Music, Sex and Poetry

So I wanna make a couple of recommendations to you at the beginning of 2008. I think my house if full of great vibrations. 1, because everyone who comes in the door is full of great positive vibes. The other thing is, we burn plenty of sacred sage in this house! The native Indians burn sage to cleanse a person's aura, and to also cleanse the vibrations of a space. This morning, I came back from Whole Foods...or, as they call it "Whole Paycheck"...clutching a big bundle of white sage. I lit the sage and started wafting it around the entire house and everybody who's at work here today. Cassie, who is coordinating my record right now, jumped up and down and said "Me! Smudge me! I need to cleanse all the naughty sexy thoughts about that boy I shouldn't be thinking about." So I traced her sillhouette with the sage, making sure to cover all her chakra points, plenty on the crown chakra. Man! Sage is powerful stuff! Whenever I'm feeling a little low or depressed, I'll shut myself in a room and burn the sage until the air is thick with its scent, and I feel well and truly cleansed. I often use it at the end of my yoga practice. I say a little prayer and cleanse my aura. It's a really magical plant, and those of you who have not smudged their homes and auras at the beginning of 2008, I suggest you jump in your car right now and drive to the nearest hippie outlet store or Whole Foods and buy yourself some sage! Good vibrations! Positive thinking! Getch yourself a great vision for the year! If you're not driving your own bus, who is? Sometimes, the process of recording can be testing. Last night I worked with the great and almighty John X, a fabulous transcendental engineer who has recorded INXS and even a track of the Stones. Yesterday I was a bit weary, and John X was like "I'm gonna put you in vocalist boot camp if you're not careful!" Today, I decided I needed to elevate my vibrations, get back in touch with the joy of writing songs. Hey man, this aint a job, this is a pleasure! So here, in the Happy House, we are burning sage, rocking out to my new tracks, and generally trying to get in a really positive mood! All things go well when you feel good. If you're not feeling good, change the channel, change your mood, but I really recommend you go out, buy some sage, and cleanse yourself off!

Happy Hump Day!
xxZoe

Sitting on my sofa last night, it was raining so much there was no where to go. I decided to take a night off watching Doors DVDs and I switched on the TV. Every channel I turned to had a new version of some sort of wierd reality series. There was one about the rock star choosing the wife, loads of girls with big fake tits and their little booty shorts writhing around while he says "get in the house." Then I flipped to another channel and it was called "Star Rehab." There was an assortment of B-list celebrities in this horrible situation, from a porn star to a rock star to a wrestling champion who admitted on TV that he got in a crash and thought his girlfriend was dead, so he slung her into the drivers seat so he would avoid getting a DUI. I'm not sure about this, whether this has all gone too far? Im just not sure what exactly we're trying to teach here. I guess you could say it's just entertainment, but quite frankly it wasnt that entertaining. There was another reality, or should I say documentary, about a woman with a huge swollen leg. She described herself as the "elephant woman" which was obviously very tragic. I could not find one thing on the TV to get my spirits up, which was intelligent, funny, witty and worth watching. Of course the Soprano's was on, but I just wasnt in the mood. I wanted some sunshine in the rain. So I did resort to pulling out my copies of Sex In the City and hitting the treadmill. I dunno, but some of these shows seem a bit glib. I wonder what's going to be next...stars taking a dump around Hollywood??? I used to like PUNK'D, but that was really a higher class of reality show. What do you think? Do you think all these reality shows have gone too far? Watching an addict in excruciating pain vomitting, completely nuts out of his mind, I wondered whether this was really the kind of entertainment my nervous system needed on a sunday night when i was trying to just chill. What do you think??

Now we've had the sexual economic revolution. There's so much freedom to reinvent your definition of what it is to be a modern man or modern woman...last night, as the rain poured down on my roof in the Hollywood hills, I watched an old episode of Sex in the City. One of the characters said "never in the history of Manhattan have women had the same amount of money and power as men, and therefore this gives them the freedom to view men purely as a sexual object." I was thikning about all this, and I was thinking it sort of comes down to winning or losing, or who's on top or who's underneath. It's just no fun being the one who always has to lose. If you're dealing with a real competitive guy, be it a band leader, a partner, a leader, feeling like you're having your strings pulled as a woman. These days, I'm really inclined to surround myself with guys who have no problem trading up on who wants to be leader at that moment in time. I can spot the guys a mile away who are still caught in that outmoded, old-world behavior where a woman really has to surrender her power to her dominant male partner. In your 20's, maybe some of us are prepared to be an accessory to a man's ego, but by your 30's, you're so done with that old game called "Please the Man!" or "He's the Boss!" More and more I think in terms of harmony and honoring the moment. We all have to develop out of architypal parterns which lead us to feel bondage, or not as free and creative as we might. I guess we've explored every kind of dynamic under the sun: the guy who stays home and takes care of the kids, the guy who supports the dynamic business wife. Having said that, it still never ceases to amaze me how many men I meet who still have this need to dominate. You can spot them from the outset, the old-style "you're gonna be my woman and do what I need to you do" type of man. Actually, my father was one. He couldn't bear anyone being any more clever or beautiful than him. He was the boss, the big peacock in our house, and after the age of 18, I was definitely well on the way of being tired of that. More and more, I think we're learning to trade up so that everybody gets to win, and we get to teach each other. The more comfortable we can all get with our feminine and masculine sides, the better. But at the same time, I love being a woman and I love when you can be a man. I just dont need to be the passive little flower who is a puppet for your ego. So my idea is we all get real comfortable at sharing the power and sharing the love. What do YOU think about equality these days??

The beginning of a new year is definitely a magical time. The space to create our lives in any way we choose. I always loved Jim Morrison's line: "Grant us one more day to live our lives and perfect our art." So guess what?? We all got the gift of one more year. A new song, a new love story, a newborn child, a new start, a new way of seeing yourself, a new way of seeing the world. I'm someone who loves the business of recreation. I re-create myself frequently through my songs, through my passion for living in new ways. I always feel new in a way because like the universe, I never stop moving. So I love the clarity that the month of January brings. Like the desert, which as you know I love so much…it's my blank canvas…, the new year, with all it's new beginnings is a new blank canvas on which we shall paint our lives. My mother is a painter, and I always feel like she gave me artist eyes, a magical way in which to look at the world. Creativity is a very powerful thing, and once we understand that a new year is a chance to create anything our soul desires, we really feel inspired to go for it. Of course, we are always visiting eternal themes. For me, it's a year in which I hope to create new music, new friendships, find new love in the world, and have a new understanding of myself. That may be the most important thing for a human being because the more self-connection we feel, the more connection we feel to the world around us. New awareness brings a whole new way to move in the world. I hope you're all enjoying the newness of being you in new ways at the beginning of a new year!

I know, I know...it's taken me a little while to say absolutely anything about the fact that we're here in 2008! But I've been meditating on it, folks, imagining all the possibilities for this year. So Happy New Year to you all! I feel like 2008 is gonna be a great year. Something about the symbol of the 8 makes me feel like it's a year of magic. I intuitively think this year is going to be about freedom and love. I intuitively feel like this is gonna be a great year for making some great music! I think this is a year about relationships. it doesnt have to be about your relationship with someone else...it could be about your relationship with yourself or your own creativity. Of course, January is a very analytical month. We're all busy analyzing what we want the rest of the year to be. ya, I've been a little quiet, but I've been doing a bit of bear medicine. bear medicine is hibernation time, the dark time when all the new seeds are germinating. I'm having a great time here, pulling all the songs together for my new album with my team. It's going to be more of a rock album...I've been doing a lot of soul searching to really write my truth. I feel like it will be a big evolution from the last record I made, and I'm really excited to bring it to you! So please excuse my lack of blogging, but all my love is coming to you in songs later this year! Let me know how you're all doing, and what you feel 2008 is going to be about for you!