Tag: @pennyandsparrow

Penny and Sparrow – Mattering Ram

Hope, again.

(Listen to this song while you read this, listening to it, inspired this post.)

This is a song about the stories that connect us to one another and to this day. Penny and Sparrow gave us a song about their stories and reminded me of mine…

I spent some time with my favorite person, wandering the hall of mosses and the beaches of Ruby. The Hoh Rain Forest and the beaches just south of there are sacred for me. They restore me and remind that I am a piece of a star, just like those beautiful spruce with their lichen friends entwined amongst them. This beautiful world will heal us because it is us. We all have a place that refills us, it may be a whole slew of places or just a few… but you have them.

Susan walking in the hall of mosses at the Hoh Rainforest National Park

These are pieces of the stories that brought me to this day…

Stories…

“If you ain’t got love tho, does it even matter….“

Stories are people

When Penny and Sparrow released this song, they dropped these paragraphs of explanation.

“Mattering Ram is at least 15 short stories that actually happened to us. Most of them happen to everybody (over time) and all of that non-fiction matters. Every tail of every snake is tied together in this song so your focus keeps getting pulled in all directions. Here you’ll find pro-tennis writhing alongside antidepressants, near death on huge mountains, naked motorcycle photo shoots & euphemisms for birth control. It hits so hard because it’s all real and recognizable. As honest as life and knee-jerk reactions.

Sometimes things are important for the exact reasons you expect them to be, and you keep eye contact with em’ while they molt and become something else. Other times, you’re wrong and the moon cracks in half while you’re staring at your shoes. Either way it matters.”

This hit me, right between the ears, it rolled me up against the wall and asked me… what are you doing?

I am not sure when a song has rocked me like this. I was almost eighteen the first time I heard John Lennon sing Imagine, sitting in an old boat of car with my friend Floyd. He had told me it would undo me, and he was right. Floyd matters…

This song digs deep like that, even more because I have so many stories now, so many stories. I am getting good at painting with charcoal…

“Guess I think that matters.“

Andy and Kyle are telling us what love is and that it matters. They are telling you about love by giving you stories that belong to them, showing you what love means to them. The stories of your life are the pieces of the love that has made you. The good, the bad and the glorious.  Andy and Kyle are reminding us that today is the day our story is written. As long as we have breath, it is the time to write.

Who are the people in your story? Are they making you better or are they just taking the love out of you?

“All of it still matters”

How many homes will have a photo hanging in the front room of someone on a Suzuki, with no clothes?  I have a friend named Jonny… I think he’d be up for the shot. It would look just fine on my front room wall.

This is a really simple, and gorgeous song… three chords… three beautiful chords that live to make space for the stories in the lyrics… this is such beautiful magic. It reminded me of the rounds we sang in grade school, its tempo and measure. But it never repeats itself and it just keeps slithering across your soul. Yes, I did play my bass along with it and it sounded beautiful.

You don’t know the future and I don’t know the future, but if we’re honest, we know the past. We have our stories and if your very lucky you have your ancestors stories. We have no excuse in making the same mistakes over and over. But we do…

So many tales to bite and connect to.

“Does it even matter?“

I raced into adult life thinking I knew it all… just like you. I found out slowly and sometimes suddenly, I knew nothing. I still know mostly nothing. But I know joy…

We all have a string of tales that brought us to today. The snakes tail, in the snakes mouth…

“Was it a placebo?
Was it a distractor?
Tell me how the wind blows
Tell me if it matters”

I was an ice cream truck driver who broke the 20 MPH rule…

I made some stuff out of fiberglass and I’m pretty sure there is still a Freightliner truck out there with some of my handiwork holding up its hood.

I hated that farm, and it didn’t really care for me. I found darkness there, darkness that nearly consumed all of my song.

it only mattered in how I drifted, and it mattered in who my children turned out to be.

I loved the ditches and canals of block 18 and 47. I got my first glimpse of what a man like me might look like there. I wish I had paid better attention, but does it really matter?

I searched the spirits, and they gave no sound…

I broke through the bondage of Christianity and I really thought it mattered…

“Does it even matter?“

I tumbled into a world that I believed was forbidden to me. I never got to be a college student, but I walked around the halls of education for twenty years.

but what did I change….

Now I write stories that explore the magic that music gave me when that piece of a star broke away and said I will be Rusty…

“All of it still matters”

I find hope in following Susan through the trails and shores that we are blessed to be surrounded by.

I find hope in my coworkers as they navigate this chapter of their story. I am a soul that matters in this chapter of their life, our permanence does not.

“Either way it matters“

You have this moment to create, give hope and find joy… that matters

I am not going to try and explain the stories that Penny and Sparrow sing about in this brilliant song because those stories belong to Penny and Sparrow. They are singing about the pathways that they snaked through to get to this day. You don’t know Nemo, you don’t know Esperanza…

You have a series of stories that have brought you to this day, no one understands them like you do. Some of them are terrifying and some of them make your heart swell. We all made choices that pushed us to today. I believe the universe would be happy if you listened to this song and found that you matter, because you do….

“I don’t know the future
Shout it from the rafters
You don’t know it either
I don’t think it matters”

I wish we were better at letting our understanding of the past guide our ability to steer us into the future. But then, that would require us to be honest about who we are and what brought us here…and we are not.

We control some of our story, but more often than not, we are just washed up on the shore to drip and sputter and try and figure out why.

Pause a moment… look back over your shoulder and look at your trail… look at your story. You rode a river of stories to get to this day. Look at them, they are medicine for you. They are medicine you can give.

I am surrounded by humanity finding their food, every day I am at work. How primal is that?  It is medicine for my soul. People just running from one story to the next at breakneck speed. Most are good and honest people who could create so much joy if only they knew they mattered. I get to tell them they do… We are all hope, you, your friends and the one who bagged your groceries today. All of us create…and it matters. All of us create joy.

If we don’t create, how do we have hope? With everything we see around us, how do we find hope? If we all give up, then what, where do we go?

Listen to this song with your heart wide open and soak in it. There is magic here, really deep, crazy good magic.

Penny and Sparrow, thank you. Thank you for listening to what the music was telling you. Thank you for such good stories that made us smile and recall our own. There is beauty in knowing that the moon might crack open while you are staring at your shoes, and yet, you still got a chance to say pull the goalie…

Listening, learning and growing…

Penny and Sparrow – Need You

My Treasure Chest of Friendship

(Listening to this song while you read, is strongly encouraged)

For almost two years, I have been listening to Need You, by Penny and Sparrow. It is the third track on their January 2022 album, Olly Olly. The entire album has played over and over and over… Need You, has been repeated the most by far. It’s story dancing in my ears, wrapped in spells of musical beauty, and it has been so good for my soul.

I knew I would write about this song almost immediately, but I wasn’t sure what it was trying to help me see, so I decided to just wait and enjoy its beauty.

A song will let you know why you need it, when it is time for you to know why you need it.

Music is therapy, it soothes me, it is a place I find wisdom in.

A song is a piece of a songwriters soul floating through the webs of the universe, sowing its magic, hoping it soars…  

When I was ready, Need You told me about friendship. It sang of my longing for something just like this…

“Somehow in the dream you knew that my heart would break

Semi-automatically

You said, “when you can’t find quite enough air there to take

Copy how I breathe”

 

We were doubled up and crying

You were right there by me

Midsummer empathy

See how I need you“

I moved around a lot when I was growing up, and outside of my family, I do not have a single friend from my childhood. I remember so many times thinking that this would be the one that I would talk to for the rest of my life, but it never happened. My dad would find his next dream and we would move, and their part in my story was over.

I didn’t move around as much as an adult, but my ideology did. It moved with each decade and with it, my friends. A friendship based on like ideology is a shallow well that dries up before you ever quench that thirst.

Friendship can follow your financial success, or your failure, the number of friends I had when I was making six figures compared to the number I had when I had to go to the food bank to eat is a stark example. Things like that can make you give up on friendship… I never did.

Listening to this song gave me a moment to open parts of my soul that I have kept closed for decades. It has been like finding an old wooden chest covered in dust. It took some work to get the lock open but what I found inside is astounding. I found so many pieces, from so many friendships and I wept at the richness of my life.

There are little pieces from that one room school house I went to first grade in… Miss Palodichuk in particular…

All of the pieces I have from the very first time Robbi came home, she was my first friend.

There are so many pieces from that little eastern Washington town… all of those friends that I thought would be there for ever… Every piece they gave me is still right where it should be…

I have this precious pile from all of the beautiful souls that I encountered working in education. I am forever changed from exchanging little bits with all of you.

Right where I needed them in my silly life… that is how bad I need all of you…

See us in red and black

Mirrored white ocher hues

I won’t give one thing back

That’s how bad I need you

Friendships can be just for a season, you may need that person for a time and when that time is past, your stories take you on different paths. I know that we could talk all day about the varied reasons that friendships move on. We could get very wrapped up in the mechanics of why that happened, and it could devolve into how shallow one was and so on. It might just be the end of that season. The seed they gave me and the one I gave them has sprouted and it might need to find a different angle of the sun so it can grow. But even after that season is past, I still need them, I need that piece they gave me, it is part of the color of my story, and I won’t give one thing back.

Here is the thing about friendship… you meet someone, a colleague or maybe just someone on the street. There is a connection, a moment.. an exchange… That is all a friendship needs and it doesn’t matter if it lasts for ten seconds or ten years… When someone gives you a piece of themselves, you get to keep that forever.

There is something truly beautiful about being around people that get you. You don’t have to explain your translucent skin or your really shitty eyesight. They read things for you and they let you give them your weird wisdom… I have so many beautiful people that I love so much. Each one is a voice in the harmony of my life, and I am better for knowing them.

My best friend Susan, she gets all of me. She lets me copy how she breaths… I won’t give one thing back. We will follow each other forever…

“Everyone gives up the ghost

Us too

Let it be known

All the proud hours I hold

Are around you

See us in red and black

Mirrored white ocher hues

I won’t give one thing back

That’s how bad I need you”

This song tells the story of a beautiful friendship. One of those I always romanticized and wished I had. I have spent an embarrassingly large amount of time in my life complaining that I never kept friends growing up. Listening to Penny and Sparrow sing of this friendship where you get help breathing and you’ll never give one thing back, I realized I do have that. I am rich with that…

I have taken some time writing this… to sit in this moment and let the magic of this music teach me all it has to offer. When I think about evaluating a friendship based on a measure of linear space spent together It seems rather silly. It doesn’t matter if I know you for a week or for twenty years, your contribution is just as important and all of those little pieces we exchanged are part of who I am today and I would not give one thing back.

I relish the joy of being adopted into my wife’s friendships, ones she has had since kindergarten. When we met it was a foreign concept to me, and I have marveled at their depth of relationship and love, it is exactly what she needed to be the beautiful human she is today. Just like my collection of friends is exactly the pieces I needed to be me.

Andy and Kyle are Penny and Sparrow and I really don’t know a lot more about them, except for their crazy good harmonies and their crazy good music and their crazy good lyrics… They are true wizards… I have listened to everything they have done, so we are friends. Olly Olly is worth listening to thousands of times and more. I am so grateful for Andy and Kyle putting this into the universe. It is the piece I needed just right now…

“I won’t give one thing back

That’s how bad I need you”

I am at a place in my life where I can really dig into the moments. I am not in a hurry to achieve, I have been there, and I did do that. I am content to look into my own soul and write about what I find.

I am finding an immeasurable amount of joy in the friends I have from my gig at your neighborhood grocery store. Some of them are generations away from me, but the richness of their contribution is awe inspiring. I never expected this, I have been fairly ignorant of my good fortune most of my life. But here I am, standing in this moment and knowing how badly I need all of you. The friends I have known, and the ones I have yet to make.

Humanity is so beautiful, it is kind and has enough love to quench any fire. We have to remember that. There is more than enough hate and cynicism to wash it all away, but I have hope, my hope is in my friends and that chest full of friendships……

Music is a superpower for me, this blog is my attempt to try and understand some of that, it is also an attempt to give you some hope. I have hope because there are other weirdo’s like me out there and I am grateful for every one of you.

Create… unleash your wildest idea… when we let our creative energy run wild, the world is better.

Thank you, Penny and Sparrow, for letting these bits out into the universe…

Cherish your moments, they will go past you unannounced. Be less worried about what you achieve and far more interested in who is out there to achieve it with, you need them. When you get those walks at the dog park, the lunch over ramen and the stroll through your own downtown, hold onto that windows rolled down and everything is alright feeling, it is real and it will help you fly. I am flying, no matter what the day throws at me, I am flying and it is in no small part due to the chest of friendships I found, thanks to this beautiful song.

Listening, learning, and growing