Category Archives: Playlist

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Sexually active

At a clinic visit this week the Medical Assistant screens me. “Are you sexually active?”

I say, “Um, what do you mean?”

“Are you sexually active?”

“Um, I do not have a partner.” By now, I really want to laugh.

She still looks confused. “You are not sexually active.”

“Ok.” I try not to giggle. Apparently her question series does not cover um, solo sexual activity and I resist telling her about the downtown sexual health and toy store. The new multispeed, multipattern suction toys are, well, enlightening and INSPIRING and EXPLOSIVE.. Or, um, something. Snort.

Let’s just study the dome. This is from Venice and tells the story of Adam and Eve.

I have sent a message to my physician saying that they may want to rephrase the questions. “Do you have any sexual partners?” would be more enlightening as far as sexually transmitted disease risk. Heh. The whole thing cracked me up. My blood pressure was still 108 over 70. Ha, so there, heart disease. My English/Scots father’s family is adapted to tobacco and alcohol and my father ran a low blood pressure even with 55 years of unfiltered Camels in his lungs.

Heh.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: dome. This is the Basilica San Marcos, which has multiple domes. This one tells the story of Adam and Eve. I now want to paint one of my ceilings. The bathrooms have too much moisture. I suspect this will not enthuse future realtors.

Alone and lonely are not the same thing.

Fantasy is good.

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always on your mind

This is a compilation poem from more than one song and more than one person I’ve dated. A friend and I really dislike a song her husband sings that has the “I wish that you had told me” line. We make faces at each other and whisper, “We wish that you had listened.”

Sometimes I am treated as an admiring audience by a male. At least, that is the role he would like me to play. I get pretty bored pretty quickly. If he doesn’t give me reasonable floor time, if he doesn’t listen, well, goodbye. Find another female slave. One male tells me that my poetry doesn’t matter. I think, oh, I guess it doesn’t matter to YOU, but it certainly matters to ME. There is a certain wicked enjoyment in writing poetry that references his words, heh heh. Enjoy!

October 8, 2022

________________________

always on your mind

the songs you sing
I was always on your mind
you wish that I had told you

isn’t that a lie?
you told me never to ask you
to do anything. Ever.

what was always on your mind
you told me many times
you could read mine

what was always on your mind
you said you could read mine
I wish you had. Even once.

what was always on your mind
was your fantasy me
who obeyed your every wish

what was always on your mind
was that I would wait at home
available to listen or for sex

what was always on your mind
your terror of the ball and chain
that I’d entrap you into marriage

what was always on your mind
had nothing to do with me
I tried hard to tell you

what was always on your mind
had nothing to do with me
I tried hard to tell you

what was always on your mind
was a fantasy. Not me.
How can you be surprised I’m gone?

you wish that I had told you
you say I was always on your mind
I wish that you had listened even once

_______________________________

I took the photograph on Marrowstone Island a few days ago.

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Stages of Peace Playlist I

Dang, I’ve got a lot of stages. So it is a long playlist! I can’t complain (yes I can), after all, I wrote the stages. Hmm, to work, to work, to play, to PEACE.

Twisting words- The Grass is Blue – Dolly Parton

Confusion- Get it Worked On -Delbert McClinton

Denial- Old Number 7- The Devil Makes Three

Bargaining – Gallows Pole- Alvin Youngblood Hart

Anger- Joanne Little- Sweet Honey in the Rock

Bitterness -The Wound That Never Heals – Jim White

Revenge -Silver Dagger- Dolly Parton

Acting Out – Pills I Took- Hank Williams III

Oppositional Defiance- All Hail- The Devil Makes Three

Grief -Days Like These – Over the Rhine

Acceptance- In my time of dying – Alvin Youngblood Hart

Forgiveness -Jesus on the Mainline – Mississippi Fred McDowell

Healing- I be your water- Sweet Honey in the Rock

Hope – So Glad I’m Here- Sweet Honey in the Rock

Reconciliation – You are loved, Victoria Williams

Peace – Everybody Ought to Know (and) Redemption Song- Sweet Honey in the Rock

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Playlist: Acceptance

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: acceptance.

Playlist: Acceptance

I will start with Norah Jones: Seven Years. Sometimes bad things happen and are happening now to little kids. β€œShe’s a little girl, with nothing wrong, is all alone.” is beautiful. I wish the kids in the war zones had nothing wrong.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UI7hkrAoulU

Next is a family song, my family. My mother learned this from her parents. Her grandparents were both Congregationalist Ministers. This is a totally cheerful sounding song about Judgement Day, called The Great Judgement Morning. My sister and father and I only did one recording session, over two days.

Malcolm Ottaway, Christine Ottaway and Katherine Ottaway singing The Great Judgment Morning

Sweet Honey in the Rock: Biko

And Sweet Honey in the Rock’s first β€œhit”: Joan Little. It was played on the news stations more that the music radio. Sometimes acceptance means accepting that we have to fight. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_Little

Randy Newman: Louisiana 1927

The Stanley Brothers: Oh Death. Well, that gets right to the point, doesn’t it? Took me a while to find this.

Over the Rhine’s The Long Surrender is an album that blows me away. I think all the songs are about acceptance in one way or another.

The Laugh of Recognition

All My Favorite People

Days Like This

From Blood Oranges in the Snow:

Let it Fall

Zucchero and Macy Gray: Like the Sun

Zucchero and Miles Davis

The photograph is my father Malcolm Ottaway at his 70th birthday, playing music with Andy Mackie. The photo below is my sister. These were taken by Maline Robinson in 2007ish, and I photographed the photos.

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Playlist: Stages of Grief 3

Stages of Grief Playlist 3

All women all the time today. Grieving for their men or our culture. Fighting back.

Denial

Dolly Parton: The Grass is Blue

Bargaining

Ann Peebles: I can’t stand the rain

Anger

Lily Allen: Not Fair

Acting Out/Fighting Back

Sweet Honey in the Rock: Give Your Hands to Struggle

Revenge

Dolly Parton: Silver Dagger

Grief

Tricia Walker: The Heart of Dixie

Acceptance

Bessie Smith: You been a good old wagon

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Playlist: Bands I have danced to

I have done two grief playlists. I will do more, but it got me thinking about other playlists. And we need distraction from grief too.

I am a swing dancer and jitterbug dancer. I lived in the Washington, DC area from 1985 to 1989 and then left for medical school. I spent a year being depressed about a breakup. The only time the depression lifted was when I went dancing. I started with contra dancing and then took a swing dance class. In the 1980s, we would have 400-600 people show up at the Spanish Ballroom in Glen Echo Park in Cabin John, MD, for a live band and a lesson, in a no alcohol venue. We would dance our socks off for three hours. We barely clapped for the bands, but they didn’t seem to care, because they liked watching us throw each other up in the air!

Marcia Ball

Daryl Davis

(You could watch his ted talk, too.)

Maria Muldaur

Maria Muldaur’s joyful album for the beginning of the end of the pandemic

Uppity Blues Women

Little Red and the Renagades

Doc Scantlin and his Imperial Palms Orchestra – at the Kennedy Warren Ballroom in Washington, DC.

I took the photograph of the poster this morning. It is from the 1980s.