May Love

May 12

It has gone from winter to summer here in Canada and no one knows what to do but drive around and blare Pink Floyd. I just got my winter tires off and now the lawn mowers are growling and I am the last one on my block to have a tidy lawn. To this, I say: Whatever.

If you were at our last Zang (Zoom hang) the love was palpable. It’s a great chance for us to come together and talk about the books we are reading, the state of the world, our own jobs…and in the case of last Saturday, we spoke about Saturday cartoons. My favourite growing up were Hercules (poor production but great music and storytelling) and Jeremy. Behold the production value of this gem:

Dale who joined us, wrote me after the hang to say there is a CD of cartoon theme songs covered by 90’s artists and since we are all relishing the 90’s throwback, I’ll share his recommendation with all of you:

Saturday Morning Cartoons Greatest Hits

Thanks Dale!

Our next hang won’t be till July sometime. If you’ve never come to one, please do. Don’t feel shy. ALSO…I’m excited to announce that there’s a pre-Asianblue concert VIP cocktail/mocktail party for Backstage members only. It will be from 6-6:30pm EST and I’m so thrilled to be able to hang with you all before the big event. I’ll send the Zoom link out for that in the next few weeks.

I bought a new bass! It is an Ibanez SR Mezzo and looks like this:

It came to me in a meditative state that I have been ignoring my joy around the bass. It is always on my joy list…and I have a pink Fender P that is too big and is buzzy. So the Ibanez is a return to the bass that I first bought at age 16. I had named it Peter after the chap who sold it to me at John Bellone’s in London. I have yet to name my new bass…but suggestions are welcome. Here I am at 16 with Peter:

So….what else is new. Mercury is in full-on retrograde so just try your best to chill for the next few weeks. I’m actually doing an astrological reading tomorrow and I’m very excited about it. It will be with Leslie Galbraith who I heard on Ashley Wood’s podcast and despite years of self-care, self-work and diving into things like therapy, human design, recovery workbooks, breath work and energy readings, I’ve kind of ignored the straight-up natal chart reading.

This is not Leslie’s site, but I went here to get my basic reading and it blew my mind how accurate it was. You just need to know your birth time.

Permission.

Sometimes I swear that’s all we are looking for. Permission to be ourselves. From coaches, from the stars, from the music we listen to, from the books we read, our families, the friends we have….

I’ve often thought that if that’s the gift I can give people…permission to just be…to breathe a big sigh of relief and just surrender to who we really are…then everything is worth it. The truth is, we can give ourselves permission. It’s just so dang hard.

I did a marathon set of interviews on CBC across the nation the other day. Talking about songwriting. I think they were the easiest, most energizing interviews to do because at the root of everything I do…every plan I make…is THE SONG. It all began when creative writing and piano lessons merged…once I realized that they could (at age 10), Mozart and all those dudes fell away…they would never have my attention the same way again. I’m not sure you can hear the interviews anywhere but in some ways, doing syndicated spots like that…speaking to radio stations from Cape Breton to Victoria…makes you feel like all of Canada is in your back pocket. People were so lovely. BUT…I realized that it’s very hard to TALK about something that is FELT. And to me, songwriting is a feeling, it’s a flow state…I’m not one of those cerebral writers…where I can think my way into a song. There are many writers like that…I applaud them. But for me, it has to come from the heart. The process is magical….I feel drained by the end of it. It’s quick usually and it’s fun and I lose track of all things.

Even with the new album…I think I cracked open my heart to send messages to Michael in the music…or to receive them from him through his words. I was so happy to learn that not everything has to be “Fetching Decay” …. melody born in a state of misery…

In other news, life has been swinging like a pendulum…from sessions with rural Reiki masters to …bread crumb trails to German record labels….from therapy sessions….to soccer practices….opera concerts….to children’s dental emergencies….tears….joy….everything in between.

THE HIGHEST HIGH: my brother Tony keeps sending me yacht rock. No matter how abysmally low the listenership of any of these gems he has unearthed, he sends them along, with the exuberance of a child who has discovered new toys in the sand. The latest was a band called Dawn Patrol…and a song called “Keep On Believin’”.

“What label is this on?” I wondered after hearing it. Turns out Dawn Patrol are a Dutch band on a German label called Legere Recordings. I found a contact of mine who knows the president of this label, and now we - Mr. Legere himself and I - have a meeting this weekend - I’ll let you know how it goes!

I wonder sometimes about signing to Mercury…how did I choose that label? It certainly wasn't because the guy who sang “How Bizarre” was on it. Or the guys who sang “Who Let The Dogs Out?” I wonder now how educated I was about the whole thing or if I just signed cuz they were a big label and I liked the A&R woman sort of.

This time around I’m hoping to go with my gut, and all of this intuition I’ve nurtured over the years. And gratitude. I mean, if nothing comes of any of my meetings, how amazing is it, to share this music…to talk to a record label 6348 km away. To have the president of this label know the names of my new songs, songs that barely existed a year ago. He said he flew on his bicycle when he heard “Valencia”. Danny Goldberg at Mercury never flew to “Death Is A New Day” I’ll tell you that!

THE LOWEST LOW: Part of waking up, of moving forward, of learning to love someone new completely is truly coming to terms with your past. “Go to Sue!” my friend Liese said. I’d never been to a Reiki healer, not to mention an intuitive. I went in with a healthy skepticism. Most people know what I do in this town of 7000. And one glance at my social media and you can figure out what matters to me. But Sue, the intuitive Reiki master, insisted she didn’t know me and the first thing she felt in my energy was MUSIC. She put her hands on my head and after some silence said, “you lost it, you stopped doing it”….she told me I was disconnected….that I held so much anger….and whether she was a con artist in linen pants with a beautiful plant-filled studio by the river or not, her words brought tears to my eyes.

Divorce is one of those things that has no timeline for it’s healing….and the way it steers you toward or away from forgiveness. I realize most of my anger is directed at myself…for my role in the breakdown of the marriage. Being hard on yourself and being honest …. is a fine line…a tricky line to walk. I think I can be equal parts….and these parts bleed into each other all the time. I know the self-care and self-improvement can be a distraction from just living, just being….I’ve been very careful to reign in the posts that feel too preachy…to swimming in my own “notes to myself”. Projections. Is that what they call them?

But she suggested one thing that was not the product of any unexplained intuition and healing talent…journalling. So I did, I journaled, for the first time in a long time. Not on the computer, not on the Notes app in my phone, old fashioned ballpoint pen to lined paper.

And I wrote about being angry at myself, and angry at being left to parent alone…and angry at being female…at the way I learned how to be female when I was younger. Or what it meant to be born a girl. Trust. So many trust issues. “trust and faith and all the things I had”….to quote “The End”. So all of the things in the news lately have been a tsunami. I’ve protected myself from it for a while.

I felt better after journalling. I feel better right now, writing to all of you.

I honestly don’t think you can underestimate the power of writing with a pen on paper. There is something different about it than typing. Even just 5 minutes. 10 minutes….it’s shocking that I don’t or can’t make the time for it. Let’s all make the time for it.

For our hang at the end of April, and your gorgeous spirits, THANK YOU.

For reading this, THANK YOU.

For sticking with me for 2 decades and being cool every day of those years, THANK YOU.

For everything that is about to come, I will always know that you were here first and fully. THANK YOU.

I’ll write again before the concert, but thank you. Always feel free to drop me a note or comment or keep in touch.

Love Emm