Whole lotta love

Driving back from a whirlwind trip home to drop my father off tonight, I plugged in my ipod and scrolled through, searching for someting I hadn't listened to in a while. Lo and behold, I stumbled across the Dawson's Creek soundtrack (I know, that show...but the music was good). It was a toss-up between that and the hilarity of bopping along to a Kylie/Madonna mix, which I just didn't think was safe given the rain and fog.
So I pressed play and rediscovered this song by Sixpence None the Richer. I loved this song. I still love this song. It's sweet without being mushy. And it's love at it's simplest - kiss me and the world explodes with music and song, just like in a Disney movie.
I also kinda love what Leigh Nash is wearing in the songclip. That sweet and girly dress with the punky boots! And her voice is just lovely.
Hmm...Seems there's a lotta love going on in this post.

When I linger no longer

It would seem to most quite morbid to think about your own death in detail. In particular, to prepare arrangements for your funeral when you're perfectly healthy. But it's something that has always been on my mind, and something I think is actually quite important.
As a kid I was surrounded by death quite a bit. My childhood home was right next to the town cemetry, so my brother and I would spend afternoons and weekends wandering the graves, making up life stories for the brave soldiers, beloved grandparents, and sweet children 'sleeping' next door.
But it wasn't just the neighbours that kept death in the forefront of my mind. My family has long had a history of illness - my nanna had breast cancer and suffered a number of strokes, my granddad was run over by a tractor and suffered mental illness, my mother has been pronounced clinically dead on 8 separate occassions - meaning we frequented hospitals quite often as kids. As a result the fickleness and fragility of life was never something I was shielded from.
I watched as my mother suffered through heart and brain surgery, as her best friend fought off breast, throat, lung, skin and finally bone cancer, as my nanna spent the last month of her life in a medical coma after a severe stroke. And then I stood by as, one by one, we buried each of my grandparents, boxing up their lives as though they were a theatre production that had run its course.
The thing that stuck in my mind, even at thirteen, was the agony, the distraught emptyness that seemed to hang in the air as my mother chose hymns for the funeral, or my uncle struggled to write a eulogy that could honour my Granddad when all he wanted was to have him back.
Funerals hurt. That doesn't really need to be said. But the thing is we - living, thriving, breathing human beings - avoid that pain until it hits us, or our loved ones, square in the face. I don't want that. I don't want that for my husband, or my children, or (God forbid) my parents. So I've planned my funeral as I'd plan any other event in my life. I know that I want to be cremated, and that I want my funeral in the early evening. I am adamant that Amazing Grace would be the absolute worst choice for my funeral song ever. Instead, I'd like something that celebrates the people who have come to see me off. That thanks them, and offers them joy and peace. And, most importantly, something I would have listened to myself, if it were them and not me no longer here.
I heard The Parting Glass the other night while watching some late-night TV. The gent singing is Luke Macfarlane whos voice, I think, makes this version more beautiful and haunting than any other I could find. I knew immediately that this was the song I would like playing as I say my final goodbyes. It is sad, true, but it speaks of a full life and bequests love and joy to those remaining.
I will smile from whereever I end up to know my life is toasted with a good whiskey, a smile, and this song:

Freefalling

Last night a gentleman took me to heaven. With his hands and mouth he comforted, caressed, and thrilled me for hours. The gentleman was John Mayer. And no, (sadly) I did not sleep with him.
My friend Vodka and I were lucky enough to score front row (!) tickets to his Brisbane Concert. I'm not sure who was more excited, although I would suggest she would be considered more of a die-hard fan - she could guess the song simply by seeing which guitar he picked up! That said by the end of the night I had rekindled my love affair with John (yes, we are on first name basis - he looked at me dammit!), and only wish he was playing again tonight.
Yes, the media have given him a grilling lately, and he may not have the glitz and showiness of say Pink but, putting that aside I would suggest he gives good gig. In fact, the best of gig. His fingers move across the guitar like he is caressing a woman, and (save a tragic drop at the end) Mr Mayer moves around the stage with such ownership of the moment you can't take your eyes from him. And then he sings. Wow. I've spent many an hour trying to come up with the words to aptly describe his voice but, truth to tell, it's impossible. There's a smoothness there that lulls and calms you, and yet an underlying raspiness that's all sex and badness. It's good and evil perfectly combined. It makes it easy to see why the girls love him.
Now of course this magic, while almost totally John-created, also comes in part from his fantastic band. They were brilliant! And I have to give a shoutout to Robbie simply because he looks so very much like one Harold Bishop from Ramsay Street (of Neighbours soap fame, for all you non Aussies and Brits).
We drove home, V and I, thoroughly exhausted and exquisitely content. Best. Night. Ever.
And now, some photo love courtesy of Miss V. He's a bit of a looker.