Fascinating Trivia

When I attended a review meeting at the unit this week, I caught up with some of the lovely girls from my group.

One of them asked me what I was doing with my days and it got me thinking...

Because my weight has dropped a little, I am finding concentration very difficult. I am also spending vast amounts of time walking about, an anorexic 'behaviour' really.

Anyway, what follows is a list of some random information.

Currently reading: How The Light Gets In - A fantastic first novel by M.J Hyland who creates a complex and fascinating protagonist, a young exchange student whose troubled life leaves her desperate to both 'fit in' and 'escape' almost simultaneously.

A Purpose Driven Life (Rick Warren). My spiritual reading being almost zilch over the past year, I decided that the title of this popular book sounded like something the doctor might order. The two and a half chapters I've read so far, have confirmed this instinct.

Being True To Life (David Richo) - A random find on a rickety table outside a secondhand bookshop last weekend. The whole purpose of this book is to inspire the reader to write poetry. Flicking through, I was instantly captivated by the lines:

I'm too depressed

To write a poem

Yet here it is

Simple. Brilliant. Truth.

So far, I've only read the introduction.

Currently Listening To: The Avett Brothers - I And Love And You - Loving this album at the moment!

Fleet Foxes - Helplessness Blues -Quirky, choral, undoubtedly indebted to Simon and Garfunkel for inspired melodies.

Mumford and Sons - Sigh No More - What an Album!

Anything country, as per usual really.

Currently Watching: T.V series, The Apprentice (even though I hate Alan Sugar and the absolute unbridled arrogance of the contestants!)

Film - Mystic River, which I turned off halfway through cos my attention span is short right now.

Currently coveting: The Canon 430D SLR camera, although I have also looked at the Canon SX30 IS. I am passionate about photography and would love to take it up as a proper hobby. However, I am reluctant to 'rush' into anything at the moment and these cameras are very expensive.

Currently Enjoying Eating: Tesco Goulash Hearty Soup This is one very good low calorie meal if you halve it and add the odd new potato and salad! (Not that I should be doing low cal in a big way but...)

Currently Creating: Felt Flowers (er... yeah... I'm not sure either but hey... I have some time to spare between the hours of 4 and 6 most mornings).

My Recovery Project Scrapbook is still looking sparse (but not quite as sparse as my recovery itself - ho ho ho, tounge in cheek, hurts a bit to laug, etc etc...). I'm trying to complete a page about scales and numbers.

And there you have it. An assortment of trivia.

Anyone want to share in a similar fashion? Feel free to reply in comments.

And Speaking of Country... Sometimes music will reach what nothing else can.

Anything beyond work has felt very dark and frightening this week. I have been fighting to stay 'on my outside'.

I've been listening to Paul Brandt, a country favourite of mine. He has sung to me on every car journey I've made this week.
Very kind of him.

I'm posting one of many songs where I appreciate the sentiment but am uncertain about the theology. Nevertheless, it has helped to keep something in me alive and above water.

The song talks about how love will find us if we can just 'hold on'. This presents all sorts of, 'but shouldn't we take more responsibility and do the seaching rather than being pathetic and waiting to be found', thoughts in my head... But for just this week, I have had to ignore the questions and the disagreement and allow it to comfort me a little.

I used to know this love he sings about and a part of me knows it probably exists regardless of me and how I feel, but there was a time once where I felt it rather than just knew in my head.

From the album 'Risk', Paul Brandt singing a cover of Nordeman's song Hold On.

And I am...

He will find you when you've called in all your favours
He will meet you at the bridges highest ledge

So baby don't look down
It's a long way
The sun'll come around to a new day

So hold on
Love will find you
Hold on
He's right behind you now
Just turn around and love will find you

Country Music and Me!

My old sound system certainly wouldn't have won any awards in a Stereo Beauty Contest.
A black and silver Panasonic monstrosity, it was the kind of thing that even looked incongruous in the 80's, despite being designed then! You get the picture right?

However ugly, I remember that stereo because it was my first encounter with country music.

There was a channel which I used to find when I turned the tuning knob by painstakingly tiny degrees, often all the way up the red line and then all the way back down again, until I found something that sounded like country!
I don't know what the channel or the program was, but when I first heard the music, something in me simultneously leapt up and lay down, with the happy comfort of a joyful reunion. Somehow I was 'found' by country music. It made sense of something innate but unknown and it still does that.

Ok... so country doesn't get you a lot of street cred around here and it's just not cool for someone my age, though perhaps now I'm getting on a bit it will become more accepetable! Either way, I'm coming out of the genre closet and admitting to my passion for all things country! Big American trucks (for any Kendel Carson fans!) prairies, Stetson hats, ranches, the mid West, Nashville, guitars on backs, boots, harps, checked shirts, pick up trucks... Admittedly, my American Dream isn't quite the traditional one but...
(We've all got to have a dream though right? One day I'll...)

Country music gets a raw deal. It is stereotyped and ridiculed mercilessly by most people under the age of 30 and although it has made some appearances in the mainstream charts in recent years (think Shania Twain and, more recently, Taylor Swift) it is still the butt of most music jokes - You've all heard the one about what happens when you play a country record backwards...)
Bizarrely, it has even been suggested that country music is somewhat dangerous inasmuch as there have been studies which have tried to prove a correlation between listening to country music and suicide! (Steven Stack and Jim Gundlach were the men responsible for this strange idea!)

I don't think there is a way to describe it, but country often picks me up from the grey and places me on a sunbeaten dirt track with the smell of hot grasses and the sense that the world is bigger and wider and more beautiful than I can see right now.

Perhaps it's the spirituality that seems to be carried up the roots and into the core of country, I'm not sure, but it's my kind of music and in some strange way, it gives me hope like nothing else on earth.
Country music lacks pretension. It's real... about real life and real people. It is a lot about love and relationships. God, working hard, drinking hard and family life are all themes and they are written honestly and without ambiguity.
I like the way that country takes a little of our secret hopes and our inner values and makes them real.

I love it that Dierks Bentley once said that "country music has always been the best shrink that fifteen bucks can buy" (!!) because it sums it up so beautifully! Country music ministers to the broken parts and advises the longings. It will sit with your grief and pain but it will also offer light and hope. It's message is that no matter how bad it gets, you will make it in the end.