Category: Music
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Courage is…: Joannie Rochette & Petra Majdič
The greatest achievement of this 2010 Winter Olympic games wasn’t Canada’s first Gold medal, or its last, or any other Gold or Silver medal awarded in the Olympics. The two most courageous performances in the Olympics netted Bronze. One was a battle as much with emotional trauma as with any other competitor. The other was…
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Sheryl Crow is strong enough to be my man…
Sheryl Crow, I don’t know, she’s got something going on, and has been one of my muses at critical moments. She writes and sings like a broken angel, with equal measures of strength and vulnerability, passion and fear, hope and futility. Some of her music is exquisitely beautiful — notably just about anything from the…
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Black and white, darkness without light: a spiritual journey begins on a Three Dog Night
The joyful melody and playful rhythm will be all too familiar to my mother, and the eldest of my sisters. I was about 12 when this song came into my life, the first 45 rpm record I recall owning. I spun the disc hundreds of times…maybe thousands…playing it again and again until I’m sure everyone…
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Peter Gabriel & Ken Follet: Fear, the mother of violence
A while ago I was reading Ken Follet’s The Pillars of the Earth. Set amidst the brutality of the English middle ages, it’s interesting to see how all Follet’s characters experience fear, and more interesting how they respond to it and how, oftentimes, they are controlled by it, particularly the most violent of them, and…
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The party has already begun: 2010 in Vancouver and I Believe
They’re here. Turquoise jacketed volunteers and orange vested police converge on the city. They’re here. They’re everywhere. Tomorrow, the world’s biggest winter party and carnival begins in this grey, wet city. Is this the first winter Olympics ever held in a place where the grass is green? Where the vines are sprouting with new growth?…
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Deva Premal: the tranquility of Gayatri Mantra
A day of stress and frustrations and, in the end, a recognition that I’m not ready to move forward on a course of action requiring a one-year commitment…not just yet…not without a more careful consideration of the options and possibilities. So, a little something to calm the soul….
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Deva Premal sings The Moola Mantra: a gift of love
A couple days ago, this mantra played during a peaceful, energetic, meditative moment while in a healing session with my chiropractor. It reminded me, as it often does, of the woman who gave it to me. It was my introduction to the grounding peace and tranquility of mantras. As I listened, I remembered that in…
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Fleetwood Mac and my summer of love
I can’t remember how I met her. I think it was possibly on the boardwalk, or in the arcades at Weirs Beach. I do remember my buddy Brad and I hitching part way around Lake Winnnepesaukee so I could be with her. It was the summer of ’76 on the lake, and my first summer…
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Gabriella Cilmi: Lessons to be learned and feel a little safer
Gabriella Cilmi (pronounced “chill me” — and she does give me chills) was all of 17 years old when she co-wrote and recorded this song and others on her debut album, Lessons to be Learned. This is no Avril Lavigne, or Miley Cyrus, or Britney Spears. Cilmi has a soul of the ancients, and a…
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Om Namo Bhagavate: Deva Premal — Tranquil Mantra
Something peaceful, tranquil, to end a day of moving forward, oh-so-slowly, but forward. Translated, this very simple mantra reads “Om, reverence to the Lord Vasudeva”.