Today's DailyOM Offerings...
September 19, 2014
Dream Suite
Suzanne Ciani
1994
There's a reason movie montages of lovers holding hands in the park, flying a kite, walking on the beach, or cuddling around an outdoor fire under the stars all take place in slow-motion: Time stops when you're with the one you love, and that sense of floating is perfectly captured by Ciani, a gifted classical pianist who composes music that's rich in the emotions of Italy, of mood and cinema. She's the perfect unabashedly emotional conduit for that sense of stopped time. Surrendering to her highly emotional music is to tap into a rich vein of Italian emotion that stretches from Ennio Morricone's 1970s Italian-romance film scores back to the doomed courtesans and lovers of Verdi and Puccini. Dream Suite was recorded in Moscow with the Young Russia Orchestra, a 70-piece outfit that perfectly backs Ciani's titanic moodiness; the Russian artistic passion and lust for life in the face of bleak hardship meld perfectly with her larger-than-life romanticism.
Kicking things off elegantly is the moving "Meeting Mozart," with Ciani echoing high notes that tinkle and tickle along staggering motifs of pizzicato strings and thunderous modal shifts that seem to crack the soul wide-open, releasing huge flocks of seagulls and rays of morning sun that heat up the harsh winter landscape like the golden teardrops of a beautiful sun. The jaunty flute of "Dream of the Pink Zebra" or the crashing cymbals of "Riding Heaven's Wave: Eulogy to a Surfer" add moods and textures to this overall sense of suspended time and emotional floodgate opening, with gorgeous crashes of foam rising like sprinkles of angels via twittering flutes that shower high quarter-notes across the sea like shiny diamonds. "Megan's Dream" operates over a cycling piano riff over which Ciani's lead tumbles like a happy baby, and is dedicated to "the time between life an afterlife"-with huge choruses of mellow brass and brooding bass and sensuous strings.
Recorded at a time in her life when she moved from her longtime home of New York City to a small oceanfront cabin in Northern California, Ciani "successfully battled breast cancer. I fell in love and married in Italy. I lost my beloved mother but became ever closer to my family." That mixture of loss and courage, love and sadness, letting go and holding on is present in Dream Suite and makes for extraordinarily powerful listening. Get it, play it, and let your pent-up emotion come flooding out under Ciani's gentle but powerful guiding fingers.
September 19, 2014
A Ways to Go
Sagittarius Daily Horoscope
The meaning of life can perplex you today, leading you to spend the majority of the day lost in thought. You may find your inability to puzzle-out the significance in your own life highly distressing-particularly if you view this seeming lack of insight as an indication that you have stopped growing as an individual. You can satisfy your soul without answering the moral and spiritual questions you ponder today by reminding yourself that the quest for a meaningful life is, most often, a never-ending one. If your questions go unresolved, be gentle with yourself. As you may find the answers you crave in living a good life every day, consider using your time to explore your values in action.
When we recognize that the answers we seek may not come to us easily or quickly, we can relax and enjoy the learning process without worrying that the pace at which we acquire wisdom is incorrect. It is common for those who wish to evolve to attempt to judge their own progress. However, as we are individuals, each of us will grow at different rates suitable to our personal experiences. Accepting this straightforward fact enables us to put aside this misplaced need for speed and concentrate on asking the questions that will help us reach a new level of enlightenment. Because we understand that evolution is an unending process, we look not for resolution, but rather for knowledge for its own sake. Your frustration will vanish today when you learn to take pleasure in the search for significance itself.
September 19, 2014
Dodging and Deflecting
Let It Roll off Our Back
by Madisyn Taylor
When we are criticized or attacked it is important to not take it into our heart space.
One of the most difficult challenges in life is learning not to take things to heart and hold on to it. Especially when we’re younger, or if we’re very sensitive, we take so much of what comes our way to heart. This can be overwhelming and unproductive if it throws us off balance on a regular basis. When we are feeling criticized or attacked from all directions, it becomes very difficult for us to recover ourselves so that we can continue to speak and act our truth. This is when we would do well to remember the old saying about letting certain things roll off us, like water off a duck’s back.
Most of the time, the attacks and criticisms of others have much more to do with them and how they are feeling than with us. If we get caught up in trying to adjust ourselves to other people’s negative energy, we lose touch with our core. In fact, in a positive light, these slings and arrows offer us the opportunity to strengthen our core sense of self, and to learn to dodge and deflect other people’s misdirected negativity. The more we do this, the more we are able to discern what belongs to us and what belongs to other people. With practice, we become masters of our energetic integrity, refusing to serve as targets for the disowned anger and frustration of the people around us.
Eventually, we will be able to hear the feedback that others have to offer, taking in anything that might actually be constructive, and releasing that which has nothing to do with us. First, though, we tend ourselves compassionately by recognizing when we can’t take something in from the outside without hurting ourselves. This is when we make like a duck, shaking it off and letting it roll off our back as we continue our way in the world.
Dream Suite
Suzanne Ciani
1994
There's a reason movie montages of lovers holding hands in the park, flying a kite, walking on the beach, or cuddling around an outdoor fire under the stars all take place in slow-motion: Time stops when you're with the one you love, and that sense of floating is perfectly captured by Ciani, a gifted classical pianist who composes music that's rich in the emotions of Italy, of mood and cinema. She's the perfect unabashedly emotional conduit for that sense of stopped time. Surrendering to her highly emotional music is to tap into a rich vein of Italian emotion that stretches from Ennio Morricone's 1970s Italian-romance film scores back to the doomed courtesans and lovers of Verdi and Puccini. Dream Suite was recorded in Moscow with the Young Russia Orchestra, a 70-piece outfit that perfectly backs Ciani's titanic moodiness; the Russian artistic passion and lust for life in the face of bleak hardship meld perfectly with her larger-than-life romanticism.
Kicking things off elegantly is the moving "Meeting Mozart," with Ciani echoing high notes that tinkle and tickle along staggering motifs of pizzicato strings and thunderous modal shifts that seem to crack the soul wide-open, releasing huge flocks of seagulls and rays of morning sun that heat up the harsh winter landscape like the golden teardrops of a beautiful sun. The jaunty flute of "Dream of the Pink Zebra" or the crashing cymbals of "Riding Heaven's Wave: Eulogy to a Surfer" add moods and textures to this overall sense of suspended time and emotional floodgate opening, with gorgeous crashes of foam rising like sprinkles of angels via twittering flutes that shower high quarter-notes across the sea like shiny diamonds. "Megan's Dream" operates over a cycling piano riff over which Ciani's lead tumbles like a happy baby, and is dedicated to "the time between life an afterlife"-with huge choruses of mellow brass and brooding bass and sensuous strings.
Recorded at a time in her life when she moved from her longtime home of New York City to a small oceanfront cabin in Northern California, Ciani "successfully battled breast cancer. I fell in love and married in Italy. I lost my beloved mother but became ever closer to my family." That mixture of loss and courage, love and sadness, letting go and holding on is present in Dream Suite and makes for extraordinarily powerful listening. Get it, play it, and let your pent-up emotion come flooding out under Ciani's gentle but powerful guiding fingers.
September 19, 2014
A Ways to Go
Sagittarius Daily Horoscope
The meaning of life can perplex you today, leading you to spend the majority of the day lost in thought. You may find your inability to puzzle-out the significance in your own life highly distressing-particularly if you view this seeming lack of insight as an indication that you have stopped growing as an individual. You can satisfy your soul without answering the moral and spiritual questions you ponder today by reminding yourself that the quest for a meaningful life is, most often, a never-ending one. If your questions go unresolved, be gentle with yourself. As you may find the answers you crave in living a good life every day, consider using your time to explore your values in action.
When we recognize that the answers we seek may not come to us easily or quickly, we can relax and enjoy the learning process without worrying that the pace at which we acquire wisdom is incorrect. It is common for those who wish to evolve to attempt to judge their own progress. However, as we are individuals, each of us will grow at different rates suitable to our personal experiences. Accepting this straightforward fact enables us to put aside this misplaced need for speed and concentrate on asking the questions that will help us reach a new level of enlightenment. Because we understand that evolution is an unending process, we look not for resolution, but rather for knowledge for its own sake. Your frustration will vanish today when you learn to take pleasure in the search for significance itself.
September 19, 2014
Dodging and Deflecting
Let It Roll off Our Back
by Madisyn Taylor
When we are criticized or attacked it is important to not take it into our heart space.
One of the most difficult challenges in life is learning not to take things to heart and hold on to it. Especially when we’re younger, or if we’re very sensitive, we take so much of what comes our way to heart. This can be overwhelming and unproductive if it throws us off balance on a regular basis. When we are feeling criticized or attacked from all directions, it becomes very difficult for us to recover ourselves so that we can continue to speak and act our truth. This is when we would do well to remember the old saying about letting certain things roll off us, like water off a duck’s back.
Most of the time, the attacks and criticisms of others have much more to do with them and how they are feeling than with us. If we get caught up in trying to adjust ourselves to other people’s negative energy, we lose touch with our core. In fact, in a positive light, these slings and arrows offer us the opportunity to strengthen our core sense of self, and to learn to dodge and deflect other people’s misdirected negativity. The more we do this, the more we are able to discern what belongs to us and what belongs to other people. With practice, we become masters of our energetic integrity, refusing to serve as targets for the disowned anger and frustration of the people around us.
Eventually, we will be able to hear the feedback that others have to offer, taking in anything that might actually be constructive, and releasing that which has nothing to do with us. First, though, we tend ourselves compassionately by recognizing when we can’t take something in from the outside without hurting ourselves. This is when we make like a duck, shaking it off and letting it roll off our back as we continue our way in the world.