can't get enough

i finally finished grading papers for the Conflict Management course i taught earlier this month. started packing up boxes of my stuff today. AND, found the time to record some new uke songs! check them out:

Oh Girl

i wish i didn't suck at bar chords! my piano and violin-trained fingers just don't want to get flat against the finger board like that.

Doctor My Eyes

i got to cross a big one off my bucket list last night, when i saw Jackson Browne perform an acoustic set at the historic Landmark Theatre in downtown Syracuse (technically, it was also an item off my Syracuse-bucket-list).
Jackson Browne's music has meant a lot to me in my early-adulthood. Late For The Sky was the soundtrack to many days and nights spent alone at a window in my apartment in Syracuse, thinking about life, listening to his words and the letting the music wash over me. trying to anchor myself in something happy while feeling lost and drifting in a sea of sorrow i didn't recognize or understand.

it occurred to me at some point that i should try to see Jackson Browne before he stopped touring and doing shows. Ben and i looked into buying tickets to shows he did all over the country, in California, in small little townships and wine country resorts across the country, but then the other day i was walking downtown after dancing in the park to the library to drop off some books and saw in big letters on the marquee: JACKSON BROWNE. i was in total shock, i couldn't believe it. years of trying to get to Jackson Browne and here he was, days before i'm set to leave Syracuse, and he shows up practically at my doorstep. it seemed too good to be true.
so last night i put on a billowy skirt, did my hair, and power walked all the way to the theatre, grinning to myself at the joy of this moment: happily single, treating myself to a date with one of my favorite musicians. and i smiled so hard and so constantly throughout the night that i think i created some new wrinkles.

to watch Jackson Browne perform acoustic renditions of some of my favorite songs from Late For The Sky will truly remain in my heart one of the most emotional moments i've ever experienced surrounded by so many strangers. (the other one: Bruce Springsteen performing "My City of Ruins," both times i saw him).

at the end of the concert, the older man sitting next to me turned to me and said, "thank you for being a fan."

so, in honor of that great experience, my own rendition of one of my favorites:

ETA: look at this cutie! i sat up in the balcony and missed seeing this gorgeous face.

another rendition (because i have been singing it all day every day):

To Love Somebody

I'm Not The Only One

another Sam Smith cover! he's perfectly in my vocal range, which is why i love him.

Open Arms

Not In That Way

practice helps everything:

Moon River

this is one of my and my mom's favorite songs. happy to add it to my growing repertoire.

p.s. i've noticed that YouTube has flagged some of my videos as "matching third party content" and thus as possible copyright infringement... which is kinduva compliment... i must be doing ok if they can at least id the song i'm playing, right?

Wild Horses

a new one. i'm pretty much at a rate of one new song every other day. a great feeling!

Demon Host

not sure what this song is about... the lyrics are a bit creepy, but i was watching Stories We Tell by Sarah Polley last night (highly recommended!) and this song caught my ear. (it's also what inspired me to try out Skinny Love by Bon Iver).

hope y'all enjoy it. and hope my raspy voice disappears soon.

Skinny Love

another take, this time in a lower octave:

singing in the rain

it's been storming a lot the last few days. trees torn out by the roots all over town.

i've unfortunately been caught outside during every single one of these storms. i can't seem to learn my lesson, with relationships or with the weather. i'm stubborn, i do what i want.

i've been getting back into music again, listening to a lot of really great records, bought some new stuff at a used vinyl shop before the torrential downpour, and playing some music myself. trying to pass the time productively while i figure out next steps. the best part of this is that it reminds me i love creating things and really enjoy making music. i haven't done much of that lately... i guess one thing i refused to admit to myself was that i really hated ben's singing... boy couldn't sing a note in tune to save his life. would literally make me cringe. he was great at guitar, but had no rhythm. (sorry, cruel words, but the guy's a jerk. and his singing really is awful). so my singing is a little shaky from lack of practice, but it's nice to find a voice again and the space to let it out. i've been playing so much ukulele/guitar that my left fingertips have completely calloused over and turned numb. never has not feeling felt so good. if only i could say the same for my heart.

hope you enjoy listening as much as i enjoyed learning them.

a Rihanna cover on the ukulele:

and if you love Sam Cooke as much as i do, watch an improved rendition below!

Stay With Me

another entry in my growing ukulele/guitar repertoire: a cover of Sam Smith's "Stay With Me"

if you're not familiar with Sam Smith, he's great. his cover of Whitney Houston's "How Will I Know" is so heartwrenchingly good that i feel compelled to post it here.

sea of love

i've sometimes wondered how i would handle something like a life-shattering, emotionally devastating break-up if i had to (obviously, i didn't think about it often enough, or i might've been better prepared. alas, some things you can just never anticipate).

in the past when i've grieved the loss of loved ones, i've shut myself down, unable to find the motivation to move forward in productive ways. i always beat myself up over things, whether it was the time i got fired from a job, or the time my first boyfriend cheated on me, i've always put myself at the center of that blame ("you weren't smart enough," "you didn't work hard enough to make things work," "you're not pretty or interesting, why would anyone ever want to be with you?") or found ways to blame others if i was feeling generous to myself that day ("the management at that organization was a mess, those people were jerks!", "the lady my dude was cheating with is ugly, why would he want to be with her?") neither one of these approaches is healthy. but we do strange things when we grieve.

when my uncle passed away, i blamed myself, somehow, for it happening. i beat myself up over not visiting him in San Francisco just months prior, thought maybe if i had, the entire course of time would have been changed and he would still be alive. when i got the call that he was in the hospital, i was teaching a class full of irate special ed students in South Central LA and i put the phone back in my pocket, in casual disbelief, and somehow didn't let things sink in enough to phase me (he died that night, when i was in grad classes. when i got the call, it suddenly sunk in so much that i felt myself sinking... tears leapt to my eyes, i couldn't breathe, i ran out of the classroom and got in my car, drove thru the night sky wailing and begging for everything to go back. i called cousins and cried while they told me they loved me. i just stuttered in my stupid grief. i couldn't tell them that more than anything else, i felt guilt, i felt i had caused this to happen... i had believed so much in my world continuing uninterrupted that the universe had to send me a dramatic sign to WAKE THE FUCK UP).

when my grandma passed away, i did the same thing. i thought about the call i had with her just a few days ago, how i was happy to talk to her but also eager to get off the phone so i could go back to whatever stupid selfish thing i was doing at the time (probably studying or writing a paper, or more likely pretending to do that while i wasted time on the internet). i called her every week and this week she was more talkative than usual, and took the time to tell me she loved me, how much i meant to her, and how proud she was of me. i took those words in, but didn't let them resonate the way they should. when she passed away i thought about that conversation, and still do quite frequently, as my grandmother knowing her time was coming and needing to say everything she needed to say to me. how selfish and self-absorbed i had been at the time to not appreciate and be there with her in that moment... it is still a guilt and a pain i hold tight to my heart to this day. i did so many little things to show her i loved her, but when it counted i wasn't there for her in the way i should have. if i could have that moment back, if i could have a handful of moments back, would everything be changed? could my love for her and for my uncle have saved them if i only let them feel it a little more? i had the belief that my love was magical enough to protect all those around me.

i carry so much guilt and sadness with me every single day. all the ways i've wronged my loved ones and all the times i've been the recipient of love and taken it for granted. when i stop too long to think about it i get sick and angry at myself, and in the strange way of grief, wish i could bargain my life, my youth, my health for the chance to bring any of those people back.

i spend a lot of energy thinking about this. in the last few weeks, as i've had to adjust to losing my job and losing the love of my life in the space of a month of each other, i've wondered every day if this is all somehow my fault. if i deserved this. if somehow the universe designed this as a punishment for something terrible i did.

every morning is a battle between two forces inside my head. one that wants to punish myself, to see myself fail, to never be happy again, to never rise out of bed, to shrivel and die and be forgotten and disappear. the other wants to fight, to prosper, to create and reach out and risk it all because there isn't a lot left to lose. i am never sure each morning which one it's gonna be. and throughout the day those competing forces still rage on inside me. there are moments when something reminds me how bad everything feels right now and i shrink into a ball, just break down inside myself and if i don't cry, i stare into the distance and see nothing.

but i am still here because of a few small things that mean everything. at my lowest, darkest point, when i could feel myself suffocating under sadness and grasping for a way out, i had a friend who was able to help me. i'll never forget this moment because he saved me. he gave me what i needed before i even realized i needed it. he told me it's ok to grieve, to be upset, to feel torn down. but never, ever, should i blame myself for any of it. people do cruel things to one another but we cannot be cruel to ourselves. even if i forget that, he reminded me that there are people who love me. and even though there are so many people who hurt us, who take us for granted, who make us feel small and invisible and insignificant, there are more who love us, for whom we are the world, who would be devastated if we disappeared.

in the last few weeks i'd beaten myself up so much i stopped eating, stopped sleeping, and stopped feeling anything besides sadness. i got good at smiling in public, but mostly so i wouldn't make people around me uncomfortable. my family has had the worst of it -- i haven't told them about my job or relationship problems because i don't want them to worry about me. for my burdens to be their burdens. but they can tell. my dad told me on the phone as he waited for his flight to London that he worries about me because i haven't sounded happy in a long time. we're having a family reunion in a week and i'm worried about bringing all this sadness with me. he told me he loved me, so emphatically, that i would have cried if i had any tears left in the tank.

my cousin said it best: "remember that there are people who love you. put one foot in front of the other until you get yourself out of this."

remembering in this helps me to lift my head and get out of bed every day. if not for myself right now, then for the people who love me, who believe i can do great things.

since things started falling apart, i've been slowly finding my feet again and managing to put them one step at a time towards the future: i started playing guitar and ukulele again (as evidenced by my videos), i've started reading and writing again (as seen on this blog + got a public library card!), i've found new communities and causes to dedicate my small efforts to (joined a community bike repair group that fixes bikes for low income youth, did a 50 mile bike ride in support of programs for homeless individuals in Syracuse, will be joining weekly rides with the same homeless advocacy group, trying to find opportunities to work with inner city youth on violence prevention, thinking about starting a cycling group for women and victims of assault and abuse). and even though it once felt impossible to love again, to open my heart to another person and risk being hurt again, it hasn't stopped me from loving my friends and family... if there is anyone in the world deserving of it, it's the people who have been there for me when i needed them most and asked nothing in return, who have seen my sadness and met it not with revulsion or annoyance (as my former partner did), but with patient, steady, everlasting love.

this is not a break-up song, but a thank you song. a song of thanks for showing me the sea of love i am immersed in.

Mystery Girl

heard this song on NPR the other day in a story on Roy Orbison and it's been stuck in my head since. here's my ukulele attempt at it:

i should leave it alone but you're not right

today brings: more acoustic distractions from the pain i can't stop feeling. one day i'll be able to write and speak with clarity the sorrow of love lost, will be able to give shape to my pain and then discard it like a husk. but until then, these songs are all i have to offer for utterance.

edited to add:
a few hours after the initial video was posted, i rode my bike to the lake and i cried as i stared out across the water. when i got home, my longtime partner and former fiance packed up his stuff and moved out. empty bookshelves and half an apartment vacated... literally holes all around me where a person i loved used to fill it. in the trash i found a note he'd written me last christmas: "Happy Christmas, Baby! Want to color and/or read together tonight? I love you so much, Your Baby Boy" -- so much lost in a year. and he took the activist coloring books he gave me as presents with him. he left other things... frames of us on the floor, a copy of a book i gave him when we first started dating, piles of laundry. such an empty hollow feeling. right now i don't know how i'll ever not be sad, this feeling seems like it was built to last.

so i cried and i cried and when i had no tears left i tried this song again and this is what came of it:

heartbreak hotel

things have been so shitty lately. if i can live through this i can live through anything.

i can literally feel my heart break into irreparable pieces every day. i think if i ever manage to put the pieces back together, it will be less capacious than before. sometimes i feel i may never find a way out of this sadness.

my survival tactic is to space out distractions for myself... yoga this day, dancing the next, dinner with friends the day after that, a phone call with a west coast friend after that... and in those gaps, i learn songs on the guitar and ukulele, like applying mortar to the gaps between bricks... hoping i can build up defenses around me.

i'm not a super singer. i do ok with strumming things but i'm no rock star. i'm just trying to cobble together an arsenal of kick ass break-up songs to sing when i feel my resolve disappearing.

guitar tabs for Jens Lekman's "Cowboy Boots"

ever since i first heard this song i wanted to figure out the tabs. enjoy!

Capo on 3rd fret

Intro - G A D G

G                A
You were in my dream last night
D                    G
Like every night since two years ago
G                             A
I think my dream is trying to tell my something
           D                   G     
And I say “tell me something I don't already know”

G    G/B       Em        A          D
Just buy me a drink, so I can refuse
G                          G        A                   D
To raise my glass to these sad and worn out midnight shoes
              G      A            D
In my next dream I want a pair of cowboy boots
              G         A                    D
The kind that walks the straightest and most narrow route
G/B
Anywhere but back to you

G                     A
Here we are down the same old street

D                G
Here we are with nothing to say

G                         A
My little hand trying to make it into yours

        D                         G
But you put it in your pocket and look away

G               A
I keep my eyes on the sidewalk

D                       G
For something flippable like a dime

G                     A
I wanna know how you forgive someone

D                          G
Someone you've forgiven so many times

G    G/B       Em        A          D
Just buy me a drink, so I can refuse
G                          G        A                   D
To raise my glass to these sad and worn out midnight shoes
              G      A            D
In my next dream I want a pair of cowboy boots
              G         A                    D
The kind that walks the straightest and most narrow route
G/B
Anywhere but back to you
Anywhere but back to you 

because i was in love

Sharon Van Etten is having her moment, and good for her. i was driving around Syracuse this morning, feeling so sad and lost, and then this song emerged from a long playlist i made in college.

it was like being thrown a parachute. i felt lifted above the gravity of my sadness for a moment.

i wanted to keep singing it and singing it and thus soothe all these heart wounds. apply it generously like a salve.

you can see i'm breaking up a bit over here. there are some words that are harder to say and swallow than others.

year of the ox

it is Chinese New Year. i spend it with my uncle's family and a group of his college friends, who work together at a construction equipment wholesale factory. the party takes place in the warehouse/office building of their company.

the space is confusing. i wander around trying to figure out what this place is. i observe: a pool table. a poker room/office. a dance hall/karaoke lounge/bar (where i currently write my notes). living quarters (i learn later that the workers stay here one night of the week). poker cards lie on a desk next to a stack of business cards, a pool table doubles as a desk. the building seems corporate, but screams "PARTY!!" and there are no definite lines between the two. i decide i like this approach to business, and stroll back towards the party.

as with any Chinese holiday, the food is central to the celebration, and each with its own symbolism. there are trays of glutinous rice balls, noodle dishes of various combinations (the long noodles signify long life), and every imaginable meat of the land and sea: chicken, pork, beef*, fish (for good luck in the next year), shrimp, squid and octopus. fruits a-plenty too: citrus of every imaginable size (clementines, mandarins, tangerines, navel oranges, kumquats), big shiny grapes, and pineapple (the mandarin word for pineapple – "fon li" – sounds like the word for "good fortune").

my aunt takes me around the room, introducing me to everyone as a teacher in the LA school district. one of the older ladies looks on me in disbelief, remarking that i look like a "xiao pengyu" (literally "little friend", meaning "a small child.") one of the older men she introduces me to knows my father. they are about the same age. when my aunt asks me if i think he looks "nyen chien" ("light in years", "young") i say yes, and he jokes that he has had many facelifts. he pulls his cheeks back with his palms, and grins. he then points to the belt holding up his pants, telling me, "this belt i'm wearing is made of all my old skin!" he guffaws and wanders off to eat something sweet.

i befriend the small old man sitting to my right. he is shrunken, but has a fine set of teeth, a strange combination. i get him hot water and soup and and offer him a mandarin, of which he only eats half (it is sour, he squeezes his face together in disapproval). i imagine the two of us make a funny pair, the oldest and youngest in the party, friends b/c no one can understand what we say and b/c we do not wish to talk, just sit, eat, and watch. i overhear my little friend talking later with a group of men about visiting Vegas and going to strip clubs. my companion is, apparently, familiar with the "classy" ones. he is a man of scrutinizing tastes in women and oranges.

i notice the old men across from me laughing, touching cups and enthusiastically finishing off their drinks. later i realize they have been hiding a jug of whiskey under the table, mixing it into their drinks. i've witnessed at least 4 rounds by this point.

the party eventually reaches a critical point – when just the right balance of food and alcohol has been consumed and the spontaneous karaoke begins. i sit in a leather couch in the back of the lounge/bar, remembering how earlier during dinner i heard one of the drunk men across the table declare that he was "ready to sing!" he tells everyone that his musical reprisals aid his digestion.

after observing many eager karaoke renditions of The Carpenters and Chinese oldies, it occurs to me that karaoke is never spontaneous, but always the sensible conclusion to a new year's party. the party-goers gradually take to the mic to sing their favorite songs. i watch 2 women begin to timidly dance, one leading the other around, alternating between tango and foxtrot.

i sit in the back, smiling, regretting those wasted years of Chinese school – never learning enough to be functionally literate to read the karaoke lyrics.


*edit: i realize now, that there was actually NO beef served yesterday. i wonder if that is b/c this is the year of the ox, and to eat beef would be negative symbolism and a bad start to the new year.