rise and shine sleepy jo(e)

Remember Herman’s Hermits? Me neither. They’re an English pop band from the early sixties. I wasn’t born until the late seventies, so yeah… (I’ll leave that one right there)…

Anyway, I’d never heard of them, but then my (ultra ridiculous) friend Joi sent me a clip of one of their songs the other day, with a small extract of the lyrics. I don’t know why she *actually* sent it, but it was a significant clip for me right at that moment. The lyrics are pretty straightforward. I’ve pasted them in below, along with a YouTube clip of a rather quirky Kenn Wingle singing the song…

So, let you and me be Joe (I’ll be Jo without the ‘e’ seeing as I already am), and then read the lyrics more symbolically rather than literally, and I reckon it’s a little kick up the rear we all need occasionally. It’s also a wickedly catchy little hook. Welcome to my earworm…

Rise and shine, sleepy Joe
Now’s the time, don’t you know
To get into a new kind of dream
You’ve been living alone
With no Bell telephone
And you don’t have a shirt that is clean.

You can rest your head
On the corner of your bed
You can watch the world go by
But you never gonna see
What the other people see
If you’re always gonna be a sleepy Joe.

Rise and shine, sleepy Joe
There are places to go
There are windows to clean on the way
You’ve got nothing to loose,
But the shine on your shoes
Do the best things you can every day.

You can get upset, at the way the people get
You can turn your back on the crowd
But you never gonna see
What is absolutely real
If you’re always gonna be a sleepy Joe.

Rise and shine, sleepy Joe
Now’s the time, don’t you know
To get into a new kind of dream
You’ve been living alone
With no Bell telephone
And you don’t have a shirt that is clean.

Rise and shine, sleepy Joe
There are places to go
There are windows to clean on the way
You’ve got nothing to loose,
But the shine on your shoes
Do the best things you can every day.

Rise, and shine; sleepy Joe…

favourite song lyrics (for now)

Sometimes, I put a song on repeat. For fifty billion and eleven hours. And I listen. Over and over and over again.

Because the music GETS at me. And the lyrics reach through my walls and literally INHABIT  me.

Often, a powerful song can heal parts of me. I can feel it working. Doing something deep in my soul. The other day I read that ‘healing’ songs for Aries(which is me) are songs in D sharp. I’m yet to test that theory. But if so, I’ll be living and listening in D sharp from now on!

This song is currently one of those that stills me…settles me… soothes me…

You could plant me like a tree beside a river
You could tangle me in soil and let my roots run wild
And I would blossom like a flower in the desert
But for now just let me cry

You could raise me like a banner in a battle
Put victory like a fire behind my shining eyes
And I would drift like falling snow over the embers
But for now just let me lie

Bind up these broken bones
Mercy bend and breathe me back to life
But not before you show me how to die

Set me like a star before the morning
Like a song that steals the darkness from a world asleep
And I’ll illuminate the path you’ve laid before me
But for now just let me be

So let me go like a leaf upon the water
Let me brave the wild currents flowing to the sea
And I will disappear into a deeper beauty
But for now just stay with me

Here’s my paraphrase: There will come a time that I will bloom, and fly, and fight in battle, and shine forth, but sometimes, and firstly, I just need space to BE… and to cry, and lie down, and to have someone just stay with me….

Thank you, A. A. for your beautiful lyrical expression… xx

you can hear more with your feet on the couch.

Yesterday afternoon, for four hours, I drank soda water from a wine glass. With my feet on a couch. And listened to GREAT music. And just chilled. I wrote, I read, I thought, I spoke(a little). But essentially,

I JUST CHILLED….

That’s right. No diving. No jumping. No emails. No laptop. No phone. No nothing.

And in my chilling-ness, at one stage Gillian Welch was singing forth to me gloriously.

AND I WAS ACTUALLY HEARING THE LYRICS.

Because I was chilling.

My theory is that you ‘hear’ more when your feet are on the couch. [And yes, that’s just a metaphor for being relaxed.] Having your feet up means you’re relaxed. You’re not heading off in a rush. You’ve slowed down a little. You’re ‘chilling’…

so you HEAR…

This was the first line of one of Gillian’s songs:

“There’s got to be a song left to sing, coz everybody can’t have thought of everything”

I love it. It’s true.

There’s something in each of us that is not thought of yet.
Sing it out.

xx

SING! (but maybe not a song of sixpence…)

I’ve been talking and thinking a lot about music, and singing, lately.

That’s not soooo unusual for me, although before I continue, I should inform you that my ‘default’ song(you know the song you just launch into unawares when you haven’t been listening to enough ‘current’ radio…) is actually “O Holy Night”.

I know.
It’s alarming, seeing as Christmas comes but once a year(see what I did there?) but it’s true. In February, June, August AND December, you’ll catch me singing “O Holy Night”.
I. DON’T. KNOW. WHY.
It just is what it is…

I’ve been thinking about singing so much that I even recently made Wednesdays ‘sing-all-your-words” day(and then promptly forgot to enforce my own rule and nobody sang anything today but hey…it’s the thought that counts right?)

Music evokes emotion, and memories, much like smells do…

I can hear The Carpenter’s “On the Top of the World” and I’m immediately transported to my childhood, forcing my younger brother to perform dance routines with me in the lounge room, and forcing my parents to watch and celebrate our amazing gifts of song and dance…

I can hear *insert name of band here* and I’m shaken up again, as a young high schooler, when my best friend’s older brother gassed himself in the family car listening to *said* band on repeat….

Kylie Minogue’s “Locomotion” gets me every time, and I’m fourteen, and SCREAMING with laughter as my friends and I dance around our holiday house in Cape Town….

Song-writers AMAZE me. They have an incredible ability to bring expression to things we often just have no idea how to verbalise at all… And strung along to a killer hook, we’re roped in for life. Literally.

Singing is FUN. Singing is GOOD FOR YOU.
TRULY. It awakens you. It makes you happy. Especially if you’re singing at the top of your lungs in the car as you hoon(at a responsible 100kms an hour) down the highway – preferably on a road trip to the beach with some of your best mates on the planet…

But don’t take MY word for it:
Suzanne Hanser is the chair(as an aside, I do feel for anyone who is a ‘chair’) of the music therapy department at Berklee College of Music. She says “Because singing is visceral, relating to, or affecting, our bodies, it can’t help but effect change”.

Studies have also linked singing with a lower heart rate, decreased blood pressure, and reduced stress, according to Patricia Preston-Roberts, a music therapist in New York. She uses song to help patients who suffer from a variety of psychological and physiological conditions. “Some people who have been traumatized often want to leave the physical

body, and using the voice helps ground them to their bodies. Singing also seems to block a lot of the neural pathways that pain travels through.”

Hmmm. Suddenly, mucking around with a song and a dance again sounds good to me!

One study conducted at the University of Frankfurt in Germany, found that people who sing(and not just professional singers) had higher levels of immunoglobulin A and cortisol – markers of enhanced immunity – after they sang than before. Just listening to music did not have the same effect as BEING ENGAGED IN the singing of the song…

Sounds to me much like life really.
BE ENGAGED.
LIVE.
Don’t just ‘listen’ to the music and let life pass you by…

SING!

Loud and proud. Off key or on. Whatever. However. Whenever. Just do it.

‘Open your mouth, and sing out your song. Life is short as the day is long.
Can’t leave you my body, but I’ll leave you a tune. This is my legacy. Cheers to you.’
Brooke Fraser.