Tag Archives: Women

Take It From Here…

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I got inspired to sit and to write as I was sitting on my bed listening to Justin Timberlake’s “Take It From Here” off of his Justified album. I’ve loved this song since I was in high school, but I’ve been inclined to revisit it a lot as of late. I’m at a juncture in my life where a lot of important things are about to hit the ground running for me, and it can get to be a little overwhelming. 25 is very rapidly approaching, and it seems that it will be the year that I have the most growth — professionally, creatively, interpersonally, and any other aspect you can think of, I’ll probably be progressing as I enter into my mid-20′s. Here recently, I’ve been privileged enough to have a vast array of conversations with various people in my life. In these conversations, it’s been revealed that people think I’m a great person who deserves all of the love in the world, and who is full of talent and promise. Yes, I realize that that last sentence made it sound like I am tooting my own horn, but it is in fact not meant like that at all. I truly struggle with the idea that I’m great and capable of all of this progress that I see happening right before my eyes. It’s a constant battle to remind myself that I am a great person and that I am capable of great things, and it’s even more difficult when I don’t really hear it the way that I crave to hear it…

So where does the song come in?

Glad you asked! If you take the time to listen to the song, it’s basically Justin telling his woman that he’ll be there to pick up where she leaves off. He’s telling her that he’ll be her strength when she can’t do it anymore. That he’ll be the positive to her negative, the yin to her yang, “When all the love feels gone/and you can’t carry on/don’t worry girl/I’mma take it from here/Just as sure as the sun will shine/every morning every time/don’t worry girl/I’mma take it from here.” Powerful stuff, right? He’s basically telling her to lighten her load, take a breather, and just to lean on him, and he’s got it from there. There are some days I wake up tired, and don’t want to get out of the bed to do anything. I don’t want to write, I don’t want to use other creative ways to express myself, I don’t want to talk to people, and I definitely don’t want to go to work for 9 hours. It would mean something so special to me to get to have the kind of support that he’s talking about in this song. That unconditional, unwavering, and consistent support from a man who cares about and loves me.

Ah, one day.

 

Until next time, folks…

Feature Fridays – When I Wake Up

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To say that this week has been a trying one would be an understatement. You know how they say, “when it rains, it pours”? Well…for me, it’s been a monsoon for a solid 7 days straight. I’ve found myself in parts of my brain that I never wanted to access again, and leaning on people at an unprecedented rate. Do I like getting there? No. Do I like all that extra leaning I’ve had to do and will probably need to continue to do until I figure some things out? Not in the least. It’s a necessary evil, though, and I’m extraordinarily blessed that I have people that I can lean on and that can handle me and everything that comes with me having to lean.

That brings me to my song for the week. As I’ve said before, one of the top reasons I love music is because it expresses what I need to say or how I feel when I can’t find the words to do it myself. It’s not always that I can’t find any words to express myself…it’s more in the fact that I sometimes pick the wrong words to get me through a situation or a mindset. Trying to be positive in the midst of a stream of negativity is something that I’m continuing to work on, and sometimes I don’t have the positive words to affirm things for myself. All that being said, some things just can’t be adequately expressed in my own words…so I had to turn to music.

Jill Scott – When I Wake Up (click the link to go listen — I promise you won’t regret it…)

She starts the song with “too much on my mind/here I am thinking again/all lost in my brain…” If that has not been my life for the last week, I don’t know what has been. It’s like she peeked into my life at this very point and decided to write a song just for me. The beginning of the song laments the fact that she is stuck inside of her own brain, but the affirmation that directly follows in the lines “but when I wake up/and one day I will do it, yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah/I’ll have let you go/and everything I went through was beautiful” said all that I needed to hear about everything going on in my life. And starting at 1:55, when she says “Do you/know how it feels/to be lost…” and then there’s that pregnant pause…it directly spoke to how sometimes you don’t know what you’re going to do to get out of the nightmare that you’re living in, but you know the breakthrough is around the corner. Or at least that’s my interpretation. Jill expresses the uncertainty of the current climate she’s in at that point, but also makes the entire song about what happens when she wakes up. She makes it clear that she will and has to get up. I don’t know about you, but that spoke to me loud and clear.

Needless to say, I’ve had this song on repeat for the last week. The week started with me crying every time I heard it, to last night driving down the highway with the windows down, smiling with every note I sang. It’s like I’m starting to stir in the sleep that this nightmare has caused…and when I wake up…

My good people, what are some songs that you listen to to get you through tough times? Share them with me in the comments…

Until next time, folks…

 

Feature Fridays – Le BOOM Vent Suite

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Howdy folks! Welcome back to Feature Fridays, and today I have a pretty personal song chosen. I know it’s the Friday before a holiday, and everyone is amped to get their long weekend started (I KNOW I am), but I decided I needed to share this song with you all since it’s been on constant rotation for the last week.

It always feels like Christmas to me when an artist that I love releases new music. With every track that passes, it’s like ripping another piece of wrapping paper off of the biggest gift under the tree. When Jill Scott released her new album, “The Light of the Sun,” it was no different for me. Her music has been a soundtrack for me in both sad and happy times, so I was eager to see what direction she took this new album in. As with most new music I buy, I bought it on my iPod, so I pulled my headphones in while at my desk at work and began to listen. 1 got to track 5 and immediately stopped in my tracks.

http://youtu.be/I3szlTzmJ3c

“Le Boom Vent Suite” seems to speak to every corner of my life. It’s almost as if Jill took a trip to DC, asked me what was going on, and wrote a song about it. The beginning of the song is completely empowering for me, and inspires me to make some changes in my own life, while the end reminds me that it’s sometimes easier said than done. That balance between believing that someone doesn’t want you and you deciding that it’s time to leave with the realization that maybe they do want you if you stick it out, coupled with your realization that you completely want them and you feel that they’d benefit your life if they’d just get it together? Man. It’s like she knows me. It’s so beautifully painful for me to listen to that I can’t seem to turn away from it whenever it comes on. As if you couldn’t already tell, I relate best to music, but it’s especially gripping for me when I’m going through something or trying to get to a place that’s described in a particular song. Whenever I feel strongly about a song, I tend to listen to it over and over, and that’s exactly what I’ve done with this song this week.

If you haven’t done so already, please go buy her album! It’s a work of art from start to finish in my opinion, and as a woman, there are a few songs on there that I completely relate to and that I feel very strongly about, with “Le Boom Vent Suite” taking the lead for the one I feel the most about. Are there any songs that you all have that seem to just kick you in the chest because it most accurately describes your life at a certain point? Let’s chat about them in the comments! Until next time, folks…