Sweet Thing

This simple song, a sweet ditty, came to me while wandering the streets of San Francisco and Berkeley (my birth-town!) with my mama, during spring-break. Ironically, it was inspired by a little sugar packet titled "Sweet Thing." I kept that little packet for quite some years!...

Mmmhmmhmm
Mmm…Oh Honey
Mmmhmmhmm
My love is a sweet thing…

...
© Spring 1996, San Francisco

(um, you kinda have to hear it - it's a really yummy bluesy thang... :-)

Cry For Help

Living in Denver, alone, my 2nd to last year in college. This beautiful grace had sung through me - I now knew my purpose in life, but I didn't know how to live the day-to-day. Just weeks after that first song, I shaved off my beautiful gypsy locks. It was time to be born again, fresh and new. The night I decided to shave it, I realized I was cleansing a deep-seated sense of shame ~ wherefrom came this feeling of not-good-enough-ness?? From my ancestral gypsy past? From the endless taunts on the schoolgrounds? It was time to be born again into the light of inspiration, beauty, and goodness.

Shaving my head, I was light as a feather, happy and radiant as the sun. But I was also out of work - having quit my night-job at the strip club and knowing not what the future would hold. Would I have to move (yet again? I've moved so many dozens of times already in this life!). No money, but a tremendous knowing of the goodness of my new path...

When the world turns away from me
And the struggle runs too deep
And all I know is holding on
Tell me where can I go when the wind blows
Ooo oo oh... yeah yeah, come on ‘n help me
Oo a hoo, come on ‘n help me, help me, help me
Give me a safe place to cry

And I’m feelin’ so alone
And I’m in danger of losin’ my home
And all I know is to keep on breathin’
Whoh but where can I go to keep on dreamin’
Ooo oo oh... yeah yeah, come on ‘n help me
Oo a hoo, come on ‘n help me, help me, help me
Give me a safe place to cry

Well I don’t got a lover and I ain’t got no money
But still the world is lookin’ kinda sunny
Cuz all I know is what I got inside
And I’m standing on this edge here, ready to fly
Ooo oo oh... yeah yeah, come on ‘n help me
Oo a hoo, come on ‘n help me, help me, help me
Give me a safe place to fly

...
© Spring 1996, Denver, CO

Gypsy Woman (my first song!!)

Walking along the street one dreary day in April, 2006. Near campus, where I was studying psychology, dance, women's studies... Deep in my own healing process, I had discovered a love of dance ~ of the dance of life moving through me ~ Spirit becoming form in the dance that was in me, but not my own... I knew my passion as a dancer - movement was my healer, my release, and my most beautiful gift. Little did I know what more was to come. But this day, this grey day, walking along in my combat boots and long flowery skirt, my gypsy nature took over and out came a song! And in a voice I'd never heard ~ fuller than life itself, a gift of Grace... It was in this moment, on these lyrics, in this voice, that I knew my place in this world, my mission of truth.

Gypsy Woman, takin’ you higher
Burnin’ inside like a fire
Gypsy Woman, liftin’ you higher
Let her inside to inspire

Gypsy Woman lookin’ for a home
Lookin’ for a place to call her own
Gypsy Woman, lookin’ for a home
Looking for a place to rest her weary bones

Gypsy Woman, takin’ you higher
Burnin’ inside like a fire
Gypsy Woman, liftin’ you higher
Let her inside to inspire

Gypsy Woman gotta move-a her bones
Wherever she roam, there is her home
Gypsy Woman, shakin’ her bones
All o’er this great earth, she has flown

...
©Spring 1996, Denver. Revised June 1998, Crestone, CO