So there’s this site called singsnap that’s a karaoke site – let’s you record yourself singing songs to the site’s backup music. My friend, Kathi, introduced me to this site back in 2013, and I made some recordings on there over that summer and then pretty much forgot about it and moved on to other diversions. 🙂 But this morning I was thinking about a Jason Mraz song, I won’t Give Up, and went back to my recording of it on singsnap. It was the first song I recorded on there and I didn’t really know what I was doing – this is not a professional recording or anything. But I feel impelled to share it today. It’s a song for my country and my world. Here’s the link to it: Karen’s recording of I Won’t Give Up.Â
I won’t give up on us Even if the skies get rough I’m giving you all my love I’m still looking up, I’m still looking up. – Jason Mraz
I was feeling a little melancholy yesterday. (There are always reasons to feel gloomy, if you look for ’em.) And then this thought came to me and helped me…
One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the (music) abideth for ever.
– paraphrase of Ecclesiastes 1
Mom asked me if I’d like to go downstairs and listen to the music program in their retirement place with her. I thought this was a fine idea. Dad was taking a nap and she asked me to wake him so he could join us. I went in and kissed his forehead. His eyes blinked a couple times and opened. He saw me and smiled. “Hi, neighbor!” he said. I asked him if he wanted to go downstairs and listen to music with Mom and me and he thought this would be a great way to spend some time.
The music was fun – songs I’d never heard before. The residents all seemed to be familiar with the lyrics and sang along with some of the tunes.Â
It occurred to me, then, that in maybe 10 or 20 years the music that will be blasting out of retirement homes will be The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Bonnie Raitt, Tom Petty, The Beatles, Neil Young, The Grateful Dead, The Doors, The Eagles, Simon and Garfunkel, The Hollies… and the idea of that cracked me up.Â
“Who shall declare this generation?” Who shall decide what truth and love are?
– Mary Baker Eddy
And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.
– Roald Dahl
It’s been a crazy month, and yesterday I hied me up to Bellingham – my spiritual home – for a much needed recharge.
As I was walking along the path to Boulevard Park – on the edge of Bellingham Bay – I ran into a man with a sitar. I asked him about his instrument and he talked to me a bit about how a sitar is put together and why it makes the unique sound it makes. He let me touch the strings and run my hand over the smooth kaddu ka tumba. He’d found this sitar in Texas and had learned how to play it from a master sitar teacher in San Francisco. The sitar had been in an Indian family for seven generations before it came into his hands.
I told him he had no idea how much I needed his music just then, and he said, “Oh, I do.” And then he played for me. I closed my eyes and opened my hands to whatever came to me – opened my thoughts up to the beauty and magic of that moment, and felt myself enveloped in harmony and peace – surrounded by a universe of Love.
Ancient sound. Ancient music.
I took a deep breath and he played the last note as I opened my eyes. The music only lasted a minute maybe – but it was all I needed.
I brushed the tears from my eyes and thanked him. He said, “Bless your heart.”
I went a little further on my walk then. On the way back I looked for him, but he had disappeared. And somehow that felt right to me – it made the moment when he played his sitar for me more magic somehow.
Mental melodies and strains of sweetest music supersede conscious sound. Music is the rhythm of head and heart.
– Mary Baker Eddy
Now I’ve been cryin’ lately,
Thinkin’ about the world as it is.
Why must we go on hating?
Why can’t we live in bliss?
– Cat Stevens, Peace Train
This morning I was looking on YouTube for that wonderful old Cat Stevens song, Peace Train, and stumbled upon a documentary of the songwriter that I found really thought-provoking. I’d known Cat Stevens had converted to the Islam religion many years ago, but I hadn’t really known much about Yusuf Islam’s (Cat Stevens’s) spiritual life beyond that. I’d heard rumors that he had supported the fatwa against Salman Rushdie, and I remember reading about Yusuf Islam  being suspected of terrorism and detained at an American airport when trying to enter the U.S. a decade ago. But the music he’d given us as Cat Stevens in the 70’s didn’t correlate in my mind with terrorism and religious extremism – it did not compute – so I’d just pretty much ignored all the rumors and kept the old Cat Stevens and his music alive and well in my thoughts. Basically, I took what was useful to me – what touched me and inspired me in his music – and ignored the other stuff.
Then this morning, as I was looking for Peace Train, I found a 51-minute documentary on Yusuf Islam’s life. Fifty-one minutes. In internet time, where we are used to bits and pieces and snatches and soundbites, 51 minutes is a LOT of minutes to invest on one YouTube clip, right? But I was interested enough that I figured I would go ahead and start the clip for myself and when I got bored I’d just turn it off and go on to something else.
I pushed “play” and began to watch the documentary. Before I knew it I was already 35 minutes into it, then 40, and then it was done! And I found the entire 51 minutes fascinating! So interesting, in fact, that I started scribbling down quotes for myself, to remember later.
The documentary addresses Cat Stevens’s career as a musician, his conversion to the Islam religion and changing his name to “Yusuf Islam”, the Salman Rushdie fatwa, and Yusuf Islam’s detention for suspected terrorism. Through the entire documentary Yusuf Islam comes across, to me, as sincere and genuine, intelligent and well-spoken. He says he never supported the fatwa against Rushdie and I believe him – I figure he doesn’t have a whole lot to gain by denying his support for the fatwa, and he might actually be risking a fatwa on his own life by saying he doesn’t support the fatwa on Rushdie’s. He claims he’s never been a part of any extremist Muslim terrorist activities, and, again, I believe him – from my own observation, terrorists (whether Muslim or otherwise) seem to be pretty proud of their terrorist activities and don’t spend their time denying what they’ve done. And when, in the documentary, we see Yusuf Islam addressing a gathering of Muslim leaders he’s not inciting fanatical extremism, but is telling them, instead: “We need inspired leadership to guide us back to the elevated path of wisdom and away from the temple of politics and ignorance.”
As someone who identifies as a Christian Scientist, I have now and then felt the sting of prejudice that comes from ignorance and fear. Maybe that’s why I’m able to feel some empathy for Yusuf Islam. In the documentary he puts it like this: “I was being painted in the same colors as all this often kind of political stuff.”
Islam says, “There’s certainly a change in the wind… There’s a chance for a new understanding of the moderate middle path of Islam because the extremes have been exposed. A lot of people have missed the whole point – including some Muslims who have gone off on their own strategy of trying to improve the world through some kind of devious means.”
I, for one, am glad that Cat Stevens converted to Islam. He believes he was led by God to do so. I believe God, Love, leads us all down our own unique path – and I believe every path leads to Love, in the end. Maybe every religion and non-religion needs adherents with reasonable voices – voices that speak of peace. Maybe the Islam religion needs the voice of Yusuf Islam speaking and singing for it and helping lead the way towards Love.
“I don’t really want to get involved in politics,” Yusuf Islam says, “I prefer to sing a song.”
Now, I’ve been happy lately, Thinkin’ about the good things to come And I believe it could be; Something good has begun.
Cat Stevens, Peace Train
Of all Cat Stevens’s songs Peace Train is the one that has most inspired me. Here’s the Youtube clip for Peace Train that I was looking for this morning:
Last week my dear FB friend, Caroline Martin, asked me to collaborate with her on putting together a youtube video featuring her beautiful song, Child of Mine, and my photography, Neither one of us had ever made youtube movies from our music and photos before and I had no idea, really, how to go about this kind of thing – but I said “yes” – how hard could it be, right? – and trusted that, once again, Love would lead the way as we entered a new adventure.
Serendipitously, I’d learned just a few weeks ago from my friend, Amy Duncan, how to put captions to my photos on pixlr.com. So after listening to Caroline’s song, and writing down the words to it, I went to pixlr and started adding the lyrics to photos that I thought might work well with the song. Then yesterday – also serendipitously – one of my high school students mentioned that most computers now come with free movie-making thingies – so I checked out my computer, and sure enough, there was a movie-making program I could download.  I added Caroline’s song and my photos to the movie-making thingy – et voila! – we had our movie!
Note: In the collage at the end of the movie there are four pictures – photos of Caroline’s beautiful children – that were not taken by me. They are great shots, though, and I would not be surprised to find that the ever-talented Caroline Martin took them herself. 🙂
If you go to the youtube link below our collaborative effort should appear…
Without any words you sat down at the piano one last time before heading off on your new adventure. You knew I would come and hear – pulled by that irresistible sound of your fingers on the keys – and all in a flash I saw you again as a toddler – the back of your round little downy-haired head as you sat on my lap at the piano, your tiny fingers pushing down on the keys, then your face turning up to me, a grin of pure glee there… is there anything more powerful than love?
Adventures of the Madcap Christian Scientist 