Merry X-mas (yes x, look up the etymology/symbolism fools!) Libretto

Another thing besides sporadic blogging that I like to do is make a playlist.  This is most certainly a vestige of my gen x youth during which I made, gave away, and received many a mix tape.  Oh memorex!  Usually I make a playlist for one of two reasons: the celebration of the birth of Christ and the death of someone's loved one.

So here we are December 22nd and I feel safe releasing this year's playlist to the world.  Some of the songs may take you back, others might educate you; some you may love and there are ones I guarantee you will hate.  Each song has made it onto this playlist for a special reason, and, as far as it is appropriate, I will let you in on those reasons.

1. Ave Maria-Christina Perri:  The closet Catholic in me loves the Ave Maria in all of its forms.  This year it is making a Christina Perri turn because I have a sneaking suspicion that 14 year old Mary would have sung in this kind of voice.  Mary is a perfect example of humility and submission through faith, yielding her will and her body and reputation along with it to the unfathomable plan of the Holy Spirit for our reconciliation to the Father.  Full, indeed, of grace, as grace itself dwelt within her for nine months, through the power of only grace.

2.  Mary Did You Know-C-Lo  Green:  The Prov Dance Troupe makes me cry every year, throw this song in the mix, sung by that crazy animal lovin' former Goodie Mobster and I'm just bawling my eyes out.  But really, Mary did you know?  As a mom, it's a legit question.

3.  Hark!  The Herald Angels Sing- Nat King Cole:  In the movie of my life, Nat King Cole is my grandfather and sings me sweet Christmas carols  like this one.  "Mild He lay His glory by, born that man no more must die." Gets me EVERY time.

4.  All I Want for Christmas is You-Mariah Carey:  Mom danced a wild hybrid jig/charleston with such abandon about the kitchen to this song. I am sad for all of those who never saw it.  I'm pretty sure my little brother relived this in leopard tights and a foxy shirt the year mom died, the last year we all christmas'd together.  This song holds the perfectly ironic mix of joy unspeakable and abject heartbreak for me.  Laugh 'til you cry.

5.  Mele Kalikimaka-Bing Crosby:  I have had a secret love affair with Bing Crosby since I was a very young child.  I suppose I first fell in love with his voice and then later with all those black and white movie musicals he was in.  Living in Florida is reminiscent of the sentiment in this song, especially today, at the beach.

6.  Silent Night-Sufjan Stevens:  I love that there are no lyrics sung in this version; it is properly silent.

7.  Christmas Day-Dido:  When I was younger and a good deal more naive and still believed in true love and that it was available for me, I loved this song, thinking I would in a single meeting fall in love with some knight of old and he would go off and promise to return to me on Christmas day, and that this would indeed come to fruition on that Christmas day when we would promptly get married.  Yes, after approximately 3 hours of knowing each other!  I failed to hear the key words in the last verse:  those were the last words she EVER heard him say.

8.  Happy Christmas-Maroon 5:  We all know and love the original.  But, I am currently in the midst of a very torrid and very REAL (imaginary) romance with Maroon 5 frontman Adam Levine.  Grrrr...beard, plaid, singing, tats, hugging people on the voice.  Sometimes I get jealous of Blake Shelton.  And then later that night Adam phones me to say it's all just for ratings.

9.  Blue Christmas-Bright Eyes:  This version is just melancholie enough.  I don't know why, but there's always someone I can imaginate into this song, every year, without fail.

10.  Baby It's Cold Outside- James Taylor and Natalie Cole:  I actually dislike the arrangement, especially the instrumentals.  And while I love nat's voice, I am not a huge fan of natalie's.  But I love James Taylor, so I imagine a young James and Carly singing this in their innocence, before the marriage and fighting ruined the sweetness.

11.  You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch:  SERIOUSLY, I LOVE THIS SONG. "Given the choice between the two, I'd take the seasick crocodile!"

12.  Christmas Without You-OneRepublic:  Sometime you just need to get your Ryan Tedder on.

13.  Christmas Waltz-She & Him:  I like to think the disagreement between object and subject pronouns here is purposeful and adorable.  It's an adorable new Christmas song.  I love a new song.  Mix it up! Favorite line fragment: "in three quarter time."

14.  I Wonder as I Wander-Jewel:  Jewel really can disguise her voice.  No, really, is that ACTUALLY jewel?  Anyway the lyrics are grande.  Grande Latte.

15.  Oh Come All Ye Faithful-Phil Wickham:  His voice makes me think he really loves Jesus.  He really wants us to come and behold the king of angels with him.  Plus, I Love a Linus reading of the Christmas story!

16.  Oh Little Town of Bethlehem-Annie Lennox:  I am pretty sure Annie Lennox is ACTUALLY one of the Cherubim.  Does she or does she not appear to be (and sound like) a ferocious, fiery, angelic being dedicated to constant worship of God and the protection of His throne room from those who are not worthy to enter.  I don't always love when a songstress strays so far from the original tune, but Annie can do what she wants.  I love her voice. It is magic, angelic even.  Cherubic.  "Cast out our sin, and enter in, be born in us today...come to us, abide in us, our Lord, Emmanuel."

17.  Away in a Manger-Drew Holcomb:  I was introduced to Drew through Blood Water Mission and the 1,000 Well Project, during a different stretch of my life, when I was really passionate about being an instrument in saving the world from all its social ills.  This version of this song sings to me of that time.

18.  Hark! The Herald: Vienna Boys Choir..This is incorrectly labelled as in Handel's Messiah it is actually entitled "For Unto Us a Child is Born."  It matters not.  I absolutely love Handel's Messiah.  On a recent journey home from North Caroline I listened to the entire performance by the London Symphony Orchestra.  It was insane.  It tells the whole story.  No stone left unturned.  The goosebumps caused by chills that I get listening to it actually hurt.

19.  Comfort and Joy-Tori Amos:  Tori is some sort of woodland faerie and she has a very interesting take on some lines from an old classic.

20. Evergreen-Switchfoot:  This song has the angst of the old grunge era of my teen years.  It also has a few lines that I believe to be a reference to a Pink Floyd song.  I love songs that refer to songs of yesteryear.  I love switchfoot but you guys already know that.  I do really want to be alive all year long, and these years I feel less and less alive thanks to a cold breeze that has been chilling the fervor in my heart annum after annum so that now all I have is an icicle of a heart that barely wakens from its hibernation for a few moments every year, but doesn't have the energy to sustain it so falls back asleep in hopes for something miraculous to happen and really thaw it out permanently.

21.  Be Still-The Fray:  Everything about this song is just perfect.  I have been rereading Brennan Manning's Souvenirs of Solitude.  I am incapable of wrapping my mind around the idea of a lengthy, purposeful, silent retreat from all humans and other stimuli.  I have  a pretty serious case of adult ADHD so being still is impossible in my humanity.  "Be still, and know that I AM with you, and I will sing your name."  Beautiful.  It is a very real call on my heart.

22.  Beautiful Things-Gungor:  I really believe that next year is gonna be a beautiful year, in a practical, visceral, carnal, REAL, human way.  Not just spiritual.  But in my actual life, things are going to be really beautiful.  I am by nature a realist (read pessimist) but I am flippin the script this year.  Name it and claim it Jess is in effect.  Leggo, I'm finna take off! (Laura that was for you...shofar and all)

Merry CHRISTMAS!!!!!!!! Hands skyward, shoulder shrug, weird voice.

The Island

I have to take a break, which may be permanent, from blogging my novel. I will write it one day.  For now, here's a little something you might like to hear about.

There is an island I know like the island on Lost, only instead of floating in an actual ocean this island is suspended in the water above the land that separates the waters above and below, tethered to the time space continuum by a tattered thread that causes the island to spin and twist as the thread unravels. When I think about this island, I hear the song from Peter Pan, "it's not on any chart, you must find it with your heart" but sung by Union Station; and indeed there are aspects of it that are just like the island of lost boys.  You have to travel there under dark of night and think lovely thoughts and hold your breath as you pass through the waters.  You are ushered in by rows and rows of tall evergreens that are carefully manicured in a strangely germanic fashion - undergrowth and brush all cyclically burned away, leaving only the majestically tallest and strongest rooted in the ground, stretching through the sky.  The island itself is a small, quaint, quiet middle-class community of older homes made with natural materials hidden behind the contours of foliage that predates any human dwellers, and newer homes whose clean look and sparse landscaping speaks of an attempt at domestication of this feral terrain. The entire island is ensconced by immense guardian farms of storied landed gentry whose money is most certainly invested in keeping its secrets and protecting its inhabitants as much as they need protection or are willing to accept it.

When you get there you immediately feel the change.  The air is a bit cooler, crisper, and cleaner, and much heavier.  No the air is lighter and gravity is heavier, not so much heavier that it is crushing, but heavier enough to make you feel the earth beneath your feet a little more intimately.  I'm sure that compasses don't work there, due to some kind of ever changing spinning magnetic vortex.  Every time the tether to this earth makes a new pendulum swing, it changes the whole mood of the island and it takes some adjustment on your part as the visitor. As my sister would say, you have to get your sea legs.  Sometimes down is up, sometimes sideways is soup, and always winter is the hap-happiest season of all.  In real life, summer is the best season with its ocean and warmth and sun and tanned, fit, beach bodies and careless ease.  But that's when here there seems to be too much free time causing seriousness and summertime sadness that Lana del Rey sings about and while to me she is referring to the end of summertime to the island I know it is the actual summer itself.

The bite in the air the winter wind flies in with it wakes the island natives and draws new members of the pack in an attempt to prove their alpha status.  They become restless and wild, full of compliments and fire. Maybe no shave November plays a part turning the formerly clean shaven baby faces into refuges for a chorus of woodland creatures.  Maybe the increased gravity makes their muscles grow instantaneously and the winter husky is translated into chiseled bodies in contrast to the winter coat of hibernation insulation of the real world.  Maybe they're just on "that cycle" - finally.  Traps and lats and delts, triceps and biceps and even glutes are on prominent display. The uniform of the day is most obviously the shirts from that mystery flannel vintage etsy shop everyone keeps pinning.  The number and variety of shapes and sizes and softness and number of buttons that are undone (strangely it doesn't seem at all Miami vice of them to have 3 or even 4 unbuttoned buttons) invites a careful survey and cataloguing with margin notes that mimic the original intent of the facebook.  This winter shift turns mere mortals who might not normally even turn your head into the Thor-like hottest hottie mchottertons that ever hotted.

When I am old, I want to live part of the year in the no man's land between the island and the estates.  I want to buy a small shake shingle cottage with a wrap around porch in the woods.  It seems like the perfect place to write a book.  I can only take the island itself in short spurts.  A day, maybe two at the most, at a time.  I am not immune to believing that, like the Island on Lost, it is all real and it all matters and so I am susceptible to losing my bearing and an attachment to reality.  My actual life demands that I stay firmly planted on the land where I know in which direction north lies at all times.  But I can dip my toe in on a bi-monthly basis and drink from the fountain and let it keep me young for a little while longer.