Robert Fripp + My Schizoid Loop

Robert Fripp, guitarist and founder of the group King Crimson was born on May 16, 1946 in Wimborne Minster in the United Kingdom. I’ve seen King Crimson in concert twice and the term PHENOMENAL doesn’t begin to do those concerts justice. Fripp has also famously played and collaborated with David Bowie, Peter Gabriel and Talking Heads, among others…. In his honor I am reprinting the post I wrote about feeling schizoid during the COVID-19 lockdown. – Jadi

Concert catelog from the second time I saw them!

King Crimson is infamous for a song named 21st Century Schizoid Man.

Cat’s foot iron claw
Neurosurgeons scream for more
At paranoia’s poison door
Twenty first century schizoid man

Blood rack, barbed wire
Politicians’ funeral pyre
Innocents raped with napalm fire
Twenty first century schizoid man

Death seed blind man’s greed
Poets starving, children bleed
Nothing he’s got he really needs
Twenty first century schizoid man

Songwriters: Robert Fripp/Michael Rex Giles/Greg Lake/Ian Mcdonald/ Peter John Sinfield. 21st Century Schizoid Man (2004 original master edition) lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group

That’s the opening soundtrack to days that are hard in lockdown. I’m fine most of the time. The sky is a blue I cannot remember ever seeing. Less pollution and few cars on the roads mean more and louder birds than before.

And I go for walks, and practice self-care. I love to cook, so that’s more than all right. I can take my time with elaborate recipes. Great way to channel my restlessness. Uwe and I live together in lockdown harmoniously most of the time.

Last night’s quiche

Some days, though,  I exist in a schizoid loop. I’m trapped in repeating cycles of WTF WTF WTF? Every couple of days I feel this: boom. I understand how we got to where we are right now. We’ve been pushing the envelope for decades. Why did we think we’d be exempt? Boom! But hard as I try, I cannot grasp how swiftly our world changed once that final roll of the cosmic dice was set in play.

We’ve been taken down by a virus, something you can’t even see without a microscope.

BOOM!

And fuck doing yoga, and meditating, and the crap version that’s all I can remember of the tai chi I learned from a Chinese man in my San Francisco neighborhood 40 years ago. What’s happening now overwhelms me. Forget trying to understand the point of view that claims we just need to get back to business as usual. That bullshit is literally killing us.

I gather myself back into a little ball and slowly unwind my cramped limbs and psyche. Writing helps more than anything. My first collection of short stories is taking shape as I try to deal with what’s happening. [1]

I have friends with health issues who  live in  deadly serious lockdown. A few weeks into the self-quarantine the radio station I listen to played It’s All Too Much, a song from the Yellow Submarine album.  I’ve always loved this song! The Beatles were a big part of life’s soundtrack for my entire family, including my parents when they were alive.

My friend and her husband are Beatles fans too, and they turned me onto Radio Paradise in the first place. I was all smiles that morning, such fond associations and sweet memories all around. I thought, Hey, I’m gonna call her, and she answered her cell phone with a really cheery “Hi there!”

I lost it. I burst into tears and couldn’t stop crying. She hung on and waited for me to be able to speak, because that’s what friends do, and at some point my  crying jag stopped just as abruptly as it began. “That was not my plan when I dialed your number!” I said. “That’s the first time this has happened to me since this crisis began. I have a feeling it won’t be the last.”

And we had a really good laugh. I’m learning how to be less careful with my emotional balance, I figure if I need to weep then bring it on, because on some days crying is the single response that even approaches appropriate. I haven’t broken down since, but when I’m out for a walk and I see a family with little children in the distance, I feel those tears. Or when I hear from people I know in my present life, or from my past. Or anywhere else on the globe.

WTF WTF WTF?? I’m a hot mess, and that’s as it should be. If I find myself crying again, I’ll be in good company.

When I look into your eyes, your love is there for me
And the more I go inside, the more there is to see

It’s all too much for me to take
The love that’s shining all around you
Everywhere, it’s what you make
For us to take, it’s all too much

Songwriter: George Harrison. It’s All Too Much lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

Stay safe everyone. Stay healthy.

NOTES: © Text Jadi Campbell 2020.  Previously published as My Schizoid Loop. Photos Uwe Hartmann 2020. To see Uwe’s photos and pics from our trips go to viewpics.de. Source: LyricFind [1] I finished that book: My short story collection The Trail Back Out was honored as 2021 IAN Book of the Year Award Short Story Collection Finalist for the Independent Author Network and with a Red Ribbon by the 2021 Wishing Shelf Book Awards of England. In addition, The Trail Back Out was an American Book Fest 2020 Best Book Award Finalist: Fiction Anthologies. The title story The Trail Back Out was longlisted for the 2021 ScreenCraft Cinematic Short Story Award. 

My other books are Broken In: A Novel in Stories, Tsunami Cowboys, and Grounded. Tsunami Cowboys was longlisted for the 2019 ScreenCraft Cinematic Book Award. Broken In: A Novel in Stories was a semifinalist for the international 2020 Hawk Mountain Short Story Collection Award from Hidden River Arts, and named a Finalist for Greece’s international 2021 Eyelands Book of the Year Award (Short Stories).

Click here for my author page to learn more about me and purchase my books.

My Imaginary Friends: #11 Elbow’s Song Real Life (Angel) + Today’s Birthday: Guy Edward John Garvey

Real Life (Angel) von Elbow bei Amazon Music - Amazon.de

Elbow’s lead singer Guy Edward John Garvey was born on March 6, 1974 in Bury (Greater Manchester), England. Mr. Garvey’s instruments include the guitar, harmonica, percussion, keyboards and, of course, his incredible voice. He also writes lyrics and presents on BBC 6 Music.

To me, one of the most heart-opening and heart-melting songs of the last decade is Elbow’s Real Life (Angel). I have been riveted by this song from the first time I heard it play on Radio Paradise – and Radio Paradise is hands-down the planet’s greatest indy, commerical-free, listener-supported radio station.

I know this is a lot of hyphenated hyperbole, but read the lyrics and listen to the song, and Guy Garvey’s voice will transport you to a better place.

The song: YouTube: Real Life (Angel) and The band: Elbow.co.uk

The lyrics: Real Life (Angel)
If you wake in the quake and the roll of the heartbroken
Pounding the ground in a sawn off ballet
Bring us in an indigo dawn with the lovelorn and renegade
You always found peace in the grip of the beat, darling
Time alone with the pounding of your heart
As it starts to heal you’ll find a better mirror in another
You have never known dumbfounded
So out of reach and hollowed through
Blue and white the light and sound surrounding
As the music pulls you through
And on that hallelujah morning
In the arms of new love, the peace that you feel’s real life
Go straight to the place where you first lost your balance
And find your feet with the people that you love
And bring us in an indigo dawn with the lovelorn and renegade
Yes you with the eyes ever met not forgotten
Get hold of the night that rises in your blood
Focus on your pulse, focus on your breath, know that we’re never far away
You have never known dumbfounded
So out of reach and hollowed through
Blue and white the light and sound surrounding
As the music pulls you through
And on that hallelujah morning
In the arms of new love, the peace that you feel’s real life
Angel
Angel
Angel
Angel
You with the eyes ever met not forgotten
You with the arms for the lonely whoever
You with the laugh that could bring down a tenement
Talking your way through the heart of the citadel
Up on the tables, or shouldering strangers, or
Under my arms we add to the waterfall
My little sister with brothers in common
You never need fear a thing in this world while
I have a breath in me, blood in my veins
You never need fear thing in this world while
I have a breath in me, blood in my veins
You never need fear a thing in this blue world
You have never known dumbfounded
So out of reach and hollowed through
Blue and white the light and sound surrounding
As the music pulls you through
And on that hallelujah morning
In the arms of new love, the peace that you feel’s real life
Angel
Angel
Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: Craig Lee Potter / Guy Edward John Garvey / Mark Potter / Peter James Turner / Richard Barry Jupp
Real Life (Angel) lyrics © Warner Chappell Music, Inc

 

My second book Tsunami Cowboys contains a scene in which I needed to convey harmony, even a state of grace. I often listen to music playing as I write, and I was newly in love with this band. The solution came to me without needing to think about it… A character named Scott puts a CD on to play and the room is washed by the song Real Life (Angel). I knew that anyone reading my book and familiar with this song would know exactly what I wanted to say.

NOTES: From Elbow’s CD The Take Off and Landing of Everything, released in 2014. ©2021 Jadi Campbell. Uwe’s images from our trips and his photography may be viewed at viewpics.de. You’ll find the scene Thanksgiving in my book Tsunami Cowboys. Tsunami Cowboys was longlisted for the 2019 ScreenCraft Cinematic Book Award.

My books are Broken In: A Novel in Stories, Tsunami Cowboys, Grounded, and The Trail Back Out

Tsunami Cowboys was longlisted for the 2019 ScreenCraft Cinematic Book Award. The Trail Back Out was honored as 2021 IAN Book of the Year Award Short Story Collection Finalist for the Independent Author Network, and American Book Fest 2020 Best Book Award Finalist: Fiction Anthologies. The title story The Trail Back Out was longlisted for the 2021 ScreenCraft Cinematic Short Story Award. Broken In: A Novel in Stories was a semifinalist for the international 2020 Hawk Mountain Short Story Collection Award from Hidden River Arts, and named a Finalist for Greece’s international 2021 Eyelands Book of the Year Award (Short Stories).

Click here for my author page to learn more about me and purchase my books.

My Schizoid Loop

King Crimson is infamous for a song named 21st Century Schizoid Man.

Cat’s foot iron claw
Neurosurgeons scream for more
At paranoia’s poison door
Twenty first century schizoid man

Blood rack, barbed wire
Politicians’ funeral pyre
Innocents raped with napalm fire
Twenty first century schizoid man

Death seed blind man’s greed
Poets starving, children bleed
Nothing he’s got he really needs
Twenty first century schizoid man

Songwriters: Robert Fripp/Michael Rex Giles/Greg Lake/Ian Mcdonald/ Peter John Sinfield. 21st Century Schizoid Man (2004 original master edition) lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group

That’s the opening soundtrack to days that are hard in lockdown. I’m fine most of the time. The sky is a blue I cannot remember ever seeing. Less pollution and few cars on the roads mean more and louder birds than before.

And I go for walks, and practice self-care. I love to cook, so that’s more than all right. I can take my time with elaborate recipes. Great way to channel my restlessness. Uwe and I live together in lockdown harmoniously most of the time.

Last night’s quiche

Some days, though,  I exist in a schizoid loop. I’m trapped in repeating cycles of WTF WTF WTF? Every couple of days I feel this: boom. I understand how we got to where we are right now. We’ve been pushing the envelope for decades. Why did we think we’d be exempt? Boom! But hard as I try, I cannot grasp how swiftly our world changed once that final roll of the cosmic dice was set in play.

We’ve been taken down by a virus, something you can’t even see without a microscope.

BOOM!

And fuck doing yoga, and meditating, and the crap version that’s all I can remember of the tai chi I learned from a Chinese man in my San Francisco neighborhood 40 years ago. What’s happening now overwhelms me. Forget trying to understand the point of view that claims we just need to get back to business as usual. That bullshit is literally killing us.

I gather myself back into a little ball and slowly unwind my cramped limbs and psyche. Writing helps more than anything. My first collection of short stories is taking shape as I try to deal with what’s happening.

I have friends with health issues who  live in  deadly serious lockdown. A few weeks into the self-quarantine the radio station I listen to played It’s All Too Much, a song from the Yellow Submarine album.  I’ve always loved this song! The Beatles were a big part of life’s soundtrack for my entire family, including my parents when they were alive.

My friend and her husband are Beatles fans too, and they turned me onto Radio Paradise in the first place. I was all smiles that morning, such fond associations and sweet memories all around. I thought, Hey, I’m gonna call her, and she answered her cell phone with a really cheery “Hi there!”

I lost it. I burst into tears and couldn’t stop crying. She hung on and waited for me to be able to speak, because that’s what friends do, and at some point my  crying jag stopped just as abruptly as it began. “That was not my plan when I dialed your number!” I said. “That’s the first time this has happened to me since this crisis began. I have a feeling it won’t be the last.”

And we had a really good laugh. I’m learning how to be less careful with my emotional balance, I figure if I need to weep then bring it on, because on some days crying is the single response that even approaches appropriate. I haven’t broken down since, but when I’m out for a walk and I see a family with little children in the distance, I feel those tears. Or when I hear from people I know in my present life, or from my past. Or anywhere else on the globe.

WTF WTF WTF?? I’m a hot mess, and that’s as it should be. If I find myself crying again, I’ll be in good company.

When I look into your eyes, your love is there for me
And the more I go inside, the more there is to see

It’s all too much for me to take
The love that’s shining all around you
Everywhere, it’s what you make
For us to take, it’s all too much

Songwriter: George Harrison. It’s All Too Much lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

Stay safe everyone. Stay healthy.

NOTES: © Text Jadi Campbell 2020.  © Photos Uwe Hartmann 2020. To see Uwe’s photos and pics from our trips go to viewpics.de. Source: LyricFind

SPECIAL NOTE: If you try to comment in the wordpress.com reader and get the message “Sorry – there was a problem posting your comment”, click on the title of this post to get to jadicampbell.com and post your comment there. Sorry for the ongoing problem.

Click here for my author page to learn more about me and purchase my books.

The Seeds of Summer

The sun occasionally shines. But the air has a nip today, the wind gusts, and clouds traverse watery blue skies. (In my head the entire cast of A Game of Thrones mutters, “Winter is coming ….”)

Summer’s about to end. I still hear crickets at night outside our windows, but how much longer? When their voices (legs?) go silent, it’s the final signal that autumn is taking over.

Autumn is a beautiful time of year. We went to the Stuttgarter Weindorf last weekend, the annual Wine Village. My meal included sauerkraut (a food I’ve come to love only since living in Germany) and homemade spätzle, the egg noodles that are a specialty of Baden-Württemberg. For dessert I ordered a plum tart, Zwetschgenkuchen. Uwe agreed with me: the Weindorf version tasted like Mama’s. My mother-in-law baked it often, with plums from the fruit trees in their yard. And there it was, a sense of nostalgia.

I’m listening to Radio Paradise as I write this post. They play Jackson Browne’s For a Dancer, from his 1974 album Late for the Sky. Lyrics and melody from long ago weave into this afternoon.

Coins harvested from a money plant and 3 sand dollars

One of my last acts before returning to Germany from the USA two weeks ago was to harvest coins from the money plants in a friend’s garden. I love this description of money plants: “Also known as Honesty, of the genus Lunaria, silver dollar plants are named for their fruit, with pods dry to flat silverish discs about the size of — you guessed it! — silver dollars. They hail from Europe and were one of the first flowers grown in the dooryard gardens of the New World for their pods and edible roots.” [1] I’m harvesting fruit from American plants that were originally European flowers. I myself am a strange kind of transplant, with roots in both places now.

The coins of the flowers are tissue-thin, each containing several dark seeds. I’ll plant them in pots for my balcony, come springtime. What will grow? Will their seeds take root? But I like the uncertainty. These are the seeds of summer, and even as summer dies (don’t forget: “Winter is coming!…”) in them is a chance to grow something new. Numerous chances, actually.

As we enjoy summer’s bounty, reaping what was sown, it’s comforting to know they’ll carry over into seasons to come.

May your summer seeds bloom anew.

NOTES: © Jadi Campbell 2017. [1] www.gardeningknowhow.com

Click here for my author page to learn more about my books and me.

One Versatile-ly Lovely Blog. Two Awards.

Holy Moly. In the space of a month I’ve been nominated for not one but two blogger awards: The Versatile Blogger Award and One Lovely Blog Award. Why doesn’t every year begin this way?

The rules: Thank the person who nominated you. Share 7 things about yourself. Nominate 15 bloggers. Notify the nominees. Put the logo of the award on your blog.

The wonderful blogs that nominated me are http://julianaleewriter.com/ (Versatile Blogger) and http://joeyfullystated.wordpress.com/ (One Lovely Blog). Juliana and Joey, thank you. Both of you rock.

With a nod to Vanity Fair, here are 7 facts about me.

  1. State of mind: Blissful. I was presented with 2 awards!
  2. Next move: Back to the drawing board. Oh, heck: I can’t draw. Back to the laptop key board.
  3. Listening to: http://www.radioparadise.com  Nancy over at Laughing Maus  — who is also a member of my writers’ circle here – turned me on to this commercial free, listener supported indie station. They play an amazingly eclectic mix of music. Check it out (you’ll thank me later).
  4. Trait I most admire in others: Grace under pressure.
  5. Trait I find saddest: Fear of change. Unwillingness to admit a mistake. I know that’s two traits, but I can’t decide between them.
  6. Weirdest personal trait: About two years ago, I began to wake throughout the night while dreaming. I can recall every dream in vivid detail.
  7. Current physical condition: Tired. I was up all night dreaming.

My Versatile Blogger Award nominations go to:

  1. http://aprayerlikegravity.wordpress.com
  2. http://bluefishway.com
  3. http://dreaminginarabic.wordpress.com
  4. http://gallivance.net
  5. http://ididnthavemyglasseson.com
  6. http://ironicmom.wordpress.com
  7. http://juliannevictoria.com
  8. http://journeysofthefabulist.wordpress.com
  9. http://laughingmaus.com/
  10. http://randomactsofwriting.wordpress.com
  11. http://suellewellyn2011.wordpress.com/
  12. http://tonningsen.wordpress.com
  13. http://thewritingwaters.wordpress.com/
  14. http://valeriedavies.com
  15. http://the-tin-man.com/

onelovelyblog

:

My One Lovely Blog Award nominations go to:

  1. http://barbtaub.com/
  2. http://arranqhenderson.com
  3. http://athingforwordsjahesch.wordpress.com
  4. http://bethannchiles.com
  5. http://www.bloodfaces.com/
  6. http://codymccullough.wordpress.com/
  7. http://honeydidyouseethat.wordpress.com
  8. http://iamforchange.wordpress.com
  9. http://intothebardo.wordpress.com
  10. http://mylinesmylife.blogspot.de/
  11. http://ramblingwoods.com
  12. http://raysharp.wordpress.com
  13. http://thewhyaboutthis.com
  14. http://travel-stained.com
  15. http://unpackedwriter.com

The rules for both awards are the same. You can view them here: http://versatilebloggeraward.wordpress.com/vba-rules/

But really all my nominees could accept either – or both – as many have been nominated numerous times (for either. Or both.) They’re all terrific.

Now if you don’t mind, I need to go turn up Radio Paradise!

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