A Night with the Weepies

Magical Music.
You may have noticed that the name of this blog was borrowed from The Weepies song, "World Spins Madly On." Needless to say, I'm a fan of this couple from Southern California, and was given the wonderful opportunity to hear them live yesterday evening by my buddy Rachel. Thank you Rachel :)

Last night, while basking in this amazing music, I felt all of the worries of the day melt from view. It's as if enjoying the performance of music is a solvent. It dissolves any of those silly things that muddled the joy of life before, and allows more significant truths to come into focus and lift my spirits.

Music is magic to me. It's not necessarily the lyrics that shed so much light, but something about the music itself being created around me that allows a shift. And, it can be any music. It can be reggae, classical, folk... the list goes on. It's the collaboration, the necessary intuition, the self-expression that happens when people get together and make music that creates the "magic." I don't want to explain it, I just want to appreciate it.

I remember a counselor at Christian summer camp once emphasizing that We The Campers should not allow ourselves to be fooled by what we felt during the worship music. It was as if he was revealing to us the terrible secret that the emotional swell and sway of music is in itself deceptive. Our thoughts can only be trusted sans music.

To this I say no. I have only known music to be a water that washes the sand out of my eyes and allows me to feel what I felt last night: gratitude, love and a new source of contentedness.


A Change.
In listening to the lyrics of the Weepies last night, I also realized that my blog name may need to change. I named this "world spins madly on" because when it was created I had up and left New York and moved across the country to pursue a new education. Life felt mad and it felt like it was going to continue to spiral chaotically along, despite my desire for it to just slow down.

However, I now feel a new connection to their song "Slow Pony Home." It speaks of holding "so many people in my suitcase heart." Here I am, living in California with people that I love, meeting new great people, and loving people in New York, in Pennsylvania and elsewhere. As my journey continues, more beloveds are piled into my "suitcase heart." So, since this blog is about "the view from where I'm standing", I feel it's only appropriate to update the title to match my current state.

A simple change, that I can only foresee becoming more and more true.