i may be late to the game, but a friend of mine introduced me to a group called "slum village."  and while i’ve spent the last couple of years getting exposed to my fellow south asian musicians and the varying types of music we’re putting out into the world, let me tell you…i’m so loving this new exposure. 

i get the same feeling listening to them as i do when i listen to kruder and dorfmeister, although they’re two totally different types of artists.  but they are both sexy as all hell and raw at the same time.

i’ve been thinking about the next album a lot.  i want it to have a much sexier feel the next time around.  sexy in a sly, seductive way.  different type of songwriting.  a new artistic challenge.  not sure i could rap though.  might be an odd proposition to hear me rapping!

as for an explanation about me moving to london (a request from a comment)…well, my astrologer said i was going to marry a man and that we’d live abroad.  the only city i could see myself in abroad is london so i’ve just decided that’s where he must be and where i’ll end up.  astrological foolery perhaps, but i’m preparing just in case…

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perhaps it has something to do with the end of the year.  the quiet.  watching friends and family travel all over the world for the holidays.  watching your own city get very very still, especially when you don’t venture much into malls anymore, what with on-line shopping and all.  but with all this time to sit with my thoughts, i begin to meet my obsessions all over again.  generally i can keep them squashed down under work, fun time with friends.  yoga class surely helps defuse the bomb about to explode in my head.

obsession.  in its worst form, it comes as "spinning."  running in a wheel like a hamster with stress being the only product.  this is the most frustrating form of obsession for me.  it’s neither productive nor fruitful and i usually ask myself if i am really that bored that i have all this time on my hands to spin.  the answer usually gets me off my ass and redirects my attention to the myriad of things i want to accomplish in this lifetime.

obsession.  in its most entertaining form, it comes as "fantacizing."  entering an altered reality in your mind where all your dreams exist as true.  you have the life you want, with the person(s) you want.  i can take it in the form of hope and idealism.  it can also burn me from the agony of knowing that such fantasies have not yet made their way to my physical world.  i am forced to exercise patience or go insane.  i have seen glimpses of both. 

obsession.  a miracle really.  it can make us creepy and excited, inspiring and strange all at the same time.  it’s the stuff of a good song.

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i’ve been following this story of the air marshall and the passenger he shot.  i’m completely saddened by the events.  we are living in a culture of fear fueled by thoughts of brown ghosts hiding in corners and ethnic boogeymen under our beds. 

i understand he may have been doing his job.  my question is why do we have a job whose purpose is to suspect that everyone and anyone could be a potential threat to society.  seems like a self-fulfilling prophecy. 

call me naive.  i think we should expect to receive what we give out.  if we stand on our pulpits ranting about the insanity in the world, we sure will spend a lot of energy looking for it in the most obscure places, and no doubt find it or even create it.  an air marshall kills a bipolar man because he said the word bomb. 

seems to me our time would be better spent finding all the good and love and flaming those fires instead.

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so on wednesday night (two days ago), i went to visit my eye fairy.  that’s what I’m going to call her from now on.  it was the first session I had with her during the night.  i definitely notice that my vision is considerably less sharp as soon as hits around 4pm and the natural light begins to fade.  a very frustrating fact i am learning to live with.  when i worked with my Fairy, we worked in extremely dim light.  if you can relax the muscles around the eye and have clear vision in dim light, then you can definitely have clear vision in day light.  it took me much longer to get to the same level of clarity I normally would have gotten if i was reading in bright sunlight.  we worked for about half an hour and then i was back to my own devices.  i’ve been a lot less faithful about not wearing my glasses as much - even if they are not 20/20 glasses.  i have noticed a difference that these 20/40 glasses offer me considerably clearer site now that my eyes have started to get better.  it’s been not even a month.  wow!

i did visit my eye doctor brother in cleveland over thanksgiving.  and instead of it my vision experiment being a surprise to him, he asked me about it the minute i got in the car.  i suppose blogging about the journey didn’t really keep it top secret, but i specifically said that it was meant to be a surprise to him.  some unnamed member of our family spilled the beans!  since the eye exam would not have been a controlled experiment, i decided to forego getting my eyes checked by him.  will just wait til my vision is 20/20 before i have him check me.

enough about the eyes…i’ve been enjoying these colder months a lot.  partly due to my increasing fascination with moving to london.  i’m getting very open to walking around in cold rainy weather more often than not.  london is such a fantastic city - a cross between bombay and new york city, with a little bit of eurpean charm and tradition thrown in.  fantastic!!! 

i’ve been using this time especially to get quiet with myself and think about what i want to do in 2006.  it’s a thing i do once a year or so.  take inventory of my life and reassess its direction.  do you do that?  i find it very inspiring to give myself the permission and time to reinvent my life if i want.  most of the time, the shifts are very subtle, but every once in a while, i set myself up for the next roller coaster ride.

one of my goals for next year is to travel a lot more.  2005 has kept me pretty tied to los angeles, which has had a lot of great moments - including a lot of time with my family.  but next year, i aim to go to london, india, morocco and bali.  on my trip to cleveland, i made a friend on the plane who is a jewelry designer.  much of her work is inspired by her many trips to bali.  after hearing her talk about it…i just have to get there.  as for heather’s work…you should take a look.  it’s beautiful.

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day 12 was a big day.  perhaps partly due to the fact that mercury is in retrograde, everything was all askew.  including my eyes - in a good way though.

you’ll not believe this.  i met with my "eye trainer" of sorts and we did some eye experiments.  taking sheets with words on them and putting them out at a distance.    the 1 inch letters were about 10 feet away from me.  at first, they looked blurry as usual.  so i was neither surprised nor disappointed.  it’s what i’ve experienced since i was 7.  she encouraged me to do some of the eye exercises i’ve learned.  in a few minutes, the letters came into focus.  and i rattled them off to her fast. 

oh my god!!!  it’s working!!!  once i get things into focus, if i blink for a second, they return to blurry and then i have to relax again into clarity.  very frustrating.  apparently over time, this will shift and i will be able to see clearly and blink at the same time.  physiological imperative i suppose.  in the meantime, i sit a little closer to my computer screen and take my glasses off as much as i can.  i’ve even lessened my prescription a bit (still within the legal limit for driving, don’t worry).  definitely a trip.  and very encouraging to watch the brain at work.

day 12′a bad skewed thing:  last night, on my way from rehearsal with rick and on my way to rehearse with adam and jeff for the hotel cafe show tonight, my clutch blew out!  i was talking on my cell phone and started saying, "oh my god.  my car.  it’s making a really bad noise."  the boy on the other end tried to talk me through a quick fix, but no go.  my stick shift was not going to get into gear under any circumstance!  thank god i was not on the freeway.  i pulled over and sat in the car for an hour while i waited for my dad and AAA. 

i had my guitar in the car with me, so i pulled it out and wrote a song.  it’s called "chase down" and i’m going to play it at tonight’s show.  i also made my self laugh periodically by reminding myself of a waiter in palm springs last weekend offering me a little bowl of chopped tomato, onion, cilantro and chili.  "would you like a side of pepe de mayo?" 

folks..he was serioius.  i was with my sister kathleen.  she loves malaprops so asked, "i’m sorry, what is this did you say?"  "pepe de mayo," he replied with a completely serious face.

"oh right!" she said.  "i love pepe de mayo."

for those of you in the midwest, pepe de mayo is actually called pico de gallo.

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this is day 8 of the natural eyesight experiment.  it’s getting a bit easier.  at least i’ve kicked the mild depression about the world being unclear.  i have been able to care a lot less about what the outside world is doing.  when you can’t see the world around you, it becomes like static and white noise.  you can get quiet with your thoughts and not worry so much about things that don’t really concern you anyhow.  i find myself having lots of very intimate conversations with my friends.  up close and personal.  for those of you who are nearsighted, try it for a day.  see what it’s like to walk around without your glasses or contacts.  you’ll be amazed!

lately i’ve been obsessed with this alicia key’s song called "unbreakable."  it’s one of the most catchy and novel r&b songs written in a long time.  you should all check it out.  i’ve linked you all to a stream of the video from her mtv unplugged show. 

hope you are having a beautiful sunday and hope to see you all on friday at the hotel cafe show.  it will be incredible.  the cafe just was remodeled.  lovely new stage and incredible sound.  new song or two debuting at the gig.  we’ll have lots of fun…

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as if eyesight could be un-natural…  january 2003, i decided to do an experiment and see how my body would feel if i became a vegetarian.  so i went home to my parents’ place for dinner and announced that i would no longer be eating meat.  that i was going to try it on for size for 30 days and see what i thought.  in california, vegetarianism is almost like a prada bag.  folks wear it on their shoulder to let everyone else know just how conscious they are.  i wanted to see what all the hype was about.  i found that i felt a lot more energetic and enjoyed my food more.  so for me it worked.  3 years later…i’m still not eating meat (except for fish, so my mom calls me a bengali vegetarian). 

so now i have my next experiment.  i have been wearing glasses from age 7.  and though my power is not too strong (-3.5 and -3.25) - average for nearsighted people, i’m still very attached to my contact lenses and enjoy the seeing crystal clear images!

i had long heard about yoga exercises being able to correct vision issues, but the product of western medicine and coming from a family of docs, i didn’t really believe it.  until one day, a good friend of mine came into yoga class wearing her soda bottle glasses.  she told me she was working on correcting her vision through a series of eye exercises.  2 years later, she is glasses free!

i know…i’m a skeptic as well, but i also remember what my yoga teacher says about the yogini’s body.  it’s a lab.  we experiment with postures and exercises to test the energy flow and understand what brings us closer to our center. 

in the same spirit of my vegetarian experiment, i am now attempting to correct my vision au natural.  i decided to go for it for 30 days.  i started sunday, november 6 and have asked my friends not to let me give up.  i am not allowed to wear my glasses except for driving.  i am moving around my day at a snail’s pace.  for someone as type a as me, this is a very humbling experiment. 

when i walk around, i’m not quite sure if people are looking at me, so i just smile all the time.  i don’t want people to think i’m being rude or ignoring them!  going to the grocery store salad bar is like an adventure.  i can generally tell what everything is, but i’m like an 80 year old woman checking and rechecking - there’s the added pressure of having to make sure i’m not accidently putting any meat in my salad. 

i have noticed that the puffiness under my eyes has disappeared and that when i wake up in the morning, my eyes are very dry.  odd.

i have also noticed small shifts in my eyesight.  i have moments when the computer screen gets clear again as if i’m wearing glasses.  i start to tear up every time that happens and then lose it because my eyes are all watery!  but mostly right now, i walk around frustrated and a little sad.  it’s a bummer not being able to see clearly. 

i will keep you posted periodically.  my brother is an eye doctor and i haven’t told him about my experiment.  i’m going to his house for thanksgiving and every year he tests my eyes.  by that time, i would have been at this for 2 1/2 weeks.  you’re supposed to see improvement by then.  i’m excited to test the experiment then.  countdown begins…

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i just wanted to wish everyone eid mubarak!  the month of ramadan is over.  i managed to fast 26 days.  it feels incredible to have cleansed myself, rediscovered my discipline and found clarity of mind for this month. 

this morning my dad and i went to eid prayers at the anaheim convention center and then i took him to brunch.  we had a date.  there were over 15,000 people praying together this morning.  imagine the power of that.  the imam asked that we all pray for world peace in these troubled times.  so i did.  and i do.

may you all be blessed with peace and love…always.

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last night, i went to the u2 concert at the staples center here in LA.  friends, this is the second time i’ve seen them in concert.  i was blown away.  by far one of the best concerts of this size that i’ve seen.

the capacity of the venue is roughly 20,000+.  every once in a while, i would look around the center and just take in the sea of people singing every one of the words to the songs.  many times, bono just stopped singing.  i cannot imagine a better feeling for a songwriter than to watch a stranger sing the words to his song, let alone 20,000 strangers.  i also cannot imagine what that kind of attention and adoration does to your worldview!

but the moment i just lost it was when bono grabbed a girl from the audience below him and pulled her on stage to serenade her.  for the entire song, he just hugged her in close like he was about to whisper how much he loved her while they were standing on a quiet street corner in the night.  meanwhile, he’s got a mic in his hand and he’s being blasted through a coliseum!  it was an incredible moment and a testament to what an incredible front man he’s been for u2.

i like the small shows, the intimate, "come get up in my business" shows.  i prefer them.  but every once in a while, it’s so inspiring to see what other reality exists.  if for nothing else than to bend my own.

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i can’t tell you what time it is.  it may be that we’re supposed to fall back.  it’s likely pretty late.  i just finished watching born into brothels.  needless to say, there was a reason it won an academy award.  a compelling and touching film.  if you haven’t had a chance to watch it yet, rent it.  netflix it.  do whatever you need to do to see it. 

you will be moved.  you will be moved to do something.  give in a way you didn’t realize you could.  at least that is what i think.  i would love to hear what you think. 

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