Still waiting [ imp]atiently for "Gnoseological Paradigms"

So as I have mentioned before, I have six tracks of this album already, of the full eight promised by Paolo (although if memory serves, I think he said that "Soon There Will Be Light" won't be on the album, which is a shame in a way because I like it, particulalry the piano parts - but it probably could do with some tweaking. Anyhoo...)

I don't know what order they should go in, so I have imposed my own order.

And I have made my own itunes play list, which I have been listening to a lot.

It's Sunday morning, the baby is asleep, I am getting ready to host a BBQ for her birthday, and I'm listening to Gnoseological Paradigms (Ali's cut) and positively longing to get the album proper.

Sometimes, when I haven't listened to the songs for a while, I start to ask myself if they are really as good as I remember. And then I listen to them again and fall in love with them a little more.

Sometimes they make me really melancholy, sometimes they make me really happy, other times, reflective - sometimes all of the above and more at the same time.

This morning I have been feeling a intense excitement while listening to them - not just because the songs were making me happy (and they really really were making me happy,) but because I felt this swell of pride for Paolo and everything he has been able to accomplish. When I listen to his music, I feel so totally sure that many many other people are going to love it. A picture rises in my head of a bunch of people who are going to be big fans and they don't even know it yet! It really makes me want to jump up and down, which may be silly, but hey, so I'm silly, what else is new?

I am wildly happy for Paolo, and, oddly, for all the people who are going to love his stuff as much as I do - I know it may sounds corny but I really did feel that way this morning. So add corny to my adjectives of the day...!

Also what I love about his songs is that some of them evoke feelings and reactions that I only used to get from listening to Tori Amos songs - and lately, much as I have tried, I found the new Tori Amos stuff much less accessible to me. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE Tori Amos's other work, and I am really disappointed that, for whatever reason, I can't fall into the most recent album. But it's like love - it is love - and you can't force it. You either feel it or you don't. I am listening to the new album every so often in the hope that it will gradually trickle in - this did happen with The Bee Keeper but never really worked for Boys For Pele - so there you go.

I love the musical the depth - that every time I go back there is more to discover - more resonance. Jessica's voice is beautiful, often soaring, bird-like over the rest of the score occasionally plunging in and out of the other instruments and sometimes almost absent. But always lovely. Thanks Jessica! :-D

Now that I have seen the video for "Gravita", I feel that my experience of that song is definitely enhanced (I just love that video).

"Paradigms" is my favourite track - I always start any album with a favourite track, which I listen to over and over, often eschewing the rest of the songs. It's a bit like a honeymoon with a new album, for me at least. Then what usually happens is that I eventually let the rest of the songs play while I'm busy doing other stuff. And after I've done that a few times, it's like something suddenly clicks - the songs are not only no longer strangers, but many of them have worked their way into my subconscious somehow, and without my being aware of it, even songs I may not necessarily like have made themsleves a part of me. And that breaks the ice, and so I can start relationships with the rest of the songs, until each one means something to me.

What really hit me this morning was the words in Paradigms, which made me think for a moment about how, as children, the lack of language and lack of exposure to religious and social indoctrination and intolerance had allowed us, for a brief time at least, to be so free. We didn't really judge or evaluate our emotions or our actions, we just got to experience them - to be sad when sad and happy when happy. And not guilty or paranoid. For a moment in time anyway.

I wonder a lot about what to say to my daughter about religion as she grows up. I'm afraid that there is such a thing as a religious gene, and that I will have passed it on to her. Because although I don't believe in religion or even really in god, like a recovering addict, I still feel the ghost of a need to prostrate myself befor some higher power, to give my life over, my decisions, my way of life - to abdicate responsibility.

Which is stupid, and masochistic and lazy - faults that I'm afraid I must own up to. Which is how I came to flirt with Christian fundamentalism, throw myself into Islamic fundamentalism, play around with Paganism until I finally came to a calmer, more self-accepting state. Now I definitely view my religious compulsions (which are few and far between but also too dangerous for me to deny their existernce) as the result of the early religious instruction I received - like the wound was inflicted, and has healed, but that the scar tissue will always pinch in cold weather, or something like that. I have to keep them in check, recognise the danger signs and remind myself of why my love affair with religion had to end. It wasn't good for me. From my point of view, religion is like a person I have been deeply attracted to, had an intense relationship with and then had to leave, not becuase I want to, but because I have recognised that the relationship isn't good for me and ultimately, it isn't real - it's all in my head. (Isn't everything....but anyway)

I remember in particular puzzling over how I could be a good Christian or Muslim when I knew that I was definitely a bisexual person. Definitely not gay. There's nothing wrong with bein gay. If was a lesbian, I would be fine with that. But it's not me. I know that because I am attracted to some men and and I attracted to some women. I happened to marry a man, a man that I love very much. But that doesn't erase my sexual identity. I don't view the relationships I have had in the past (sexual and non-sexual) with women as a 'phase', athough I know that some people do go through a 'bi-curious stage' and feel that they come out of it straight. That's their experience, it doesn't mean that mine has to conform to theirs. Of course not!

People can say what they want about bisexuality being a pit stop on the road to gay (wasn't that said in an episode of Sex in the City?). But I know better. It's just that a hetero lifestyle is easier on so many levels, and if you have the choice, why not choose the easiest path? Also the gay/lesbian world isn't so welcoming of the bisexuals - some of their reasons are actually pretty good - the bicurious may not mean to do damage to the gay people they unwittingly (or sometimes I'm sad to say intentionally) 'experiment' with - but I know that often harm is done, so and I do see where the negativity may come from from but hey...

Also I didn't and don't meet many girls who are into girls on a daily basis - actually I used to mainly fall in love with straight girls. (I know I should probably say 'women' - I have a hard time remembering that I'm all growed up now, so forgive me) Anyway, that falling in love with straight girls well... that never leads to anything good. So yes, I know that I fancy girls and boys. And no, bisexuality doesn't make you any more or less likely to cheat on your partner. There seems to be a lot of talk about that these days.

Ok, it definitely widens the field of potential sexual/romantic partners, but I am a very loyal person and despite some lovely invitations to cheat on my (now)husband over the years, (issued by men and women,) I have never done so nor do I intend to do so, bisexual or no. Although monogomy isn't that important to me as a concept, my husband's feelings about monogomy are. And monogomy is important to him. He has asked me to vow monogomy and I have chosen to do that. So bisexual or not, that is what I will do - be monogomous. So religion and sexual identity has definitely been a quagmire for me in the past. One of the best things about getting out of all that religion was being able to feel good about my sexual identity. And that of others. Phew!

Hopefully I know better than to go down those roads again (the religious and therefore most often assocaited gay-hating roads,) and I really hope that Georgie doesn't end up walking them too. Ultimately I have no control over that, and shouldn't try to exert any, lest I end up pushing her there. But I do wonder about it and I do worry about it a little.

But back to the music. That's something else I like about Paolo's work, it really is a music towards atheism, at least it is for me. It speaks to my experience of religion and how I have scrambled to the shores of atheism/agnosticism and can look back and then move on. I find "Ziqqurat" particulary tends to take me back to musing on all the bizarre religious shit I have gone through. And of course, it makes me glad to have gotten out the other side.

So there you go, whether you wanted to know or not, this is how I feel about the hotly anticipated works of Paolo Ferrarni - and how I feel about religion, and it's influence over my life to date.

I know you are working as fast as you can Paolo but please, for the love of pete, hurry the fuck up!

xxx