Ellis

#1- I often listen to something while I am working. Today my typical selections (The Story, The Moth etc.) weren't feeling right. It took a while to find what I needed but finally I landed on music from the festival I was at last weekend.

#2 - I found the song that I wanted to write the chorus in my journal - A Reckoning of Us by Robbie Hecht.

#3 - Though there are many songs posted I could include here, I chose this one mostly because of the woman singing it. She is the embodiment of kindness, just being in her presence brings me joy.

#4 - She (Ellis) is one of the reasons I played a song at the campfire at the festival. Nobody there cared whether I played or not, but for me it was stepping into a circle of people I respect. It was an unfamiliar step, but made much easier because this woman was there and I could follow her song and her lead and her kindness. And writing this now makes me realize how her authenticity supported and encouraged my authenticity.

#5 - Listening to other Ellis videos - she was talking about her need for expression and somehow this hit me in a way I haven't heard it before. The need for expression. I have that need too. I wonder if this is a universal need or more selective. Like the need for danger that some war correspondents have for example.

I'd like to add the following quote which my friend sent yesterday in a book review she thought I'd like.

“"'How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives,' Annie Dillard wrote in her sublime meditation on presence vs. productivity. There is hardly a more enduring embodiment of this spirit than Henry David Thoreau, for whom the very definition of success rested on the ability to greet one’s day with joy. Yet this philosophy of mindfulness and immersion in the richness of life is increasingly eroded by our culture’s cult of productivity, which eats away at our ability to truly see life as it unfolds before us."