winter: tunbridge, vermont

Early 2012 was the last winter I lived in the middle of nowhere Vermont. I did live in the middle of nowhere; people that are vaguely familiar with the geography have a difficult time knowing where I lived, but it was east central Orange County, in the midst of dairy farms and hills in between the Green and White Mountains. Coincidentally (or not, as the case may be), right around the corner from my childhood religion's prophet's birthplace, smack in the middle of Montpelier and White River Junction, as the crow flies.

A really lovely place. I loved it. My husband and I rented a tiny house out there before they were cool, in the summer of 2010. We moved there dry (which I have done too many times and has more than likely taken years off of my life), dry meaning no jobs no income. We saved up for a Pacific Crest Trail thru-hike and we weren't getting too much support for getting our thru hiking pooch to handle the desert, so we opted for plan B, which was to move from the front range of Colorado to a place I wanted to live since I was 17. Also, as my husband grew up in northern New England, he was anxious for us to get back to his homeland after living out west for a long time.

The move turned out to be great, really. We began our life long love for outdoor guiding that summer, making a ton of cash for being out for a few hours, which quickly grew into a full time business partnership by the next season. I was working with kids in creativity during the off season, which was also fun. Lots going on during those two years that I loved. Eating out of the garden, dealing with the goats, watching the cows graze, drinking Long Trail Ale, hiking over 100 miles a week...a nice time.

This winter, however, was unusual. I felt like life was stopped for some time, and I felt impatient for it to resume.

I had completed a yoga training in India in November and was ready to change some shit around. I was ready to stop living small, I was ready to move forward in my life. I was ready to make more of an impact than I had up to that time. I was just ready for something different. This decision came after a severe wrench in the plans; our community was absolutely devastated by flooding the previous fall from a tropical depression that made 11 inches of rain in steep mountain valleys in 2 hours. Our jobs were wiped out, an entire road was wiped out, our favorite hiking trails and snowmobile trails we loved to walk on were washed away. I was a nervous mess from forced change and hated that people that I knew had lost everything (I reiterate: everything). My favorite mountain town was even completely impossible to get to. Folks had to have supplies airlifted to them...and it was a place I stopped by on the way home mere hours before the storm hit. It was like all of the optimism was completely sucked out of that bucolic summer that we had and the fall became a unplanned financial recovery time. And through all of this, I planned to go to India, and hell or high water (pun completely intended) was not going to stop me from doing so. So...when I came back, I was ready for another chapter. It was obvious that the Universe had some serious things to say about my living in Vermont, and I was ready to take it to the next level.

And here I was, sitting in the tiny house alone most of the time as my husband was working a lot and my job was with a private school with a hell of a lot of snow days taken. I sat at home alone a lot during that time period, so I did what I could to keep myself sane, as anyone would need in order to survive a winter inside a 300 sq foot house. I was raw from being tucked away. I needed more adventure, I needed more of SOMETHING.

I listened to a lot of Billy Joel at this time. I had just gotten engaged (see previous post from from 2012) and was making a return to listening to him after a few years off. I loved this song as it related to his wrestling with being bipolar ('They say that these are not the best of times, but they're the only times I've ever known') as well as being on the verge of something in his life....something we later know as rock stardom. Yet, it ain't here yet, and he is sitting on a porch in upstate NY pissed he's not in the city (a la the Hudson River Greyhound line he refers to in 'New York State of Mind'). Time is passing slowly, he's frustrated, he's pissed and sad.

And here I am...time passing slowly, frustrated, wanting something (ANYTHING) different. Not sure what the hell is going on. So I'm doing my time in rural Vermont, waiting for the other shoe to drop, waiting for something else, waiting for the Universe to show up and say Sarah, here are your orders for the next few years.

I wrote massively during that time, which will more than likely never see the light of day, including songs which my musical snobbery grading never gave more than a C. I prayed a lot, I walked a lot, I cried a lot. I attempted good things for myself. I made myself move forward on some things, which turned out to be really great in the long run (thanks Kripalu!), but even then, still waiting.

I felt like this waiting, this purgatory of movement, was almost like a mourning. We were already in the action of leaving our small cabin; past that, I got pregnant with our first child, so this definitely marked the time of an about face in terms of change....but...this turned out to be in hindsight a mourning of standing still, of living life how I wanted to live with a job I wanted to have. It was an interesting time in which I got to know myself, and quite a bit, and get to know what I wanted, too. What challenges I was up for.

Funny thing is, almost 5 years later, I am sitting here in what feels like purgatory again. This is precisely why I am recalling this memory of mine...maybe to find some lessons that did not get passed the first time, the opening of myself. This time I am allowing the written word to see the light of day, even though I am still in hiding by not pushing it (ha).

Who knows what the hell is going on. All I know is this song wraps up my emotional seeds about it. The time where I am about to jump out of my skin is pretty closely aligned with this songwriting about it. I saw Billy Joel in concert a few years ago and almost ---ALMOST--- got to hear this one live. Unfortunately for me he gave the audience the option of hearing this song or Vienna, so you can bet which one they picked. I was screaming my ass off in the nosebleeds, though.

Here you go. Summer, Highland Falls.

https://youtu.be/ygNNpvzuNFA

christmastime is here. always.

in this time of the year, to say this song is popular is an understatement. however, in the last few years of my life, nothing has really brought me as much calmness and sweetness as listening to jazz piano. I think it may have something to do with watching Charlie Brown Christmas and Mister Rogers Neighborhood when I was a kid, which always brings about the calm in the eye of the storm.

My vast statement is that the voice of love, peace and tranquility is in jazz piano.

That being said, and also since I recently found out that this is the 50th anniversary of this album, I felt it necessary to share some experiences with this song;  i 'm really not even sure where to start with all of the memories, but they are all mentionable.

i walked down the aisle to this.

no kidding. In the midst of trying to plan the perfect wedding, i decided to just get married. I married in the middle of November, in that sweet spot of early winter before snowfall and the peak of Christmas bustle, in one of my favorite places in the mountains of the Blue Ridge, the tail end of the Southern Highlands. It was the weekend before Thanksgiving, my favorite holiday, and there were just a few leaves on the trees at the elevation we were at for the colors to be spectacular. I even hiked before I got married, it was great.

Well, you do not have to guess that I had at least three hundred perfect songs planned to play at my wedding, a mixed tape I began back when I was 15 and had saved on my computer for God only knows how long. Joke is, on the day of, I decided to remain in the moment as much as possible, which asked of me to choose songs while I was getting my hair done and right before the ceremony. This was it. I chose it because of its sweet peacefulness that seemed necessary, as my insides were shaking. Truth is, I'm not good at being on the spot...even though I know it is necessity. Why I couldn't elope; the idea that I needed to be present and in front of witnesses to show that I loved this one person was essential. However, eloping would have been way easier and less stressful for this old ass bride that was uncomfortable with being in the sun.
Regardless, it was great. A little slow to walk to, but set the tone beautifully.

i was once on highly medicated states at a concert festival and listened to this and it immediately put my mind at ease...when I really needed it. Really.

Judge all you want, but this happened at a moment in time where I had been working my life out in my head, over and over, analyzing this and codifying that, trying to put all of my emotions and the reasons I was having them in the 'right place'. I have been told that my favorite phrase is 'i'm just trying to figure it out'... well, i was, and to my detriment (still annoyingly do this). I was forcibly working on shit in my head making excuses for varying events in the name of trying to move forward ...fruitlessly trying to find rationality in unpredictable emotions.
Then pop--this comes on the shuffle.

There was nothing to it. I melted in my sleeping bag and placed this on repeat. I didn't sleep, I don't think, but I melted, and for hours. I rested in this safety. I had a friend of mine tell me God is love, and God is everywhere....I think most spiritual people regardless of religion can agree on that one. This was it for me. This allowed me to relax into being loved, even if it was just music reminding me of my choice of what I thought. I cannot stress more what that meant to me at the time; I have consistently been someone who is on the path, moving, working towards something, always doing SOMETHING. i have always had it be up to me to push my way through the bullshit. to be passive? that was truly miraculous.
Talk about a gentle comedown...it was beautiful.


I have watched it snow countless times while listening to this. It provides a good soundtrack for gentility and softness.

since i was a kid.
i watched the show again with my kids and recognized that this music sprang up every time it snowed on the program, which makes sense. i don't think brushes on drums could create that visualization more in my head, for sure. I could just hug Vince Guaraldi for getting the tempo exactly right for falling snow, and laying on the keys just right. Even the bass solo at the end was as smooth and warm as the rest of the song.

I once did sound for a jazz trio that covered this album at a venue I worked at. What a seriously fun gig to have...I got to make it sound like I wanted to.

They dedicated it for me too, after asking them to play it. It was awesome, and a powerful moment of holiday magic for me, sitting at that sound board in stinky painted up jeans while folks paid 50 a ticket for it. I have a friend that insists that we get a Christmas miracle every year, and this was the 2007 Christmas miracle.
'Sarah, could you turn up the gain?'
'Already did!'


Since whacking him on the side of the head with this song every holiday since we have been together, my husband has also become a huge Vince fan as much as I have....we even found out that he was friends with Jerry Garcia. Whack, but I guess all those beatniks in San Fran in the 50s and 60s all knew each other. There's a picture of him on Aoxomoxoa.

So here we are. A tribute to the sweetest memory of childhood through to profound adult moments, all through a simple song. Even if you've heard it through the holiday season more times than you can count, I assure you it's worth another listen. Sonic love.

always and forever…?

i felt in touch for the first time ever in a long time.
i put on my favorite record from when i was 12. and i melted into it, remembering entering the dark side.

let me back up. I realize, sitting here and listening, that I loved to write in tandem with music for my whole life. and it could be drivel, it could be perfect, it could be anything…but what it really was to me was home. i felt like MUSIC is what made me a better writer; and that my wild imagination is the way to spurn….there is nothing creative i could do in the world and be without music….music is what spurs me.

so…now knowing this, WHY is it that way? why does music open the innerness of me that is essential? I love EVERYTHING ABOUT it. i love the story it tells in melody alone, what it makes me think of. the words, the layers of harmonies. it's been my rock when i had nothing else, so a very much a security blanket. it was my father when i was a child, it was my lover as a lonely teenager (and lonely adult). since becoming pregnant i haven't entertained much fantasy anymore, so I have been negligent on the appreciation for it; luckily, that changed for the better this evening, and it was refreshing.

the king of love songs

so.
call me what you want.

but i am just on a huge billy joel kick these days.

since my recent engagement, i am listening to lot of love songs in order to find the one that makes the 'cut' of my wedding. i have songs i associate with the gentleman in question...in fact i blogged about both of them on here, so there you go.
but a definitive love song? one that says everything? that's a toughie.
so, two days ago, i was cleaning my house and billy joel's 'an innocent man' popped up on shuffle. at the end of the song, i was reduced to a ball of crying snot on my couch. in one song, he managed to remind me of this engagement and begin restoring all of my faith back into what is most important...love. the security of knowing someone is around for you, supporting you, believing in you. and since my india trip, i have been consistently focused on this issue, as one thing I am learning is that I need to develop a more trusting relationship with the Universe, allowing it to support me. I need to allow for me to be loved. More importantly, I need to feel the ferocity of feeling loved coupled with the fear of losing it; to stare bravely in the eyes of this fear and accept the possibility of failure and proceed anyway. accepting each moment for the fullness that you can, allowing any past bitterness to be shed permanently.
all this from a billy joel song, right?
yes. it taps into all of this.
so let's start from the beginning.

My love of billy joel all began when i lived in New York City. Of course, besides the enthralling experience of living in New York, (where Springsteen and Billy Joel are king, mind you)there was a romance in my life, too, with my best friend at the time...one that i associate closely to his music, that was very monumental.
I was 23, and the guy i was involved with was from Hicksville, NY...Long Island to you and me. Also the home of Billy Joel, which naturally provided the musical landscape of our relationship. We revealed our romantic feelings for each other at a diner during a radio station playing of 'She's Got A Way' (it sparked the conversation), later becoming our song. I remember him taking me to meet his family in Hicksville for the first time and being shown the village green and the Parkway Diner, made timeless in the song 'Scenes of an Italian Restaurant'. Silly stuff.
But...
Sigh.
It was the first time I really fell in love; and it was what I refer to as the awakening point of youth into adulthood. It drove me to grow in a different direction completely, after realizing the childish notion that sometimes even when you fall in love, it doesn't end like a Disney movie like it's supposed to. It can just end, and really messily. Soft and sweet seventies Billy Joel love songs colored my world often at this time, dripping with romance and sentimentality while in the relationship, and bitter cold hard tears that I felt I deserved after it was over. And in New York, Billy Joel songs are being played all the time...goes without saying that it was hard to listen casually...so I put good ole Billy away for a decade or so.

Now that I am older, getting married, and thankfully the experience that put all of that emotion into my life had long been forgiven and let go. So, I decided to revisit sappy Billy Joel love songs with full bravery.

After regrouping from my episode, I first put on 'You're My Home', an old song from the 70's that I often think of when I think of my fiance, due to our casual moves and locale changes and adventures. A truly beautiful concept--the fact that a place is not your home, but a person--a person you can just be with and feel at ease and centered. A beautiful song, and after hearing it after some time I was reminded by how romantic that song is, how fitting. Wherever we are, we are home with each other.
Knowing the musical dork that I am, I had to wikipedia it...I had to know what the motivation for the song was, knowing how I like to get obsessed with total trivia like that. As it turns out, it was written for a gift for Billy's first wife; upon more research, so was 'She's Got A Way'. In fact, ALL of the great Billy Joel love songs weren't for Christie Brinkley, or the young Hamptons foodie he married later in life, but for Elizabeth, the woman he wed before his fame. The woman who was 'the waitress practicing politics' in 'Piano Man' and subsequently in 'Zanzibar' (she waited tables to support the both of them and her young child from a previous marriage while he was the main attraction at a piano bar in LA, also getting her Master's degree in Business); the woman who literally helped him to become the famous singer songwriter that he is by being his business manager from 1974 to 1982 (through the huge success of "Piano Man", "The Stranger" and subsequent albums that made him a household name...before uptown girl and MTV), eventually becoming too stressed and dissatisfied with the rock n roll lifestyle to end their relationship. My guess, knowing what I know about her, she probably wasn't as much of a groupie as some musicians would like their wives to be. 'She's Always A Woman', for example, was written about her shrewd style of doing business for Billy, which he appreciated and could see her femininity through. 'Just the Way You Are' is for her, too.

Wow. This changes my idea of the man and the master. I had always associated him as being a pretty miserable womanizer from my time of working fine dining in New York. I heard enough things about him from our Hamptons location. Needless to say, the romance was soon taken out of any of his love songs...or I might have been looking for an excuse for all the emotion to be sucked out of the music just from my prior relationship.

But these were all written about one woman, a woman who is now out of his picture entirely and before he was even famous to my knowledge, by 1983.

I thought about how that relationship might have looked...before being famous, struggling just to get paid to do something that you loved, to get by, to have nothing but to lean on your partnership...and then looked at my own. i began to cry at the similarity. not bad tears, just tears of...trust. I began to think about all of the things my fiance has told me over the years of our struggling, how we work together so well...and think about how it would've sounded in song...

And this would be it.

It was a very touching moment for me...It reminds me to fully accept the love that is being given at every moment, instead of just shying away from it and letting it slide under the mat because I can't handle it being taken away from me. To have the bravery to be fully aware. To know that these love songs are being 'sung', in one way or another, to me every single day. I think that is something I didn't want to even think about after the pain of past relational failures, with all negative emotions tied up in music, but now that I am in something real, I can accept it. And it's extremely overwhelming emotionally, but in such a good way it's about indescribable. Billy Joel just filled some musical communication gap from my head to my heart.

so thank you, Billy and Elizabeth. I bet you guys had something really special, as your union inspired some pretty incredible love songs that say everything. Now I feel like a kid wanting their parents to get back together.

Playlist of blog includes 'An Innocent Man', 'She's Got A Way', 'She's Always A Woman', 'Just the Way You Are'. I couldn't find 'You're My Home'...frown.

but i think this may have made the wedding cut.

what a difference a day can make...

I spent the morning in the mountains looking for a home.
the process of remembering living in the mountains in the dead of winter is becoming familiar to me again, and all the pains in the ass that it comes with.
however...
i felt relief. like, finally. I finally get to go back outside. Essentially, with both of our jobs, the Universe has created this possibility to live there, making the commute actually *easier* on the both of us (we both work at the base of the foothills which makes our commute from downtown Denver a LOT easier). And people, the less you have to drive in the city the better. I always get seriously pissed i don't have my bike here yet, because driving in traffic here is just...retarded. Here, it's all spread apart just neatly for us to have to travel by car to some suburb 30 minutes away by car, and the drive just..sucks. nothing makes me hate humanity more than being stuck in traffic. and it always sucks. except for weekend mornings.
It's just...I forgot how nice a drive is in the mountains is after a good day of work. I have witnessed some of the most beautiful sunsets in my life living in Northwest North Carolina, just driving home from WORK. the fog, the light snow cover at the tops of the mountains when it is just raining were you are, the ski slopes in the distance when you crest a mountain at just the right altitude... like, damn, I LOVE living in the mountains. GET ME BACK THERE, PLEASE.
I have been crazy homesick for the Appalachian Mountains since September, since things were going so epically crappy in Colorado (in every facet of my life, too... except for my relationship, which is just getting super strong... way cool). Jobs falling through, paychecks falling through, moving into a seemingly nice apartment that has masked itself as living off of Colfax in Denver (it's an experience)...all of this reminds me of what i essentially need in order to get by.
Mountains, music, yoga, and honest working.
and i gotta get out of the city.
and I know, for a FACT....the sunsets in the Rockies will completely blow my mind, for sure.
I just want to go home, to the mountains. to feel comfortable. I feel so at ease in the cracks of Earth that just that backdrop carries me through all of the adventures in my life. nature is terribly hopeful and achingly beautiful in ways that effect my highly sensitive personality, much like a good song does. (amen) keeps that energy pure and real for me. It's what I will be willing to work hard for and accept easily.
Dealing with shoveling up to 3 feet of snow off of my car, the ability for your pipes to freeze up, wondering how much wood you have to cut to keep yourself warm (or have on hand)for six months of the year...sign me UP. You need me to rebuild a deck for you? Tile your bathroom? Install hardwood floors? IN.
Sigh. Can't even tell you how much better that makes me feel.
Ready for the next step...let's go. Stay in Colorado is what the Universe chose for the both of us...so now I am ready to hear the answer on whether to keep looking for a house or deal with the bull that comes from living in the mountains. Sigh. I hope I find a place in Conifer or just west of it. That would rule unbelievably.
Okay. Rambling. I just felt the need to update. I am just, finally, after months...beginning to see the end of this tunnel.
So, of course, i have to attach some musical thing on this. I have been listening to Jamie Lidell's 'Jim" album, just harmonizing away on Green Light. A plus for the old school soul set that's refreshingly modern. And, not surprisingly, what I have to offer at my present time. So much soul... it's the most classic Jamie song on the album. it drips the air of fluidness. and all lyrics make complete sense. make it what you want. make 'i love you' carry the most weight in your heart. trust. it's really all up to you...
I have a feeling things are going to get much better. I know exactly what i want now, which is an awesome realization...makes it nice and easy to know what you want.

okay, then. let's go.

cause i simply love having you around...

yup. in love. miserably so at the time, since we are parted by the entire united states. I see him once a month. And it's hard - difficult, really - at the end of the month, right before I see him again. He'll be here in a week and a half, to stay, even...but I am just powerless about it. I miss him so much it's hard for me to be positive about anything. Especially when I can't go out there to see him. It's really frustrating.

So this is where this post comes from tonight. I have been in love with 'For the Love of You' for ages.

I first got it when I downloaded the Essential Isley Brothers right before I left for the Appalachian Trail, and I had (remarkably) chose this one to throw on there. Don't know why, since I didn't really listen to it much before I left, I think I was curious to see if I would like it 'on the road'. I knew from prior experience hiking required funk music from time to time.

Well, this song I remember listening to at a gap in North Carolina...it was before Wesser Bald (the one with the tower), I think, when I remember putting this one on for the first time. I just like the jam, really, not lyrically pinpointing anything in my life at the time, so I listened to it alot while hiking.

Well. I meet the man (again). And kisses and tears and Joni Mitchell later, he came to visit me in Philadelphia. I left the next day to drive to Nashville and I think I listened to this song on repeat for an hour, crying. I missed him so much it hurt. When I think I knew, as much as I was trying to deflate my feelings about it, I was in love. But this time it felt easy. Not in the easy sense, though. It's been hard to be away from him...but easy to be. Simply. He makes life so much easier to love it.

So then I meet him...and been apart from him...for a few months now, and this is a hard situation to deal with. So when I am working and my mp3 player is on shuffle, I hear this and turn to butter. Smile even though the chips are down. The last verse is probably the most sentiment for myself...


I might as well
sign my name on a card which can say it better
time will tell
cause it seems that i done just about all i can do

I know that I am living
for the love of you...

and...you know, i know it's cheesy. it's the seventies classic bootymover. it is what it is.
...but when you have soul, it all feels right.

listen away.
11 days and counting...

the lost art

albums. most specifically. what i grew up with....the package deal, the record. i was thinking about this today as I thought about things that I wanted my love to listen to, since he sent me a wonderful gift...a musical sampling. One was a soundtrack to our relationship up to this point, in which he picked all the tracks himself...and then a sampling of some live Grateful Dead, which I always enjoy. I am so touched by this gift..this gift of himself, really...to me, that I want to repay him of a sampling of my own.
So i get to thinking...what reflects something that's me...
and I can think of is sitting him down and playing about five of my favorite albums. a whole expression of a message from one artist. an event. a collection that says this is the music I love to listen to. Not just a song, which to me is just a thought, merely so. I wanted an autobiographical experience...something I loved so much.
So came down to the top 5....
1. Kind of Blue, Miles Davis. The first time I heard this album I was in the summer between 8th and 9th grade, in the sweatiest kitchen ever in Columbus, Ohio. My brother in law took us kids to the public library that day to grab some summer reading, and he came to the counter with this one and a Thelonius Monk tape as well, which I don't think ever made it back to that library. I remember what I was doing the first time I heard it (I was baking a cake)...wild how I still remember that, after countless times I have listened to this... I have bought this album 4 times, taped it from another tape once, and have bought this album for other people twice. Jazz at its finest. Blue in Green is probably the most gentle and romantic song ever written; when I worked at the Palm in New York I used to ask our bar piano player to play it, and he did, every time....in fact, later recorded it and gave me a copy. Countless experiences in my life that this has served as a backdrop...so hard to describe more than that. I remember watching the sunrise in Cleveland in a 24 hour bus ride from TN to NYC listening to Flamenco Sketches, dancing to the entirety of the album on a subway train at 3 am while stuck in between stations, sitting in the dark watching the snow fall in Colorado listening....beautiful.....beautiful. My favorite album of all time.

2. What's Going On/Let's Get It On, Marvin Gaye. We had this double record set when I was really young....it was my mom's and my two sister's favorite record at one point, and mine as well. That's the one thing that you can find in common in our taste in music, is Marvin Gaye. It was strangely very involved in my childhood...my mom would get home from work and I would have Marvin Gaye on playing Barbies.....I was definitely a weird kid. I bought these again recently, and have to say listening to these songs is such a familiar feeling ....like home, almost.....love the Marvin. It's rare I don't like anything he does. Look at my previous blog, for crying out loud. I credit him for teaching me how to sing.

3. Billy Breathes, Phish. My first Phish purchase, which I recieved in high school. Lee Woodrough had both played this one for me in attempts to dig the band, and then one day Lee left his copy at my apartment, and I popped it in on my own (usually he was forcing me to listen)to clean the house. A few years later, I was taking off any and every chance I could get to see them play....a pattern I set for a few years. Fell in love, and fell hard. I listened to it today, and although other Phish-heads argue with me about how this album may stack up to others, but the package is wonderful. It's an album you can be intimate with, emotionally, and it flows from a poppy funky rythmic intensive first half to a subdued mysterious, almost heavenly second.....ah. Another album that has proved backdrop to my life many times, many relationships, and have bought this cd twice. Steve Lillywhite, you rule. In fact, now the boys are back together, they enlisted the help of Steve Lillywhite to produce the new album.

4. Steve Winwood, Steve Winwood. Why I love British musicians....Steve Winwood. Ahhhhhh. What a talented guy that's completely underrated, except for 80's pop favorites. This tape I bought in 7th Grade (with my own money), at the beginning of my crush which probably is still going on, and this tape still resides in my car. The first time I listened to it I decided to let it play all the way through because I loved the first track so much. Then, for a looong time, I listened to it every day while I wrote (I wrote back then, daily). The tape is beginning to warp now, but my proudest moment came in the Great Escape dollar vinyl section in Nashville, and I found it on record, which has long since been out of print. If I am ever having a shitty day, feel emotionally drained, this does it for me tenfold. Steve's first solo release which recieved little to no press in 1977, found it in a bargain cassette bin in Philly, and fell in more love than before. Wrote on his own for the first time in his career, and Willie Weeks plays the bass. Perfect.

5. Moondance, Van Morrison. I bought this tape and subsequently stole it from my brother in law....I got it for him for Christmas in 1992, and it got to a point where I was listening to this one on a daily basis when I was a freshman in high school, Into the Mystic especially. I still have this one in my car as well....and recently reconnected with this album over the beginning of my yoga training over a year ago, with Caravan, especially. Whenever I get finished with a truly spiritually cleansing workout, this tape is still moving, in that strangely poetic soulful way. It's honest music.
Mama's Gun, Erykah Badu. I got over my first failed relationship with this album. (the track 'Green Eyes' says everything I needed to say) I spent the first winter I lived in NYC alone in my apartment bonding with this one, and continually bond with it. For some reason, it makes me feel stronger.....reminds me of my own strength that I forget I have innately inside of me, and the funkiness and soulfulness of the album as a whole does make this my soundtrack on so many levels. Still one of my favorites, so much so I had to share it with the number 5 spot. I walked into yoga last week and my teacher was blaring it from the lobby and I got choked up telling her about it, and she freaked out telling me a similar story. What power music has, hah?