Blue Moon Sessions

Yesterday at Pine View Dairy Farm, the back-to-school flavor of the month was peanut butter and jelly.  While it’s true I ate my strawberry ice cream without company since my kids are in school, I thought a blue moon flavor might be a better offering.

In August 2012 we'll have two full moons, the last one occurring today.

The blue moon to me is all about value.  In grocery store lingo it’s a lunar bogo (buy one get one).  It’s got me thinking about value in my life. I’m so inspired by the moon’s beneficence that I’m looking to song lyrics for a similar generosity of value.  But more on that later.

When I recall poems and songs about the moon, one poem really comes to mind. Some years past, my friend Susan, who is just as moved by words as I am, gave me a book of poems, 365 of them, to be exact.  The concept is that for each day of the Julian calendar, there’s a poem.  

Spoiler alert:  You just may fall in love with the Percy Bysshe Shelley poem for June 18, “To Jane: The Keen Stars Were Twinkling”:

Though the sound overpowers,
Sing again, with your dear voice revealing
A tone
Of some world far from ours,
Where music and moonlight and feeling
Are one.

The poem was inspired by Shelley’s infatuation with a guitar-plucking housewife in Pisa named Jane. The lines about “music and moonlight and feeling” resonate with me during this month of the blue moon. 

I’ve made a point to spend some time with the moon this week, harvesting the magic. These blue moon sessions of mine include a patio and some candles and an iPOD. I’m listening to songs and recalling their meanings at the time they were popular (thinking about the acoustic memory) and comparing them to the lyrics’ current message for me, or really, how the song speaks to my life today.

These blue moon sessions have been rather purposeful:  I’m mining old favorite albums like Decade and Let It Bleed to look for lyrics that might suggest a second meaning at this juncture in my life.  I’m searching for songs that will render a blue moon acoustic memory.

A couple times I’ve run across a song that's inspired me to run in the house and play a song on my guitar (like Shelley’s Jane) when lyrics call to mind a newer meaning.

Aside from harvesting blue moon acoustic memories, this month's double dip of a full moon is a great time to contemplate intent.  If you could have something twice this month only, what would it be?

I am a lonely visitor/
I came too late to cause a stir/
Although I campaigned my whole life toward that goal/
I hardly slept the night you wept/
Our secret’s safe and still well kept/
Where even Richard Nixon has got soul.

“Campaigner” 
-Neil Young

Country Girl

Acoustic memories often come with a hankering, and since I just drove to Austin with my daugther in the car a few weeks back, those hankerings have been countrified.  Somehow the longing in my heart has shifted on the dial.

I’ve been bit by the bug--not a bed bug--a Country with a capital “C” bug. I was voted least likely to be bit by the country bug.  I cut my teeth on Stones and Faces (and Maker’s cause that’s how they handle the younguns in Kaintuck).  I aspired to become a rock guitarist (or a vet or a detective), not a country music fan. And don’t blame it on my parents: My dad only tuned to WTMT 620 for race results. I promise my dial was set to LRS-102 during the impressionable years, as the photo clearly shows. (Technically, this was Paul Neff's basement.)

How did it happen? Might be all the time I’ve been spending on farms in Lancaster County. Could be the windows were open while I drove through Nashville.  Blame it on the sound of eighteen wheelers infiltrating my dreams on the road. I could’ve caught it from Kelly Ford, the diva of country music DJs, at our high school reunion. Or maybe it’s emanating from the pearl snaps on my western shirt.

Maybe I’m evolving. Nah! Too late for that.

Cards on the table, here’s what was on my daughter’s iPod on the road trip that’s now on rotation in my head:

Jake Owen/ “Alone With You”

Luke Bryan/ “I Don’t Want This Night to End”

Eli Young Band/“Even If It Breaks Your Heart” 

Way back on the radio dial/

A fire got lit inside a bright eyed child/

Every note just wrapped around his soul/

From steel guitars to Memphis all the way to rock and roll.

“Even If It Breaks Your Heart”

-Will Hoge and Eric Paslay

She Wears It Well

I’ll admit I changed my Internet loading page to PBS NewsHour to get away from the mindless drivel of information that headlines on Yahoo.  Nonetheless, I find myself starved for some popular culture from time to time, and although I enjoy Jeffrey Brown’s segments, my diet is still deficient.

That’s why I found myself looking at an analysis of Kate Middleton’s spectator attire at the Olympics.  I’m happy to report I liked what I saw.  

What I didn’t see: toe cleavage, plunging necklines, tattoos, VPLs or even visible panties. Instead, I saw classic beauty in subtle wrappings.

I’m sure Kate would love to cut loose with some short shorts and peep-toe pumps, but I’m glad she’s promoting a demure, feminine image.

Now I can't get the song that mentions Madame Onassis out of my head.

But I ain't forgetting that you were once mine/

But I blew it without even tryin/

Now I'm eatin my heart out/

Tryin to get a letter through

“You Wear It Well”

Rod Stewart, Martin Quittenton