I love music. I don't own a television - music (live and recorded), theatre (not kino), and literature make my life wonderful in so many ways. So I'm going to start sharing things here that might add something to your life. Maybe it's joy, maybe a new feeling, or maybe just a moment in the moment. Or just something to dance to... and if that's not enough, step back from your life and think things over.

I'll update this once in a while, when I have some of that "Free Time" stuff I've heard about. It's a bit of a pain to find the youtube or other link that works, has quality, and might still work a week after I link it. A lot of my international stuff won't play from the USA, for instance, and vice versa.

Oh wow - 2012-05-01 "May Day" - Nitetrax just posted an awesome mix of lots of old Prince and, my friends. I love Prince, if you can't dance to his music you need to check your priorities in life. Sorry - that's just how it is <snap>.

Songs about life. Messages from places and people who have perspectives that make me think, feel, and maybe understand.

• Loreena McKennitt - We all have them. "The Dark Night of the Soul."
• Afro Celt Sound System - "When You're Falling."
• Talking Heads - "Don't Worry About the Government"
• Whitney Houston - Of course. I miss her. "The Greatest Love" and I wish she could have gotten there herself. This world is a little bit darker without her.
• Frank Ocean - I can't find a good link for "I Miss You."
• Concrete Blonde - Yeah. The LAPD. Back in the day, just corruptly evil. I don't know what they are like now, but they scared this white boy too. "God is a Bullet."

Music you should know about. These are artists I've been introduced to, or found, or seen in my travels. They have talent, smarts, and vitality - and they will make your life better.

• Bitter:Sweet - from my home in SoCal. Beautiful music, wonderful lyrics, this will put you in a better place. For "A Moment" .....
• The Foreign Exchange - "Maybe she'll dream of me?"
• The Lemon Bucket Orkestra - I don't even know the title of this song. Just buy all their albums, the world needs more gypsy funk punk marching bands.
• Regina Spektor - "Fidelity" is great, but all her stuff is great. Amazingly talented.
• Seeed - I love this cover of "The Tide is High."
• The Disposable Heroes of Hiphocracy - Telling it like it is. "Television, the drug of the nation." If you weren't listening to them back in the day, you should be now. Speaking truth.
• Raphael Saadiq - Come on, soul is always with us. "Good Man" is so smooth.
• Assemblage 23 - "Damaged" ... just play it.... I am merely a product of the life that I've lived.
• Miracles of Modern Science - so many things, "Eating Me Alive"
• MC 900ft Jesus - from a while back, totally brilliant. "The City Sleeps"

Songs about love. I'm a romantic in a lot of ways, and trying with this life to be both effective and authentic. So sometimes that is in tension, but sometimes it opens up new paths to a future that I couldn't have imagined without facing the contradictions. So here's a few songs that talk to my heart and to my mind. And if you think you are too old or too smart for love, I'm sorry.

• Jill Scott - I'll know I've found the life when I find a woman who loves this song as much as I do. So let's "Take a Long Walk."
• India Arie - what can I say? "Ready for love" comes from that place of mature longing that we only find when we are wise enough to give without concern for risk.
• Nneka - part of the African Diaspora, by way of Germany, where I was introduced to her through some odd coincidences. Here is "Love" for you.
• Evanescence - "Good Enough" is a very sweet song.
• Billie Holiday - "The Very Thought of You." Nobody has ever said it better.
• Divine Comedy - "The Perfect Lovesong" is what I want to have played at the reception if I ever marry again.
• Loreena McKennitt - "The Lady of Shallot" set to music. Perfectly. Heartbreaking.
• Knoxx - "Complete" tells it like it should be, proving men can talk true.