Starting tonight
I secretly believed that if I didn’t post any blogs in November, I would still continue to write and stockpile posts so that when December rolled around, I would have an arsenal to draw from.
That didn’t happen. At all. In fact, I’m checking my computer for any scraps I may have written that I could form into a full post today, and all I can find is a short snippet about watching “The Business of Being Born,” and how I could have gone my whole life without seeing Ricki Lake naked in a bathtub, and ending with something along the lines of “I prefer my birth tidy.”
And yes, I know that statement will come back to bite me someday. Something about placenta?
What I DID write in November is three new songs, and I’m recording demos while I’m here in Nashville – starting after work tonight. The process of writing these songs was different than it has been in the past, maybe because of the long creative drought that preceded it, or maybe because I moved 1,200 miles away from the weird comparison game that goes along with living in Nashville, or maybe just because the past year has included some personal earthquakes – things I haven’t written about here, but that have rattled me in a very real way.
As a result, I have no idea if these songs are any “good” – but I know that they mean a little something to me. It feels good to have something new to share.
share:
tags: "The Business of Being Born" | Annie Parsons | Change | Denver | Moving | Nashville | Songs | Songs | Writing
…waiting…
this made my heart really happy for you. :)
I think songs that mean something to the writer ARE the good ones. They are the songs that last. Can’t wait to hear them.
Im so glad youre back. My workday just improved dramatically. Kim would feel the same, but she is on some fantastic mexican vacation…
so I was GOING to comment on the previous post, but since there are 44(!!!) comments, I decided to write here. I was afraid you wouldn’t see me.
okay, this is strange. I watched sleeping with the enemy in november too!! for the first time ever. AND, it terrified me so much, I had to stop it half way through, watch an episode of modern family to calm my nerves, and then finish in the morning.
so glad you’re back.
If you wrote them, and they’re from the heart – they are without a doubt good, even very good.
Crank up the cd burner.
So glad you’re writing – and recording – again. :)
I watched “The Business of Being Born” back in a movie club…
So I’m bracing myself at the beginning, ready for the miracle to present itself in all it’s unmedicated glory… and almost the entire movie was stretched-magic free. I actually relaxed into it, listening to Ricki wax on spinal taps and birthing tubs, listening to all that language about birth float around proud, and brave souls. I was getting attached to the women, even becoming jealous of that divine ability to carry another human. Women, I was thinking, they’ve got a magic power I can’t even fathom.
Then it happened. Last ten minutes or so. Crazy, hairy fear gripped me as all those women got naked and into tubs moaning over their pain while whoever-committed rubbed their backs and tried to coo them into calm. Blood and water, and slimy life rolling right out into the world. Those women, sweaty and pained, looked like they’d seen God holding those things, the terror and joy all mixed together, floating about blood and water.
And now words of the mighty midwife, the harpy like angel-beast who hovers around the portal between life and death, her words I still can’t shake. They have repeated themselves over and over in my head, coupled with visions of miraculous portal horror. She says to me now in roars:
“REACH DOWN AND GRAB YOUR BABY!”
…um… was that movie at all like that for you?