February 2015 News Muse & Music
MUSIC
Good For You
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Good for You… your musical adventure for February 2015, sung by Doug Ashdown
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I sold my soul to the highest bidder
Pitched hope against hope some day I’d be delivered
I crawled the streets
Between the light and the darkness
Trying to find some way to fight this
Then I heard a voice
CHORUS
I’m good for you
I’m good for you
I’m good for you
If I’m good for anything
Tell me you’re an angel flying to me
Heal my heart give your love to me
Above the world
Through your grace you complete me
Nothing can defeat me
When I hear you say
CHORUS
You’re good for me
Through the good and bad
In a thousand faces
You see who I am
You’re in my blood
There’s nothing I won’t do
To be good for you
Good for you
Good for you
If I’m good for anything
Get This Album
Including the classic Winter in America
and Good for You,
from Doug’s website!
© Passionworks Music 2001 By Washuntara and Doug Ashdown
NEWS & MUSE
If I’m Good for Anything …
NEW: Click the orange Soundcloud logo to listen to Wash READ this article
If you want to know how you’re doing, look around at the people you spend your time with. Especially your closest few. Are they good for you?
In my early life, with at the very least one broken wing myself, i’d always sort out other one-wingers and hope by some miracle that they could fly for both of us
i hear you now: “How did that work out for you, Wash?”
My point is this. Imagine if someone said to you: if i’m good for anything, i’m good for you. Makes me want to sign up!
“If i’m good for anything” is one of my favorite sayings. Such an Australian way of thinking, too. It’s a fair dinkum, tell it how it is, no bullsh*t approach to life. The phrase doesn’t mean to be disparaging, or self-disparaging. It’s simply the way it is.
What i love about Good for You is the humility of the characters. That’s what gives it its gold. The song’s beautiful foray into what’s good and what’s not good for you at the deeper levels also gives us the sense that both of these characters have worked hard to get where they are, to be good for someone else. They’ve worked through the good and the bad, through a thousand faces of themselves to see who they really are.
i decipher this as being a sure sign of enlightenment, lightened up at least, or in awareness. These kids have been around the block a time or two, and are showing up in the way that i’m aspiring to show up too: with emotional intelligence.
(Speaking of which, if you want more of that, check out my next He She We workshop near Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on March 28 — see the last article.)
That makes for good relationship.
What You Are Looking for Is Looking for You
People laugh these days when i speak to my bar, expectation-wise in matters of the heart, being so low that i trip over it.
This funny little Washism speaks to what i can do now about my end of any conscious relationship.
For years, my bar was set so high with fairy tales, happy endings, and other stories i expected to come true that it lacked kindfulness to both myself and others, starting with those i tried to love and those who tried to love me.
As i lowered my bar, that is, as i realized being in a conscious relationship was an inside job, my love-ability increased. When i worked out that it was ok for me to make mistakes and be human, that reflected out into my relationships.
The takeaway is this: like the song says, if you really want to be good for somebody else, you’ve got to be good for you. Ain’t no way over it, ain’t no way under it, only through.
Makes me want to glue these two strong words together: self and confidence. Why do some folks seem to be born with self-confidence in spades and others have to work their way through the whole deck to get it? However you get the confidence in yourself, it’s a bloody good thing to have in a relationship.
Here’s what’s funny. When the jar is empty and the vegemite is all gone, you’re ok. Like that good book said, i’m ok, you’re ok. i’d like to think we are born with this innate feeling, until it gets knocked or trained out of us.
- Life support for Aussies
There’s nothing wrong with me. Or you! There never was. There’s lots right with each of us, tho some of us come in flavors and stripes that have never been seen before and may never be seen again.
i’m good for me. Even when i forget that.
It’s such a blessing to have built relationships with others to remind you of this — those who can see and hold the light while you find the way (to quote When Was the Last Time). Another way of saying the same thing would be to say you have put wonderful mirrors into your life. Or, plan B, you didn’t do a damn thing and it’s just pure grace in action that they’re there.
At this point in my life i’ve learned that it’s ok to visit hell once in a while, but don’t pitch a tent there. The buddha was right. All the conditions i need, all the conditions you, dear one, also need for absolute happiness-already exist. Right here.
Well, somewhere around here.
Breathe. They’ll get to you if you stop long enough. What you are looking for is looking for you. Peace and happiness, freedom and love, they’re all looking for you. Listen for them.
One of my other favorite songwriters, Don Henley, said it so beautifully: “Learn to be still.” Try a meditation class. Go to yoga, tai chi, find a way to get unbusy. How would that feel, if the last thought of each day came from a place of contentment, from a mind that knows itself to be good, beautiful and true at its core? Good for you. The voice of comfort and self-confidence within. God and all her little angels or minions, right there with you.
Writing Up with Ashdown
- We wrote Good for You on the banks of the
Torrens River in Adelaide, South Australia.
We wrote Good for You on the banks of the
Torrens River in Adelaide, South Australia.
In The Great Book of Troubadours, one of my rules is: Write Up. Work with people who are better — in the words of my nephew Craig, heaps better — than you are.
Douggie Ashdown has the voice and heart of an angel. No wonder he is one of Australia’s premier singer songwriters. (We also cowrote that fabulous song, Mercy on You.)
He’s also from Adelaide, my home town. i met him through another of my cowriters, Australian songwriting legend Al Caswell, when i went back home in 2001 to look after my mum while she was ill. Funny how that works. i went to do good for mum… and the universe did good for me.
i was excited to work with Douggie, because i’d grown up listening to him on the radio. His 1977ish hit song Winter in America was a part of my psychic terrain. (Little did i know how much it would foreshadow my life, both the song and the sentiment.)
The funny thing is, i’ve never sung Good for You myself. i’ve tried as best i can, but it just doesn’t fit my face. The sentiments are true; i helped craft them. i brought the idea to the session that if i’m good for anything then i’m good for you, and we chiseled on it together. But Doug makes this song his own. Bravo!
Making an Omelette: A Heads-Up on Last Month’s Bullying Article
i received so much feedback from you all regarding the “Bully for Christmas” story from Deer Park Monastery last month. So many of you wrote in to say that you have experienced something similar in your lives too.
Dear ones, thank you.
My dear old dad had a classic Australian joke, “You can wish in one hand, sh*t in the other, and see which one fills up first.” That is, without the tools and skills to deal with bullying, what chance do you have?
Resolving and finding peace in matters of bullying — physical, emotional, or spiritual — takes three fundamental things: compassion, skillful means and sheer guts. To this situation, i am now applying fierce patience.
Most have thanked me for speaking up. Others have challenged my inability to be stronger. To take this abuse? I hear both of these sentiments and still believe enough is enough.
One of my mum’s classic sayings was, “Chug, you can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs.” i know she was right. So i ignore the tiny voice inside me that still wonders, as victims do, whether this was in any way my fault.
So for those of you at this same choice point, who can no longer be pushed or bullied, Washuntara says, “Courage, dear brothers and sisters, you do not walk alone.”
Live Wild, Dream Hard, Love Big,
W
OH SO QUOTABLE
“When i found God, it really helped me to believe in myself.
Then i realized God was myself.
Then i bumped into Buddhism and found out i didn’t even have a self.
And as my dear grandfather used to say: Chugger, if you don’t think too good, don’t think too much.
So here i am today, a Buddhist who believes in God, and not thinking about it too too much.” …W
* Chugger is Wash’s boyhood name.
January Update
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MUSIC
How Many Teardrops
How Many Teardrops… My gift to you for January 2015
How many teardrops is it going to take
How much of your time are you going to waste on him
Girl you’ve been a fool too long
How many broken hearts are you going to mend
How many lonely nights are you going to spend crying
Could it be there’s something wrong
Well there’s another dozen heartaches just around the bend
What’s it going to take to make you stop
How many teardrops … How many teardrops
Why do you want to hurt like you do
One day you’re gonna stop letting him walk on you
Dragging your heart all over town
Come on out little baby and dry those pretty eyes
I’ll show you what is real and what is not
How many teardrops … How many teardrops
Well this river of tears is yesterday’s news
Saturday night, what you got to lose
Got the top pulled back and the sun’s going down
Ain’t nowhere to go but up
How many teardrops … How many teardrops
Let go of it baby, you deserve a little fun
Add it up and see what you’ve got
How many teardrops … How many teardrops … How many teardrops
© Passionworks Music … By Washuntara and Tony Marty
NEWS & MUSE
Bullly for Christmas
Dear One,
A joke…
So this couple who has been together for a very long time was sitting down to breakfast.
What she meant to say was, “Dear one, would you please pass me the coffee.”
But what she said instead was, “You ruined my f*cking life.”
Happy New Year to you and my dear worldwide Washuntara mob! i hope your Christmas was all you wanted it to be, and that you at the very least unwrapped some joy for yourself along the way.
This Christmas i got an opportunity to see what a good feelings stacker i still am. How, like the woman in the poignant joke above, i can pile those conflicting emotions in on each other for way too long.
As usual, i got the hell out of Dodge over Christmas. And headed to my beloved Deer Park Monastery to celebrate the big guy’s birthday. (Ironic that i should be going to a Zen Buddhist place to get a line on Jesus, but you do what you gotta do.)
And then, in the midst of what should have been a peaceful retreat, i found myself direct dialing my brother JC the revolutionary, with the simple request: tell me what to do.
TO LOVE AND TO LEAVE
One would think, given the spirit of the season, that getting together with family (or in my case my family of choice) would be a good thing. But it’s not always a walk in the park, even at Deer Park. When i asked brother Jesus for help, it was because i felt like i had been systematically bullied.
In fact i had been systematically bullied, by one of my family.
Bullies are real. Their actions are deliberate and calculated to hurt. And successful. This person definitely got a rise out of me, though i would prefer to think myself above all that. i was angry. i felt grief. As we would say in Auswegian, i’d had a gutful.
i have heard it said that what others think of me is none of my business. God, i am a long way from that. It would have been great to finish my retreat thinking that good old holy Washuntara was well and truly on his way to enlightenment. Nirvana, here we come!
Instead, i spent time curled up on my little cot trying to put up with it gracefully, willing myself the courage to just get through this. Not speaking my peace. Proud to listen to my own songs (I Will Not Be Silenced from The Makings leaps to mind), instead i simply conformed in sufferance.
After a few days, i also held a kangaroo court, dreaming of ways i could not only neutralize my suffering but at the same time, take my offending family member out. No surprise. i was brought up in an arguing family, at least 7 generations of scrappers behind me. They hardly took a breath for lunch. So my first instinct is to fight or argue. (That’s how i show someone i love them, right?)
And right here i want to say this: If you think you are being bullied, you are. Doesn’t matter how old you are. It’s common. It’s the home demon, street angel syndrome. Or online bullying. It’s crazymaking to witness hurtful behavior coming at you, and the next moment see that same person acting loving and kind to others.
Bullying is strategic and premeditated. It’s the closest thing i know to evil. And it works. Even in a Buddhist monastery.
All i wanted to do was have a nice Christmas. Bugger!
Only just recently am i learning to take myself away from this. Thich Nhat Hahn says just go for a walk, get some space. The next question is: then what?
When someone is an addict (and yes people can be addicted to bullying), and when the addict refuses to accept any responsibility for their behavior, they are a victim of their own behavior. If i try and change them, i become the second victim.
i cannot help them. You cannot help them. The only way to stop the hurtful behavior is to stop enabling it, stop thinking you can stay and fix it. The only thing to do is fix the thing you can fix—you. That is, leave the situation.
Don’t stop to think about what it looks like, either. When the house is on fire, never mind where your lip gloss is. Don’t hunt for the fire extinguisher. Get out first, and then get help-at a neighbor’s house, a safe distance away.
Here’s a tip: save your ass, not your face. This is not running away. It’s the opposite of running away. It’s running toward you. Towards your power. It’s love in action. If you ever need permission to do this, i hereby give it to you. You are braver than you think.
LET IT OUT
JC’s answer to my plea, arriving at 5:45 am as i strode toward morning meditation pretending i was not seething with anger, was simple. And, as expected, revolutionary. “You must speak. You must speak, with Love.”
i will not be silenced.
Which segued into one of my treasured 12-step classic sayings, which i just shared above: “You can’t save your ass and your face at the same time.”
Guess what Washuntara got for Christmas? He got his tears back. For the best part of three decades, i have said that the reason most men don’t cry is for the fear of, once started, they would never stop. And yet, it’s good to cry.
When i heard the answer that it was right to speak up, i let the emotional tide wash over and through me. Instead of shutting it down, i sat on my meditation cushion and let it out. That was my Christmas miracle.
Then i wasn’t angry any more. Monty Python’s whistling Always Look on the Bright Side of Life drifted through my head. (And i was supposed to be sitting still meditating!)
In the end, i spoke my truth to those i thought it could most help. I reported the bully and stepped out of the situation. And they rose to meet me. The monks were very responsive and immediately set about discussing what they could do about it. i got to enjoy the rest of my retreat, officially avoiding my suffering in the only way i know works: through transformation.
Now i know again, on a new level, that it is possible to love another whilst at the same time neither loving nor accepting their behavior. Wisdom knows how to separate those two. Ignorance can be bliss, but only for a short time. Sometimes the price of wisdom, and her sister freedom, can seem high, or difficult, but in the end it is the least expensive option, and you will sleep at night.
HAPPINESS 2015!
This morning down at the beach, over my bowl of fruit, i spied a banner that read: “Jesus: the reason for the season.”
Inserted a mouthful of pineapple. Chomping away, his most powerful message drifted to mind: Love thy neighbor as thyself.
A sip of coffee. My coffee. My happiness. i have done the right thing. In loving myself and speaking up to put a stop to bullying, i can safely love my neighbor from a distance and move on. Move on.
Does anyone else have a really good feeling about 2015? i do. May you find new ways of loving and remember that you are entertaining a very important guest this year: you, dear one. Don’t miss it.
Happy New Year! Don’t let the bed bugs bite.
Live Wild, Dream Hard, Love Big,
…w
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December Update
NEWS & MUSE
Dear one,
As both writer and songwriter, the most difficult place to step off from is the beginning line. At the precipice this month, i am weighing two starters for you:
Love, ad nauseum.
And “May you overstay your welcome.”
Today, the latter gets its way.
What a quote. My dear brother Tim Daley just said this to me. We were on the phone lining up new places to take my message in the new year. (He’s a Michigander — heads, up Detroit!) Anyhoo, i thanked him, and before i pushed the little red “end” button, i reminded him how much i loved and appreciated him, and how i hoped we could get eye to eye. He said, “Brother, come. And may you overstay your welcome.”
Romeo my Dutch Warmblood friend reminds me why i treasure my relationship with horses.
Romeo my Dutch Warmblood friend reminds me why i treasure my relationship with horses.
That got me.
Rule 37 in the Great Book of Troubadours is: Always Leave Them Wanting More.
And even more important is Rule 39: Never Overstay Your Welcome.
i’ve prided myself on internalizing 37 and 39. There i was on the phone, invited to joyously abandon my own rules and push past my own preconceived comfort zones. And i found myself far out to sea.
Don’t you love it (and hate it) when life does this to you?
Knowing when to leave is tricky. When Tim said, “may you overstay your welcome,” he was saying, “let me love you until you’re uncomfortable with it…” Or vice versa. That set me adrift in confused waters… in what it means to spend time with those you love until you remember why you love them, regardless. after i hung up, i laughed and thought, there’s another rule i’m going to have to learn to break.
New Song, Love Again Again
Crazy, crazy. The creative process just drives me nuts. i’m glad i know that any kind of insanity, and especially my own, ceases to be insanity when i realize that’s what it is. (You can quote me on that.)
If Not for Love is a new song. It has been my constant companion for the last 1000 hours, plus, i’m guessing. it’s made me wish that i’d a been a plumber. Do plumbers lie in bed at 4am wondering whether a metaphor is a drop too metaphoric? Do plumbers fight for and with words that rhyme with love? i wonder.
Verse one was delivered entire. It fell with the leaves, right into my head, in late September, line after line. As i drove from Wisconsin to Texas, dodging tornadoes, i’d been pondering what a bugger life can be, having just renamed the very vehicle i was riding in, once called Betty, now Jeffrey, in honor of my dear brother who sold her to me and who had committed suicide only days before.
Out of that tragedy came the unanswerable question, why? And the Great Maker of Vegemite gave me an answer, intact.
i scrambled for my phone, called my friend Dars and said, “Write this down please.” (Hands-free songwriting in action.) Out came all the words up to Angels would falter / And dreams would die.
Jeffrey was an angel. And he faltered. There’s a part of me thinks somehow i dropped him. It’s a reasonable thing to feel, though i know it’s not really true. And here come a new song to make it all… somewhat… easier.
The first verse has a power to it. Even before i got to a melody, i knew the rest of the lyric had to be as good, or, as Jeffrey would say, “kickass as good.” A tall order.
i get why the greats, those who have flown so beautifully and brightly, have often done so too close to the sun. Honestly, the creative process haunts the deeper reaches of the soul. Permeates every cell and fiber. Drives all your friends nuts, too.
But then i finally felt the shore under my wee boat. Felt the sizzle and heard the sand slide beneath it as it came to rest. The words down the side of the wee boat and the words upon my headstone will read the same: “If not for love, why would we be?”
Thank God i was born with the finishing gene, and know when to quit (except when i’m fishing). The whole committee of Washuntara (all parts of me) are damn happy with the result. This song, and we, are done. Praise Jehovah!
A perfect Mirror (my guitar) and i… happiness…
We have an Australian word called whinging. My friends have listened to me whinge about love, love, love, freaking love. Just when i thought i’d sold it all, every last rhyme and nuance, here it rises again.
Well, welcome to life. i heard somewhere that you can’t stop love. And i should know, after spending the last 50-some years trying. That statement is undoubtedly my greatest asset and my greatest liability.
Dear ones, if you really knew me, you’d know that i’m no expert in love. Wobble and fall down, get up, wobble and fall down. One of those learning by doing things.
i’ve tried grumpy, then love again.
Pissed off, then love again.
Bad pizza, love again.
Minus 12 degrees windchill factor, love again.
Talking to my darling about freedom put right all that i could put right… love again.
Love, ad nauseum.
And yet, things like this keep flowing through me:
Come to the garden
Wade in the river
By Love you will be saved
By Love you are forgiven.
Amen.
Thanksgiving Turkey Is Off My Bucket List
Enjoyed Thanksgiving time here in Wisconsin. Cooked my first turkey. Take that off the bucket list. Her name was Priscilla. We danced so divinely, i did all i knew how to do to honor her and make her beautiful. The village feasted, oohed and ahhed, rubbed their bellies, and stood in a circle as we committed her carcass to the fire. Take that off the list.
bugger this for too long
Also did my first bit of snow shoveling. That was not on the list. It’s still not on the list.
Thank you for connecting here with me and the rest of the Washuntara mob. Hope you love this new song half as much as i do. If you do, let me know. If you don’t, well, don’t. Don’t feel bad. There’s no emotion you could feel that hasn’t been brought up inside the creator in me in the process of writing If Not for Love.
Ain’t life one awesome ride? (Speaking of which, thank you to the regal steed Romeo for our time together — see pic at top. It felt holy to feel that equine power again.)
Live Wild, Dream Hard, Love Big,
…w
P.S. Please pray for Thich Nhat Hahn. As i make my way back to Deer Park Monastery in Escondido, California, for my winter retreat, i would ask that you hold my sangha and i in a place of goodness and freshness. As we speak, we dance with life and death ebbing and flowing through our teacher and beloved sensei Thich Nhat Hahn. i’ve heard him smile and say life is a game of hide and seek. Dear thai (teacher/brother/friend), thank you. All things are as they need to be.
HEAR WASH READ THE ARTICLE AND THE “IF NOT FOR LOVE LYRIC”
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