it's thanksgiving again in canada and all weekend i've been counting my blessings:
- beach walking and forest hiking-time in indian summer heat.
- silliness and antics with my adorable baby niece.
- hanging with family and friends at indulgent (and yummy) international thanksgiving dinners...
but that doesn't mean that life is all sunshine and stuffing...
i just found out i have rotoscoliosis which despite my chiropractor's frown, i am determined to reverse, along with bunions, fallen arches, dislocated knee, loose kneecaps and inverted hips. i should also have massive headaches, but i haven't gotten around to them yet as i've been busy working my spine into a corkscrew.
and yet, i feel fine. i'm actually thankful. a friend got me into her gym (lemme tell you even trainers i've been with weren't successful at it). another fitness consultant friend recommended chiro before working out (who woulda thought?). i have an amazing chiropractor in the family. and... i've got gwenyth paltrow's personal trainer's supa dupa exercise video so i can have some ballet-style fun.
all this to say: true thankfulness means being thankful for everything. not just the good but also the bad and ugly. the foundation of thankfulness is acceptance. accept it all. be grateful for it, all of it steers you forward. even if on fallen arches.
so carrying on the tradition of sly on thanksgiving, tonight's musical thank you gets a little funky. this is going on my gym rotation.
sly & the family stone - thank you (fallettinme be mice elf agin):
a little while ago k and i were indulging in a chocoholics' dream at SOMA, when suddenly i heard this. too funky. no doubt sly. the sultry basslines and horns backed up against sly's soulful voice floating over chocolate almost took me over the edge. when i got home the backup singers were still beckoning so i put it on and listened again. and again.
and when i listen, ev-ery-thing-in-side-me-is-mov-ing-to-this. ev-ery-thing. jangling bones held together by happy ligaments connected to those involuntarily twitching muscles and corpuscles... the jelly in my eyes, even.
so on the brink of american thanksgiving i present to you a funk track about being saved from the perils of addiction. and no! this does not mean i'm giving up chocolate, so please... keep it coming! i'd be ever so thankful for you being so thoughtful...
i'd recently spent several consecutive days studying with my reiki master. what seemed like magic was happening in real life.
one tough lesson was coming face to face with hard truth. tough.
and this woman knew how tough. marie "queenie" lyons - the lady who covered try me and fever knew that even fevers eventually break... as do hearts. it's all in that voice.
there are two things that make a voice penetrate our skin, tear through muscle, infiltrate our veins and reverberate deep inside our bones. one is sheer unadulterated joy. the other is soul-shattering pain. lyons sang both like a true blues-funk-soul-sister. she turned the pain of knowing even the darkest truths into something sublime.
my reiki master knows i try to move beyond highs and lows, but sometimes my bones ache for them. my veins need a hit. and that's when i listen to the lyons.
one day that will stay with me forever is stevie wonder opening the 30th anniversary montreal jazz festival.
after settling into our hotel, my friends and i arrived at mainstage around 3pm to nab some prime concert real estate. it was soundcheck and could hardly believe our ears as we approached the scene. stevie was rehearsing 'overjoyed' and 'higher ground'. then he greeted us with a robotic distortion: 'mont-re-al, ca-na-da' - everyone went wild.
our cell phone were no use so it was good to see folks interacting with each other rather than their crackberries and iphones. we met some really fun and interesting people and i even ran into an old uni friend. people started packing in. it got very hot, to the point we started removing our layers of clothing. hours went by talking, drinking, some people were smoking, my charming friend ky giving out his self-styled wonderlove t-shirts as we all groved to the dj pumping soul and r&b classics. more familiar faces. we enjoyed the company, the heat, the groove. everyone got into it. it was a good day.
when the rains came a multicoloured patchwork of umbrellas went up and our little group started dancing and singing, echoes rippling through the crowds nearby as we attracted attention and bemused smiles, nods and more singers... stevie was running late but we were having fun, the massive crowd doing the wave and singing 'my cherie amour' la-la-laaa-la-la-la's. we weren't gonna let a little wetness stop us.
when stevie finally came on stage, the clouds held their breath. the rain trickled off and stopped. the umbrellas came down and stevie declared that tonight we would to ignore the rumours and scandalous money-making media hype and dedicate the evening to celebrating the life and music of michael jackson. amen to that. then the band broke into "i can't help it", co-written by stevie and quincy jones for mj's 'off the wall' record. the 100,000+ crowd went nuts.
in fact, throughout the set, the pa system played mj tunes between performance pieces. and the entire place - including stevie and band - would just dance to them. a true and proper way to celebrate mj's music... not cover it, not sing over top of it, but to listen, to feel and to enjoy it. simply magical. mj's spirit was there with us that night, enjoying the moment with us too.
one highlight was when stevie decided they would "do it right" and play some jazz at the jazz fest! which included some miles davis and john coltrane - all done with the confidence of a team of musicians so tight and so good, to not only play soul and funk - alongside stevie - one minute, but then cover jazz masters with him the next.
another highlight - aisha morris - stevie's lovely daughter and one of his four back-up singers, who covered nat king cole's 'gonna laugh you right out of my life'. it the first time i heard the song and she gave me shivers.
and throughout the 2 1/2 hour concert, stevie might have had the most fun of us all. he played the harmonica, piano, he sang and danced and talked to us. a gifted musician and vocalist and a true lover of life, he cracked some jokes, asking the francophones in the crowd "voulez-vous coucher avec moi?"... stumbling at the beginning of a song, admitting in his good-natured laugh that forgot the words, then inviting the audience to sing middle eastern sounding vocal scales to a new track he's laying down... tough! the crowd had fun with it. and we danced and danced and danced and he gave us what we wanted to hear... (almost)!
as the show came to a close, light showers rained down over the crowd. they felt so good. a montage of mj tunes played out as all the musicians, backup singers and stevie himself came to the front of the stage. and everyone danced.
and then stevie said something that will always stay with me. he said: "if you have a big heart, love somebody. and if you have a really big heart, love everybody".
and with that, 15 minutes of glorious fireworks lit up the sky.
so for you my dears, here he is, jazzing it up and performing "higher ground" at the sound check we happened upon earlier that day:
taken from the compilation at the close of the century, available at steviewonder.net.
it's thanksgiving again in canada and all weekend i've been counting my blessings:
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