The Chariot represents a time of acceleration, change, and becoming the driver of your own bus. You have the commitment, willpower, and discipline needed to move ahead in a positive direction and blaze your own trail.
BLAZE YOUR OWN TRAIL
SONG RELEASE STORY
March 10, 2023
The Chariot represents a time of acceleration, change, and becoming the driver of your own bus. You have the commitment, willpower, and discipline needed to move ahead in a positive direction and blaze your own trail.
On writing day, my routine is always the same:
- Turn on my Bluetooth speaker, open Spotify, play "Running Stream" on repeat, and fill my room with the calming sounds of water trickling through a shallow creek.
- Light a candle (a REAL candle, not one of my battery-operated Luminara candles, which I also use and love, but for psychic songwriting, I need real fire).
- Light an incense cone or stick.
- Select a deck of cards to use.
- Sit cross-legged on the floor and shuffle the cards for about 5 minutes while at the same time clearing my mind and becoming present to what I see, hear, feel, and smell.
- Spread the cards face down in front of me in a semi-circle.
- Pull a card. (I always start with a full deck, even though I've written songs for 33 already. If I pull an already written card, I set it aside, and pull another one, until I've drawn an unwritten one.)
- Using my tarot books and several online resources, look up the card's meaning and write down key words and themes in my songwriting journal. At this point, sometimes, lyrics and melodies immediately begin popping into my head.
- Connect my computer to my digital piano to record my songwriting ideas.
- Set the card on my music stand and begin writing.
Most songs come to me within an hour or two. I write the music and the lyrics simultaneously. Once I've landed on a phrase and melody, I repeatedly perform it, over and over, until the next melody and lyric appears. As I am writing, the more I "get in my head" and think about what I'm doing, the more blocked I become. In some ways, my process feels a bit like automatic writing, except in my case, it's automatic SONGwriting.
When I picked The Chariot on April 24, 2021, I wrote down five words in my journal: road, wheels, horses, cart, you. The concept of a traveling passenger immediately begged for my attention. And then, the opposing themes of confidence and insecurity stepped into the room. It was easy for me to put the pieces together and create this song about blazing your own trail, because that's exactly what I was doing with creating The Music Tarot.
There is an indelible magic I feel when creating this music. There is no greed, there is no ego. There is no criticism, there is no doubt. These songs come from a place of intention and desire so pure, I feel indestructible. Right now, I'm on Pioneer's Highway, and in the rearview mirror, I can see the traces of my disabilities strewn across the road behind me: migraines, breast cancer, mistakes, and life experiences that have held me back. But now the wheels are turning, the road is open, I'm committed, I am focused - and oh what a ride it will be.