serai: (Aphrodite)
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Take a listen to this. Oud player Ahmed Alshaiba gives a Middle Eastern spin to a beloved soundtrack classic:





The Gael from The Last of the Mohicans



It's so fascinating to hear the effect when taking music of one cultural type and transforming it into music of another. This reminds me of what Loreena McKennitt did to God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen. Just lovely.

Enjoy!

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(no subject)

Tuesday, February 6th, 2018 02:25 pm
serai: (Aphrodite)
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dianapeaceful has uploaded another beautiful video:



讚佛偈 (Praising the Buddha)



This is one of my favorite YT channels. Lots of wonderful calm, meditative music, with lovely images to match. I use the music on this channel to calm and center myself, especially when I'm in the kitchen. It helps me infuse loving energy into whatever I'm making.

Enjoy! )O(

Hidden music

Wednesday, January 3rd, 2018 06:09 pm
serai: A kiss between Casey Connor and Zeke Tyler (Default)
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Did you know there was a theme song for the film War Games that was never used?




War Games - Crosby, Stills, and Nash



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(no subject)

Monday, September 4th, 2017 12:09 pm
serai: (SaintFrodo)
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Good Goddess, music is so powerful. I'm listening to an ambient music track on YT, and it segued from an orchestral tune to Elrond's Prophecy. And just like that, I was sobbing. I mean, within ten seconds of hearing the first note.

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YAAAASSSS QUEEN!!!

Wednesday, June 8th, 2016 03:23 pm
serai: A kiss between Casey Connor and Zeke Tyler (Applause)
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I Am Woman - Helen Reddy


ONWARD AND UPWARD!!!



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serai: A kiss between Casey Connor and Zeke Tyler (Boss)
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An early edition. Just because.




Rosalita - Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band



Always did love this song. Such lively enthusiasm, such joy. When that long whooooooaaa! happens at the climax, it's so easy to see the scruffy handsome youth running and dropping into a sliding fall on his knees, riffing on his axe all the way, to stop at his lovely lady's feet and shout her name in that adoring chorus.** Along with everything else, Bruce is just so goddamn, achingly, adorably romantic. His love songs are so fucking passionate. How many performers are there anymore who do this sort of thing without a lick of irony or self-awareness? Just all-out, punch-drunk, tell-the-fucking-world LOVE.

Our American Sonic Shakespeare. How lucky we are to have had him, to still have him, setting our lives down in riff and chord, meter and rhyme, thunder and flame. Hail to you, prophet of the street. If you're not the Boss, you're definitely the Bard.


** Bruce has always had a delicious talent for conveying concrete images using the sound of the instruments being played. Every now and then, you can see a picture very clearly in the music. He's great at that kind of punctuation. Artists who can play your brain the way they play a guitar are rare.
serai: A kiss between Casey Connor and Zeke Tyler (GothMe)
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Here's a playlist I'm having a lot of fun grooving on. Almost 200 songs, all from my teenage years:




Greatest Hits of the 70's - Youtube playlist



Holy shit, this takes me back. High school. My first girlfriends, Tina and Pam. (Well, only girlfriends. I never had any other women lovers after them.) My first concert - Queen, Night at the Opera tour, the Los Angeles Forum. Pam and I dressed in matching black satin. Damn, was she beautiful. Tall, broad-shouldered, these unreadable eyes. (I'm always terrible at describing skin tone, but I'd say hers was hazelnut...yeah.) And my first boyfriend, Ted. He was beautiful too. Imagine a male Elisabeth Shue but with fuller lips. A real English rose. We used to park his mail jeep in front of my parents' house and go at it before I went back in. (Yes, a mail jeep. We were both pretzels. Ah, youth.) Laserium at the Griffith Park Observatory. Smoking out by the Hollywood sign, back when you could still climb up there. Goddamn.

* ssssst *

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serai: A kiss between Casey Connor and Zeke Tyler (CaseyZeke)
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I thought I'd post the song yesterday's tinyfic came from. :)




The Book of Love - Peter Gabriel



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serai: A kiss between Casey Connor and Zeke Tyler (CZLove)
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Yay rain!

It's raining here, which I'm greatly enjoying. And it's not especially cold, which makes the rain comfortable to go out in. I spent the afternoon over in Glendale, depositing some money in my credit union account and then walking over to the Galleria to buy a couple of things and get myself a nice lunch. Chicken vegetable wontons and a sashimi salad. So long - maybe six months - since I could just buy some nice food to eat that I didn't have to cook myself! (Those of you who can just do that have no idea what a luxury it is, seriously.)

But now my back hurts from all the walking, so I'm going to turn in early. I'll be watching a movie or two on my little portable DVD player in bed, and contemplating an idea for a nice little story I'm hoping to write in the next day or two.

Here is a lovely music vid for you all:




Sapta Jina Bhasitam Papa Vinas ana Dharani - Imee Ooi



Whenever I listen to this song/mantra, I find myself so deeply touched that tears almost always spring to my eyes. The sweetness of the instruments and the pure, gentle longing in the singer's beautiful voice overcome any boundaries of language. I hope you all enjoy this lovely piece.


ETA: This is the mantra she is singing:

lipalipate kuhakuhate taralite niharate wimalite swaha

If I find a translation for it, I will post it. :)

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serai: (Aphrodite)
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This is so lovely...




Water Blessing Song Grand Invocation - Nalini Blossom

We pray for healing
Blessings of the water
We pray for healing
Blessings of the sea
We pray for healing
Blessings of the river
That they may flow in crystal purity

Uchu no mugen no chikara ga kore kotte
Makoto no daiwa no miyo ga nari natta



This beautiful song is based on Dr. Masaru Emoto's mantra for healing the waters of the earth. The translation of the mantra is:

The Eternal Power of the Universe has gathered Itself to create the World with true and grand harmony.

I find this mantra so peaceful and calming and loving. I use it as a walking mantra when I am out and about. Since I have no car, I have to walk a lot, and having a mantra really helps me center and be mindful as I walk, remembering to be in the moment and enjoy what I'm doing instead of thinking only of where I'm going to.

My other walking mantra is Gate Gate, a Buddhist chant that blesses those who travel.





The chant goes like this:

Gate gate parangate parasangate bodhisva

Translation:

Gone, Gone,
Gone beyond,
Gone beyond the beyond,
Blessings on the journeyer and on the journey.


I love intentional music, that which is used in religious rituals, meditation, and other spiritual arts. I play long mixes of pagan and Buddhist music when I'm cooking and especially when I'm baking. It's very centering to hear such music when you're working with your hands to make something to nurture others. I sing the songs as I'm working, and intentionally channel the feelings of peace, love, and one-pointedness into the food I make.

Enjoy!

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serai: A kiss between Casey Connor and Zeke Tyler (CZLove)
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It's DONE!



Tara the DW fangirl came by in her enormous blue truck and whisked my darling harp away to a life in sunny, warm Santa Fe, NM... )
serai: A kiss between Casey Connor and Zeke Tyler (CZLove)
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*sigh*

Back in the 80's, when I was working the Renaissance Faire here in SoCal, I had money. Not HUGE amounts, but enough to run around and buy lovely things at the Faire. One of the things I bought was my beautiful Celtic harp, made by Tripplet Harps of San Luis Obispo. I had such dreams of learning to play it! But alas, it turned out that I have no talent at all for melody instruments. (Percussion's another matter - I was playing a djimbe - African chalice drum - five minutes after picking it up, albeit at a very elementary level.)

So my lovely harp has moved with me from place to place, basically fulfilling the role of a gorgeous piece of furniture. It's made me sad to look at it all these years and almost hear it weeping for not being played. Thus, when things got so financially awful for me over the last year, I decided to sell it. I've had it on Craigslist for about six months now, and guess what?

I got TWO CALLS IN ONE DAY. I'm sticking around at home all day today because one or the other of these ladies is going to be coming to my house and whisking my beautiful girl away to a life of happy fulfillment of its stringed destiny!

Here's a picture of my darling:



Isn't she beautiful? My heart hurts to have to give her away, but it's just not right for me to keep her anymore, especially when there are people who really, really want her. The lady who's most likely to show up is over near LAX at a Doctor Who convention, and when I heard she was a fancritter (even though I've never watched an episode of DW in my life), I knew she's the one I want to take the harp away. (Though it'd be fine if the other lady took her, too.)

In exchange for her freedom, I will get FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS.

Yeah.

I'm so jazzed about this. I'd kinda given up on the harp selling, but was determined to just keep posting the ad until that special person saw it. YAY!

So please cross your fingers or say a prayer or light a candle or place an order with your cat (they are avatars of the Goddess, you know) that this will work out for me. I SO MUCH need this right now - it could be the seed of my getting up and out of my asshole situation. (My BiL will be backing me up during the sale as a precaution, and I've promised him an eighth of weed as payment, heehee.) First planned purchase: a nice cheap digital camera so I can place MORE stuff online for sale. I have so much crap, and a lot of it really is nice and of good quality.

ETA: Tara (the DW lady) has called and is one her way from LAX now. *does Kermit flail*

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*sigh*

Saturday, February 13th, 2016 06:06 pm
serai: A kiss between Casey Connor and Zeke Tyler (CaseyZeke)
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Okay, back now. Sorry about the freakout, but you guys are really the only people in my life I can cry to. Pathetic, I know. Thanks to those of you who were so kind about it. HUGS BACK

Since then:

1) HOLY SHIT, SCALIA'S DEAD.

2) I got weed poisoning on Thursday night. I was sitting at my computer, watching a movie and toking the way I usually do, which is taking a hit or two maybe every twenty minutes or so until I'm at just the right level. Usually when I smoke too much, I just end up falling asleep in my chair and then waking up and going off to bed, but this time... hoo, boy. After just a few tokes, I got hit with a MASSIVE wave of dizziness and nausea. Nearly fell out of the chair and ended up crawling to the bathroom, where I threw up a few times and then slept curled up next to the toilet, because I couldn't get up from the dizziness. I'm still feeling a bit of it - the dizziness, that is - but it's passing. I've only been able to eat some slices of whole wheat bread and drink seltzer, but I had a fruit smoothie today and I'm almost back to normal now. Gods, that was awful. The only other time that happened to me was a couple of years ago when I took a Vicodin for my shoulder and forgot to eat first. NIGHTMARE TIME.

3) I can't write that story I mentioned. It's just much too close to my emotions at the moment and far too painful for me to actually enter it now. I'm still taking notes, and want to wait until I get some distance before I try to write it, mostly because of the pain but also because I'm not completely certain it's actually a good story - it may just be a scream I need to scream. It's hard to tell for me, because so many of my stories come out of my own life and emotions, are ways to express things I'm feeling or grappling with in real life. But no, this one has to wait awhile. It's okay, though, because like I said earlier, it's a one-off, not part of High Contrast, so letting it go for a time won't affect anything else I'm writing.

4) HOLY SHIT, SCALIA'S DEAD.

5) Looking forward to John Oliver coming back tomorrow night. Anyone seen Samantha Bee's new show? She is SO awesome, and she's having a fucking great time with this. And MAN, is she vicious - it's utterly glorious. I think I may be crushing on her now that she's doing her own thing and not that Fox News Bunny character that she did on TDS, which was a wonderful caricature, but I didn't like her much. She's so much better as herself. <3 <3 <3

6) Drum Tao was on Stephen's show the other night. I have such intense desire to see these guys live. They'll be here in March, but I haven't got the money or anyone to go with. *sigh* Maybe someday...



Fullscreen that puppy and TURN IT UP TO ELEVEN.


7) I'm tired of writing angst. Somebody give me a prompt I can mess around with to take the taste of tears out of my mouth.

8) HOLY SHIT, SCALIA'S DEAD.


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serai: A kiss between Casey Connor and Zeke Tyler (PrisonerOfFun)
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Gacked from [livejournal.com profile] shirebound. Seems [livejournal.com profile] baranduin is asking for music videos. Here's a fun one from way back:




Safety Dance - Men Without Hats



Hee hee!
serai: A kiss between Casey Connor and Zeke Tyler (CaseyZeke)
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Thinking about lovely Elijah, and wanting to post some music for his birthday, when I read about Paul Kantner's passing. Goddammit, 2016. Are we going to go through this every week?




Miracles - Jefferson Starship

Oh, you ripple like a river when I touch you
When I pluck your body like a string
And when I start dancing inside you
You make me want to sing...



Man, oh man. There's nothing like the music they were playing when you were fifteen, is there? This came out during my high school sophomore year, and it was the sex/love anthem of my youth. No other song expressed the feel of sex as well as this one for me. That long, slow crescendo towards orgasm, that saxophone that sounded as if it were rolling in the sheets, those moaning backing vocals, those frank lyrics, that intense breathlessness... it's fucking gorgeous, unbeatable.

And you know, just perfect for celebrating lovely youth and hot fantasies. So turn off the lights, light a candle, have a little of your favorite attitude adjuster, and settle back for a long, slow climb into the stars with your beautiful dream of choice.

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serai: A kiss between Casey Connor and Zeke Tyler (ThinWhite)
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So I've been grooving on Bowie's music all day, giving thanks to the Goddess for his existence, and to him for the great gift of art he gave us all. And I realized that my favorite of his albums is not any of the ones you might think, but rather his best-selling one: Let's Dance.

I think it's genius. Who else could have rescued disco from the ash heap of music history and made dancing bright and fun and hot and COOL again? Nobody I can think of. And yet he pulled it off (with help from his friend Niles Roger, of course). I love these tracks. They swing. An old-fashioned term, but the only one that fits. They take you by the hips and make you want to MOVE.

And I fucking love that.




Modern Love




China Girl




Let's Dance



(Note the album cover image, which you see in that last viedo - another example of Bowie's cutting humor, as "let's dance" is a fighting term as well as an invitation to dance.)


So yeah, along with Starman (my favorite Bowie song) and Rebel Rebel, his "disco-era" stuff - Fame, Young Americans, Golden Years - and the Let's Dance album are really my favorites. I much prefer music that makes me want to move rather music that makes me angry or sad. The Berlin period may have been more innovative, but it's just not stuff I want to listen to. THIS is what I listen to - the Bowie that moved, that danced, that laughed. The Bowie that knew life is worth living.

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(no subject)

Monday, January 11th, 2016 01:35 pm
serai: A kiss between Casey Connor and Zeke Tyler (ThinWhite)
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Here's a wonderful tribute to Bowie from Nile Rogers, the head of the disco group Chic and the guy Bowie chose to partner with for his biggest selling album, Let's Dance.

David Bowie Changed My Life

He talks about how his career was basically over when he ran into Bowie, who took to him as a friend and collaborator instantly. It's really a sweet, touching story, proving yet again that Bowie had a talent for seeing, for connecting, and for seizing the moment to make something amazing.

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serai: A kiss between Casey Connor and Zeke Tyler (ThinWhite)
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Jesus. I really don't know how to feel about this. He was so enormous, unique. It's not sadness I'm feeling - it's emptiness. He's not leaving sorrow, he's leaving a hole. A hole in the center of things, at the edge of things, in the eye of things. In the way we see things. No, in the way things are seen. He created a way to see things that no one else had before, and now that lens is capped, and things will not be seen that way again. Other ways, yes, but not the way he saw them. It was never the makeup, or the swagger, or the knife-edge balancing act of his persona, or the songs even - it was the way he saw things. That's what made it possible for him to rope together all the arts and disciplines he did, and make a life that was in itself a work of art.





It was that life in total that was the thing, not any one component. He wedded life and art and found the way to make them dance together. I am a DJ, I am what I play, he sang, and he was right. For the world, he was what he played, what he played at, what he played with. He played with the world, turned it into a weird, fantastical jungle gym that he climbed on, up, around, endlessly rearranging the bars to move the dance along.





He was sharp, too. His humor was pointed, observant, nasty, and he used his art and his stature and his stance as a slightly alien being to drive that humor home. To drive that knife in. Listen to me, don't listen to me. Talk to me, don't talk to me. Dance with me, don't dance with me. No... Beep beep! He reveled in artifice - in some ways he was the ultimate Artificial Being - but he played with that fantasy, made it reality, then made it a fantasy again, taking it with deadly seriousness while he was laughing hysterically. That constant uncertainty, that duality, made him the human embodiment of Schroedinger's Cat, in a way - he was never one thing or the other, but both and neither simultaneously.





He played with history, too. Even his own stories were fair game. The shrieking of nothing is killing me... Time and again I tell myself, I'll stay clean tonight... I've never done good things, I've never done bad things... The hero Major Tom falls to earth hard, his fame driving deep into darkness, depression, addiction. He falls into a field of stars he cannot escape, up into a space that traps him, slowly killing him. Want an ax to break the ice, wanna come down right now. The beauty of the world can lift us into heaven, but it can also rot and kill us. There is no certainty, only change, fluidity, the cycle. Change or be left in the darkness.





Fake or real? Is there a difference? Does it even matter? All of life is a fake, a construction, something made up between creatures who think they know what the world is. But we don't know, not really. All we have is our stories to keep us afloat, to give the time meaning, to keep time in existence at all. Every pair of eyes is different, every gaze changes the world, nothing is the same ever, anywhere. Strange fascinations fascinate me... Time may change me, but I can't trace time. Fluid, moving, changing. We think we're on solid ground, we think we know the world, but ultimately we know nothing. His art celebrated Socrates in its way, acknowledging that the best wisdom is to acknowledge the absence of certainty, to keep questioning, keep searching, keep moving. To move is to live... until one stops moving. And even then, we keep moving, onward, into something we cannot see or understand.





But it doesn't matter, does it? Because we're here, right now. The water flows around us, we swim, we dance, we change. Life is a dance, a song, a painting, a living sculpture. An alien thing, fallen to earth from the stars, breaking open and covering the planet with a net of seeming infinity, always changing, climbing, dancing, joining, separating, rising, waking, looking up, rising up, falling, falling, dying and rising again. Moving towards the light, falling towards the darkness. Life, grand, bright, ridiculous, spinning, exploding, artful, chaotic, heroic, seemingly endless... until it ends. We can be heroes, just for one day.

Just for one day. That's the message. Just for one day.

RIP, strange and beautiful prince. I'll keep my radio tuned to the stars. Now you'll be the one calling us from beyond...





The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don't go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don't go back to sleep.
People are passing back and forth
through the doorway where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.

Don't go back to sleep.

-- Rumi


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serai: A kiss between Casey Connor and Zeke Tyler (ColorLight)
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The Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame announced its inductees, and of course there's been copious bitching about it. But it's driven me to go looking for some of the music referenced, and the fact that Chicago got inducted just makes me warm inside...




Saturday in the Park - Chicago

...Will you help me change the world?
Can you dig it? Yes, I can!...



This song is so much a part of my teenage years. It carries the scent, the feel of those years, the 70's in Los Angeles. Those horns, the very sound of summer. Gods, I miss horns like that in rock music. And that piano riff! Warms my heart and makes me smile every time.

Listen children, all is not lost,
All is not lost, no, no, no...


*sigh*

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