LunarMusings

My Sacred Life Sunday: Angie Evans

My Sacred Life Sunday

This weekend has been a lot of fun.  Jon and I attended our friends 4th of July party on their boat in Redondo Beach, and got to watch 3 fireworks shows occuring along the length of the coast!  It was a lovely day, with great food, disco dancing on a boat, and much snuggling for the evening show.  One of the fun things about this party was that it was hosted by my Soul Sister and her girlfriend, and was attended by about 20 of their other lesbian friends.  My Jon was the only guy there!  The joke of the night was that Jon would be awarded the Honorary Lesbian plaque for the evening.  My baby held his own very well among all of us women and I love him for it! 

Then last night we went to The Mint Night Club to attend a CD release part for the amazing Angie Evans.  Here is a bit about her:

Its not often one comes across a young artist with the ability to create a truly unique sound and mix it with heartfelt, empowering, insightful and arousing lyrics that leave you groping for more. Angie Evans combines folk, soul, jazz and funk as if they were meant to be together. Her poetic lyrics and soulful voice speak of love, sex, passion, and consciousness.

Born in the suburbs of Northern California, Angie grew up contemplating the outer realms of society and culture. She started playing guitar at 17 and within a year she had written her first song and began performing for her friends. Angie attended Cal State University Long Beach, where she received a degree in Creative Writing with a minor Womyn's Studies. It was there, after finding the wonders of Womyn's studies, sociology, race, politics, and the literature of ethnic and female writers, that she began to believe in the greater good of the poetic and political word. All while discovering the beauty in conscious hip hop, soul and funk music, she began to find a voice that was the perfect fit in content and vibration.

At 21, Angie self-produced and self-released her first 5-song EP. Since then, she has performed at countless venues ranging from coffee shops to college campuses in Long Beach and in the greater Los Angeles area. In June of 2006 Angie booked a six-city, nine-show, west coast tour and made the journey completely on her own. In addition to this diverse array of venues, Angie has performed at many events benefiting various feminist, LGBT and women-centered causes. Angie has been a featured performer at the San Diego Pride Festival (2006), the Long Beach Pride Festival (2005/2006), Ladyfest San Diego (2005), Ladyfest Las Vegas (2006), and this spring she will be performing at the Southern Womyns Festival in Atlanta.

Angie's music is powerful and so so sexy. I swear, and I say this with no disrespect intended towards my Beloved, or to hers... Because I'm not, nor have I ever, but with her...?  I. Would.  :)  Her music is that passionate, that sensual, that deep down in the depths of your pleasure heart and that rooted in Truth.  And she is just a beautiful soul.  She not only sings, but she serves us the meanest Mexican Hot Chocolate over at our favorite haunt, Viento y Agua.   

We danced until well after midnight in a sea of women loving women and it was such a cool state to be in.  I am so grateful to live in an area where people feel relatively free to be and to love as their hearts lead them.  Its one of the things that I love most about Long Beach, where I live.  And its why I loved our entrance stamp to the bar.  Celebrate.  This weekend for me was a celebration of friendship, freedom, love and music.

If you are in the market for some great new tunes, check her out.  You can purchase her music at the link above, and here is a link to her Myspace.  

How did you Celebrate your weekend?

Sacred Life Sunday: Magical Lovers and Righteous Babes

Sacred Life Sunday

Its been an amazing week.  The support and words I received from all of you in my previous post was so beautiful.  I am grateful to each of you who left comments, sent emails, and created posts of your own in response to mine. 

One of the gifts of wisdom I received this week was from our therapist.  She is quite simply amazing, and Jon and I have been so deeply enriched by having her in our lives.  She is a Spiritual Therapist and is in such alignment with who we are and where we want our lives to go, I sometimes can't believe how blessed we are to have her.  She helped me reframe this duality I have going with being an artist and a business woman.  Both require creation, creative approaches, and are a phenomenal opportunity to integrate my left and right brain. 

I had never looked at it this way, although it seems obvious.  Its all a dance, and I'm the one who gets to paint my approach to it all in whatever brushstrokes and colors I want.  What began to be clear to me however, was my pessimism about my abilities to pull off a successful creative life that supports me and flourishes in the world.

Money has always presented a bit of mental/emotional block for me, and this was the topic of discussion between Jon and I on our dinner date the other night.  It was one of those conversations where I am needing to revisit and have him repeat his wise and loving offerings over and over again, because I am forgetting already.  But in such a loving way, and with such wisdom, he pointed out for me how I speak about money, and my ability to manifest my financial world, from the assumption that I just can't. 

So much was said, but what I took with me from that talk was when he reminded me that I can do whatever I set myself out to do.  If someone else has done it then so can I.  And that I need to get that I have the capacity to find my way to what it is I want to create in my life. This is the assumption I need to operate from in the world.  I am paraphrasing a bit here, because again, it was challenging to hear.  But there is something magical in having a lover hold your gaze and tell you that you can.  And I found myself drinking it in like Moon Nectar for the Soul.  He was affirming in many ways that evening.  I later received the nicest compliment I have ever gotten.  Ever.  (Thank you deeply my love.)

I am finding that I am healed by my willingness to open.  Open to him, open to myself, and open to the gifts that are continually wanting to come my way and be received by me.  I know that when I am in resistance, as I am to approaching my store and income as a business, that I block the universe from gifting me with more.  I block myself from playing Big.  And more then all that, I miss an opportunity to really be creative in broader ways in my life.

After all this goodness, I went on a date with two of my Soul Sisters.  We saw Ani Difranco in concert at the House of Blues in Anaheim, California. I had never seen her live before even though I have been a fan for over a decade. Here's a little blurb on Ani:

"Ani DiFranco is a singer, guitarist, and songwriter. She started her own record label at the age of eighteen, called Righteous Babe Records. She is known as a prolific artist (having already released seventeen albums) and is seen by many as a women's rights and feminist icon. She received the "Woman of Courage Award" at the National Organization for Women (NOW) Conference and Young Feminist Summit in Albany, NY."

I don't know how to even write about this.  This woman rocks.  Her path as a Feminist performer in this world... paving her own way, putting out her own music, her political message, her refusal to sell out... the way she kills it with that guitar on stage!  Oh my god!  My soul was so shaken.  So excited, and thrilled.  The Righteous Babe in me felt ready to burst out of my body and take flight. You know that swell of tears you get when you watch something so true, so sourced from the deepest wells, so profoundly, artistically, revolutionarily beautiful, that you are no longer watching with your physical eyes or listening with your mere mortal ears, but instead receiving from your own deepest well of soul essence?  I had that.  Over and over again.  She sang to me.  Woke me up. 

Her stories about birthing her daughter at home, how that reinvented her Feminism, her lyrics, her energy and voice, the unapologetic taking up of her space in the world, her devotion to art, and paving her own way and giving the same opportunity to other artists, her courageousness in writing and reciting this poem:

floor me, and inspire me to be my own brand of courageous, revolutionary, spiritual feminist, with a voice that is compelled to speak out Truth, and the audacity to know that I can do anything I set out to do. 

Here is another video.  This one is part interview and part music video.  I love this song!

And of course this song.  Because we are all at minimum 32 flavors, and there is room for all of us at the top.

I set out at the beginning of this year to Play Big In LIfe, and since then, a huge mirror has been held up to my face by the universe showing me all the way in which I don't.  Its humbling, daunting at times, and depressing at others.  And yet, it has also been an amazing opportunity for magical encounters like the ones I have had this week that are there to show me the Big Me thats available.

Its been a good week.

Flow Temple in Los Angeles

Last night, after my grump fest, Jon and I went to a Flow Temple Party.  Dan, the organizer is a friend of Jon's from Thailand.  It was such an amazing experience.  Essentially, anyone who is an artist is invited to come and participate in the creative Flow.  Dancers, musicians, painters, sculptors, fire spinners, acrobats, photographers...  The purpose is to come together and allow the energy to move us all in creating.  It was fabulous, and last night was especially wonderful because some of the best Poi Spinners in the world came by.  The video you see below is of a fire dancer named Yuta, who hails from Japan, and has quite a following.  I am trying to find videos of last night on Youtube to share with others, and this one is the best so far.  You can actually see me in the background in the first half of this video! The last half of the video is at the end of the evening with the musicians left their instruments, and just let loose vocally.  So much fun!

I must say that this evening was the perfect remedy for how cranky I was feeling early in that day.  It was such an inspiration and energy rush to be in a room full of creative people celebrating each others art.  Most were performance artists, but there is room for all, as there are tables set up around the parameter of the space so artists can paint, sculpt, draw, etc while the music and the dancing is being performed.  I also got a chance to see Jon spin fire for the first time and it was quite frankly the sexiest thing I have ever seen.  No words...   :) I will be posting some of the photos I took last night on my Flickr stream in the upcoming days.  Stay tuned!

Update: Here is another fabulous video!

Be Inspired...

The imagery and cinematography along with the amazing music just sent my spirit soaring.  The ending had me in tears and feeling like I wanted to leap in that way that you know you can in the core of your innocent child self.  Have a magical and freeing day.

Travel Playlist

A while ago my very cool Client/Friend, Fey asked me to post my playlist of music that is circulating through my Ipod while on this trip.  So I have several, and have begun to create others using my "On The Go" setting.  What is listed below are Artists and the songs that are speaking to me right now.  Some are for journaling, some for meditating/dancing/praying, some for watching the country side fly by while on trains and buses, and others for just laying around in bed trying to cool off. 

So here goes, in no particular order!

Cree Summer
    Deliciously Down
    Soul Sister

Dar Williams
    As Cool As I Am
    Iowa 
    Closer to Me

Patti Griffin
    Big Love
    Blue Sky
    Carry Me

Dave Matthews Band
    Don't Drink the Water
    Crash Into Me
    Dream Girl
    Typical Situation
    One Sweet World

Ani Difranco
    Joyful Girl
    Served Faithfully
    Imperfectly
    32 Flavors

Iron and Wine
    The Trapeze Swinger
    He Lays in the Reigns
    Each Coming Night

Jai Uttal
    Durga Pahiman

Krishna Das
    Devi Puja

Bhagavan Das
    Jai Kali Ma
        And anything else by him that I have!

Beatles
    Here Comes The Sun
    There Are Places I Remember

Butterfly Boucher
    Another White Dash

Dixie Chicks
    Wide Open Spaces

The Frida Movie Soundtrack

Lila Downs' Una Sangre CD

Lyle Lovett
    Private Conversation
    If I had a Boat

Nelly Furtado
    One Trick Pony
    Island of Wonder
    Fresh Off The Boat

Peter Gabriel
    Solsbury Hill
    Red Rain
    Games Without Frontiers
    In Your Eyes

Rusted Root
    Send Me On My Way

Sarah McLachlan
    Sweet Surrender
    Black and White

Susheela Raman
    All three CDs that I have
        Love Trap
        Music for Crocodiles
        Salt Rain

Toni Childs
    Walk And Talk Like The Angels
    Dreamer

Tori Amos
    Caught a Lite Sneeze
    Hey Jupiter
    Raspberry Swirl
    A Sorta Fairytale
    Taxi Ride ;) (just a little shout out to my bloggie friend here!)
    1000 Oceans
    Cooling

The Weepies
    The World Spins Madly On

Whoo!  Thats alot!  I have left out quite a bit I'm sure, but that should give an idea of what has ben running through my lovely Ipod for the last month.  I am also catching up on my hundreds of podcasts, but thats a post for a whole other day!

Will post more updates on the trip soon!

e