Playin’ The Edge

CBC Radio 2 has stopped playing classical music 24/7 because they realized their audience is going to start kicking off soon and playing classical for 5 people is simply not a good use of taxpayer dollars.  So now they play good stuff and I sometimes listen to it on the way to work. 

They’re always careful to tell you the performer, name of the song *and* the album it comes from - often before and after they play it.  They’re poster children for polite Canadians.  It’s also ad-free and there are no annoying you’ll-never-guess-what-I-imbibed-with-my-coffee Kenny, Tina and Ron-type morning show people….ewww…..

I don’t mean to hack on classical, but for me it’s just not the kind of music I want to listen to in the car.  It’s either subtle violins I can’t appreciate over the roar of my 6 cylinder or it’s in-my-face Gustav Holst designed to send me  into a telephone pole.  Thanks, I’ll save that genre for home.

Anyhoo, they played Sarah Harmer’s “Basement Apartment” this morning.  Yes, this is another fan-girl post, obviously I’m in a mood.  I love that song, and I’ve played it in yoga class too.  I thought, if I could write lyrics like that I would be a more happy and fulfilled person – I know, hard to imagine that’s possible.  But until then, I’m so glad we have Sarah:

Basement Apartment

You live out where the street ends
In a basement apartment with one of your friends
And the tap drips all night
Water torture in the sink
The furnace is burning
But it’s still cold i think

I can smell the bleach
That they use in the hall
But it can’t clean the dirt off of me
It’s seeping under the door
In across the floor
It’s starting to hurt

Everytime I breathe
Everytime I try to leave
Everytime I breathe

Now the toaster sticks
And the empties are piled
I haven’t been up the stairs in awhile now
I gotta wash the sheets on my bed
Gotta watch the things that go unsaid
God I wish we’d leave it at this

And every evening you open the door
You come down
There’s nothing like watching tv
all night underground
And no one is watching me slide
Below street level
Barely alive

Now we live out where the street ends
In a basement apartment just like our friends
We always said that we were different
But you know now that we weren’t
‘Cause there’s holes in all the bottles
And my lungs hurt

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Mary Oliver

On the weekend I saw Some Kind of Monster, the documentary Metallica did about making their last album and I’d highly recommend it.  I know what you’re saying, “Um, do I look like a raving metal head?”  No you don’t and I’m not one either but stay with me before going back to listening to your Zamfir pan flute music.

 I got the impression that they brought in the cameras to grab some footage that could be jammed onto a concert DVD or something.  But instead the cameras caught the band coming into the studio after losing their bass player, spending a bunch of years apart with serious creative differences and no material.

Their management hired a $40k/month therapist who specializes in helping performers. Where the creative process had been driven by two of the band members in the past, he helped them figure out how to make it more cooperative, so they’d have a “now we’re all working on lyrics” time together.  And what a process it was, it looked pretty painful at times and the album still took 2 years to create.  With the challenges they had, it probably wouldn’t have been made at all without the intervention.

These guys worked hard on not just doing the “stock” thing but keeping it interesting and different and it meant being excruciatingly honest and going to the edge with each other.  Their challenge seemed to be about channelling the anger and emotion into the music and not at each other.  They even invited in the guy who was thrown out of the band in the early days who talks with heartwrenching emotion about his regrets for screwing up – it’s brutal to watch.  By the end the band has bonded in a way you can’t imagine at the beginning.  Once they finished the album they became a unified front dealing with all the external stuff that comes into play post-album release.

If you have any interest in music, it’s a great insight into the creative process.  They’d listen to the playbacks, find the nuggets in a song and nurture them into interesting hooks.  And the process seemed to be succesful, they ended up with 30 songs to choose from for the album.

The part that really got me was midway through, James, the lead singer goes into rehab and pretty much comes out a different person.  He goes from being sullen and disconnected to talking through some pretty heavy shit, which must have taken serious guts with the cameras rolling. 

You see him dealing with his “new life” trying to do things sober for the first time.  Pretty challenging for someone whose stage persona was all about consuming beer.  But at the end of the film there’s a bit from a concert where he’s really connecting with the audience and you can see that it’s more effective than the beer bit probably ever was.

So before going back to your Zamfir records, check it out.

I got Zero 7′s latest, Simple Things and it is so awesome for yoga.  It’s good lush chill-out background music with enough beat that’s never too in your face.  It’s smooth without being schmaltzy.  I used almost all the album, there’s a mix of vocals so you don’t feel like it’s all the same stuff.  Here’s how I remixed it for my 85 minute yoga class:

1. Destiny – sexy vocals and a nice groove for 5+ minute warm up
2. Give it away – a good smooth beat for starting sun salutations and standing poses
3. Out of town
4. Simple Things
5. Red Dust
6. Likufanele
7. Polaris
8. In The Waiting Line – here’s where it starts to slow down for some nice easy stretching
9. This World
10. Spinning

And I finished it with 10 minutes of crystal bowl sounds I got from itunes for Savasana.

Today’s quote is from Nora Ephron’s, I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts On Being A Woman.

Anything you think is wrong with your body at the age of thirty-five you will be nostalgic for at the age of forty-five.

It’s a good book, I recommend it

I like to download from Yoga Today and then do a class on weekend mornings.  I grab whatever looks interesting when I think of it and then have a few classes to pick and choose from – thank god for large hard drives! 

I’ve been doing alot of Sarah Kline’s classes. I find she throws in some interesting flows and poses that give me ideas for my own classes.  Also I’m mad for a good hip stretch, so I loved this flow that she did in a recent Dynamic Kripalu class:

Downdog with Lift – In downdog, keep your right leg straight and lift it, pressing your foot toward the ceiling.  Hold for a moment, then,

Plank with Tuck- bring your shoulders over your wrists for Plank and bend your right leg and tuck your knee into your chest.  Hold for a moment.  Repeat this 2 or 3 times.  Then, bring your right foot forward for a High Lunge and hold for a couple breaths, then drop the back knee to the floor and flatten out the foot for,

Low Lunge – hold here for a couple breaths.  Place both hands on the left side of your right foot, or drop to your elbows and hold a deeper stretch here. 

Add the twist – Keeping your torso low, place your right hand on your right knee and twist to your right.  When Sarah did this she even used her hand to press her knee out to the right a little, which adds an inner thigh stretch too.  Wow, that gets into spots I didn’t know existed!  Then repeat on the other side.

Thank you Sarah!

My Mom bought me a Lush massage bar for my b-day and I hadn’t really tried one before but now I’m in love with it.  Not only does it smell amazing (lavender and something else that’s yummy) but I’ve been grooving on using it in the shower. 

I don’t think this is technicall how they suggest you use it, but it’s working for me.   If I’ve been out in the sun, I get in the shower and smooth it over my wet skin and then rub my skin a bit to help it sink in.  The bars are made from shea butter and stuff so it locks in the moisture and feels great.  I use mine anywhere I need moisture instead of lotioning after my shower. 

Which means it’s one more thing i get to do *in* the shower, and one less thing I have to do afterwards.

I’m always trolling for yoga downloads and recently found www.yogadownload.com.  They let you  choose your class by time (from 8 minute abs to 90 minute classes), style or focus.  Once you pay you get a link right away, you don’t have to keep checking your email which inevitably comes in when you’re out of time. 

Check out their free 20 minute Power class - it’s a great way to trial it.  I also grabbed a 30 minute class while I was there for all of 3 bucks.  So you wonder about quality right?  No worries there.  It was taught by Dawnelle who provided just the right amount of technical detail and instruction.  She offered a few important points without telling me everything she knows about the pose.  And, some of the flows were really inventive – Airplane with Eagle Arms?  Whoa, my arms are too wrapped up to break my fall.  How fun is that?

I’m going back to fill my shopping cart – see ya’ there

We all have songs that we could listen to over and over again. My current one is “Offering Chant”, the unplugged version from Jean-Philippe Rykiel and Lama Gyurme on Rain of Blessings. It’s simple and lovely and speaks to me.

I’ve been using it as a pre-Savasana tune, and then using more hummy tracks from these guys for the relaxation itself. It makes the room subtly vibrate.

Ever stand in the kitchen and have the urge to strike the pose? You whip into a spontaneous Warrior 1, Warrior 2, Triangle Free-Style Flow with a Wide Leg Forward Bend chaser. And you feel so foot-loose and fancy-free. And then it happens. Your feet start sliding. You’re in danger of sliding into the splits, and that wasn’t part of the plan.

I’ve had some close calls. I’m in a pose, I’m in my groove and then the slide starts. And the threat of blowing a hamstring harshes the little buzz I’m trying to grab in the kitchen. But totally by accident I discovered my Crocs are a godsend. (No link. They do well enough and unless you’re living in the forest you *know* what I’m talking about).

I just can’t run around the house in bare feet, socks or slippers. I don’t want to be reminded my floor needs sweeping, I’d never get the socks clean and I need good support for marathon Holiday baking sessions. So I’ve been wearing my Crocs and love ‘em. Since Fall I’ve been wearing socks inside my orange Crocs and oh baby, the husband can’t keep his hands off me! Sorry *can* keep….I meant “can”.

Anyways I discovered by accident that because Crocs are non-slip they’re ideal for spontaneous fits of yoga. My feet DON”T MOVE. Crocs are non-slip even when they’re wet, so you can go ahead and Side Angle straight out of the shower – it’s crazy!

Thanks to my Crocs, if I ever do the splits, you can bet it’ll be planned.