Miss Leslie

See Video From Norway

Go to my Facebook Page at http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Miss-Leslie/27567419855 to see video from my shows in Norway this week. . . .

Connecting

This is my 4^th trip overseas with my band. But my 6^th trip overseas. When I was 14 I went to Austria, Hungary and Romania with the Fort Worth Youth Orchestra. And in 2008 I went to China for my day job.  But one thing that has always struck me is that we are all so different but still the same.

I have very little idea of what anyone is saying. Of course, most everyone here speaks English, so communication is relatively easy. But my sets here are filled with my original material. I wonder how much of the lyrics anyone understands?

We played our first set yesterday at the festival. It went well for our first time playing together.  I performed as I usually do – putting my heart and soul out there. As a good friend once said, “Leslie sings every note she feels and feels every note she sings.”

And a woman at the front of the stage looked at her friend and put her hand on her heart. And I could tell that she was telling her that I felt what I was singing.

The thing is: we don’t have to speak the same language. We don’t have to have the same skin color. We don’t have to be of the same gender. We don’t have to have the same sexual orientation. We don’t have to have anything in common in order to connect.  But we do have to feel.

I understand ideologies. I understand “values” and “beliefs”. I understand “morality” as many people define it. But if we cannot feel, we cannot connect. And if we cannot connect, we lose our humanity. And our humanity is what allows us to see each other as smaller parts of a bigger whole. Through our humanity, we look at each other, not as adversaries or sinners or infidels or enemies, but as brothers and sisters and wives and husbands and sons and daughters. Our humanity allows us to see our similarities and not our differences. We see that we are made of skin, muscles, blood and bones. We hurt. We cry. We laugh. We are the same.

You have to forgive me. I think on these things as an extremist took 76 lives here in Norway. Regardless of whether he is certifiably insane or not, there is no doubt that at some point he lost his ability to feel for others.

In my opinion, this is why there are those of us that are drawn to live music – we long to connect to others. We feel and music helps us feel. And there are few things more powerful than a performer onstage feeling a song and having us feel the song with them.

Yes, teach your children values. Teach them ideologies. Teach them your myths that help them understand the world around them. But for God’s sake, teach them how to feel. Teach them music and poetry and art. Help them understand the human side of their spirit that allows us all to connect.

Because we need to connect.

Relief

I should be working. I have about 5 million things to do before I leave for England and Norway on Thursday and here I am writing. Hard to stop expression. I do it all the time, but sometimes I need to go with it.

For those of you outside of Texas, we are experiencing a severe drought.  I am starting to call this the “summer that everything died”.  I’m not a proponent of watering. I don’t have to have a lush green lawn. I’d rather not use up more natural resources. So my yard is brown. My plants are brown. I have a tree in the back yard that I think is dead.

A friend of mine stated to me a couple of weeks ago that she thinks that we are somehow absorbing the effects of the drought. She had a bunch of friends that were breaking up or had died. . . . I think there might be something to this theory, but maybe these are just the coincidences that we piece together when we feel the overwhelming power of Mother Nature.

I see it all more as signs and believe that signs and lessons are all around us to learn from. And today it rained. I sat on the porch working on my laptop while my toddler and 8 year old played on the front porch and watched the rain. I smelled it. I tasted it. I felt stray drops hitting my legs.

As I watched the ground drink as fast as it could, I was reminded that relief always comes. When we have reached our limit, when we are thirsty beyond dehydration, when we are hungry beyond starvation, relief comes.  I always tell my kids to remember during bad times that the good is right behind it.  I try to remember that myself, but it is difficult when you are enveloped in darkness. There’s nothing wrong with darkness. Not to sound obvious, but you just can’t see.  Everything that you know and understand is all around you – you just can’t see it.

There have been times that I have been envious of blind people.  If you have ever been around one, they do not have the same barriers that we do. They usually say exactly what they think. They don’t censor themselves. They don’t worry about what words will do to a facial expression. And they are much more sensitive. All of the other senses are much sharper to make up for the lack of sight. And they are used to the darkness. They feel, hear, taste and smell everything around them – they don’t need the light to understand that.  But for those of us that can see, we need relief from the darkness – that light to remind our eyes that everything we know is still there.

A friend of mine posted on Facebook that she was excited about seeing dark skies. I found it ironic. Funny how something that you normally view as negative can be positive?  Like my Dad's saying about "that's like water to a drowning man".  Doesn't it make you wonder how negative or positive things really are? That it depends on what your perspective is? 

And is it possible for us to learn from that and use that? Can we be in the middle of that "negativity" and really turn it into something positive simply by thinking of it differently? Can we sometimes view a storm as a good thing?

It didn’t rain very long and I know that it wasn’t enough. But for just a little while I was reminded of the goodness of dark skies and the hope that even a small relief will bring.

Just Because I'm a Woman (and Free Download)

I contacted a dancehall this week about the possibility of playing at their place. I was informed that female artists don’t do well in their COUNTY. If you’ve followed me at all the past several years, I’ve written about this before and harping on this topic is not the intent of this particular blog.

But I have to say it took me back. I was respectful and politically correct in my response. I informed the person that my particular belief is that the issue has to do with ARTISTS that are not well known in their area – that it does not have to do with an entire county having a problem with hearing women singers (I have no doubt that if Miranda Lambert or Taylor Swift held a concert at that dancehall, that the place would be packed). Regardless. . . .

I have an almost 12 year old daughter. She is on the verge of adolescence. And since we are in the year 2011, she deals with adolescent issues already. I, like all of the mothers who have gone on before me, struggle with how to guide her into womanhood. How do I help her accept herself for who she is? How do I guide her through a patriarchal world that I myself still struggle to understand?

I have a 15 month old daughter. She is the opposite contrast to her older sister. Her older sister has dark, chocolate brown eyes, brown hair and chestnut skin in the summertime. The baby is like a live version of your favorite baby doll from childhood – wide, bright, summer sky blue eyes and blonde curly hair that falls into her eyes. She loves every part of life – she doesn’t judge or worry about anything. She breathes in and out and smiles at just existing. She knows nothing about the worries that her older sister feels. She is who she is and feels completely free to be that. One day I will share with her the secrets that I have shared with her older sister, that I continue to struggle to understand myself.

I will explain that a woman’s body changes constantly throughout her life and that she should love herself no matter what stage she is at. I will remind her of how beautiful she is – and ask her to focus every day on a favorite part of her body and try to expand that list of favorite things about herself. I will inform her that uniqueness carries much more value in the world than most people ascribe to it. And I will tell her with all of my passion that she must be herself no matter what other people (even the people MOST close to her in her life) think.

I have learned a lot from my children, and, not being prejudiced, mostly from my daughters - maybe because they take me back to being a little girl. They remind me of the days when I didn’t have a care in the world – when I didn’t notice what I looked like or what I looked like through others’ eyes. I made up songs. I played with dolls. I sang as loud as I could in church. I was just me.

I have a rebellion that has been too long welling up inside of me. Although I’m very successful at conforming, I do not like it. I see beauty in every person – in every facet of humanity. I like variety of life – of music, of art, of people. I like myself. I like the music I write – whatever genre someone thinks it belongs in.

Growing up, I wished many times that I was a man. I noticed as a pre-adolescent and adolescent that men had more privileges than women (reminder here: I was a preacher’s daughter in a fundamentalist, highly conservative Christian denomination). I saw things that I could not do because I was a female.

What I’m saying is that I will tell my daughters to rejoice in their womanhood – no matter what that “holds them back” from. No matter what prejudice is made. No matter what they are assumed to be.

I’m glad I’m a woman.

In honor of the spirit of womanhood and being yourself, I'm sharing 2 things - one is a song I wrote called "Pretty Girl". Download it for free:

 Download 10 Pretty Girl.mp3 (10957.2K)

Lyrics:

What a beautiful girl you say , “She’s almost beaming.”
And you think because you’re friends, you know her feelings.
But does her smile hide those eyes full of longing
For more than beauty and something deeper than belonging?

 

Cause she’s just a pretty girl to you - nothing more could you see

Cause you can’t take the time to ask her if she’s broken or she’s lonely

Yes that pretty girl is beautiful but she has a lot to hide.

You think you know her well, but you can’t tell she’s dying inside.

 

When she walks into the room, she’s always laughing.

And that smile she wears so bright must mean she’s happy.

But if you could see inside her heart, you’d see a stranger.

So don’t judge someone you don’t know or give advice to try and change her.

 

Cause she’s just a pretty girl to you - nothing more could you see

Cause you can’t take the time to ask her if she’s broken or she’s lonely

Yes that pretty girl is beautiful but she has a lot to hide.
You think you know her well, but you can’t tell she’s dying inside

The other is a video of one of my favorite songs that Dolly Parton wrote. Yeah, the lyrics are dated, but it's got a beautiful melody and the spirit of the song has always captured me: