Thinking about connection ..  physical connection is just one kind, but spiritual connection is so powerful it doesn't even need the physical.

For example the intimacy in great music,  to be inside the artist's heart and mind. Sometimes they echo my own, before I even get there myself. The constant delight and amazement that they can DO that!  A soulmate.
And at the same time I'm perfectly happy never to meet them, to share them with the rest of the world.  If I saw them in a restaurant I probably wouldn't disturb them! That is part of the mystery, magic of music -  intimacy. The connection I believe is real, it just happens at another level.

Sometimes the connection is with someone with whom it's not easy. One person I know,  we clash like identical magnets that go crazy. Yet his soul is one of the purest I've ever seen,  still, like a clear deep pool.
Sometimes the connection is one way.  I have felt very strong soul connections with people who don't like me, their words never hurt.

 Sometimes the connection with a stranger - an author or an acquaintance is clearer than with loved ones. I feel a connection right now just writing this for someone, maybe you who may read this and feel in sync.

When people die or leave connection doesn't go away. My grandmothers are both real and in my heart as much today as when they were alive ten years ago. One of them I have come to understand much more since her death. ( had to grow up first)

When a deep connection is there the physical world can seem almost irrelevant.  Connection never fades.  At the deepest level I believe we are all connected only some of us don't know this yet.

Without peace and respect for our differences we have nothing. Proving who is 'right' and who is 'wrong', particularly between the faiths won't work to create a better world if people are angrily taking sides, still have an axe to grind.  At the deepest level there is no point to prove!
Actions work a million times better than words as an ambassador for any faith. When someone is aggressively trying to prove they are right, I wonder what they are afraid of. When someone is peaceful, humble, kind and strong, I love being around them and ask them all about their faith.

The marathon was on Sunday, hundreds of runners. I was watching, admiring them from my er,  twenty minute run.  One man had dropped out early and  was sitting alone under a tree in the park, looking overwhelmed, still wearing his number. For some reason I felt embarrassed on his behalf, that he had dropped out so early. I didn't say anything, kind of looked away, maybe to spare him embarrassment?
But then he was kind of laughing, like a huge weight off his shoulders.  Personally I hate races..  to me happiness is dropping OUT of races not trying to WIN them. I know a certain amount of competition is great, motivating.  But the 'burying the opposition' mentality makes me really uncomfortable. At university there were trumpet high note competitions (by the way nothing to do with music) . And studying classical music, the strict syllabus was like a strait jacket ..  I couldn't breathe.. just wanted to  break away, find my own voice, be free, create music, a different sound.  To me people are all just unique individuals. Great art and competing, for me they clash like art and money.
 I know nothing about this exhausted man under the tree. Maybe it got too hard. But  maybe he is a workaholic, has barely seen his family recently, had an epiphany, realised it's just some dumb race. That can be very freeing..  :)) Racing against yourself is brilliant, what hopefully the marathon runners are doing.  Winning the race is a triumph. But we are not all wired the same!!  Some of us work much better when we drop out of the race.

I love hotels, they don't have to be fancy, anything up from clean basic country motels is good. I love the neat rooms with the flat beds and the paper strip over the toilet seat and the bleachy bathrooms and the little soaps with the shell picture on them. And in the better hotels I love the hum of corporate.. is it solitude? or just loneliness? and all the beige, the deep bath, so many white towels and not a speck of dirt in the bathroom, just that hum. The cold enormous beds, always need an extra blanket, made tight like a sandwich, I love them,  and the high rise view of some strange city below. I love the thick curtains which need drycleaning but most of all I love about hotel rooms, no clutter!! They are a blank canvas.

Last weekend I went to my favourite pizza place where everything is always the same. But this time it was different.  A man arrived, dressed like a taxation officer, wheeling a karaoke machine!

I liked watching him set up. I liked his assurance, the way he plugged in a few leads, stood back, hitched his belt up, surveying the progress, no mucking around. The musical signs weren't good. But it still FELT good.  It felt like we were all in safe hands.

Then he pressed PLAY. Now I  don't know how to say it    - but after a certain amount of gigs there are particular things you come to dread and avoid, and over the next 45 minutes he happily embraced my whole list.

He sang theme from Titanic, Always on my Mind, Unchained Melody.. the backings  were tired, the saxophone sounds plastic versions of plastic saxophones.  He transported me straight to a country  Australian RSL Club, somewhere dark and cool, where there's hardly anybody around, just  the blazing afternoon outside, the mindless looping din of poker machines, somewhere beer soaked, where the carpet is sticky.

And I was HAPPY!  Beforehand we had been a disconnected roomful of strangers. Now people were smiling ..  at first ABOUT him, but truly in no time at all, WITH him. We were connected.

 It hit me again, the awesome power of live music,  even when it is a man and a karaoke machine. He still bravely exposed his heart and guts to a bunch of strangers.  It's amazing how live music can melt strangers and any  feelings of loneliness and make us warm inside.
  
Live poetry can get me the same way.   He reminded me of the real reason I love to perform. But also what an enormous privilege it is.
It was one of the happiest nights I can remember.

Yesterday from a cafe I saw an old man crossing a busy road with a frame. There were four lanes of oncoming traffic and he didn't look up once. Amazingly the cars were all stopping then a cyclist began directing traffic around him until he was safely across. A bit later I went around the corner and there he was, shuffling along. It turned out he had lost his wallet and I spent the next half hour retracing his tracks while he waited. Unfortunately it didn't turn up so after searching everywhere we had a coffee then walked back to his home.

Although he hadn't lost much money, he was mad. It wasn't the time to play optimist; he might have belted me about the head. I might have too in his shoes, which is why I'm sharing this next bit with you rather than him.

Wallet aside, he was very unhappy in general. He told me angrily he was 81 years old and his whole life was unlucky and always had been. That nobody had ever cared, he had nothing except his home and no-one to live for. He told me he had outlived his brother, nearly had his face blown off in two industrial accidents in the 60s, how once a friend had won the lottery and died three days later.

Yet in two hours I witnessed so many acts of compassion toward him it was astounding. At least a dozen total strangers came to offer genuine help. While he had been waiting for me someone else saw him and also went looking for his wallet. A neighbour gave him her number to call if he needed anything. When I went to pay for our coffee the cafe owner refused my money. He told me he himself had visited the man's home two weeks prior after noticing he wasn't around to see if he was ok. It turned out he had fallen but his niece was staying with him while his foot healed. Now he has a nurse checking in on him and a lady bringing his meals. Apart from his foot he is in good health.

So is he unlucky in life or or is he lucky? Is it bad luck to narrowly survive a major industrial accident unharmed or good luck? In the past I have seen too many people - myself included - using 'optimism' to convince themselves things are great when they're not. But I understand the importance of optimism now. It's a different thing altogether. That old man has all the evidence to prove no-one cares, yet all around is abundant proof that they do.

There is a beautiful spider, shiny and dangerous. Dangerous, but not evil. There is a big difference.

All around are its old webs, like deserted ghost towns, wrapped around branches, breaking off in the wind. In the undergrowth beneath its old conquests, forgotten carcass shells, lie rotting in the leaves.
They once meant everything. They mean nothing now. For today is a very special day. The spider has fallen in love again! This time it is different - the soulmate among soulmates.

To the naked eye it looks like nothing is happening - just a spider on a web, but the opposite is true. The spider is waiting out the exact moment when it will pounce. Meanwhile it is making a new home. Focused and silent, it weaves with all the precision of a machine. Every few moments it looks up from its weaving to check on the object of desire. Still there, across the way. It breaks the spider's heart to see one so trapped but it won't be long now, very soon they will begin new life together here.

There is no time to think about the fallout, the others, the trampled ones. Instead it thinks about all the ways it will show its love and undying possession, how it will stop at nothing to spoil and protect its new love. In every other random moment, raw desire is driving it crazy. The spider has never been more alive or beautiful than it is right now.

So in love is the spider that it never hears the rustling of the leaves above or feels the eerie stillness. For as it watches, so too the spider is now being watched, by the beady eye of a bird.

-------

Every song has a story behind it, and a story behind that. To hear 'Beautiful Spiders' and see the new album reviews, click this link: http://cdbaby.com/cd/egeyer2

Without passion and dreams we are nothing. Yet sometime between the ages eighteen and thirty most of us bury our passion. We do it irrespective of and way before we have families to support or any real excuse. I don't know why we decide it's time to 'grow up' and pick something sensible we only half enjoy to do for the rest of our lives.

I suspect it is possible to live out our lives without any true passion resurfacing. I tried to do that but the price is high. A life without passion is not a life, it is a life form, barely existing, like a snail that is drying out, stuck to a rock.

I believe that true passion, for dancing, for a country, for a person, for writing, for anything, is worth more than all the money in the world. Yet it is usually money and lifestyle that dreams are pushed aside for. That and pressure from others who wistfully pushed their own dreams aside.

But passion and dreams don't actually die. At best they lie dormant and leap out for the rest of our lives to haunt when we least expect it. I just watched the movie Flashdance. It may be soppy, but it is honest somehow, it literally drips with raw passion and he is right. When you give up your dream you die.

When we do the unique thing we are each born to do time ceases to exist. Our deepest dreams are inbuilt, timeless. There is no time in that place and no reason why we can follow our dreams at eighteen but not fifty eight. Our dreams are who we are. I truly believe that we become old only when we let go of passion and dreams.

I wonder why there are certain moments, music, art and books that stand out from the sea of great moments, music, books and art.
Every few years something comes along that is overwhelming - untouched and pure as a baby. It’s a reminder again why I chose this path in the first place.

I know how to be happy and how to find happiness in the strangest, simplest things, but here I mean those rare times when two seconds of music for example - just two seconds - can flood us with PURE BLISS , completely out of the blue. Have you ever had that happen?
It may be two notes on a guitar or a crystal clear lyric that suddenly feels like the answer to .. everything.. it is like the missing piece.

Almost nothing moves me to that degree. I can think of eight times in twenty years. One was a cartoon by Edward Gorey stuck up in a country shop window. It was weird and enchanting and pure, like medicine. Another is author Kate Grenville. I don’t know how, but her books are tapped into the core of my soul. And she arrives first, unearthing bits I haven’t yet gotten to. And a couple of Carmen McRae’s later albums, when she had given away being a perfectionist, a singer, even, when everything was stripped back to the raw story. There is a whole life in every line.


Some of these moments are whisper quiet, some creep up, some go pow! They have been triggers for the happiest, bravest decisions I ever made, and changed the course of my life.

Today I heard a snippet - a chord - in some music that four years ago shaped a direction I have since explored in my own music. The first time magic hasn’t gone away; out of the blue on an ordinary day I am in love again.