I imagine everyone is really doing the best they can with what they know. Don't you think so? It is definitely time for tea here in the morning on a Saturday in November of 2021.  Unseasonably warm here as we wind down to the end of the current calendar year. Breathing deep and working on music and homesteading. Making it through each night of sleep as I seek rest. Life is a one day at a time kind of deal. Water is on the stove. Tea forthcoming. I was living in Santa Cruz in the 1990's, coming back to Oregon every year to attend a local fair in the woods. The bass player I was working with at the time, Marc Cirovic lived with a famous bubble guy named Tom. Tom lived a calm and eclectic life that included the pattern of morning tea done right. As I just poured hot water over my tea bag I recall, as I always do when I brew a cup, that Tom taught me one morning to put a timer on for five minutes for the steep. Years later as I recounted this story to him he told me that he now steeps for only four minutes. Drinking a cup of Downton Abbey tea that my friend Amy gave me last year for my birthday I ready for a trip to 5th Street where one of the last Farmers Markets of 2021 is happening. As we usher in the new year may we all remember the good old days. 

How joyful it is to be alive. What an amazing time we live in yes? As the seasons change and our most treasured experiences are happening in nature I realize just how divine and perfect it all is. The leaves, the neighbors, the birds and really each and every breath. What a true excitement I have everyday as I venture out into the beautiful world. Today did not disappoint nor did yesterday or the day before. Real life is tremendous. There is everything to gain from being in this garden of eden. My steps will always be in the real grass. My senses are and will be alert, alive and real as I listen to the birds sing as they sit in the trees and fly above in the skies. The real world, the real environment is at hand. Seek gratitude even when there is fear to feel. May your vibrations be in tune, the music of the ethers be yours and may you know how important it is for you and I and all of us to find our own graceful peace in mind, heart and spirit. I have been forgiving everyone for everything these days. No use in holding grudges and it makes me feel much better. Try it, you'll like it. Be stronger than the lures of the internet as it develops.  Keep your heels dug in. Save the last dance for me.

Sometimes after watching the filming techniques that different creators use on home spun Youtube videos I have come to see its affect on me with my creative thought process both in the real world and in imagining how I, myself, might make videos for Youtube. I have a channel and I do post videos on occasion.  Actually I often like to record music and then compile it with images that I have shot on one of my two cameras. Truth is though that sometimes I get so excited that it is difficult to go slowly. Slowing down is hard. I like to be uncomplicated generally. Life moves at a good place if I pay attention to what I am doing and enjoy it. The thing with video footage and music is that sharing what I produce gets me so excited that I am not always doing my best to edit to more of a state of perfection.  When I go back and look at videos from a year or more ago I can see how much I am changing as I learn. There are so many things to learn about both recording music from bpm's to creating loops, and balancing tracks and how to use software and real time lighting and capturing moments in a digital format and how to edit. These past two weeks I have shot a fair bit of video footage of autumn out on different farms.  Once my battery died and I didn't have any charged ones with me and various other things like forgetting to pack my small camera and seeing light through trees...and missing the shot...things that definitely slow down my creative process but not slowed down in the way I like. Yesterday we drove out and interviewed an elder man who owns 40 draft horses. It was amazing how fluid he was at guiding the big horses Suzy and Belle. I'll edit this week and see if I can record some new music tracks.  Thanks for staying tuned.  Love, Lizzie

Many years ago my mother told me: "There is no backdoor out of marriage." She was right of course. Although my marriage at the time was indeed failing I could not find the front door. The isolation and loneliness I felt were deep seated. Years later I realized just what it is to be a woman looking back and grappling with the guilt, justified or not, of leaving a failing marriage. In fact, I had my cake and I ate it too. When something is to good to be true it usually is. Falling in love with musicians is nothing new to me.  I've been in love with a few in my time. The thing I kept learning was that falling in love with someone's music needs to be different than falling in love with them. Music is not enough to make love last. I always wanted to believe that it was. As I write this, different musical affairs come to mind.  The one that began my thinking though is the one I wrote the song Was A Lullaby about.  He was a kind, gentle and young musician. We really should have just remained friends. The love in both his music and his eyes was very real, if not just enamored with me and my musical ability. I believed it to be love although it played out as mere folly. His father cajoled and encouraged us but in a perfunctory way. His mother was furious. And truly in many ways I was to blame and my apologies were forth coming. And as I always like to say when a bad affair produces music: "At least I got a song out of it." Cheers to love and music.

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Thank you thank you thank you! It really seems to me lately that things are changing for the better. A veil is lifting in reality.  Joy is abundant. Gratitude defeats fear. And love can be felt in the heart.  Life, it seems, is a matter of frequency, light and vibrations. Stunning resonance is becoming so incredibly present.  We can feel it all around us during waking and sleeping. Just the other night I dreamed that I kissed an old boyfriend of mine.  And then I drove two hours to see my mom, right by his old house and remembered that I had that dream. It was literally just the next day. Just now when thinking about it I can understand that there was closure for my heart in my dream. We get what we get with people. Practicing sheer gratitude and forgiveness is blessing my life daily. We are all right where we are supposed to be in God's plan. Light is shining and casting out darkness. I mean all of this on a very personal level. I cannot assume that you the reader has this same experience that I am having in life. I can say FOR SURE that because I am rising to the responsibilities of creating reality and that I am no longer allowing base low fear vibration that comes with fear (and anger) I am far happier in just a matter of days. I am choosing to be safe.  I am safe.  I have actually always been safe. Inside and outside. I feel that everything is okay.  It is all good. I am safe and comfortable. My child nature and my wise elder self have come together in peace and in harmony. 

Last weekend when I was in Florence, Oregon for a performance I met a young woman named Molly. Her mom was in a wheel chair and was present for the whole three hour show.  She drank red wine and seemed enthralled by the Italian flamenco guitar and Russian violinist not to mention my Spanish songs. She hand wrote a note to me about singing a ballad but it was late into the performance and my stage time was over. I went outside and met her daughter and smoked a couple drags off of her clove cigarette for old times sake. I was delighted to know her name was Molly because my favorite dog from my childhood had that same name. I called her Mo Mo.  She was a poodle Pomeranian and died when I was 18. She will always have my heart. I recall that when my parents were divorcing in 1978 or so Mo Mo once licked the tears from my cheeks to try to help make me feel better. I dreamed shortly after she died that she was on the beach below a cliff near where my mother lived off of Elizabeth Street. She was swirled into the sand and at peace during a brilliant dreamy sunset. And actually she is laid to rest right there near the house underneath a pink rhododendron bush. So it was nice meeting Molly and seeing my brother and sister there in Florence.We go again for another performance on November 13th.

Loving my day job as usual. Thinking about Starr Bray and how grateful I am that she didn't want this job anymore. I stepped in as a manager here at a lovely Air B'nB in my home town. I've been working and running this place since 2015. Starr died over a year ago. She witnessed the beginning of this international virus may-lay from her hospice existence after facing brain and lung cancer that became apparent in the summer of 2019. Within eleven months she had died peacefully. I feel comforted by her on many occasions. We became friends in 1998. Her daughter was four or five and her son was not yet born at the time. She did some really powerful spiritual things as she prepared to depart. Her brain cancer really changed her awareness of life and she was deeply affected by the spirit world even before she began grappling with a shortened lifespan. As we near the Samhain holiday, also known as All Hallows Eve I think of the song I wrote on the last day I saw her and said farewell. I asked her to please be on the spirit side when I pass. Meet me there. Greet me there.  I will post the song lyrics when I get home today from work.  I love you Starr Starr.

So I have to confess I've been hanging out with a Russian. And the reason I feel compelled to call it a confession is that my last post was all up in the communism mentality. Having compassion and empathy both for historical details from a Russian born person has not been easy.  I am stunned by how the history of Russian has affected generations of beautiful people from a rich Christian culture. There are things I just don't want to know about what people have survived in countries that have been taken over by the value systems that drive communist ideals. I once had a young music student who's mother was born and raised in Russian.  She would drop her talented daughter off to study guitar and voice with me and we would engage in simple conversations about life and all that she was doing.  I was impressed deeply by the moral integrity she showed in relation to her husband.  The Russian people are incredibly loyal, especially the women. Marx and Stalin.  I am just beginning to learn about how and why so many people died in a genocide.  Anyway, Russian violin is amazing.

There are many things to notice about the slow, precise destruction of culture as it is absorbed into socialism with a bent towards Marxist communism - namely that the people begin to lose their will to live. They envy the dead for not having to witness decline. Little by little the vestiges of a reckoning reality begin to dramatically shift as business's close and people's rights to pursue happiness and the peacefulness of life decline. The dust of many established societies have come, flourished and failed before the people of the world. History repeating its self before our dying eyes. The people begin to lose the will to live as in quiet moments of subdued disbelief they get their strength up to try to hope that all will be well just to see more failure. The people begin to lose the will to live (that is part of the plan as people don't fight) as it gets harder and harder to survive. Until one day broken and battered by the system they succumb almost willingly as they are corralled, broken from their family and friends.  Maybe they extend a hand of ancient hope to someone nearby but in the end they are buried in a mass grave of flesh and bones. Their freedoms but a memory that no one can recall.

Traveling around with amazing musicians these days has really improved my experience of life. Forever at Last was staged at this local Burning Man event last weekend on the grounds of Camp Wilani.  When I was eight years old or so my mother dropped me off for summer at Camp Wilani.  It was my first camp experience with horse back riding, archery, song circles around the fire pit and being alone socially with other girls and boys my own age in a bunk cabin with group meals in a big mess hall.  Anyway, I had not anticipated that I would have memories as I had no idea that the event was located on this property but it was wild psychologically for me.  Turns out the guy running sound also went to camp there when he was young and we talked about locations around the property. Havenroot Reverbia Camp was pretty cool. It is what they call: The Oregon Burn. I am going to post some links on Youtube and I'll put those here soon.  I am singing with a world class guitarist from Lost at Last named Priyo and a famous Russian violinist named Natasha Popova.  I just sang with them publicly for the first time this past Saturday.  We embark on a tour South for two weeks at the end of October with four dates booked so far.  If you want to hook us up with venue stages please be in touch. I am feeling blessed and also it is a strange time to invest in concepts of the future because truly we are just right here right now.  My ambitions are morphing as I let go of who I thought I was.  God bless us all.