First, Finlandia.
This is a big secret, so for now, don’t post anything about it or mention it to your playa family circles beyond the choir. Details forthcoming, but we are collaborating with the Black Rock Philharmonic this year and will be doing this piece. We will do ONE verse in Finnish. We will do the second in English, the hymn translation. You have a score and a basic note practice track, so hold tight for the text.
Second, Awake My Soul, Mumford and Sons
This needs a tenor soloist, so if you are interested, have a listen. I love the text, I love the vibe and it fits in with the theme in as much as I’m interpreting it to be about wildness and authenticity. I love the line, “but your soul you must keep totally free…”
Third, Wild Life-
Choir, one of our missions is to instigate and inspire our congregation, our selves…
We are, I believe, puppets of the spirits that live beneath this ancient lakebed. We all know how this spirit takes over here, waaay more than it does at say the Super Bowl or the World Cup. (Not to negate the power of those experiences, but it ain’t like that)
While this song is, in its original lyric, basically a simple classic with a simple message, the rewrite is meant to get folks to take home the spirit that causes authenticity, creativity and less dogmatic living.
We are mostly back from the 2020 nightmare. But if you have noticed, we are back with some changes. Normal work life, normal schedules can’t silence the never enough goddamned time to live, to create, to float off into the dust and wind up where we wind up, guilt free. We’re back, but to what…?
Maybe I’m feeling it more because I’m in my early 50’s and all my lady friends in that same age bracket know all too well how life changes.
Shit ain’t the same. It was never meant to be the same.
So what the fuck are we doing…?!
And every newbie who steps foot on this playa will have to reckon with the spirit. What do we tell them? It’s our job to at least help them keep the door open…
I think of a musician I recently played with… young, green, scared shitless of life, hiding with prescriptions, balking at someone on tour (a very burner event) who said to him in all heart-all soul way:
“Open up your heart, be open to magic..”
My young friend balked, scorned, laughed, stormed off, offended…
To my poor young friend, to every newbie, every old timer who can’t see it because been-there-done-that…
Wake up…
Rise up…
Do your dance…
Break out of the cycle that’s killing your spirit…
Take your wild life home with you and spread it… like real butter…like cream cheese…like death-proof glitter caulking…!
Your WILD LIFE is calling!!
Love,
M
In WILDNESS, is the preservation of the world..