dreams

two nights ago i dreamed about coming face to face with Sherry Sherman, a woman i knew in the 80s who was intrumental in my defining my career, a friend who i had a cut with, a mentor and older sister and an important woman in the development as a social worker and as a woman.

i dreamed i came face to face with her and we reconciled our cut off. She updated me on her happenings...she married after many relationships and finally settled down. She told me hesitantly she dated many men and stopped ...and told me she dated a woman and it was one of her better relationships. when i tried to apologize about the cut off, she mentioned it was not necessary and i woke up

i woke up many times all night and went back to sleep into one long dream that really was scattered parts of dreams

last night i dreamed of child abuse trainings. I dreamed of all sorts of situations where child abuse training would occur. I was mostly at my orthopedic doctors. there were multiple waiting rooms with mulitple people. I wanted him to look at my glands, which have been swollen ( in real life for over a week) and hurt to the touch.
my exterminator was there and called for shoes in size 8 and 9. These were special Slipper Merrills that he was giving away to a post man for being a nice guy. i moved to the second waiting room, which was a living room and i thought i was at the gynacologist office. again, i wanted my glands checked out as they are swollen.
i work up thinking that if there is a war on terror and a war in Iraq. why cant there be "a war for children".

with all teh sexual abuse, child abuse and fatalities....there needs to be a war For Children. I wonder if i can copyright that Line...

it came to me in a dream......

heart of gold weekend

it was only a week ago that i was ready to leave my downcoats for spring jackets and just as the crocuses and daffodils were starting to sprout, that ground hog did not see its shadow and i geared for 6 weeks of winter....sure....like the new englander i am, i filled my tank with gas, went to the grocery store, stocked up with essentials and veggies and hunkered down for a storm... i made barley and mushroom soup and turned on the olympics..

the snow started on saturday about 5pm and it wasnt stickin but by 3am, the street i live on was a winter wonderland. By 9am, when i went out to get the paper, i couldnt see my mittens in front of my hands...i came back in and put on the flannels and found the kitty and watched TV til 1230 when i had to get dressed and start to shovel my car free..i shoveled and shoveled and shoveled and bribed the guys with the snowblower not to spray my car by heading over to dunkin donuts to get em coffee... then i saw the poor covered SUV of my neighbor who is 19 and just got his first car, so i shoveled his tail pipe and cleaned off his car... i went to the grocery store of the older americans who live in my building and got Millie some lettace....

the snow drifts are as tall as i am and cars were covered but i didnt care, i had today off so i didnt have anything to do by shovel again... and dig my car out..

i took advantage of a snow day( i have the right boots) and went to see the Jonathan Demme movie on Neil Young's Prairie Wind called Heart of Gold . It was filmed at the Ryman in August as Young was preparing for surgery for his anuresym. Its a theatrical masterpiece. THe direction is stunning, the subject, Neil, his band and friends, and the Ryman are captured as actors in this movie.

the Music is the cd Prairie Wind from top to bottom and then more acoustic music by Neil et al . EmmyLou Harris is featured prominently in the movie as is Pegi Young. There is steel petal, piano, fiddles, bangos and even a dulcimer as actors in this movie. Its a concert film and a retrospective as well as introspective.

I am not a guitar player but i wondered how a performed or guitar player would see this film. I watched the concert and wanted to clap after each songs. Neil speaks and tells some stories about the songs but the movie is a concert. And its a hell of a concert...

see jonathan demme's Heart of Gold is a great concert film...what a way to end a snowed in weekend.....

the weather in chicago

19º
"OFF-PUTTING

what do you do on a snow day

i got up at 8am and drank some coffee and then went out in the blizzard with white out conditions to get the sunday papers. i watched some of the coverage of the blizzard of 2006 and then watched Michelle Kwan's leaving the olympics.

around 12 i went out to brush off my car and shovel it out. I worked on my car for over an hour, walked to get my super some coffee and then checked on Millie who needed a head of lettace. I walked to Shoprite to get her some lettace and some fruit and broccoli. I also bought some shrimp for me

I came home and cooked the shrimp and broccoli and then settled in with my receipts and all sorts of bills so i could sort them, throw away what i dont need and prepare to get an appointment with the accountant to do my taxes.

I ususally do that sort and file and collect data chores around presidents day. I used a snowy afternoon to watch the olympic coverage and sort receipts. I have millions of them to sort through... But its now done and i can watch the rest of desparate housewives in peace

i am off from work tomorrow so i have another snow day to shovel and clean off my car

maybe ill watch a movie or zoo out in front of the tv...but i doubt it

the weather in chicago

28º
"COLD COMFORT"

the weather in chicago

34º
"SUGAR-COATED"

if you have a cat, you know the INNOCENT LITTLE KITTY FACE

dreams of suzanne vega

i had multiple dreams of suzanne vega and the downtown crowd. the talk was the suzanne was drunk. it seemed to be that she was chronically drinking and it was not to her benefit.
there were many little dreams that seemed to blur into each other

another had me in a classroom, as an observer. IT was a classroom like the Manhattan Adelphi campus or a high school the type you see on TV and i was sitting in the audience in one of the chairs with the arms. Again the topic of a drunked suzanne vega came up

the week of february 8

Happy Valentine Daze, Capricorn! To begin our meditation on love, let's turn our attention to your appearance. I think you owe a huge debt of gratitude to the fact that you don't have the face and body of a dazzling supermodel or gorgeous hunk. The temptation to rely on your physical attractiveness at the expense of developing your character would be virtually irresistible. In the coming days, this fact will bring you a fresh batch of benefits, including a subtle breakthrough in your romantic life. Here's your quote of the week, from Katharine Hepburn: "It is the plain women who know about love. The beautiful women are too busy being fascinating."

the weather in chicago

31º
"SERENE

the weather in chicago

33º
"CAN'T COMPLAIN

joni tribute at carnegie hall poster

 
 

Mondays suck

YOGA

the weather in chicago

21º
"CAN'T COMPLAIN"

song for sharon

Song For Sharon
by Joni Mitchell Printer-friendly version of this lyric print

I went to Staten Island, Sharon
To buy myself a mandolin
And I saw the long white dress of love
On a storefront mannequin
Big boat chuggin' back with a belly full of cars
All for something lacy
Some girl's going to see that dress
And crave that day like crazy

Little Indian kids on a bridge up in Canada
They can balance and they can climb
Like their fathers before them
They'll walk the girders of the Manhattan skyline
Shine your light on me Miss Liberty
Because as soon as this ferry boat docks
I'm headed to the church
To play Bingo
Fleece me with the gamblers' flocks

I can keep my cool at poker
But I'm a fool when love's at stake
Because I can't conceal emotion
What I'm feeling's always written on my face
There's a gypsy down on Bleecker Street
I went in to see her as a kind of joke
And she lit a candle for my love luck
And eighteen bucks went up in smoke

Sharon I left my man
At a North Dakota junction
And I came out to the "Big Apple" here
To face the dream's malfunction
Love's a repetitious danger
You'd think I'd be accustomed to
Well I do accept the changes
At least better than I used to do

A woman I knew just drowned herself
The well was deep and muddy
She was just shaking off futility
Or punishing somebody
My friends were calling up all day yesterday
All emotions and abstractions
It seems we all live so close to that line
and so far from satisfaction

Dora says "Have children"
Mama and Betsy say "Find yourself a charity
Help the needy and the crippled or put some time into Ecology"
Well there's a wide wide world of noble causes
And lovely landscapes to discover
But all I really want right now
Is find another lover

When we were kids in Maidstone, Sharon
I went to every wedding in that little town
To see the tears and the kisses
And the pretty lady in the white lace wedding gown
And walking home on the railroad tracks
Or swinging on the playground swing
Love stimulated my illusions
More than anything

And when I went skating after Golden Reggie
You know it was white lace I was chasing
Chasing dreams
Mama's nylons underneath my cowgirl jeans
He showed me first you get the kisses
And then you get the tears
But the ceremony of the bells and lace
Still veils this reckless fool here

Now there are twenty-nine skaters on Wollman Rink
Circling in singles and in pairs
In this vigorous anonymity
A blank face at the window stares and
stares and stares and stares and stares
And the power of reason
And the flowers of deep feeling
Seem to serve me
Only to deceive me

Sharon you've got a husband
And a family and a farm
I've got the apple of temptation
And a diamond snake around my arm
But you still have your music
And I've still got my eyes on the land and the sky
You sing for your friends and your family
I'll walk green pastures by and by

Copyright © 1976; Crazy Crow Music

capricorn Horoscope for week of February 2, 2006

capricorn Horoscope for week of February 2, 2006

Verticle Oracle card Capricorn (December 22-January 19)
Good news, Capricorn. Right now your financial prospects look almost as bright as those of the oil industry, whose earnings grew 42 percent in the last three months of 2005. There is a caveat, however. If, like the companies that sell gasoline, you attempt to capitalize on bad news and profit at the expense of the collective well-being, your money situation will suffer. To gather all of the good economic fortune that's available, you've got to redouble your efforts to maintain high levels of integrity.

the joni tribute

Music Review | Tribute to Joni Mitchell
Songs Open to Interpretation Flaunt Their Staying Power

*
E-Mail This
* Printer-Friendly
* Save Article

Article Tools Sponsored By
By JON PARELES
Published: February 3, 2006

One way songs survive is to prove themselves adaptable: to become widely heard through endless rearrangements and multiple genres. Another way is to be just the opposite: so personalized and obstinate that every performance becomes one more imitation of the song's originator.

Joni Mitchell has written both kinds of song, to judge by a tribute concert on Wednesday night at Carnegie Hall. It was a benefit that raised $130,000 for the Music for Youth Foundation, which supports music education. Ms. Mitchell, who has post-polio syndrome, was not there; a statement from her said she was home with "a very sick cat that needs medicine twice a day." But her open-tuned guitar chords, her vocal slides and her vibrato were emulated by half of the 23 acts on the bill.

The concert only hinted at Ms. Mitchell's eclecticism. Representing jazz was the ballad singer Little Jimmy Scott, who performed the standard "At Last" — which Ms. Mitchell has recorded — as a series of short, stabbing, utterly dramatic outbursts. Most of the lineup featured singer-songwriters playing acoustic guitar or piano.

Dar Williams, Amy Grant, Shawn Colvin, Sonya Kitchell (backed by Assembly of Dust), Joanne Shenandoah, and even male performers including Martin Sexton, Marc Cohn, Jesse Malin and Mark Oliver Everett (leading Eels) stayed close to Ms. Mitchell's versions of the songs they chose. It was a measure not only of how inseparable Ms. Mitchell's songs are from her performances of them, but also of how many songwriters have modeled themselves on her since the 1960's.

On the surface, Ms. Mitchell's lyrics have the candor and detail of a diary; behind them is a meticulous organization of ideas and images. Her music has grown ever more idiosyncratic. She began her career with the simple folk harmonies and symmetrical melodies of songs like "Both Sides Now," but went on to incorporate jazz harmonies and the spontaneous rushes and pauses of conversation in her phrasing. What seems improvisational in the first verse is clearly a structure when it returns.

With songs from the 60's, the 70's and the 90's, the concert sketched Ms. Mitchell's trajectory. As a young woman, she made grand philosophical statements about life's cycles and paradoxes in songs like "Urge for Going" and "The Circle Game"; Tom Rush, an early advocate for Ms. Mitchell's songwriting, performed them both with reflective serenity.

"Both Sides Now" got two renditions. Laurie Anderson used pulsing electronic chords and plucked fiddle notes to make the song a solitary reflection on disillusionment; Judy Collins made it sweetly optimistic. Nellie McKay tried to remake "Chelsea Morning" with a hint of piano rumba; it resisted. And Richie Havens sang "Woodstock" as a quiet elegy for long-gone 1960's idealism.

Ms. Mitchell's 1970's songs grew more restless, more willful, and more innovative. She sang about a character — possibly herself — who was constantly in motion, traveling from place to place and man to man. The folky melodies gave way to mutable lines that were more naturalistic and more virtuosic.

Michelle Williams (from Destiny's Child) sang "Help Me," from 1974, following the melody's leaps and dips and swoons while using the breathy tone and self-congratulatory moves of current R&B, a fascinating mismatch. The Cowboy Junkies turned "River," from the 1971 album "Blue," into a rootsy torch song.

The Wood Brothers (Chris, from Medeski Martin & Wood, on bass with his brother Oliver on guitar and vocals) brought a bluesy openness to "Black Crow," from 1976, and Suzanne Vega, sounding closer to Ms. Mitchell, sang "Amelia" backed only by a bass, making it the song of a lone voyager. Neil Sedaka cheerfully linked "Raised on Robbery" back to piano-pounding 1950's rock.

By the 1990's, Ms. Mitchell's melodies were stretching toward jazzy recitative, as her lyrics confronted a world she found ever more merciless. Meshell Ndegeocello, playing bass accompanied by ghostly guitar and percussion, captured the desolate tension of "Cherokee Louise," about an abused teenager. And Bettye LaVette turned "Last Chance Lost," a terse and bitter breakup song, into an intense, wrenching soul lament that seemed to encompass a lifetime of disappointments. She made the song her own — no easy feat.

Tribute

A tribute in tune with Joni

The salute saw Shawn Colvin soar.
Tribute concerts are tricky things.

With multiple performers tackling the sacred songs of an icon - often on short notice - it's easy for interpretations to end up imitative, perverse, literal-minded, indulgent or just plain dull.

The land mines multiply when you're talking about saluting an artist like Joni Mitchell. Not only does her catalogue have few peers, the material features chord changes and melody lines that could daunt even the most seasoned star.

Thankfully, the concert given in tribute to Mitchell at Carnegie Hall Wednesday kept the missteps to a minimum. And those artists who brought daring and dash to the songs more than made up for them.

This particular tribute was more necessary than most. Since Mitchell says she'll no longer perform, record or write, it's up to others to keep her legacy alive.

Not that she's showing much interest these days. While Mitchell appeared at past toasts to her talent, this time she had curator Michael Dorf read a note revealing the following excuse: "My cat is sick and I can't leave."

Why not stick with "My dog ate it"?

At least the night's proceeds benefited a worthy cause - Music for Youth, which provides lessons in the schools.

Any serious music student could have learned plenty from Wednesday's show. With 24 artists taking on as many Mitchell songs, the show made fans marvel, again, at the breadth and musicality of her work. Genres included rockabilly (a campy take on "Raised on Robbery" from Neil Sedaka), folk (Judy Collins' sterling version of "Both Sides Now"), country-rock (Jesse Malin's wily interpretation of "Carey") and jazz (Meshell Ndegeocello's rubbery "Cherokee Louise").

Many artists fiddled with the songs' points of view: The alterna-rock band the Eels inverted "All I Want" from an expression of female need into an example of male withholding. Tom Rush turned Mitchell's tale of wanderlust ("Urge for Going") into a rumination on lost opportunities. Nellie McKay made "Chelsea Morning" plucky.

No one selected Mitchell songs from the '80s - not bad considering her output then. While classics of the '60s and '70s dominated, two of the night's highlights came from 1994's "Turbulent Indigo."

Shawn Colvin found a sturdier melody for the title track. And Bettye LaVette performed miracles by turning "Last Chance Lost" into a desperate soul shouter, contrasting its spare instrumentation with high drama.

There were stumbles: Michelle Williams (of Destiny's Child, not "Brokeback Mountain") couldn't find the melody, or the rhythm, of "Help Me." And the Native American singer Joanne Shenandoah delivered "The Dawntreader" entirely flat.

But the night's flaws faded in the face of performers like the Wood Brothers, who gave "Black Crow" a sexy new jazz groove. Or Richie Havens, who turned "Woodstock" into a tale of youthful possibilities squandered.

Such moments made this tribute not a rote rehash, but a night adventurous enough to deserve Mitchell's difficult, hungry spirit.

the weather in chicago

34º
"FUNKY