"Live Deep"

"Never stop learning, playing

or finding wonder

in the world around you.

Live the length of your life,

but live the depth of it as well."

Some writer or poet sold a piece of their prose to a greeting card company. My Grandmother bought it and gave it to me on my birthday this year. This is the first stanza of it.

I have the card tacked to my bulletin board and I read it everyday. It is so inspirational and the message, especially coming from my grandmother, drives me to live my life in the moment enough that I can look back with no regrets.

That was something I started this year when I turned 30. I made a very planned, thought-out, conscious decision to start living the life that I dreamed about. I don't succeed everyday, but the way that my life has changed since January is pretty staggering. I often stop and have to blink away tears of joy. Even in my most exhausted, beat-down, walked-on, aggravated and ugliest states, I have to admit (sometimes begrudgingly lol) that I am in a really amazing and lucky place in my life. And I've gotten here with a lot of hard work and a lot of love and support from a handful of people . I also realize I could've been in this place a lot sooner... but that's a story for another time I suppose.

One thing I have regretted in particular is not singing a Tori Amos song for my Senior Pizzazz solo.

[Pizzazz is a small, elite showchoir at my old high school (think: NERD) - we choreographed and sang songs that our choir director chose, had special fancy outfits, and each member was allowed to choose a solo song to sing for our mega concert.]

I've often wondered what I would sing if I could go back to that point and change it from the Lisa Loeb song I chose...would I actually be able to narrow it down to one Tori song? And would I be satisfied not being able to play the piano along with it? and another thing... when will I actually get around to learning how to play the piano? Hmmm, Sam? You're not getting any younger!

Tori Amos was a HUGE inspiration in my life in high school. I'm talking, huge. She was a central force in my world. I devoured all the literature I could concerning her, her life and her career, watched videos, bought all the CDs I could, singles and all. And while I'm not as fond of her newer music as I am the older stuff, her work is still firmly entwined in my roots and I am the person I am today partly because of her music. She is not the reason I love the piano - that love was there. Either I was born with it or it happened when I was too young to remember, because I remember drawing a piano in kindergarten and pretending to play it. But her playing is the reason I love her work - her raw natural prodigal playing... the classical influences, the blues influences, the layers, the way it worms its way down into a primal and inexplicable part of me and oh my arms go up, oh my oh my oh my gawd, it's rapture, rapture, rapture.

Not Tori, the piano. But because she is so firmly intertwined with her playing, the piano love/need/obsession encompassed her too when I was younger. And if I'm honest, I was a lost soul as a teen, and needed a shepherd. Tori served that roll at the time, for better or worse.

If I could go back and sing a Tori song, it might be this one, that still, absolutely still, makes me jive like a jackrabbit.... but since I can't go back, maybe I'll play it for myself on a future birthday. Learning the piano is on my list of ways I'm going to "live deep".