"Because you never know where life is gonna take you and you can't change where you've been, but today, I have the opportunity to choose"

India.Arie is a goddess. I truly, truly mean that. She's the type of goddess that demands to be worshipped - like cats were in Ancient Egypt. Or wait, maybe they were killed. No, wait, that's the Middle Ages I'm thinking of.... yes, they were definitely worshipped.

(note to self, Wikipedia "worship cats, Egypt")

Ok, that actually has nothing to do with the point of this blog. The whole point of this blog was to discuss feelings.

So back to India Arie. There are a handful of artists who have saved my life, and I don't use that expression lightly, over the years. The ones who inspire passion, who remind me those little nuggets of truth, when I have so forgotten. India.Arie has slowly become my artist of choice over the past year, my own personal guru who is so easily accessible on iTunes, the one who I pose a question to and 2 minutes later she is answering it in song, verse, and some of the sweetest guitar sounds there are.

This show that I am in now, we are heading into the final 10 days pre-concert time, and so I find myself immersed in all the music that our fabulous fearless leader Jessi Nicholson has chosen so carefully... and ya know, every day I find myself thanking my lucky lucky stars to be involved in this project.

In case you don't know what project it is, I am singing background vocals for Jessi Nicholson's band Journey Into Eye. It's her baby, this project, and she is such a talented and driven (not to mention fabulous!) professional, that I am blessed to work with her. And, insert shameless plug here: we are playing June 4th, 10pm, at the Backstage Lounge in Granville Island, tix $10 in advance, $12 at the door (email me at megnatphil@hotmail.com for tix!)

So I bring up the show - not Just to lure you into buying tickets, hehehe, but for a deeper reason: I needed to explore my evolution up until now.

i was swimming, yesterday, and in the pool, I realized just how far I've actually come. I swim because it's the only - and yes, I mean ONLY - cardio exercise I can do without any pain. And I was kinda groaning, because I was starting to get bored in the pool, and as I was going through the front crawl motions I decided, OK, I'm finishing this lap, then i'm outta here.

And all of the sudden, India.Arie's "and I Choose" popped into my head. Are you familiar with her lyrics? If not, I will paste some of them here:

I Choose to be the best that I can be
I choose to be authentic in everything I do
my past don't dictate who I am
I Choose

And this part of the song just looped through my head. It looped. I was looping through the pool, swimming my laps, and India was looping through my head.

But, like, I just got to thinking, "Sheeeeit... I do choose. I do!" We like to think that we don't choose. A lot of times, we hope that we don't choose, we soooo hope that we don't, because then we're not accountable, right? We're not accountable for the bad stuff. The gross stuff.

I have more to write about this, but it's late, and I need to go to bed. So for now, I'll just leave you with India's "I Choose"... and you can take from it what you need.

Love,
Mega