Reflection

Elaine Diane Taylor – The Stone

words and music Elaine Diane Taylor

words and music © 2004 Intelligentsia Media
performance © 2012 Intelligentsia Media
SOCAN / ASCAP

When we look into a mirror and see a spot of something on our faces, we brush the spot off of our face, we don’t wipe the spot on the mirror. We’re aware it’s just a reflection. Our face and how it presents itself to the world is not the mirror.

Our bodies and lives reflect who we are inside, just like the mirror reflects the physical appearance. When there’s a spot on our lives the trick is to change the action or position or belief that brought it, and not to change the reflection. Kind of a different slant on looking at the world.

For example, the things we eat reflect impact our bodies. Our bodies reflect what we’ve eaten and how we use our bodies. It takes a little while sometimes, and there are protective processes our bodies use to get rid of toxins, but how we look reflects what we put into our bodies and how we used them. And those actions came from what we believe we should or could do. The circumstances in our lives, the joys and pains, are there reflecting our inside selves in the same way. I’ve heard that we become what we read and who we spend time with. That makes sense. What we put into ourselves becomes what we create and what we turn towards.

Everyone is unique, We I’m calm and honest about what makes me happy and excited and what I’m passionate about, the things that do it for me are very different than what does it for others. We are all unique, that’s why only we can know deep inside what makes us happy.

All experience are there all the time, but what I turn my attention towards is what comes into my life.

This song, The Stone, is about reflection.

The Stone is about change, about facing a real reflection and questioning why we would move towards something that doesn’t seem to reflect what we want in our lives. If we move towards something that’s no good for us then there is something deeper down that we don’t want, maybe an unconscious belief or fear.

Being still enough to see a clear reflection is a good practice to bring those beliefs out. Why do we move towards something that doesn’t bring happiness? When all possibilities are in front of us, why would I point myself towards one that isn’t bringing me towards what I really want? Slowing down the mind and asking the honest question might bring that out and name it. I don’t want “that” but I want “that other thing” even less. Or getting “that” will also bring “that other thing” so I avoid “that” subconsciously. By asking ourselves what brings joy and what we fear, then we can find out what “that other thing” is that we’re hiding from ourselves. Learning to name “that other thing” helps to move around it and just bring “that”.

The Stone asks that question for me.

Socrates said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Our lives are valuable, so perhaps by not examining what we are spending our lives doing then we’re exchanging our lives for something that isn’t worth enough to spend time doing it.

Me? I like rocks and trees and love and ideas. I like water and creating beautiful things that make me and others happy. I like making music that helps me and perhaps others to feel our highest and most expansive selves. To see the world and our lives in a new way. To build new ways of thinking that let each person be excited and filled with joy for their own unique person.

If I’m looking at myself, at a clear reflection in stillness, and I move without asking myself what I’m seeing, if I don’t spend time thinking about what I want to be for my life, then the image gets all ripply with waves of actions and moods that I create and waves of actions and moods coming at me from others.

This is The Stone.

You are welcome to download a copy from Drop Box without cost. I’m mixing a few songs I recorded recently and when I package them up as an album then I’ll take it down from Drop Box and sell the album through iTunes. Until then I’ve put up a few songs to Drop Box. It’s all good. I like when people write me little notes saying they enjoy something I’ve made.

September 3, 2012

Elaine

The Stone

Moving at the speed of sound
I come upon this pool of blue
And seeking out where truth may hide
I try to pause before I tumble inside

Seeking out the depth to dive
I toss inside my only stone
And dancing in it’s slow decent
The surface shows the rippled self I know

The pool is deep and still
deeper than I can image
I draws me as it wills
and shows me all the truth that I know
I know I must see
Where I can go and who I can be
Why can I not see
I’m sinking like the stone

Oh stop struggling
still defending
stoney heart no more defending
No, no, no
I can’t stop swimming I know

words and music Elaine Diane Taylor

words and music © 2004 Intelligentsia Media
performance © 2012 Intelligentsia Media
SOCAN / ASCAP

photography: Nikki Hainstock