Pris Campbell's Blog, page 8

Keith Jarrett, jazz pianist and his experience with CFS/ME

Keith Jarrett evoking a lot of feeling in me. He was hit by CFS/ME,the same illness I have. He was unable to play the piano at all for two years and still isn't able to play consistently. Eye hand coordination is very difficult...just hand coordination with this illness. One day when his wife was out, as an account goes which I read by him earlier, he felt suddenly as if he could play. He went into his home studio and recorded this simple melody (compared to his power playing) and gave it to his wife as a gift. This is it below.



I have the CD. The other songs are more complex and wonderful, but I'll always love this one. I know what that movement towards getting his life back meant.

Below is the link to one interview about his experience. Please take time to read. It describes how it feels to live with this monster inside you.(This opens in a new Window)

http://listserv.nodak.edu/cgi-bin/wa.exe?A2=ind9902D&L=co-cure&P=R972,

Below is an excerpt from the interview/article:

Jarrett's uncertain pattern of recovery and relapse is not uncommon
to victims of chronic fatigue syndrome, an elusive, misunderstood
disorder, its seriousness undercut by the apparent triviality of its
label.
"The stupid thing is that the name of the disease is so
lightweight," Jarrett says. "It sounds like somebody whining to their
mother, 'I don't want to take the garbage out.' Well, OK, you've got
chronic fatigue syndrome.
"But some doctors say that if you want to give the average person
an idea . . . it's like the last four months of an AIDS patient's
life -- but forever. I know people who have had this who have wished that
they had terminal cancer."

Well, it's Halloween again

This is the day my crossbones show. Kind of like Cinderella having to rush home before midnight so the mice and pumpkin wouldn't be discovered, her gown transformed to rags. I'm entering week four of voice loss and this darn virus from hell so my husband is in charge of answering the door when the wee goblins knock tonight. The only problem is, he got hit by something last night and is sitting in the recliner with a dazed look on his face today. He has voice, though, so let's hope the festivities aren't long. Our dog enjoys this more than any of us.

On the positive side, two poems were just accepted by Chiron Review today. I've been in that journal twice before but love it all over again each time. I'm especially pleased since my energy makes me like a snail when it comes to submitting things.

Back to the couch! Happy Halloween.

Pris

Two for one!

With my eyes still so bad from the whiplash , adding in the cognitive effects of CFS/ME, my stack of unread books sits there calling to me, but I can't answer. I've been writing poems that I hope will become part of a new book in about a year from now and I'm in a mood. Sometimes music is the only place I can go to tame the uncertain beasts inside. Tame, or release them. I don't know which.

Anyway, I couldn't decide on which video to share so I'm sharing both. Hope you take time to at least start them both, but I'm betting if you start you'll finish. Johnny Cash's Hurt comes with an extraordinarily moving video and his rendition of this song outdoes Nine Inch Nail's, even in their opinion.

Marianne Faithful sings a moving song and who can beat Nick Cave playing his distinctive sound behind you? No video on this one. Just a set picture but put on your headsets and enjoy.




Hurt by Johnny Cash in a very moving video recorded not long before his death.




Crazy Love by Marianne Faithful, with Nick Cave behind her.

Lyrics to the last one:

Hated by all and everywhere he goes
Blazing contempt for human life and lies
Murder as art and what he knows he knows
from life and fear in other people's eyes

Crazy love is all around me
Love is crazy love is kind
But I know somehow you'll find me
Love is crazy love is blind

She walks the boulevard without a care
Knowing too much but having come so far
Pretending life is just a game you play for nothing
Loving no-one and no-where

Crazy love is all around me
Love goes crazy given time
But I know somehow you'll find me
Love is crazy love is blind

She looks as if expecting a surprise
Maybe an encounter that will change her life
Not knowing hot from cold or good for bad
If life is just a joke or if it makes her sad

Crazy love is all around me
Love is crazy love is kind
But I know somehow you'll find me
Love is crazy love is blind

Crazy love is all around me
Love goes crazy given time
But I know somehow you'll find me
Love is crazy love is blind

Here is Happiness

When I worked in Hawaii, each week a volunteer would come to the Day Care Center attached to the main building for sing along. She always ended with this beautiful song played in the upper octaves of the piano. One of my Japanese co-workers told me the song was Here Is Happiness. I'd been unable to locate it in many tries over the years. The song was magical.

Today I posted in my status message at Facebook that I was still searching for this song. One of my friends knew exactly where to search and posted the above link. Another friend commented that she had sung this at camp in Hawaii in her younger years. Small world. I'm just so happy to find it again. It doesn't have as much of an oriental 'feel' to it on guitar but the same wonderful melody is there.

Sick again

Well, I seem to blog about being sick again more than I do being well. I hope that changes soon. I have the dratted stomach/sore throat/no voice/dizzy bug going around. My doctor says his office has been filled with it. I've made homemade chicken soup with vegetables and am trying to ignore the fact that I feel I need to lie down all of the time with my stomach poked out like I'm pregnant, and painful.

Today, Scott Owens and I were set to appear on the Jane Crown show. You call in from home but yes, you do have to be able to talk. I have poems from The Nature of Attraction (Main Street Rag Press), our recent poetry collaboration collection,  on audio so if there was any chance of voice, Jane would play the poems and I would use my wee bit of voice for discussion. Her Linnux wouldn't play the files properly and since she was dealing with a mute on this end, she decided to postpone the show. My problem is that I never know when I'll be well, have voice, be able to focus on the task at hand for a new show.

Having a compromised immune system truly forces you to live day by day and not count on future plans. You can't. Last year in November my friend, Margie, of 30 plus years now had planned to replicate our three day visit to a condo on the water in November where we stayed in 2008. This was my second 'away' in 20 years. Margie struggles with her health, too, since having two bouts of lymphoma, complete with chemo and radiation. This past year she was dealing with breast cancer on top of that and a bout of pneumonia from where her lungs were damaged by the radiation to kill the unoperable tumor in her chest. It did do that, thank goodness. I was dealing with a reaction to eye drops that left my vision too blurred to see for two months and a severely injured foot. My husband drives us and watches out for us since, at her best, Margie has neuropathy in her hands and feet from the chemo and frequent congestion from that same lung damage.

We want to have a trip this year. Novemeber rates are good. It's not cold there yet. We won't schedule until the last minute, though. Until we think there's a shot we might make it this year. Having a window of opportunity to do something important and losing it is just too hard.

the bird soars
into a maelstrom...
my daily bread




Prisxxx

Music for a Sunday!

Be sure to listen all the way. The guitar collaboration in the second half will knock your socks off! Dire Straits lead singer/guitarist and Eric Clapton.

sharing a haiku

equinox
a fisherman dips his hands
into the full moon

September 23- Twenty years living with ME/CFS

Last Thursday marked my 20th year anniversary since I awoke with all of the symptoms that were later diagnosed as CFIDS (now ME/CFS). For those of you who don't follow my blog, you can read the 'about me' page on my website for a description of my experience with the illness ( http://www.poeticinspire.com/aboutme.html  This link opens in a new window. All I'll say here is that the first 9 years of this illness were terrifying. I had tremendous difficulty thinking and understanding. Light and ...

Nights in Rodanthe

I recently watched Nights in Rodanthe again, thinking as I did the first time, that the house with its feet in the surf had to be a movie creation, not a real one since the surf was washing under the steps down to the ocean. I googled and found photos of the house used in the film. Notes said that the hurricanes of 2009 had made the house unsafe but it had been bought and relocated to a safer area about a mile away. As I googled more, I saw more of these beautiful homes, now no longer protect...

Haiku tribute to Jimmy Laney, good friend, in current Sketchbook Journal

Click on Sketchbook Haiku sequence to read.

To see the whole issue, go HERE. Under collaborative photo haiga you'll also find some work I did with Geoff Sanderson. Great issue!

Pris