Thursday, November 19, 2015
Monday, November 16, 2015
Poem Series: WHIM
WHIM
Liz Fink-Davenport
You are the closest thing I ever felt to home.
A welcome mat smile with a fireplace laugh,
Knowing I could collapse into you when the gravity of everything else
turned my bones to shackles.
When life held me down against my own will,
Shoved my face in gravel, gasps for breath between mouthfuls of dirt.
I could kick off my shoes and rest in you.
Rest in a place that I was always meant to be.Because it was always supposed to be us.
At least, that’s what I tell me.
And I never feel more safe than when I can look up at your constellations.
Slip off Orion’s Belt,
And you can slip into me.
Every song that’s ever given me tingles.
Every hug that reminded me why humans need to touch.
Every moonlit secret that traveled from my lips to yours.
Every broken promise to myself.
Every sleepless night trying to figure out when the path to your door became so hard to find.
Every attempt to cling to us.
My heart broken and mended and rebroken infinite times an hour.
I think you need,
Happiness that lingers over your days and stabs joy into dark recesses.
You want play. And light. And no mess.
And I'm mess. And I'm undoing. And I'm chaos.
My heart is strung to you by a tiny red thread that is tied at your wrist.
Like a child's balloon. Tethered. And I wait. Poised between heaven and sky
And your wrist,
That tugs. To home. At its own whim.
Friday, November 13, 2015
Poem Series - Jolted
JOLTED
Liz Fink-Davenport
"And on that day when I am not sure if I can take my heart and jam it back into its tight cage. Or force my lungs to repeat a rolling rhythm. Or pull one muddy foot from the sucking ground and burden it to move a heavy inch forward. I can't. A levitation at the corners of your lips pulls my intentionally forced life into lightness. Oh, that smile. From across the room and through a mass of nondescript faces on the sea, it puppeteers my mouth with invisible threads and curls what was flatlined, jolts a heart into beating. It shoots out from where it hits hard first until even my fingertips and hair is on glowing blue fire."
Thursday, November 12, 2015
Poem Series: Liz Fink-Davenport
The first in a series.....
I measure time in the moments of being with you and without you. And the longing in between.
It is ticked out in the second hand of your blink and your sigh and your warm breath and each small movement of your hand.
So stop the harsh clock in the hall and quiet down the world while I keep my own time. By the soft beats of my heart...waiting. On yours.
Watch
I measure time in the moments of being with you and without you. And the longing in between.
It is ticked out in the second hand of your blink and your sigh and your warm breath and each small movement of your hand.
So stop the harsh clock in the hall and quiet down the world while I keep my own time. By the soft beats of my heart...waiting. On yours.
Thursday, November 5, 2015
Lexi Awards set for January 31
Nominations ballot will be available soon via Lexi's web-site, blog, and FB page.
Nominees will be announced next month, along with announcements for MCs, performers, and celebrity presenters.
Stay tuned for more details.
Monday, October 26, 2015
Failure, Fear and The Future
by Paulie Felice
Staring at a blank page.
But in writing just that one little line... poof!
It's no longer a blank page.
I see this in my guitar students all the time; arms poised, eyes slightly glazed over with a nervous half-smile, frozen before me. I've just asked them to "play something," just as my new editor here has asked me to "write something."
"Write what??"
Anything.
"Play what??"
Anything.
The blank slates intimidate us. The impossible vastness of nearly infinite possibilities can be paradoxically paralyzing. In writing as in playing, it's that very first step that is the most difficult. I suppose most things are that way. We fear the unknown, and what is more 'unknown' than The Future? The immediate future of notes unplayed and words unwritten; it's right in your face, daunting, infusing you with irrational terror over the simplest of actions.
We usually really want a plan, first. If we can just have some vision, some picture of the future, we can be less fearful. Tell me what to write about. What key should I play in? What's this post going to be about? What's this song going to feel like? How am I going to make a living if I live my dreams? Where will I live and what will I eat and what if I... fail?
The future intimidates us because it is unknown, but what we fear about the unknown is the possibility that we will fail when we get there. And right here, right now in the present, we have not failed yet because we have not embarked on the endeavor. That's the paralyzing aspect, because we're hardwired to protect ourselves from harm. But I think that we have a misunderstanding of what failure is and our fear of it is exceedingly amplified and irrational because of this.
Failure is not the worst-case scenario.
The worst thing that can happen is... nothing.
Stagnancy, perpetual limbo and indecision, being stationary and allowing the paralysis to consume you; these are the things to legitimately fear because they always result in the only true, absolute failure, and that's the failure to move. Motion is what makes all things in the universe matter. It is the only way to affect change and create progress, and the only reason to have goals. If you have goals you MUST MOVE in order to achieve them. The potential for failure is always preferable to the guarantee of failure. If you do not move, you absolutely WILL FAIL.
So move.
Just go.
No plan.
Embrace the fear and in doing so, convert the nothingness of stagnancy into the awesome power of movement through infinite possibilities in infinite combinations. Swing your arm and strike those chords. Move your fingers and write those words. Walk out the door and into the expanse of your new life.
Stop stopping. Get going. Do something.
"Do what??"
Anything.
Staring at a blank page.
But in writing just that one little line... poof!
It's no longer a blank page.
I see this in my guitar students all the time; arms poised, eyes slightly glazed over with a nervous half-smile, frozen before me. I've just asked them to "play something," just as my new editor here has asked me to "write something."
"Write what??"
Anything.
"Play what??"
Anything.
The blank slates intimidate us. The impossible vastness of nearly infinite possibilities can be paradoxically paralyzing. In writing as in playing, it's that very first step that is the most difficult. I suppose most things are that way. We fear the unknown, and what is more 'unknown' than The Future? The immediate future of notes unplayed and words unwritten; it's right in your face, daunting, infusing you with irrational terror over the simplest of actions.
We usually really want a plan, first. If we can just have some vision, some picture of the future, we can be less fearful. Tell me what to write about. What key should I play in? What's this post going to be about? What's this song going to feel like? How am I going to make a living if I live my dreams? Where will I live and what will I eat and what if I... fail?
The future intimidates us because it is unknown, but what we fear about the unknown is the possibility that we will fail when we get there. And right here, right now in the present, we have not failed yet because we have not embarked on the endeavor. That's the paralyzing aspect, because we're hardwired to protect ourselves from harm. But I think that we have a misunderstanding of what failure is and our fear of it is exceedingly amplified and irrational because of this.
Failure is not the worst-case scenario.
The worst thing that can happen is... nothing.
Stagnancy, perpetual limbo and indecision, being stationary and allowing the paralysis to consume you; these are the things to legitimately fear because they always result in the only true, absolute failure, and that's the failure to move. Motion is what makes all things in the universe matter. It is the only way to affect change and create progress, and the only reason to have goals. If you have goals you MUST MOVE in order to achieve them. The potential for failure is always preferable to the guarantee of failure. If you do not move, you absolutely WILL FAIL.
So move.
Just go.
No plan.
Embrace the fear and in doing so, convert the nothingness of stagnancy into the awesome power of movement through infinite possibilities in infinite combinations. Swing your arm and strike those chords. Move your fingers and write those words. Walk out the door and into the expanse of your new life.
Stop stopping. Get going. Do something.
"Do what??"
Anything.
Thursday, October 15, 2015
Lexi Music Awards press release
Howdy!
David McLean here - local guitarist & guitar instructor...and creator of the Lexington Music Awards. We're presenting the 2nd Annual Lexington Music Awards show on Sunday, January 31 at the historic Lyric Theatre!
The awards, unlike other awards shows across the country, don't just honor musicians, but the entire music community....with categories for best live venue, best DJ, best music store....best song, best vocalist....plus specialty categories like "community music award" and "lifetime achievement award" (over 30 categories in all).
As many of you recall from the first show, this event was to be hosted at a small venue here in Lexington with the assumption the first year we'd be lucky to put 50-75 people in the room, but that we'd demonstrate we could build a viable program and grow it from there.
The project quickly grew out of control (haha!), and we nearly sold out the Lyric Theatre back in February amid all that snow!
We're about to launch the nominations ballot, and official nominees should be announced by late November or early December.
I'd love to chat with you further about this event! Please feel free to contact me at this email address or call/text me at 859-420-2007.
Also, feel free to check in at the FB page or look at our blog. The new web-site will be on-line soon!
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1505077303105177/
http://lexingtonmusicawards.blogspot.com/
Thanx!
--
--
David M. McLean
Skinny Devil Music Lab
http://www.skinnydevil.com
859.420.2007
"....embrace your fear..."
Saturday, October 10, 2015
EFF says "The Final Leaked TPP Text is All That We Feared"
From the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF):
"Today's release by Wikileaks of what is believed to be the current and essentially final version of the intellectual property (IP) chapter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) confirms our worst fears about the agreement, and dashes the few hopes that we held out that its most onerous provisions wouldn't survive to the end of the negotiations...."
Read it here.
"Today's release by Wikileaks of what is believed to be the current and essentially final version of the intellectual property (IP) chapter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) confirms our worst fears about the agreement, and dashes the few hopes that we held out that its most onerous provisions wouldn't survive to the end of the negotiations...."
Read it here.
Friday, February 20, 2015
LEXI Awards (the Lexington Music Awards)
"The LEXINGTON MUSIC AWARDS are designed to add cohesion and a true sense of community to the local & regional music scene; to help raise the "quality" bar; to educate artists and fans alike on what's going on in the whole music community; integrate Lexington into the wider (national) music scene; and much more."
 |
| supermodel Laura Kirkpatrick |
The inaugural show will take place Sunday, February 22 at the historic Lyric Theatre in downtown Lexington, KY. The show features 30 categories in 4 broad sections (industry, style, performance, & special)....from best live venue & best music retailer to best guitarist & best vocalist to best country artist & best rock band to community service & lifetime achievement awards.
MCed by Kristen Pflum and Bill Meck .....with special guest presenters that include supermodel Laura Kirkpatrick to Dan Wu (of Master Chef) to local DJ legend Max Corona....,with music performances by jazz legend Miles Osland, guitar wizard Ben Lacy, The Stick Men (featuring Tripp Bratton & David Farris), and more!
The organizer(s) have big plans, though starting locally. Keep up with plans, media (TV spots, radio interviews, newspaper stories, and more), and more for this year and beyond at the Lexington Music Awards.
Thursday, February 19, 2015
My Own Life - Oliver Sacks on Learning He Has Terminal Cancer
A MONTH ago, I felt that I was in good health, even robust health. At 81, I still swim a mile a day. But my luck has run out — a few weeks ago I learned that I have multiple metastases in the liver. Nine years ago it was discovered that I had a rare tumor of the eye, an ocular melanoma. Although the radiation and lasering to remove the tumor ultimately left me blind in that eye, only in very rare cases do such tumors metastasize. I am among the unlucky 2 percent.
I feel grateful that I have been granted nine years of good health and productivity since the original diagnosis, but now I am face to face with dying.....(see the rest at the link below)
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/19/opinion/oliver-sacks-on-learning-he-has-terminal-cancer.html
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