This month’s full moon music video, “Wanderlust,” was written in 2009 and was on my 2014 release, It’s About Time. This live version with some great musician friends is from 2012, recorded in the Waterwitch Cathedral studio, where Brian and I live and make music. Musically, it’s unique amongst my songs in that it has an Eastern European feel to it. We’re rocking it, wailing from our souls.
The lyrics were inspired in part by learning the practice of Vipassana, a meditation technique that helps the practitioner 1. stop resisting and running away from pain and 2. stop clinging to and being addicted to pleasure. The technique involves deep and detailed observation of one’s own body. Sounds simple, but it’s not easy!
The idea is that these knee-jerk responses—clinging and aversion—to both pleasant and unpleasant aspects of being alive are what cause us the most immense and unrelenting suffering. Life hurts. Aging sucks. Reality is damn hard. We all suffer. But we make it so much worse for ourselves and others by being caught up in these patterns of resistance and addiction. This is the central insight the Buddha realized for himself and taught to others 2500 years ago.
As you probably know, there are many, many kinds of meditation. Vipassana meditation (from my understanding and experience) emphasizes the experiential and embodied aspects and is less about concepts or dogma. People from many backgrounds and religions and non-religions can and do practice Vipassana.
For me, the word “wanderlust” describes this itchy impulse to do anything but just sit still and observe what’s happening in my body before trying to change my present situation. Allowing discomfort (“dukkha”), whether physical or emotional or both, to just be there without trying immediately to “fix” it. Taking a breath. When I do this, I experience in my own body the truth that change is the only constant there is. That headache is not a permanent rock lodged in my head—it changes all the time when I simply observe it. And eventually, it melts away. I wish I could say I was a consummate meditator—I’m so not. But I still return to this practice and find it beneficial.
Nature often inspires me to write songs. And that moon! Fly me to it, send me down it’s moony river! For those of you into astrology, yep, I’m a Cancer, a moon child. Java Joe used to tease me endlessly because I’d only schedule gigs on a full moon in my early days of performing at his coffee house in Poway. Never ever on the waning moon. (Now I love the waning moon too and am happy to perform then!)
When the waning moon looks like a sideways eye in the sky, we call that the “Wanderlust Moon.” When it’s a little smile, we call it the “Cheshire Moon,” after another moon song of mine.
The line “listening for the bloom,” refers to synesthesia. To quote from the Cleveland Clinic: “Synesthesia is when your brain routes sensory information through multiple unrelated senses, causing you to experience more than one sense simultaneously. Some examples include tasting words or linking colors to numbers and letters.” Senses sometimes co-mingle for me when I’m in nature: tasting the sound of a river, seeing the gash of color in a raven’s call. Hearing the song of the Wanderlust moon, surrounded by clouds swirling like the scarves of dancers.
Reva Wittenberg sings vocals with me, in our groovy semi-matching outfits. Reva is gorgeous physically and musically in this video. Pure goddess. Although I could hear her, I really didn’t get to see her all the years we sang together, because she was beside me. So this was really fun for me to watch.
Our yogi maestro John Nasan is brilliant on the little guitar, cool as a cucumber and flamboyant as a dervish at the same time. Carl Dexter is tuned deep into some cosmic ray from another universe as he dreamily plucks the standup bass with typical artistry and precision. Brian shakes it up with the wooden egg that matches his bald head as he also sits before the console and engineers the sound. And I’m just in the moment, surrounded by these friends, singing this music that came to me from the Tuneyard. I have performed and recorded many times with each of these incredible musicians and beautiful humans, all who have their own original work as well. Happy to share this wonderful moment from 11 years ago with you all.
One thought as we move again into the rainy darkening time: we all have our stories about our lives and who we are. Our definitions, our identities, our trajectories told and shaped and polished many times. It can be scary and incredibly destabilizing to experience our self-concepts shaken to the core. When we realize that there really isn’t a “self” floating about in there at all! And everything is always changing, changing, changing.
But it can also be freeing to change our story. We humans need stories, but we can re-write our stories any time, or reclaim ancient stories. Stories are only there to help us move through life. When it’s time, shed the old, embrace the now. As the lyric goes, “no story’s carved in stone.”
When we went to Hawaii in May, I learned from a native Hawaiian that her people have a different name for every single phase of the moon. All twenty-eight days! When you see beyond and between “full,” “half,” and “crescent,” you also see constant change every night you gaze into the sky…even if the moon is hidden by clouds.
What I call the “Wanderlust Moon,” the “sideways, shining enchanted eye,” the Hawaiians call Ole Kūlua. I love that so much.
Would love to hear your thoughts about meditation, the music, changing your story or the moon in the comments!
Wanderlust
Inside the edges of the sky
Gypsy clouds surround the moon
Sideways shining enchanted eye
Sings stillness to the gloom
And you’re wondering which way to turn
And you’re listening for who you should trust
When you find the freedom from your
Wander wanderlust
Ya-ya….
Let it come in let it go
No story’s carved in stone
From the tip of your head to your toes
From your skin deep into your bones
And you’re checking in with how you feel
And you’re listening for the bloom
When the forest garden
Opens up its song to you
This is a great shot for this compelling song!
I love the sound and vibe of this song! You all play and sing so well together; I can tell that you are having fun!