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1. Stop Being Afraid
2. Paris
3. Sphinx
4. Birdsong
5. Grace
6. Ledge
7. Tarantula (instrumental)
8. One Fine Summer Day
9. Avalanche
10. Liberate The Form
11. Never Give Up
All songs written by Jody Rubel unless otherwise noted
Arrangements : SisterMonk

STOP BEING AFRAID

Understanding of emptiness is very important to buddhist thought. Learning martial arts gave me more insight into the riddle of emptiness. In tai chi where one hand empties... the other fills. This song tries to reconcile the genius of “not-doing” with the necessity to very actively forge one’s life. The Heart Sutra is the key: go beyond the limits of normal knowledge; empty the mind and a new intelligence awakens. I wrote this song at time when I was starting to understand that success is something you have to want… and is only attainable through an inquiry of one’s personal measure of it.

When I first began I tried too hard
I was afraid of failing, not knowing what I didn’t know
Put yourself out there and take a bow
Don’t jump ahead, go blow by blow
Learning is the way of how not to close
Your mind to the knowledge that wants to flow

CHORUS:
Stop Being Afraid

INTERLUDE:
You’re not alone, you’re never alone
You’re not alone
You’re not alone, you’re never alone
You’re not alone

Face resistance,
Not the easiest path
Know what you want and then to act
Persistence against the odds
It’s a very short life
Don’t take it so hard
Know what you want
Know what you want
Know what you want
It’s a very short life
Don’t make it so hard

CHORUS

Emptiness Emptiness, Emptiness, Emptiness

Gyate, gyate, parasum gyate
Gyate, gyate, parasum gyate Bodhisattva.

CHORUS

PARIS

Where is the Paris of Proust? Has the multi-national corporate machine swallowed up authentic real life art as a way of life?

CHORUS:
Come take a ride, come take a ride, come
Come take a ride, come take a ride, come
Come take a ride, come take a ride, come
Another day, another gambit
Come take a ride, come take a ride, come
Come take a ride, come take a ride, come
Come take a ride, come take a ride, come
Another day another….
Children of no man
Walk the desert sands
Of the underground
Children of no man
Walk the desert sands
Of the underground

He walked along the Louvre
Down the lane to the Pompidou
Distracted by the streams of people
And all the things he wished he’d do
He thought of Proust
Of Swan’s Way
And the love, life, meaning feeling
In his being
He thought of Proust
Of Swan’s Way
It’s a different world,
A different world today

CHORUS

No flirt is the fashion dot com
Of the imperial world gone wrong.
Where living art in your hands is forbidden
Like the sensual.
Pas le temps de t’ecouter
Pas le temps de t’ecouter
Pas le temps de t’ecouter
Pas le temps

Swan found love in the strife-
There’s still life
Swan found love in the strife-
There’s still life
Swan found love in the strife-
There’s still life in the underground of Paris
Proust, Swan’s Way

Proust, Swan’s Way
Proust, Swan’s Way
It’s a different world
A different world today!

Pas de peux, pas de riz parris perdu o reussiz
Quand en passe par ici, once per once pousse
Car ici les gents son compress

SPHINX

How do we know that we exist? Desacartes, "I think therefore i am"... Sartre, "I am what I do." Buddha might say, ”There is no seperate self”. Wonder, awe, a sense of the miraculous perhaps defines the borders of our being...

Like vertigo on the edge of a cliff
I’m in awe therefore I exist,
Always have I known of this:
The riddle of the sphinx

CHORUS:
What crawls on four legs in the morning
And walks on two legs by midday
Walks on three legs in the evening
We travel life this way.

Surrender your will to what must be
You can’t alter its course or your destiny
Ponder this well, what creature is this?
The riddle of the sphinx

CHORUS

Incarnation, reincarnation
Incarnation, reincarnation

The sphinx as symbol of timeless portal between the past and future; speed up the karmic process... get it done in this lifetime.

BIRDSONG

Birdsong was witten while living in the woods on Whidbey island about an earlier time when 4 of us were living in Matillaja wilderness of Ojai California. We lived several miles off the grid in a "MASH" style army tent where we were seasonally cut off by the caprices of a sometimes raging river. It was the height of the rainy season and helicopters circled overhead like vultures looking for helpless stranded hikers... but this was our home. An 80 acre Zen Ranch where we herded our goats and watched boulders the size of 2 story houses bulldozed down the river by the current... Raw experinece was so feral that it broke down barriers of friedship and intimacy in unexpected ways.

It’s like Birdsong, telling of your love,
Your love without motive, love without motive
Just like Birdsong, telling of your love,
Your love without motive, love without motive

The river was flooded so we walked no further forward.
The river was flooded so we walked no further forward.

CHORUS:
No further
Didn’t need anywhere else to go
No further
Didn’t need anyone else, not anyone else

The rain streaked down our face and wet our lips.
The rain streaked down our face and wet our lips.
One good memory rescues all of this
One good memory rescues all of this life.

Tweet-deet-dee-dee-da-lee-dee
La-da-dee-da-dee
Tweet-deet-dee-dee-da-lee-dee
La-da-dee-da-dee

CHORUS

No further implies the end of thought. tweet deet dee is the new language..a syntactical structure actually capable of speaking of the murmurings of love. Several years after writing this tune I encountered the idea of “Soul Loss” in a James Hillman Post-Jungian text. Hillman equates soul loss with our abandoning of memories... both personal and collective. This contrasts but does not contradict the Buddhist emphasis on emptying one’s mind... only when we “quiet” our thoughts can we call up the memories that are most important for us to remember at any given moment!

GRACE

This song was written over several years, and the theme of leaving something midstream only to reconnect later at a more appropriate time keeps proving itself true. The stream itself is never ending. I was living in a small cabin deep in the woods when I first started this composition (many of the songs written during what I call the “original mind” period were written at the base of a large cedar I call the “Tree of listening”) and the woods were always there to invite introspective insight into the illusory nature of our emotions and experiences.

When I think of you
I feel like I’m gonna lose my mind
I’m going crazy
I can’t be with you right now
I have to go deep inside
In feeling this loss
I smile for I cry.

Our paths diverge
But things’ll be all right
Sometimes leaving things undone
Is doing them right
And with this broken wing
I will take flight.
Let it hurt enough
And you can find the heart
I smile for I cry, I smile for I cry.
I journey, Oh I journey,
I journey to the bottom
Before I touch the sky.

CHORUS:
Grace in flight, grace in flight
Grace in flight, grace in flight

Now she’s under arrest for
Possession of a weapon
And a bag full of contempt
Grace young and discontent
Thinks she can help the boys who
Don’t want help.
She’s got a thing for the dark side
An angel with a wing half bent
Playin’ tricks street corner to corner
The expense of all that good intent
Grace young and discontent
Thinks she can help the boys who
Don’t want help.
Now who’d gonna protect you
From the conviction to live for someone else?

CHORUS

I wish to know what we’re all meant to do
And what lasting meaning does pleasure bring
There’s a great many things I just don’t understand
There’s a great many things I just don’t understand

CHORUS

LEDGE

This song was written as a direct response to an Ani Difranco album. I admired the interiority of her monolgue and appreciated her admission of just “trying to survive”... but felt that she lost sight of our need to move forward together as a collective, and that collective movement is the opposite of nationalism or any ISM because it is gentle in its power to bend everyone towards the light.

The older I get the more I regret
Not doing the things that young people do.
A mistake or two might help me through
The task of making life last longer
I can’t get there without you,
I can’t get there without you.

I acknowledge that I’m part of a whole
Whose parts are lost.
I feel desperate and discontent,
A lack of innocence,
Like there’s nobody left to be.
I can’t get there without you,
But I’m pretty sure you’re as lost as me.
I can’t get there without you,
I can’t get there without you,
I can’t get there without you,
I can’t get there without you!

CHORUS:
The stronger I stand, the harder I fall,
Stronger I stand, the harder I fall,
Stronger I stand, the harder I fall,
Stronger I stand

I acknowledge that I’m part of a whole
Whose parts are lost.
I feel desperate and discontent,
A lack of innocence,
Like there’s nobody left to be.
I can’t get there without you
But I’m pretty sure you’re as lost as me.

It’s good to know you’re out there
On the fringes of it all,
Good to know you’re out there
Where anyone can fall,
Good to know you’re out there
On the fringes of it all,
Good to know you’re out there
Where anyone can fall,
Not just the righteous,
Anyone at all!

CHORUS

ONE FINE SUMMER DAY

This song was written also on Whidbey Island towards the end of my stay there when I was really torn between appreciation for the beauty of my surroundings and frustration at the extent of my isolation from mainstream society. Increasingly, I was prompted to share my music and experiences of nature with much broader strata of society.

One fine summer day
Fading into gray
Don’t make me have to say
Our love just slipped away
Don’t make me have to pay
For things I didn’t say
And please don’t look at me
Don’t look at me that way.

CHORUS:
One fine summer day
Never to repeat itself
One fine summer day…

Take these emotions out of my chest
Give these tensions a good long rest
I might always fail the test
But I’ll leave no trace, no trace of this.

CHORUS

I live in the space in between
The real and the imagined
Praying my life may yield a truth,
A sign of what can be
Help me to fell, help me be real
Help me to feel real again…
‘Cause my family I threw them all away
To make room for a collective pain
Please don’t judge the things I say
For you’re my nearest kin
Help me to feel, help me be real
Help me to feel real again…

CHORUS

AVALANCHE

We travelled out to play a festival in upper Montana a few years back and I became gripped by a desire to see a Grizzly. This wish instigated a number of field trips and new friendships which culminated in a momentary love match for one band member and an early morning face-to-face encounter with a Grizzly for me.

When I close my eyes I feel you
You’re everywhere inside my mind
I’ve travelled far to meet you
But you were there all the time
You shook the ground beneath you
Turned me upside down
Tripped into a waterfall
I fell up from the ground.

CHORUS:
In pleasures we’re born
From one to another we drift
Like a saucer in a sea of sorrow
My lips do slowly sip.
I wish this life would show me
All I need to do.
Oh I wish this life would show me
All I need to do.

I got a glimpse at my truth
When you sang me yours
And the truth is jagged like a cliff.
I got a glimpse at my truth
When you sang me yours
And the truth falls like an avalanche
Moves like a bear running through the brush
And it leaves us in a trail of dust.

CHORUS

Hits me like an avalanche….

LIBERATE THE FORM

(lyrics by William Rubel)

I lived in NYC a long time ago. My brother William and I wrote many intense songs during this time. This song is the “Mother” of all my funky tunes and refers much to the literary gods we were so under the influence of at the time. In the original version there is further homage to Franz Kafka and Jidu Krishnamurti.

Suddenly up high I see the casements
Of a window fly open,
I see the flicker of a rising light,
A human figure faint and insubstantial.
Is this a friend?
Someone who’ll sympathize?
One person alone,
Is this mankind?
Where is the judge
Who ordered me to die?
Where is the courtroom?
What is my crime?

Faith is not belief in any form of anything,
To feel the form is faith itself.
Love is not the love of any form of anything,
To feel the form is love itself.

CHORUS:
James Joyce, liberate the form.
You and I, liberate the form.
James Joyce, liberate the form.
You and I, liberate the form.
You’ve got to liberate the form,
You’ve got to liberate the form,
You’ve got to liber-liber-liberate the form!

NEVER GIVE UP

* excerpt from “Never Give Up” Copyright 1994 & 2008
* His Holiness The Dalai Lama and Ron Whitehead

Never give up, never give up, never give up,
Never give up, never give up…

Never give up no matter what’s going on
Never give up, develop the heart
There’s too much energy in our country
Spent developing the mind
Instead of the heart
Be compassionate not just to your friends
But to everyone
Be compassionate, work for peace
In your heart and in the world

CHORUS

Faith dispels doubt and hesitation
Faith is the root of veneration
Believe in justice and human determination
In the history of man
It’s already been proved
That the human will is more powerful
Than the gun
So if you want to change the world
If you want to change the world
If you want to change the world…

CHORUS