misplaced mama

We’ve been rocking a lot lately.  This stay at home mama business is really the best gift I have been given, but this suburban wasteland of my mind, with little to none funk creation is getting me down and I’m in need to Get Down. Soul. Funk. Punk. Ska. Reggae. Country. Polka. Who cares, just show me the way.  I did find a great little whole-in-the-wall club when Sister E was here visiting: GLAM.   Can you tell by the name the floors were lit with LED lights? We had a fabulous bartender named Veronika who hooked us up with love and spirits and I am pretty damn sure she had a penis underneath her cute black leather mini. She was rad and the place got me loose and it freed about a million worries I was holding on to while I  shuffle ball-changed and got as low as my short old legs could go.  Now I know some people out there think that going out dancing on an LED lit dancefloor to DJ’s spinning Funkmaster Flash and Eric B and Rakim with a lively Veronika filling me up on Guinness until 2am is NOT the place for a 33 year old married mother of two.  And most likely your right.  BUT not completely right that’s for sure, (you can take the girl outta hollywoood but don’t you ever try to take the hollywood outta the girl). A lady like me has got to dance, roll, and wind it up if she wants to feel like a free women…no?  I hope to be putting glitter on my brow and bangles on my arm and heading out to dancefloors my whole life.  Even if someone has to push me  there in a wheelchair. 

 Anyway, I have been aching for a bit of the old dance party and luckily I have two extremely rhythmic and soulful children who are game to transform our mornings into a danceparty USA of sorts.

We get up, eat big bowl mush with goat milk and maple syrup or oat pancakes with strawberries.  We sit for morning circle with our french doors open so the morning wind can come in and cool our skin and then we practice breathing (nothing like hearing Sula do Ujai breath) and we do one OM or a mantra of Mia’s choice, play (with) the Tibetan Singing Bowl, put our hand together in Anjali Mudra, and bow to each other in Namaste and then yell, "Let’s Live!"  A good way to start the morning.

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Then we ROCK.

We put on some loud music, usual a good shuffle of stuff and I head outside to attack the massive laundry build-up in the laundry room (yeah, outdoor laundry rooms are such a Phoenix thing, loads of fun in 115 degrees, lemme tell ya…), coming out with undies on my head and doing the Running Man to crack the girls up. Spraying the hose everywhere, they run around like banshees or pixies or mountains nymphs covering their limbs and bellies in paint.  Mia drags her little chair to the tree with the peace dove nest woven with sticks and our dog’s shedded hair and laundry lint. She tries to climb high enough to see if Mama Bird has laid anymore fragile eggs that always seem to end up as feral cat cuisine.  Sula struts and dips and twirls ’round and ’round, welcoming the morning sun in her own iridescent way, like a silky sheet of satin in the wind. I try to get a few Sun Salutations in for myself but when we rock it’s a bit hard to stay that focused…sometimes wild movement is the only way to get the sillies outta us, plus the girls like to climb up my back while stretch in Down Dog.  And then sometimes we just get filthy in the mud.

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I take each of these mornings as such blessed newness, fresh starts, small seeds planted soil. I watch the girls prance about, like glorious creatures that must have some from somewhere other than my insides. Our french doors open wide and the musical emissions wave through the too warm morning air, reminding us we are here to let loose and let go; to sip each moment in delight as the hummingbirds do with flower nectar.  Wandering to the garden we water our eggplant, tomatoes, artichokes, herb varieties, and cantaloupe.  We inspect every inch of our dirt waiting for our amazing little earth sprouts to grace us with their miraculous presence. So much life is growing through our method of just tossing and letting them land where they may.  Thus far that method has been my most successful. The morning music chore/play/danceparty/garden tending is the only way we can wade through the morning tide without the under-tow pulling us deep into tantrums, counter-climbing-searches for something sugary or begging for DVDs.  I am really, by nature, a pleasant person in the morning, but that stopped when I had kids.   Now I am a certified grumpus.  I gnarly monster.  A whiney, complainy, achy old piss.  So I have to have a morning plan to bring mama outta the junk, and it’s gotta be loud and fun.  This one seems to work.  For now.  For now I am grateful to climb out of bed and rejoice in the health and vibrancy in my life.

And here is what we have been rocking to:

Yazoo, Upstairs at Eric’s 

The first time I heard this album I was going into 8th grade.  I stole the vinyl version from my big sister and played it non-stop for a whole summer (that and Depeche Mode which were actually some, or at least one, of the same people if I’m not mistaken).  I will never forget that period in my life; it was so eighties…confusing, full of pressure and opposing forces of my spiritual side crashing into this new-to-me image conscious and material world; a world I was slowly becoming a part of.  That summer I got my first moon cycle, a boy kissed me for the first time that behind Rose’s Beauty Parlor on Barker Street and if I am not mistaken a bit later on that summer the same boy touched my breast OVER my Izod shirt. Yazoo’s  Only You…I don’t know why, but it helped me through it all, to gain some perspective on this new hormonal self; full of lust and angst, being pushed and pulled with the currants of conformity of adolescents yet struggling with my inner knowing I was never to conform or be part of the ‘group’.   I could lie on my bed and listen to this Euro-pop all day long, locking the real world out, doodling, writing, and dreaming.  I told Mia that this music was a favorite of mama’s when she was a "little-big girl" and I used to lie on my yellow comforter and look up at my white pop-corn ceiling and write in my journal and cuddle with my pillow and listen to it.  Now she begs for "Mommy’s music!!!"  So groovy and silly and Alison Moyet’s voice is hauntingly gentle and powerful.  Always giving me the chills.

 Unknown Title, 1998 Astralwerks Compilation

I cannot even explain the numbers of random compilations I received when I was doing music publicity and pr as well as writing reviews back in the old school days of Hollywood.  But this one is a GEM.  We are  obviously big-time lovers of the electronica scene, especially those golden-to me days in  LA and San Fran where you could get talked up off your couch and end up at a hole in the wall club with people dancing in sweatshirts and yoga pants and sneakers without pretense or a giving a damn about how they looked or who else was in the house.  They danced.  They contorted. They danced on one arm. They did yoga. And it was heavy, sweaty and I will say very spiritual, it was a church for many. I always amazing at the energy steaming from these places…the music was transforming into a new level of dancability, house meets ragga, hip-hop meets techno, drum n bass meets dub. These DJ’s and producers and supporters created a post-human bendabliity for so many free and loose folk; those longing for positive community and aware of the need for a cultural shift in the early 90’s.  And for those who saw this culture as being about the drugs…shame on them.  It was evolution and revolution.  Now it’s mainstream in so many parts of this country.  Pooey.  Anyway, Mia LOVES Fatboy Slim…early Slim who graces the last track on this CD with his god-like appeal.  Basement Jaxx, techchunky beats; I mean, who could sit still when they make such magic? Who?  The Chemical Brothers track is like a fine wine which will never go sour.  I  love explaining the history of this CD to Mia and telling her all about Mama going out dancing in velvet stretch pants which were really her PJ’s and a Nascar tank top and Adidas sneaks with Dada in tow and how Dada tried teaching mama The snake and to break dance on her back and roll her hips like him, but it was a total joke.  And then Mia will cut the rug and do some sassy-ass move and scream out "is this yoga or breakdancing?"  I tell her there isn’t much of a difference.  We crank this one loud and listen 2x in a row without even noticing.

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Manu Chao, Clandestino

I love him.  Roots sounds.  Such a visionary.  Spanish French World revolutionary Rock Reggae.  Mia likes it because we are trying to learn Spanish and she is so familiar with a reggae beat, that it speaks to her on her DNA level but with a bit of curiosity.  "What are they saying Mama?"  They are telling us basically to live good lives; live a life of freedom and love.  To live with respect.  To live.  I tell her that he traveled around the world with a portable studio, not unlike her daddy’s, and collected sounds from music-makers everywhere, he even collected sounds from the streets.  It’s great spring-summer music.  We like to garden to it.  Pick tomatoes and make a good pesto with sweet basil. Crack open a fizzy drink.  Twirl around slowly with someone you love.

The Bravery, The Bravery 

The girls and I got in the car one day and found this CD in the player.  Daddy aka The Sound Fairy sometimes leaves us musical treats to pleasure the souls of our ears. We jammed the first three tunes and found ourselves at our  destination when Mia and Sula begged, "Louder!! Louder!! Again!!  Rewind!!" Totally un-enviro friendly, we drove around a bit more to listen to the whole thing  (hey, in the name of rocking, anything goes). Bouncy, punky, poppy, totally poppy, catchy and it hits me in the gut for some reason.  It’s very 1980’s yet utterly and uniquely 2007.  Coming from an electro-wire laden root cellar, the music grows up and out with organic stringin’.  I love the lyrics…hopeful yet real.  The band was born from the surrounding fear and doubt and blood of post 9/11 New York.  They are definitely authentic and unique…yet familiar.  And within a blink of an eye away from creation in a grimy old apartment and a few ads on Craig’s list, they got a deal with DefJam/Island and that is not easy feat. The founder of the band, Sam Conway, says The Bravery is about this: Standing tall and not being afraid.  It’s about being brave.  

 Barefoot Books.

Oh how we love storytelling CDs.  Since we have turned off DVD’s except for Friday night movie night (and an occasional You Tube viewing of The Smurfs and Cat In The Hat) storytelling CD’s keep the girls listening, wondering and imagining a world of words strung together like mystery.  The first has about 13 stories on faeries…all kinds of faery stories. And the princess one has tales about empowered princesses from all over the globe from Iroquois Nation to China.  The girlies often ask play it when they need that down time; when their eyes itch and their bodies ache and passively watching DVD’s gave them a moment of stillness, but now they get to be mellow while still creating a world on their own, in the their own minds, listening intently, but not watching anything but their imagination.  I like that.  Like there is talk about a "Horned Snake" in one of the stories and Mia finally asked me, "How can the snake play a horn?"  I love it. And all the stories offer these fantastical opportunities to envision images like that.  I like only wondering  what they see when they listen, knowing they hold the vision as their own.  We dance around to the stories which all have whimsical music…pretending we are faes and princesses…but what else is new.

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 The Harder They Come Soundtrack

"…sitting here in limbo, waiting for the tide to turn…"  My girls Jamye, Kristen, Marivi and I spent a bit of some time in Jamaica back in, let’s see…1995 or something like that.  I don’t know what happened to me on that trip but in some ways I think that island offered me some kind of mojo from its core that pointed me in a much needed new direction in life.  I was a bit lost in love and major anger issues at the time; wasting away money in an academic world I could care less about at that age.  Shortly after that trip I graduated and took a backpack with nothing much in it out West never to really return East. It may have been the sea, so blue, blue like my grandmother’s eyes.  Or the perfect and always punctual mid-afternoon storm that was sandwiched by clear tropical sun.  Or maybe it was the fresh fruit and the lovely mama, with floral dresses and braided hair who sold it to me every day.  Maybe it was the large greenery offered in budform that was handed out everywhere you went.  Maybe it was the darkness that loomed across a third-world nation that pulled me into its inner eye and forced me to open my sights to this harsh, harsh world a bit more.

But I think more than anything it  was more about the way people walked in Jamaica.  There seemed to be a few inches of space between people’s feet and the sand when they walked.  Like the 2 never touched.  And then there was the man who lived down the road from where we were staying; Mr. Everything.  Mr. Everything lived in a 10x10 foot square ‘house’ with no running water and no electricity and dirt floors with his family of four.  His light, his energy his peace, his joy, his exhale…all came from a place of grace and gratitude.  I asked him one day if he was happy.  I asked him this because where I come from, if you had "as little" as he had,  people were usually angry, very angry, bitter and forced into lives of crime and violence.   And he looked at me like I was a silly gal, smoking from his hand-carved wooden pipe, "Yes-I,  Respect.  Mista Every-ting ‘appy,   Mistar. Ever-ting has di best in every-ting.  Ital food from dis ‘ere garden, mi yout are healthy n strong, the sea right over there, seen?  What else could I-Man want?  I-Man have it all. Da best of ever-ting. Right here.  Bless up. Seen?"  And he looked at me like I better understand this as one of the most important lessons in my life. That there is what changed my life.  I appreciate my clothes, my cars, my home, my running water and my lesson wasn’t to commit to a saint-like life of poverty…but if it all got taken away, would I still be happy?  Could I survive and feel my place in the world with nothing to my name? Would I feel like I had the best of everything with nothing at all? It taught me to be grateful for my soul, my free mind, my utter presence here on earth regarldess of what I could aquire.  We played this CD over and over again on our travels, as a group of white girls we had no idea about the massive vault of reggae music, beyond the mainstream greats like Marley and Tosh and Cliff, that came from that Isalnd.  But it was perfect for us. Jimmy Cliff, The Melodians, Desomnd Dekker and Pressure Drop (fun youtube video with Jack Johnson and Ben Harper) by Toots and the Maytals…nothing can get better than that song in the morning, no  matter how many times I have heard it or Toots has sung it, it feels me with reds, golds and greens and that is a good thing.  I can relive those moments in my own present life; the perfect balance that reggae always seems to make between acknowledging the suffering yet exclaiming the joy and owning the self/world healing process.

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 I tell Mia about how mama her girlfriends flew together to an Island and lived next to a bunch of Rastas and we ate delicious food and swam in the ocean, and how reggae music really came into my life for the first time there.  "And now daddy makes it?"  "And now daddy makes it, yes."  "I like reggae mama, but I like Rock N Roll tooooooo much!"  Which brings us to…

Dogtown and Z Boys Soundtracks 

Oh yeah.  Pure rock n roll, Southern California skater style circa 1970.  Jimi Hendrix, Alice Cooper, ZZ Top.  My girl need is all about the guitar solos and big bad heavy yells and the drums, she likes the wicked drums.  Once we get to these tracks she winds it up stands atop anything with an elevated surface….bangs her head like a hairband groupie and jumps off. It’s so funny to see such a light soul, a prima-diva, get totally into the gritiness ofrock. This CD is great because it gives such a nice span of 70’s rockers, plus it ends on a really sweet note by Rod Stewart: Maggie May.  Gotta love it.  I think she may have been conceived after watching this movie and perhaps somewhere in there was a spark of her rebel soul, her rocker heart, her Princess Skull.

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