wow. It’s been over 6 months since I started this post and I think it took me that long because I just wasn’t quite sure what to write. It feels hard to explain the awesome feeling that comes from other people being inspired enough by your art to expand on it, make it bigger, more than you ever could on your own. It is both incredibly humbling and incredibly expansive and powerful.
I guess I’ll just post and let it speak mostly for itself.
Huge thanks to:
Hilary Jordan for supporting local dancers and musicians and asking me to include a song in her show.
Megan Robinson for choosing “My Bright Star” and creating a beautiful visual representation of it.
David J Murphy for recording and producing the song, and tastefully adding some magic touches.
Glen Chumley for filming!
Description from the video page:
Song composed and performed by Heather Miller-Rodriguez, produced by David J Murphy in Fairfield, Iowa. Dance choreographed and performed by Megan D Robinson. This dance is dedicated to a friend who passed away recently in Fairfield, Iowa: Dan Burke. Part 2 of A Fairfield Local Music Dance Gala at the Sondheim Center for the Performing Arts in Fairfield, Iowa, produced by Hilary Jordan and the Fairfield Dance Company on March 3 and 4, 2011. Filmed by Glen Chumley
One of my favorite parts of my Rubicon Year is the group sessions. Every week I get together with 3 other women and we each have a song where we are the lead singer and band leader, and we back each other up. It’s a great way to learn new instruments, hear your song in a different way, practice working with others and gain a deeper understanding of music.
Dan is there to facilitate, support, help us out of the true stuck spots and reflect back when it’s working. The more we get to know each other and ourselves though, the more we realize that yes, if someone came up to us and said we could have $5000 for performing a song the next day as a band, and Dan was out of the country, we could totally figure out how to do it on our own and rock some faces off, even if we had to stumble our way slowly through to get there. :-)
Music is a social experience. It’s meant to be shared. I think maybe as adults, if we don’t already have a fluency of musical expression that we see in others, we revert to spoken words for their efficiency and precise refinement of meaning. The risk of hitting a wrong note feels too embarrassing, maybe similar to not being able to conjugate a verb in Spanish. But when you’re in South America all alone and no one around speaks English, you just do it. The more you speak, listen and immerse yourself in the language, the more you learn it. And you also find out that yes, for the most part you can get around just fine with your broken phrases. The communication happens in the eyes, the heart, the hands, as much as, if not more than in the words.
Having a safe space to practice and a kind and compassionate leader who can help you out of the jams, and push you to keep stretching into higher levels of mastery really accelerates the process, whether it’s Spanish, Improv Theater, or Music.
Feeling much gratitude today for my teachers past & present, and the other brave souls who have joined me in those classes where we pushed and supported each other to do things we didn’t know we could.
New Loves
Do you want to know one of my very favorite things? Going to hear music I love and discovering new music to love in the same show!
I hear moms say about their children that their heart just expands and expands to hold each new baby that comes along, I think it works that way for me with music. So yeah, thanks Sarah Sample for introducing me to Edie Carey and Andy Gullahorn at Momo’s tonight, wow wow wow!
Playing my song “Jonah’s Whale” with the Band That Has Not Yet Been Named. :) So fun!
We spent 12 weeks getting together on at Rubicon Artist Development on Monday nights to work on 4 songs (one for each of us) in the group. This was at our final showcase performance.
Coming Back to Earth after a trip to Planet Bluegrass
I’m back from Rocky Mountain Song School and Folks Fest. My 4th year. Learned so much, both in the classes and out, about music and myself. A lot to process, digest and integrate over the next days and weeks. Months probably, but the first few days of “re-entry” are the hardest.
So for now I’ll just say that among many things, one thing I was very grateful this year was the chance to sneak away on Thursday to Estes Park with my hubby for a little morning drive through the mountains.
. Wowzer.
Hooping at Hot Mama’s
Last week Amy Z. took me to an open mic at an adorable little cafe called Hot Mama’s. When I got home I went to look them up on Facebook and discovered that besides their open mic on Sundays evenings, they have a hooping session on Sunday afternoons.
I’d seen a gal do some pretty awesome hoop dancing at a Susan Gibson show and just thought it looked so graceful and fun. Here was a place that I could learn how to do it for free! They even had hoops people could borrow. My roommate Jana was out on tour and let me borrow her car, so I wouldn’t even have to take the bus to get there. I was really excited.
Somehow when Sunday came around though, I found myself dragging my feet to go out there. I was feeling nervous and shy. What if I sucked? What if people were snobby about it? Suddenly I was five years old again and worried the kids wouldn’t let me play with them!! I pulled up to the cafe and parked the car just as the song “Strange Way to Grieve” came on the mix CD I had playing.
It’s a very awesome song, and there is one-two punch of a line in particular that went straight through me, “Heaven help me, when I think I’m not enough. Heaven help me, when I think I am.” The perfect balance of courage and humbleness right? Wowzer. Have a listen:
Porterdavis singing “Strange Way to Grieve”.
So I sat in the car for a few more minutes to collect myself and headed into the cafe. Right there at the first table was Kat Tree, who I’d met out at the open mics. She welcomed me to sit with her and her friend Trudi and we all chatted as I had a tasty lunch of hummus & cucumber salad. As I boxed up the other half of the huge yumminess for later, I asked the ladies if they were cooled down enough to go back outside and show me how to hoop.
Hoops! I started off with that big one.
They showed me the stack of loaner hoops and introduced me to Michelle, who leads the meetups and teaches people around Austin, and provides awesome music to set the mood. Michelle gave me some pointers, watched me and told me what I was doing right and encouraged me to practice with my eyes closed so I could feel where the hoop was hitting me and push forward or back at those points.
I did kinda suck, but it was so much fun! And I got better and better, to the point I was able to keep it going for a couple minutes at a time. Some of the other hoopers gave me pointers and suggestions that helped too, and I had so many experiences of feeling that I got it. Which is of course when I lost it. But I picked up the hoop and went for it again. People congratulated me when I kept it going for a good bit, and told me to come back.
As I was leaving, one of the little girls who was maybe 10 years old, and REALLY good, like, 3 hoops at a time around her neck good, told me that I had done a good job today. I told her she was awesome and asked her how long she’d been hooping, and she said “A looooong time.” I told her that today had been my first time ever and her estimation of me went up visibly in her eyes. Her dad (or friend’s dad, couldn’t quite tell who belonged to who) said, “Ask them how well I did on MY first day!” and they all giggled. ”See?” he said.
So yeah. I felt pretty awesome. ”The kids” let me play with them. I got in a super fun workout. I stepped out of my comfort zone, learned something new, did something I really wanted to do, looked foolish and survived it, made some new tiny connections, planted some tiny little seeds. I think I might be hooked.
Heaven help me, when I think I’m not enough. Heaven help me, when I think I am.
I saw Ryan perform with Sarah Sample at Rocky Mountain Folks Fest, and got to hear a few of his songs in the nightly song circles. Amazing stuff, check him out!
A new song.
Don’t Forget To Take It With You When You Go
Mary opens up the windows
and waits for air to pass between her lips
It’s not the way she looks this morning
or the way the sunlight wraps around her hips
I’ve been loving Mary in the combers of my soul
“Your coat is in the front hall …
Don’t forget to take it with you when you go.”
Outside on 7th east
The air smells of piss and turpentine
and though i will always remember your face
i doubt that you’ll remember mine
your name is like an anchor
that has settled in my bones
i see you in the storefront
in the windows
i see you everywhere i go
Stars burn bright in the light of day
and all these sins begin to separate
the light from the darkness
the marrow from my bones
the truth is i miss you
and i wish i could just come home
