Softened By the Storm

 

Softened by the Storm (Listen on YouTube)

I am the ocean, I am the sea

Whatever comes unto us, ain’t up to you and me

 

Now all this time is passin

It’s such a wonder why

Yesterday’s love’s tomorrow’s heartbreak

Look me in the eye and deny?

 

We build our dreams upon the waves

Imaging for all our days, it’ll always remain the same

 

Hiding behind our shadows

Watching all the world go by

But when the sun has set, we wonder

What’s all this pain inside?

 

Let me put it all away

Smoke away another day

I’ll put it in a psychic cave

Maybe wine will guide my way.

 

Oh if I buy a new dress I’ll look my best

Throw another dollar in the treasure chest

Oh there’s something on my chest I just can’t confess

So I’ll stuff it down my throat with some candied bliss

 

Oh I gotta find the one who will tie the knot

If not at least someone who will cure my blocks

I gotta get off, get off get off, get off

Another swipe, and we’ll take off

 

Think we ain’t got the time

To ask these questions why

All we want is good times baby

Whatever maintains this high–

We’re so high.

 

But I know, this way of living

Ain’t got nothing to do with givin

So I’ll turn my mind away, I’ll turn my mind away

To a life worth livin.

 

I won’t deny the strife.

Won’t hide this pain inside

I’ll let death teach me life.

Ephemeral nature brings us life

 

Because we are softened by the storm

Thrashed and carved

We are softened by the storm

Thrashed and carved

We are stones upon the riverside

Cliffs hanging in time

We are stones upon the riverside

Cliffs hanging in time

 

And I know this time has gone far

And I know this world can be so hard

Let it soften all your scars

Let it open up your heart.

To a life worth living

 

And just know whatever light’s inside—that’s leading the way

It has something to say.

And it shows me, the proper way to be, the proper way to see

A life worth living.

 

Because we are softened by the storm

Thrashed and carved

We are softened by the storm

Thrashed and carved

We are stones upon the riverside

Cliffs hanging in time

We are stones upon the riverside

Cliffs hanging in time….

And I am– softened by the storm.

Eros Arrows: An Electro-Spoken Word; long and lost, and not forgotten

 

Written in a quiet northeastern town of Vermont in August 2013, the year of Eros.  Remastered and published 2016, the year of the Fire Monkey.

 

In-Joy

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we all know

how to fly

let us meet each other there.

From Ashes Soft Like Silk

A new era is beginning…

In Gratitude,

Always.

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So Merry

Life is alive and living!  Just competed in the Colorado Solo Artist Contest.  Unfortunately no winner here, however also no ending… only new beginnings are ripening.  Looking forward to finishing my first album in the beginning of next year.

Apologies friends, I’ve been neglecting my blog posts for quite some time and I’d like to share a little bit of what I’m working on in the vast stream of creative life.  Since arriving back home in Colorado I’ve had a lot of time to record and perform some of my song/stories from traveling… all the longing and romance, adventures, surprise, and inspiration.

Ah gosh… it’s funny how much we miss the road when we’re home and miss home when the road gets lonely.  As humans we look outside out experience so often.  I’m deeply thankful, however to have the time and space in life to be home with friends and family and to be able to spend a great amount of energy on creative ventures.  Still, I am looking forward to another adventure on the road next summer… with a new intention to tour and set up performance dates across the US and (?beyond?).

Anyone have any venue ideas?  I’m always happy to hear from people!  Check the right side bar for my contact information or comment below  😉

Much love to all,

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And hey!  If you’re in Colorado come to a show sometime.  I’ll be updating my website as soon as upcoming dates are solidified.    Sage Miller Project

So Merry Lyrics and Music by   Sage Miller

The Alchemy of Traveling Your Dreams

Wow it has been over a month since my last post.  It’s interesting that the last post I wrote had to do with commitment to the path you’re on.  Coincidentally, the last month and a half has been a wild adventure across the country… stemming simply from a dream I had one late Sunday night.

I dreamt I was walking through a lavish mansion with tall wide doors opening for me to enter.  Inside I heard my mom calling my name from the courtyard, so I followed her voice to find this vast garden in the interior of this castle-like mansion.  She was sitting on a lawn chair spread out beneath the sun holding an old school telephone (ya know, the kind with the dials).  She looked me in the face and said “they’re on the phone now, they’re calling.”

I looked at her with bewilderment, but without hesitance lifted the phone to my ear.  A woman’s voice was on the other end, and she asked, “Are you ready? Everything is there for you, in New York.  All the abundance in life is possible.  Are you ready to let go and fly?”

There was a sudden blink of silence as I thought to myself, how can this be… New York, me?  It’s not a place I really envision myself traveling too… at least not in the near future.  Then all those thoughts disappeared and an incredible lightness took over my body as I was lifted off the ground to float through the mansion out through the doors where the light was shinning in the most incredible gold colors across the widest blue sky.

The moment I awoke I had an inclination to listen very closely to that dream.  It seemed crazy, but I wanted to follow it.  I figured I had no job set in Colorado and my writing program was just about to end, and of course I had finances saved which helped.  I was in a weird place in life… I was extremely uncertain about what I wanted to do, whether I wanted to go to school or work whatever job I could find.  Ultimately I was at a cross roads.  I was so deeply entwined with creative energy after being engulfed by the Naropa Summer Writing Program that I could hardly imagine giving up 8hrs. a day to work as a waitress at a restaurant, or whatever it might have been.  I couldn’t bear myself to give in.

So without much hesitance… a couple weeks later I packed up a bag and a banjo and was set on an adventure across the county to discover what meaning this dream held.

And to my surprise, what abundance did it serve!  Nothing lavish or gold-filled… but massive amounts of inspiration, conversation, and rich experiences that could not have gone missed.  Experiences that were truly the experiential element of pure gold and rare jewels, riches of all kinds.

I bussed and trained across the country to find a city filled with seemingly infinite amounts of energy, art, and creative inspiration… took a train to Vermont on a whim and made some of the best friends I could have ever asked for by some synchronous occurrence, hitchhiked through New York to work at a surreal carnival in the middle of nowhere, and in all this time spent hours a day writing music and poetry, transforming my world from the inside out, and outside in.

And I’m an alchemist of sorts… believing your experiences both change and inform new experiences and opportunities in life.  Somehow all this novel outer experience, which I took into me very deeply through my art, had some way of carving out a direction I had not yet imagined.  After several days in Burlington, VT I called a friend back home to check in and just see how it was.  He was excited about a music production project he just initiated, and without hesitance, asked me to work for him.

This was not just some job though.  It was something different.  It was a creative calling… a job where I would be surrounded by music and creativity.  It’s exactly what I wanted.  The internal gold had manifest outside me.  So again… this time on the other side of the county, I jumped a train to find myself back where I started, except this time I was in a completely different state of mind.  I had changed internally.

I remember waking up one morning in Denver just after my return from travels.  I remember thinking… humh, it seemed like such a short adventure, almost like a dream of its own.  Life is not so different from dreams.  They are actually quite the same.  We just have to wake up inside it and consciously create the world we want to live in.

The whole world can change in an instant.  And so can we.

And I will leave you with an excellent quote by Lao Tzu (I have not traveled once in the past 5 years without carrying a copy of the Tao Te Ching).  As it is:

By letting it go it all gets done.

The world is won by those who let it go.

But when you try and try.

The world is beyond winning.

 

~~~

You have the power to transform your life.  What will you envision?  Then.  let go

love always,

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Commit

The last week of the Naropa Summer Writing Program has been a blast so far.  I’ve worked with some incredible artists, poets, and musicians with immense amount of creativity and inspiration to offer.  I’m so incredibly blessed to be able to share my gifts with these people.  This is one piece I was working on during the week and there’s plenty more to come.  Several new works can be found on my soundcloud at:

http://soundcloud.com/phoenixmusicbox

Much love and shine on,

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Moving Mountains: Faith and Loss

I wish you could look at me and see how much I love you.  I wish you could stare into my eyes and capture this bliss emanating from my heart, for you.  I wish you would remember me how I am, in admiration of your soul.  I wish you peace along your journey to the mountaintop.  Perhaps there, you will find what you’ve always been looking for.  Home.   

 

Two weeks ago I lost someone dear to my soul.  A family member who took his own life for reasons I’ll never fully understand.  When I try to peer into it, I find nothing but more questions… no answers to tell me where you wanted to go and why.

When I heard the words from Mimi, my grandmother, that my Uncle was gone I remember feeling my breath disappear for a moment.  I remember reaching my hand over my mouth as if to hold in the air and touch the feeling of loss and confusion.  Tears emerged from the corners of my eyes and for the first time I felt what it meant to lose someone.  Twenty-five years old and never a soul in my life had left me so tragically until that moment.

When I think about suicide, I remember times in my own life that were the most painful.  The struggle to stay alive pushed me to places I never thought I would venture.  Trenched within a shallow hole moments have lasted for lifetimes.  And still, moments could never span the space of eternity… I’ve yet to know the expanse of that stillness.

In that moment as I held my breath, my body was pointing to the experience… breathtlessness, stillness, eternity… completion.  It’s interesting that yogi’s practice the art of breath control, holding breath in and out, experiencing this state of stillness as if to prepare for the eternal moment: an oxymoron at best to our knowledge of the Great Unknown.  A breath, no air to breath, breathless but a breath (line from Hundredweight <-ф->).

What is left of Willy, is us.  We hold the memories of him and all other lost relatives and friends.  So it’s no wonder that each of us has our own method of dealing with grief.  I think it’s generous to share with one another how we cope with death and even illness of a loved one or in our self.  At the memorial last week I watched family members express their hurt in their own way.  Even if it went unsaid, as much conversation around death does, it certainly did not go unnoticed.  Some speak openly and directly, while others connect closely with those they trust most.  Still, some hold it inside and cope by reflecting and standing alone, or otherwise walking in the company of those they love, in remembrance of the joyous moments of living.

Even deeper, in those moments of silence and aloneness, we all reflect in our own way.  For myself, four days after the notice of his death, I was synchronously given the opportunity to climb a 14,000 ft. mountain called Mount of the Holy Cross.  At first I had not connected climbing a mountain to grieving with Willy’s passing, in fact I was uncertain I even wanted to hike in the emotional state I was in.  Then the answer became clear… the night before venturing to climb, I dreamt of my Uncle at the base of a tall mountain.  As I looked up toward it’s rising peak I could see the sun shinning down from the top, igniting a cross laid out in snow on the fierce climb up toward the summit.  It sparkled beneath the sun leading my eyes toward the peak as if luring me into its pointed crown.  I immediately rose to awakening and knew I had to climb.

A day later as we made our ascent, every footstep although my own, also became his.  When Iwas challenged and out of breath I thought of him and pushed to keep moving.  In a way, I thought about the taste suicide left on my tongue… just not finding the strength to go on.  There’s a storm brewing inside.  And on the outside, we could see it coming in through the clouds. ¾ of mile and 1,000 vertical ascent from the top I could feel it, and I knew this was where the journey

Moving to greet the base of the Mountain

would end.  As much as I hoped and prayed to reach the top and releases the ashes of my Uncle carved into my heart, as it was, this point was its home.  His home, for me.

Out of my pack I pulled out a picture of Willy that had been given to me the day he took his life.

Wilton Agatstein 1964

Auspicious.  Mimi had placed it in a pile of pictures I was taking home with me.  I wasn’t sure at the time why she placed it there, but at the time I felt there was a reason.

The reason was told in time, as I looked into the picture of the little boy smiling bright sitting next to a caged bird.  I thought about childhood.  I thought about innocence and perfection, joyousness and light… and then about the lines and wrinkles spread across the black and white print.  I thought about dying.  I thought about following those lines and making a paper airplane.  I felt like a kid, wondering how far it might fly.  I thought about freeing the bird inside his cage… the heart raging beneath his ribs.  My fingers held firmly to the picture, now an aeronautic design within my hands.  I stood gazing over the vast landscape of towering snow caped mountains, speaking to the wind and listening to hear it call back to me.  It calmed the fierce grip I held to the folded page, until I was ready to let the bird fly away.

In many shamanic traditions it is believed that our soul senses the sounds of the world before passing into the eternal realm.  It is our last sense of the living world to fade away.  There standing near the peak of the mountain, I listened more deeply as silence became clearer, my fingers softer, and all the while I knew a greater sense of freedom within and without.  I stood in that stillness, watching hearts fly into the distance.

Thank-you to all my family for their love and support in this time of our life… our hearts are connected to all those who are here in this world and the next.  And thank-you to my friends who walked with me to reached this place on the mountain.  As always, thank-you to the Great Wilderness that stands firm in our healing, our awakening, our connection, our forever home.

 

Much Love and Light

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Eternally Brilliant

Enjoy this new sound/word piece… after designing the track layers I was inspired to recite an improvised poem over the beat/sounds.  What you’re about to hear was not practiced or written beforehand… it simply came to be with trust and intention.  Goes to show… “Imagine what I would do if I could do all I can?”  -Sun Tzu… his words resonate through my life.  We can all do so much with our lives if we just believe we can.  Trust yourself!

~listen~enjoy~comment~subscribe~

love,

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Summertime

Exactly one year ago I wrote a post about birthing a new beginning… I believe I’m correct in saying, that a birthing has truly just begun.  As I wrote a year ago, I felt the years leading up until my 24th birthday were an exploration of my potential, as if I were a seeding in the ground soaking in all the elements of life… stretching out, sensing the energies of the earth and my body.  Just in the past year of life I’ve grown exponentially to become who I am today.  While the growth and exploration never ends, I suddenly feel thrilled, and perhaps slightly mystified at the fact I’m turning a 1/4 of a century this evening at 12:19am.  25.  Hummm… it’s kind of startling.  I keep wondering how it is I got here on this day.  Then I remember, and laugh with all the moments leading up to now.

Sitting here I’m smiling, knowing I’m moving into a new season of my life.  25 and moving into the summer of  life.  Summertime, the season of movement and activity, of blossoming, flourishing, abundance, and heat, passion and expansion.  Springtime is coming to a close for me, and the light is dawning upon a new wave of life.  The energies inside me are boiling as I’m just now feeling the movement of summer.  I know inside, that the past 25 years of life are transforming to take on this energy of moving into the world.  I call it the Era of Sharing, as in summer, the natural activity of life is vibrationally charged with community, sharing, and offering our passions to others.  I see the next couple decades of life being just that… a time to put my gifts into action.

I’m proud to be able to look back and know how much I’ve already shared with the world, and also very excited to see ahead, so much more to give, and show, and share.  Thank-you to everyone who has been a part of my life in all your different ways of being and sharing.  You are what makes my life so meaningful.  Without you, this passion inside me, would not be the same.

love to you always,

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e(in)ternally

Together we are eternally brilliant

Body and Spirit in a radiant matrix-of-mind.

We weave together in seamless time

to experience “this” moment

we call home.

A fire in the hearth warms this flesh

awakens this soul

heals the cuts between—

transmutational interlink

of two emulating halves

glowing iridescent blue thread

binding One

perfectly woven

human-being.

Special acknowledgement to my family who has survived the times to give this spirit a body to call home.