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Give Me Mercy, was also called “Power of My Sin”…I had the honor of being interviewed by NPR with Bill Lichtenstein and also recording 2 songs, this being one of them.  This was written on the Roof of one of the first Virtual ‘Living Room’s” now known as Living Room #13

I was sitting with two friends in Second Life ™ and excused myself, logged off, wrote this song….shared it with them that night…

Give Me Mercy ( Power of my Sin)

in my life now, i have crumbled
i have fallen, face to the sky

i have stumbled, onto something
been forgiven, in the bottom of my sin

give me mercy…give me peaceful…
give me nothing, but the power of the rain
give me one love, give me freedom (thunder)
give me nothing, but the power of my sin

in my life now, i’ve been sober
i’ve been down and around, far too many times
been forsaken, i have risen
i have been face to the ground, wings to the sky

i will fall down, I will rise
i will go out of this world, right before your eyes
cuz i have been there, i have lived there
i will die there, in the power of my sin

Flower

Here is another insane idea, cuz ya know, I wouldn’t have any other kind.  Perhaps you’ll find it brilliant, perhaps you’ll find it a complete waste of time. No matter…here it is.  As I prepare for the final cuts on the new CD, I think, Why not post some of the other songs…from ‘RoadMap’  So here are the Lyrics to ‘Coffee Cup’ a song many of you have Never heard, because..um..er..I rarely perform this one, it’s old, it’s been buried and forgotten.  So it presents itself again, and Lyrically I ask you, dear readers…..Yes? No?  This album is for YOU, and why not give me your personal feedback?  Here goes:

The Fish

Coffee Cup – 1992, and written next to it, it says… ‘Songs on Tape’..yeah, it was that long ago!

There’s some coffee brewing in the kitchen, I think I’ll have a cup

Nurture my hung over thoughts, last night I had too much.

Too much of your pretty faces, telling me dirty lies

too much of your careless love, telling me goodbye.

….Sleepin is hard without you, by my side. I got used to you, being there when I….called your name.

There’s a sunny day turning cold outside, maybe I will, go back to bed

too little sleep and my achin head, I just couldn’t close my mind….I was calling your name

And I tossed and turned, just thinking you were there

and I squeezed my pillow tight, the morning came much too soon

and I barely remember the night….. and the day goes by

.There’s some coffee brewing in the kitchen, an empty cup, that bares your name

guess you won’t be drinking coffee, in the mornings here again…….

……Suzen

I’ve been crazy full of nonsense ideas, but of course those often turn into not so nonsense ideas…and then the break in the dam, just kind of happens.  The other day, I pulled out one of my WAY too many Books. I have a thing, for empty books, especially ones with amazing textured papers in them, where I can press that black ink down and doodle out the mental waves of my own insanity.

A friend once told me, “in order to help you focus, just draw out a word tree, start with one word, and write down what it reminds you of and etc…etc…” and in my mind, it was a HELL of a tree, and if you look really close at the branches of a tree, in mid winter, it’s like a giant RoadMap, the trunk, the branches, the smaller branches, the buds, the leaves, the texture of it all…the MANY ways you can sprout off in life.  There is always the Main Root, the Trunk, the Main Path….and then there are the other paths, and sometimes different things grow, on those other path’s.

palms of hands, viens in leaves, branches of trees, Roadmaps

SOOOOOOoooo, I’m drawing and words are flying through my head. Sketching words and pictures as fast as I can, smiling ear to ear to think of how funny it is, that I’ve been in a dry patch MAJOR for the past few months, and then I think, Nooooooo. I’ve been creating other things, like the Spine of this new CD.  I’ve so far, decided on about 20plus songs for this new cd. My Goal was to have 35, but that’s not necessarily necessary (haaa)… I don’t have to have a certain number of songs, I just have to make my point…that could be done in 3 songs.., or 7 or 40…it wouldn’t matter. What does matter, is the Theme, the Outcome.

In 1994, I ended a long term relationship I was in. I made a pact with my soul and my life…to follow my instinct, to do what is right, and to live a life that would only be, my music and I.  But life had other plans, and introduced me to my soulmate…I  became immersed in raising 4 awesome kids, and pretty much putting music on the backburner for about a decade.  When I finally picked up my guitar again, for the 2nd phase of my life, I had been introduced to Second Life ™ and once again, began the Pathway of music.  Much has happened during that time. Much has changed me since then too. Many challenges have crossed my Path and so many wonderful souls, have touched my life.

Now, here we are, going into the final countdown of 2009, the Holidays..the holidays..the HOLIDAYS (can’t wait til it’s all done!!!) and I’m faced with  a direction to take this CD.  Yeah I KNOW I said it would be ready by Mid November, but I’m learning that I can’t decide these things, IT Decides these things. Just like the SONG dictates itself, sometimes so do our choices…they all lead to a certain destination, we’ve learned this.  There are papers all over my studio floor, sketched with little drawings, confessions, stick people, words, ideas. There is a microphone waiting patiently for a new song, and it will always be patient. I’m the one who often loses Patience, heh!  It will finish itself soon, and your patience, is wonderful. Thanks for tuning into the shows, for showing up, for presenting yourselves, your stories, your confessions, your lives…with me, For you have all been an inspiration to the making of this CD as well.

Have a wonderful holiday season, and keep coming back…the C D is nearly finished, hitting the final phases of the backbone, the spine, and soon the body will form and it will be in your mailboxes, or itunes, or amazon…waiting for you to listen to it’s stories. Peace!

-Suzen JueL

After writing a bit yesterday, in the breaks of a long dry spell….lyrically, not much is happening, but I’m certainly not at a loss for words.  It kinda hit me out of nowhere. ‘Roadmap’.  RoadMap, is actually an old song, I wrote at a Crossroads in my life, one of those inevitable times of change, many years ago.  The song is about Acceptance, it’s about Inner Peace, it’s about letting the distractions of the world, out…so they no longer inhibit you, so you can do, what it is you are supposed to do, in this world, with your life.  I’ve been holding onto this song a lot lately, and it seems to have presented itself over and over in my life, either by the requests of another, who has heard it once (it’s not a song I did very often) or by a new listener, who asks “Will that be on a Cd?”…ok, yep…In fact, that’s what I’ve decided to Call the CD, or should I say, it’s what it seems to have SCREAMED at me…’SUZEN THIS IS YOUR TITLE!’, poof. Done.   The rest should fall right into place now.

I’ve decided that this is going to be quite a ‘history’ of a Cd, with a scale of about 15-20 years worth of songs, that have been dug out of my old song books, old memories, histories, stories, photographs, remembering, forgetting…  I’m not quite where I want to be, in the ‘book phase’ of my life, meaning….I want to write, and I will and I do, but it comes out in song, that’s how it presents itself most of the time, a few verses and there is the whole story, right there….WELL COME ON! So, I guess you can say, this CD is like a book, but with lyrics and poetry, not 400 pages or more of print. Each song is a place, each song has a face, a personality, a history, a memory, a need, a want, a picture, a voice. Each song has a story of a memory, a dream, an experience…and on occasion, the inspiration of another persons story, someone’s inspiration, someones persepctive, or a combination of thought, carried out thru the spirits that cross our paths, in life, our kindred spirits, brothers, sisters…family without the trace of family.

If that makes any sense to you, you are just as NUTS as I am…thankfully!  Back to the grind now….Roadmap, is closer to being finished than ever before.  I look forward to hearing your feedback on it, once it’s released. Much love to you all, much peace, and either I”ll see you in the Virtual, or the Real, either way…say hi

-Suzen JueL (Resistance)

Etched upon my Living Soul

There I was, in a group of about 12 people that I barely knew, having a late night snack at about 1AM at one of the best places in Appleton, Wi. to gather round a table and converse til early morning light. We loaded up on caffeine, smoked far too many cigarettes and continued to talk to one another, this ‘strange’ group of people.  I began to talk about an old friend that seemed to have disappear off the face of the earth, and a young man named ‘Bob’ who was sitting across from me, said “I know Greg!…I know where he’s living now as well!”  It turned out that Greg had decided to become ‘unavailable’ to the human population, by moving across the country with no known address, he wanted it this way.  He was an odd one, but then again, we all were, in some crazy way.  Bob and I continued to talk and he had mentioned he was heading back to Minneapolis in the morning.

FLASHBACK to 1988 when an uncontrollable urge had hit me, that I needed to move to Minneapolis. I truly had no idea why, I just knew, if the opportunity presented itself, and of course, when it’s in the cards, it will Always present itself. I recall telling my parents, “I HAVE to move to Minneapolis, I have to start something with my life, I have to play my music.  I remember being reminded of the typical things parents say “you need a job to go there! where will you stay?’…I didn’t know, I just knew I would do it.

Bob said “If you want to stay on my couch until you get a job and settled, we have the room!”  I went home, packed up a duffel bag of clothes, grabbed my guitar and wrote a note to my family, that I would be leaving in the morning to go to Minneapolis.  Of course they woke up EARLY and we had our goodbyes, tears in my eyes, my mother worried sick…my dad came up to me, as I was throwing my few belongings in the back of Bobs little tiny red car, and he put a 100$ in the palm of my hand. That was all I had. That was it. So on that beautiful Sept day, in 1989, I got into the car, and off we drove, a 6 hour drive to Minneapolis, MN.  I saw the buildings, my heart skipped, my whole body was filled with a roaming wonder, like thousands of ants inside me, crawling through my veins, it was as if I was vibrating with this connection, this chance, this opportunity to do something, I knew…I had to do, but I didn’t quite know why.

Everything that happened in the next few months, years and decades, was off pure gut instinct. I didn’t have to know why I was doing something…as long as I knew, I had to do it.  I quickly made numerous friends, and  had numerous jobs. It was near impossible to keep one, the roaming of my spirit took precedence over logic.  My guitar was my sanity. My instinct was my whole life. I began to play, quietly, at various cafe’s and coffee houses, slowly gathering a dedicated audience, and building off that over the next decade, gaining more and more recognition as a songwriter. Making music to sell, creating songs, writing constantly.  I wandered around Minneapolis for the next 10 years, with a guitar on my back and a notebook in my bag, writing and performing my way from one place to the next. That was my income. The 100$ my dad lovingly handed me was the most I would see in my hand at once, for a long time.  I didn’t often pay rent, and quickly went from sofa to sofa, cheap apartment to cheap apartment, paying rent as I could, and rarely ever making it on time.  My friends were generous with my passion and often offered a sandwich, maybe a pack of cigarettes, which seemed to last me a week back then. I didn’t own a car, and eventually didn’t own a guitar either….I had to sell it, because I needed to eat, I needed to contribute.  I would use a friends guitar, or some venue’s I played at, had one provided….and that’s how I lived, for as long as I could.  TALK ABOUT BEING IN TOP SHAPE, no car and at least 6 miles a day of constant movement.

Featured above…Jewel is the title of a song I wrote, when my grandpa JULE passed away of Alzheimers.  The “Erik” sketch, is one of my best friends I met when I moved to Minneapolis and his daughter Shay, when I had known him. He took his life at that time. He was a musician, artist and writer with a great spirit, and is missed dearly.  The photo that is colored, is one that was taken for the Without My Wings CD, and was taped to  the  cover of the songbook that I carried with me everywhere at that time. And the black and white photo is one after doing a little show in the backyard where I once lived…

I was fortunate to have a place to live most of the time, but not so fortunate with the people I would stay with.  I once lived in an attic, with floorboards missing and all the windows were broken. I paid 50.00 a month for this, I had visitors every night, 2 winged visitors that ate the mosquito’s and other insects that found there way into the attic. Bats literally brushed up against my face, I could feel a small wisp of a wing from time to time. Eventually this became soothing…it wasn’t me they wanted, thankfully!  It wasn’t my first encounter with these amazing creatures, since most of the places I stayed, weren’t what you would call “expensive and well kept.” I had left the man I lived with, after 2 years of a perfectly unstable relationship and fought every urge to go back no matter how ‘bad off’ i might have been.  He often came to my shows, standing in the door ways of the venues, watching me, begging me with his eyes.  It was all I could do to run back into that comfort zone of pure chaos. Nope. Done. Over.

After several months, many ghost stories and incredibly hot or cold nights in that attic, 11 room mates, 2 deaths and suicides later of dear friends I had lost, to their own world of drug overdoses, and suicides…We all got kicked out of the Large house that sheltered all 11 of us. The house was torn down…the guy that owned it had to give it up, because they were going to build a school there. He later died of a drug overdose…sadly…he wasn’t the only one.  I lived with these musicians and led a life of nothing but more chaos and instability just in order to survive.

To make a long story short. I’m still here…of course much has changed, but the one thing that hasn’t changed is the drive that I feel to do music, or create things that scream out at me, in the back of my head, to do.  I can’t avoid that, it would only bring misery…as I have ignored it once, and it’s a place I never want to go again…to push down the urge to write, will make a writer sick. To push down the urge to paint or create music, will make an artist sick. To push away your true passions in life…will make a person ill, in one way or another.  To not listen to your ‘calling in life’ will make you miserable, and you’ll always hear that voice in your soul, going WHY DIDN’T I DO______?  I can’t ignore that voice. I won’t regret living on couches and being poor, I won’t regret the calling of the Others in this world saying “YOU have to do THIS or THAT”…because I would be miserable to live the life of most, or what the world thinks…should be for everyone. NO thanks.  I won’t regret lost love….but I will regret, not doing what the Gut of my Spirit, tells me to do.  If it says GO, I Go, if it says stay, I stay. I would rather live a life in solitude doing what I love, than live a life of doing what the general population does and having a steady career in something I hate and have no love for what I do.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m crazy in love with my family, my husband and those that surround my soul, but people come and go, our love for what we do, will never leave us, we have this CRAZY CHOICE in our lives, to do this….or that….and we try to balance the world inside of us, we try to make sense of it.

During those many years of wandering from venue to coffee house  to sofa and even being homeless for a time, I gotta thank my friends, and you Know who you are, for the love, the clean sheets, the warm dinners, the many hugs, for getting me through such a Wonderful Era of my life. I was happy…because I did what I wanted to do.  Thank you.   During that time I recorded quite a few albums, but..back then, most were on ‘DAT’ files or Cassette.  When I created the first CD, thanks to Ben Youngdahl and those that contributed to “Without My Wings” it is now…..15 plus years after it’s release, is available on iTunes.  The second CD on iTunes, thanks to Ian Schwartz at Studio Zero Seven and iTRadio.com, it’s also available “Certain Kind of Mad”…on iTunes, and thanks to LOTS of patience and time, I’m recording this 3rd cd, on my own, and to be honest, I rather like it!

This takes me to the last topic, before I write a freakin NOVEL on here. The CD, I have 13 recorded songs on it so far. Those of you who bought the Limited Edition, have 5 of those songs.  I have the intention of making this 3rd CD to be released, a compilation of Years of songs…the ones that stood out, from when this story began, to know. That’s about 17 years into the vault, since 1992….there may even be a few from the 80′s…acoustic things I wrote when I was Soooooo Young. We’ll see about that part.   I’ve asked some of you for your input on this and realized that I should make a place, for those postings, if you are so inclined…..I would love your suggestions of what you would like to hear on this next release. Since I finally decided on a “Theme’ of old and new, revived, revamped, re done, re recorded, and the New Material as well’….Songs you may have heard me do over the years, that you have grown to love…what are they?

After speaking on the phone with my great friend Mary Ellen, we were discussing our stories, our similarities and this all came flooding to my mind, quickly. I said “I think that will be my Blog of the day..the Story”.  I’m not the best ‘story writer’ andn I sometimes forget so much only to remember it half way through and not knowing quite where to place it in the story.  What brought me to Minneapolis in the first place, what made my Gut scream? Well, I’ve seen Minneapolis before, but that’s a story for another time. And how did I meet these people that took my soul to Minneapolis? Another story for another time.  And all those details in between….well, to me that’s not just a short story anymore, that’s something on the backburner of mind…the place where I store the ‘other parts of my life’….cuz the pages add up, and it wouldn’t be a blog anymore, it would be an E Book.  There are many lives to one life, eh?

Thank you, for reading and allowing me to share, a few things.  I look forward, to hearing your suggestions wherever we may meet, in the Grid, on facebook, on twitter, through email….Thanks in advance, I am taking it all to heart and working on the final tracks of the CD as we speak.   Peace to all of you and much gratitude!

- Suzen JueL

Every day Gloria woke up and looked at herself in the bathroom mirror, taking notice of anything new that might have occurred while she slept, or at least she would try to sleep.  She took notice of the new feathers in her wings, and the ones that had fallen to the floor, and the lovely dances of the crows as they fluttered their wings against the edges of her eyes.  Every day Gloria awoke with a new sense of the day, new goals in her world, new things to work at achieving. Every day Gloria fell down, skinned her knees, tried to fly, stumbled and jogged through the world, kicking over the earth as she did, leaving small swirls of dust behind her.

Today Gloria woke up, going directly for the coffee cup, instead of the mirror. This wasn’t the kind of morning Gloria wanted to take notice of. Every detail would show, every cross would be turned, every line would be burned and etched into her surface and the blackbirds wouldn’t even notice, their wings would be distant, their sound would be haunting.  Etched across the hardwood floor there would be words in the grain of the wood, stained under her bare feet, deeply cut into the wood of what once, was a tree, what once grew in the earth, the way nothing else could, tall and steady, no matter how hard the wind blew.  Gloria’s wings were ruffled and messed, some were missing, the light had burned all hopes of ever getting close to it. The brilliance attracted her like white fluffy moths to a flame, only to find out, the light that lit the darkness was the same one that burned the ability to have the full freedom of flight…falling hard to the dirt on the floor…she had more strength than that, more strength then to give up and lie hopeless. She would just have to walk. It would just take longer….that’s all.  She sipped her coffee and watched the rain fall against the thin window pane, the noise was mesmerizing to her spirit and she fell into a featherless whirlwind.

From now on, this would not be how things would become. From now on, this would be an allowed sickness, only to invade when she had the time to welcome it, and often she did not.  From now on, this isn’t what would take her, but instead what would make her stronger. Gloria had no time to sit and wait for someone to pull her feathers, or hand her a replacement, she could do that herself. Gloria had no time to wait for others to pick up her missing pieces when they fell to the floor, for she could do it so much quicker…if she just put one foot in front of the other, eventually she would jump and eventually she wouldn’t come back down….

A Season Later

As I was walking today, I decided it was time to take a stop again, to take a picture of my favorite post….this morning the ground was covered in white frost and my dog blended into the scenery…leaves shuffled under my feet and the sun was rising with those Long November Shadows that happen this time of year.  Minus the Snow, we usually have a bit more of, this time of year.  Grass shortly turned green when the sun thawed it out, and the Geese flew overhead, like they do every morning and every evening.  I thought I’d post this, since I just recently posted the one I took a few months ago, in the blue sky of summer.   Even the Barbed Wire is beautiful to me, even though it seems to no longer serve it’s purpose.

i love love love my backyard. This isn’t quite in my back yard, but it’s a beautiful walk. Every time I walk this way, I have to take a picture of it…..there’s just something beautiful about this POST in the Ground.  And the color astounds me. My dog hasn’t peed on it yet, haaaaaaaaa.     STILL working on new cd….DAMN am I ever having a time with the ‘theme’ as you all know, been struggling with this for awhile. Something in the air perhaps? Might be time to let the wind carry and push and pull me where it will. … .

Back in 1993/1994 I was quite new to the scene. A wonderful photographer ‘Adam’ Took this, in Minneapolis, as a promo for “Without My Wings”

Twincitiesradio.net and MJ Kroll hosted this Live Performers Showcase in Minneapolis at the Studio!

again, back in 1994, not sure what the significance of the baby hangers were, LOL

2009 TwinCitiesRadio.net