Author: Josie

Indie poet, essayist and artist, running around the world in varying states of dehyration with both arms around a dog. Any dog will do. Author of "Articulated Soul", poems and collages from around the world.

Skin to Skin — Original Mandolin Song

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The more I learn songs on Robbie, the more connection I feel to him (and the more I practice, get better, etc.). Recently, that has included Blanco White’s “Olalla” (posted below)–which I was beyond pleased to play while my hot German boyfriend played his cards on the vocals–and fun bouncy songs like Phil Collins’ version of “You Can’t Hurry Love”.

This particular song came about by studying the chord progressions I had written down for Eddie Vedder’s “Society”. Bloody good song. I rearranged them, added glides, and found a pleasing (albeit melancholic) atmosphere. Being pleased within my own atmospheric melancholy, there was a poem I had written lying handy that I started singing along with.

And man–the more I learn on Robbie the more I love him, but the more I write with him the more I love both of us.

 

Chord pattern: C Am F G
Intro: C Am F G

Hold hands with me
My feet don’t work today
and my mind is getting
dizzy

Hold hands with me
I’ve been watching your stride
Your somber foot swing
oh, it so mesmerizes me

Hold hands with me.
hold hands with me.
Just for a moment, please,
will you hold hands with me?

My arms are light
My gaze is so easy
It’s my legs that give way
When I will them to obey

The pine needles bend beneath shakey knees
and the stiff bark snaps in my
child-like grasp

It’ll level out
eventually
but that’s so far away
so crystalized in my gaze

Hold hands with me
Hold hands with me
Just for a moment, please
Will you hold hands with me?

Hold hands with me.
My mind slips into the space
Your fingers so long and safe
embrace mine

and gently, so gently
I return to myself
my heart beat finds me
finds me so peacefully

Outro: C Am F G

“Olalla” — Blanco White

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One fine Saturday, Joachim and I found ourselves on the sands of Sand Island, Oahu eating sticky pastries and dancing in left-sweeping currents. We had brought our mandolins as well, to practice Mozart for his Oma and Opa, and tacked on some Blanco White and Eddie Vedder as well.

“Rise” by Eddie Vedder (feat. Joachim)

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Another leap in time, as this cover takes us ten months past Robbie’s start date in my arms. This time featuring the absolutely dashing Joachim on vocals.

“Such is the way of the world
You can never know
Just where to put all your faith
And how will it grow

Gonna rise up
Burning black holes in dark memories
Gonna rise up
Turning mistakes into gold

Such is the passage of time
Too fast to fold
Suddenly swallowed by signs
Low and behold

Gonna rise up
Find my direction magnetically
Gonna rise up
Throw down my ace in the hole”

Brain Chemistry

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Adventure does this crazy thing to my entire neural network.

Contemplating future adventures, past adventures, other peoples’ adventures sends tiny cold rockets down my veins, freezing my heart into this standstill of sudden patience and attention. It has the effect of setting my mind someplace starry, banishing my endlessly rolling thoughts.

Adventure sets me dreaming.

It makes me dwell on useful, important stuff: like how shaking it can be to talk to someone with a different set of guiding principles; like how beautiful and safe a face can look when it suddenly smiles; like how good always exists with the bad, and how pleasure can be found amongst self-torturous suffering.

If directing my mind toward adventure is enough to make me a better person, what about the adventure itself? The long summer days of dust in the eye and chapped lips. The almost physical lumps of blood recirculating upon a night’s rest. The battle to put away the small tin mug of weak coffee and face the day; what other context allows us to be so brave, every single morning?

A good functioning brain is the effect of good functioning brain chemistry. Adventure is the stuff of just that.

 

I am in Control

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Not 70 miles.

Not 35 miles.

Not even 15 miles.

It’s 5 miles. Drink of water. 5 miles. Drink of water. 5 miles.

When the road turns uphill, when it begins to rain, when the gears aren’t sticking; you have to find a way to do something hard without fixating on the fact that it’s hard. This is the desired mindset: putting yourself in a position to succeed the long haul, by making it manageable in the mind.

At the base of this is brain chemistry.

We feel the way that our brain feels, and that comes from a collection of neurotransmitters hooking to various tipping points. Exercise—endorphins. Smile—dopamine trigger. Gratitude—more dopamine. The power of the endurance athlete is being aware of how to emit these neurotransmitters at pivotal points in order to keep going.

Break it down.

Continue reading “I am in Control” →

“Let’s Just Be the Moon”

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The lyrics for this came partly from a poem I wrote in March 2018 called, “To Speak of the Day“.

The words morphed autonomously to the tune of the moment: namely, a way to escape feeling caged. This was catharsis. I found, as soon as I joined the ranks of “songwriters”–simply by having written a song–that I had gone beyond more than just one cage.

Out of the cage of “writing music is not something that you do.” Because it’s something I did and that counts.

Is this not just perfectly analogous to the cycle tour? Who am I to do this–me, who doesn’t know how to fix a bike beyond a flat tire (yet), who doesn’t have much money saved (yet), who doesn’t know any other language besides English (yet).

It is for me, because I will do it.

 

Up in the Clouds

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Release me—

my mind is a maze of serpentine
storylines, bending and swirling
with the Kabul River, cuddling, carving
belting the Hindu Kush;

Hindu Kush to the Tian Shan;
Tengri Tagh or Tengir-Too, anything at all
to breathe in Mountains of Heaven.
Sharp, cascading inhales of the ice gods, the grins
I see in the snow lines, the dusk-shades cast by sunlight—

Yes, I’ve got the kitchen scissors left on the office desk
along with your note.
I’m standing, bareshod and slightly sweating
in the afternoon glare, trimming the ficus
that overgrows the pathway.

I trim delicately;
for with the coppery snips
I fall, more resolute
into each crispy step of the
Karakoram Highway, pedaling down from Kashgar
sweeping the Hunza, cycling with bird-arms
through Jamalabad, blowing a smooch at the violet-misted
Disteghil Sar, the back of my neck twinging from the elevation—

On afternoons such as these,
under the tropical breeze of the trade winds,
it’s only this ficus I’m snipping
that stands between
two wheels and the roof of the world.

 

originally posted to The Hydrogen Jukebox.