseaux dans les arbres
      Et sangloter d’extase les jets d’eau,
      Les grands jets d’eau sveltes parmi les marbres.

      Your soul is a select landscape
      Where charming masqueraders and bergamaskers go
      Playing the lute and dancing and almost
      Sad beneath their fantastic disguises.

      All sing in a minor key
      Of victorious love and the opportune life,
      They do not seem to believe in their happiness
      And their song mingles with the moonlight,

      With the still moonlight, sad and beautiful,
      That sets the birds dreaming in the trees
      And the fountains sobbing in ecstasy,
      The tall slender fountains among marble statues.
      — Paul Verlaine, Clair de Lune (Moonlight)

      Here lies the beauty of the creative life. We write and create art that represents our verse, shared with humanity for as long as beauty rises above tyranny. Life is surely bounded with an expiration date stamped for each of us. Our timelessness isn’t our physical presence, it’s the ripple of spiritual presence carried onward through relationships (love) and our creative expression, as boundless as the elements (should we set it free).

    • That Ain’t Us

      Yes, there are two paths you can go by, but in the long run
      There’s still time to change the road you’re on
      — Led Zeppelin, Stairway to Heaven

      We forget sometimes that change is dynamic. We make choices, live with the consequences and if we are lucky, get to react to the changes they bring to pivot when appropriate. Or simply double down on the road we’re on now.

      Decide what to be and go be it. If we don’t like being that character, change into someone entirely new. We get to re-write the script again and again in a lifetime, unless we really screw up. Choices, like changes, are incremental. We rarely reach a path of no return. We simply find that returning to who we once were isn’t all that appealing anymore.

      Having reached a place I recently aspired to be at, I have decisions to make once again: Go by the same path I’m currently on or try something new. New is often our best bet. We may take the best of what’s working and build a new path with that skillset and curated stack of good habits. This is how we all learn and grow and evolve towards our potential, by forging a new path with the best we’ve picked up along the way. And those things that don’t fit this new version of us can stay on the path behind us, because that ain’t us anymore.

    • The Restless Surge

      Little one, you have been buzzing in the books,
      Flittering in the newspapers and drinking beer with lawyers
      And amid the educated men of the clubs you have been getting an earful of speech from trained tongues.
      Take an earful from me once, go with me on a hike
      Along sand stretches on the great inland sea here
      And while the eastern breeze blows on us and the restless surge
      Of the lake waves on the breakwater breaks with an ever fresh monotone,
      Let us ask ourselves: What is truth? what do you or I know?
      How much do the wisest of the world’s men know about where the massed human procession is going?

      You have heard the mob laughed at?
      I ask you: Is not the mob rough as the mountains are rough?
      And all things human rise from the mob and relapse and rise again as rain to the sea?
      — Carl Sandburg, On the Way

      These days I see more clearly, and I chafe at certain things that used to wash over me. We learn and grow and become someone hopefully better than the character we were before. Each step is revelatory, each step confronts others with the changes within us. That confrontation is sometimes reflected back towards us in subtle ways. Pokes and prods—just to see if the illusion shatters or if there is a new truth to the story of who we are now.

      We rise, relapse and rise again in a lifetime of growth and stumbles, but our story is always set in the present. What has become of us? Where is this going? And just who will join us on our way, and do we dare to wonder—who won’t?

      “I am”… I said
      To no one there
      And no one heard at all
      Not even the chair
      — Neil Diamond, I Am… I Said

      This restless surge of change relentlessly washes away the sandcastles of fragile identity. We are obliged to rebuild them every day, or we are swept away into something entirely different. Made up of the same substance—nothing but grains of sand in our time, yet no longer the same. Only we know the truth of who we are, only we may hear the call. If we dare to listen.