I'm All Over the Place Today

On gratitude and trust

This is a post I found in drafts and definitely meant to post in August!

First, a little video of They Can’t Take That Away From Me. Meet George Grosman on guitar and Joe Fritz playing clarinet.

Yesterday was my birthday. I’ve been on a steady high the last month or so— a high of loving and being loved. Most days have felt like my birthday. This feeling has filled me after recording a podcast episode on sadness. Funny how that works. Before you diagnose me as bipolar, I’ll let you know I’ve not been diagnosed as such.

I’m just human. I’m grateful. I’m grateful to experience a range of emotions, to move in and out of bouts of loneliness. That’s easy to say on a day like today— after months like the last few months. When am I most in my “right mind”? When I’m sad, or when I’m happy? You know, I’m starting to trust myself, my thoughts, and feelings most when I am thankful. At some point in the last handful of years, I’ve started to experience tangible gratitude even while feeling low. A whisperous and sweet song playing in the background— so subtle, it took me a while to notice it. This melody has played and played as a spirit doing its own work in me, dancing as I sit, and lay, and walk, and cook and write.

The feeling of gratitude lets me know I am seeing my surroundings and inner-workings more objectively than when I lack gratitude. Life can’t all be curse, right? There is much gift in it. When I’m blind to the gift(s), I am blind to everything. I am not to be trusted.

From where did the gratitude come? Did it knock on the door of my heart, waiting for me to let it in? Did I make it wait long? Did it sneak through the window? Is it a ghost with no use for walls or doors? Did I prepare a room for it or did it choose it’s spot and settle in waiting for me to notice?

Here we go with too many questions. Instead I will consider some language around magic and mystery I started absorbing specifically from a few songwriters: Andy Squyres, John Mark McMillan, Propaganda (aka PropHipHop), and Kings Kaleidoscope. These along with some early church fathers (this is very new to me, so I will not speak on the early church fathers as if I even know what it means that they are considered “early church fathers”) have brought me into a new mindset. Oh! and a few books by Robert Capon. His works are doozies. These works of art have shrunk the universe down to size while zooming in at a molecular level. We are all miracles.

People are the undeniable miracles in my life. When I find joy in knowing another human, I can’t help but feel that’s how God feels about me. Look, now I can’t stop smiling. Maybe it’s because I just had breakfast with one of my beautiful humans. Maybe it’s the espresso in my cortado kicking in.

Pictured: My abuela and I at a concert, open mic night in my house, studio time with by background vocal beauties and producer, my man and I, green pants

Highlights from this summer:

• Hosting an Open Mic night in my home alongside my titi (auntie) Nancy. We created a space for old and new friends to read their work. I can’t describe the level of connection and love we experienced that night.

• Multiple recording sessions for Unveiled Love (song #3 of the EP). Of course, I brought friends along anytime they could join.

• Playing a show with my friend, Daniel Burns. All our friends came. The supportive turn-out was a total surprise to me.

• The title, vision, and 4th song for the EP smacked me upside the head in a single moment and I’m PUMPED.

• People joined my summer Write with Me Series! I got to hear their poems and thoughts in response to my prompts. Such a privilege.

• Hosting an Open Mic at a local, newly female-owned coffee shop. I made a new friend in the process.

• I met some talented musicians and writers. This keeps happening. I’m so thankful.

• I’ve been LOVING singing jazz. Jazz. What a gift.

Ok. Ok. Now this just feels like bragging. I’ll stop now. But I can’t take my eyes off the magic of it all. You’re that magic. You can take that insight about yourself and trust it is coming not from a place of naiveté, but from a sad girl who is also thankful— the kind of sad girl who can be trusted. Well, as long as I’m right about any of this.

For more of my work, check out this link with all the linksss.

Extras

End of the Road [Live] by Noga Erez

Life is a Song Worth Singing by Teddy Pendergrass

Stop & Listen Playlist my “thank you” for being here <3 [Apple Music + Spotify]