New album

Just got the new album from one of my favorite groups, Carbon Leaf (www.carbonleaf.com).
This album is good - though I'm still crushing on their first two. Still, I love the lyrics and the sounds that this band offers. It's the kind of music that I can crank on high while the top of my car is open (yeah, even when it is cold and rainy outside - the music is that good.) My favorite on this album -- "Under the Wire". A great mix of well written words and unbeatable music:

"I need to feel the breeze
Of new day's dawn
I need to be released
From the cold steel rail I'm on
Shake the love for a woman
Brake the emotioin overdrive
Take the train to oblivion
At the crossing of our lives"

I was also introduced this week to Jeff Buckley, another great musician. Mournful and full of angst, this is a great album to put on when I'm really mellow. I think he was only 27 when he died and his music has a lot of intensity to it.

I've been a bad blogger of late but I don't care. I've written volumes in my journal most of it is unrecognizable to anyone except myself. A writing friend of mine told me to write lists and it has worked great for me. So I have pages of lists, scraps of ideas for stories, ideas for work. Whatever "process" works for others - i don't know - but I work best in short, crystal phrases that help me stay on track with projects.

I started thinking today about the past year and the things I thought I might take with me into the new year. Here's a partial list - maybe I'll think more as I transition from 07 - 08:

1 - The creative life is worth working for - no matter what. Even the most difficult day is better than a day in corporate. One can always escape into color, texture, words or music.

2 - On that note, find time to marinate in other's creative jucies. A few weeks ago on a particularly bleary Sunday afternoon, I took a drive to the Frank Lloyd Wright museum in Bartlesville and spent the day with angles, lines and rhythm and emerged refreshed and comforted. I am becoming a firm believer in just how important art is to all of us and how it is important to make time for it. Nothing speaks to me like color and rhythm and texture - nothing lets me know that there is indeed a great Artistic Mind out there just waiting for us to connect with it.

3 - Nothing is better in the morning than a great cup of coffee.

4 - Find the now. I've stopped making goals and started closing my eyes during good - -and difficult - moments. I've started trying to find the way to stop a moment - at least in my mind - so that I can remember the texture, the sounds, the feel of the moment. Experience it, feel whatever emotion is there and then let it go. If this is what some people call "letting go" or "forgiveness" then great, whatever. All I know is that when I do that, life's curves seem more bearable. And it makes for great memories because I can remember the curve of my daughter's smile, the color of my son's eyes, the hue of the sun through my morning window.

5 - Great shoes - especially red shoes - can make any day better.

OK, there are 5 great lessons from 07. I'll find some more and post later.