Harlepolis said:

Wow. I'm only half way through but wow! I must share this with my mum.

xxo

beautiful, Richard.

SupaFunkyOrgangrinderSexy said:Can you imagine how many absolute diamonds are missing from the music world with all these unfinished unreleased and shelved projects? [/quote]

Chaka has a lot of unreleased material sitting in the vaults over at Warner Brothers. I heard some really great stuff was left off of the "I Feel For You: album. A while ago, she said she was attempting to gain access to it so some of the songs could get released. Not sure how that's coming along. I just don't get why record companies hold on to this stuff forever and then decide to release the songs after the artist dies or they just let the tapes sit and rot. Just goes to show you, unless they feel they can make a ton of money, the labels don't give a crap about the artist's fans.

sosgemini said:

Please please PLEASE!!! Tell her I said hello and I miss you both!

im so glad that you are going to this group and I am extremely supportive of you, that read was quite the breathtaker and a eye opener of your stuggle and your movement to expanded thought. I am really proud of you Rich!! Im still on a Chaka Fix..just realised how good "LOok Through My Eyes" was off of the Rags To Rufus album....WHAT HAVE I BEEN MISSING!?!?!

A++ I have to say congrats you have soul

Does Chaka still have a record label? I heard the label (Burgundy) that she and Donna Summer both were on folded. Is this true?

Supa!





I've had 'the best of:C.K. vol.one"' sitting on my night stand for however long but another thread made me pull out The Woman I Am and wow. I'm in love with this song
[Edited 12/13/09 12:32pm]
[Edited 12/15/09 8:43am]

I read this days ago and I couldn't speak. I am always in awe of you, Richard. I subscribed to this thread thinking I would come back, read it for the 4th time and comment. I'm still unable to speak.

I love you... And I'm so very happy you came into my life on this board.

She plays the drums also.

noimageatall said:

Seeeee?

In a couple of weeks, threads like this one will disappear,,,,,Richard I'm sure you know what I'm aiming at.....

Girl4both said:

And bass Though I've only heard her playing the drums.

I saw her live over a year ago when she visited Sydney.
I was 2 rows from the front, and she was fantastic!
Her nephew come on at the end and danced to close off the show, what a cutie!!!

How the fuck this thread didn't get the sticky treatment?

butterfli25 said:

Hello Gorgeous! To be received in this way and from you makes my heart sing the most glorious songs

It is amazing the power of music. My aunts house is where I was exposed to and experienced the most violence growing up. There were so many fights. So much emotional upheaval. So many sexual and spiritual assaults. So many heartbreaking experiences. But in spite of it, my cousin and I still danced in the living room. We still listened and connected through music. There was no darkness too great that could eclipse the power of one song. I hear what you are saying and I truly understand where you are coming from.

It looks to me that the dim recollection was overpowered by the light of this music. I just understand that on so many levels. I love you baby

.
[Edited 12/14/09 12:23pm]

theAudience said:

I couldn't wait for the Master to see my work, then I noticed he did his own disertation!

Audi, it is my purest pleasure for you to grace my thread and for you to see music in living action in my life. I have the maddest and craziest respect for you. Musically, spiritually, as a friend. RESPECT RESPECT RESPECT!

LOVE LOVE LOVE!

And that pretty much covers it

We are Sooooo lunching soon

xoxoxoxoxo

DiminutiveRocker said:

It's been WAAAAAYYYYY too long!

I'm like a Frankenstein over here. Instead of destroying, I'm creating

At my school, we are coming up with so many ways of loving each other and ourselves. One student was inspired to honor himself by writing himself postcards, as if he was writing them to a dear friend. But they are to himself telling how much he loves himself

In that spirit, I do the following to love myself.

Considering that I showed up to help the 4 year old (Pops - Family Nickname), and that Pops and I showed up to help my 23 year old (Olivia - my drag name at the time) and that Pops and Olivia showed up to help Richard by placing the gift in the treasure chest for me to find, I dedicate the following song which perfectly fits this experience with myself:





IN LOVE WE GROW

we go on and on
from dawn to dawn
the years have flown much faster than we know

And still in love we grow

Time has placed us here
Afraid of fear
We've seen through tears
that never should have flown

And still in love we grow

Like a baby dove,
our love in time it's snowy wings unfold
to soar
above….

I'll stay another hour, another day
My whole life
as long as I feel this way
I'll stay with you and know

As long as I feel this way
In Love We'll grow


I have done so much to help other people and I've never helped myself I am not dismissing or discounting the 5 years of work that I did. That was absolutely helping myself but going back to those memories and helping them. My God. They have always been captive in those experiences. Now I will never see those memories, or the person I was the same way.

My experiences brought me to this place, this glorious mountaintop and my God how beautiful life really is. The wounded children inside were truly just waiting for the right time to show how strong they always were. I'm a survivor.

Look at you! Healing your inner child(ren) and grieving the wounds you've suffered is causing you to clear out your emotional processes
and come to the core (truth) of ALL you truly are! And who you are is powerful, free, bold, a force to be reckoned with.

Releasing the grief (and the suppressed rage, terror, shame and pain that comes with it) allows you the freedom and the space to see clearly, hear clearly...
and move freely and powerfully through life!

I love love love that you are loving, owning and honoring the truth and totality of yourself and your path, that you are empowered and no longer held hostage by the wounds of your past.

Sweetness, YOU are a force of nature, a divine soul, a light, a warrior. You are my hero.

Your revelations are breathtakingly beautiful. Much love as you continue to become and help others to break the painful cycles of abuse.

slimhustle said:

Slim, how wonderfully Prizing and encouraging. This thing is so overwhelmingly beautiful that I have to pinch myself to make sure it's really happened to me!

Yesterday I did a spoken presentation on it and you could tell that people were in shock. Like did he really just tell that story?!. Well I'm shocked too!

I cannot wait until I get to help others to heal their inner selves. I have found my inner counselor at school and the journey I'm taking with everyone is going to carry me forward into this beautiful place of healing for myself and others. I just can't wait to love people out of their pain.

saw her live at 3121

she sucks

but her backup singers were decent

but i am sure she was good at one point in her life

now she just yells instead of sings

kinda sad

I remember growing up and my mom having all of Chaka's albums. Going through her record collection is one of my most cherished memories of my childhood. That's how I learned about Chaka, Stevie, Michael, Aretha, Al, James, the O'Jays, Manhattans, Ohio Players.....the list goes on and on

Chaka is like a vocal monument. I think to appreciate Chaka, just play her Rufus joints and her early solo joints and see her performances. U know the girl was/is the best.

I must come back to this card....

It truly does look like she is cradling a baby in her hair and talking softly to it. Comforting but not comforted. There is something else so significant about this card but first:

My cousin Lisa was 6 months pregnant when she was assaulted by her boyfriend. This assault tore the placenta and caused her to bleed. The doctors got the bleeding under control and my cousin left to come home after 2 days, even though the doctors told her to stay for 4.

She was home one day and the day after she met up with some old friends she used to do drugs with and she got high on cocaine. This induced bleeding in her womb and she hemorrhaged and had a heart attack. Her friends left her all alone in an alley.

The doctors resuscitated her and kept her alive for four days on machines. The doctors told my family that there was no way they could try and save her life while being pregnant and she couldn't go through the surgery of a C section or delivery because it was too risky to her life. So my family agreed to terminate the pregnancy. This is how baby Anthony came to die.

It was no use though, because after Anthony was removed from her body, her organs started failing and she went brain dead. My family made the painful decision to take her off life support. Two lives lost, so tragically.

The thing that is so significant for me in this card, which is something I just noticed the last few days, is the sinking boat. It looks like a vagina during the birth process. How telling that this card that signifies her has a hidden child and a broken womb.






Last night I was on the train and I was reading over this article and I was looking at this card and something JUMPED OUT at me.

As I said earlier, I pulled this card before dropping off my application at my school where I am in the Masters Program for Spiritual Psychology:









Then I had the experience of the Treasure Chest, where I found the gift that My Aunt had given me as a child. In the 8 months prior to going to school, I had pulled the card with the merman and mermaid with the rainbow connected hearts and dolphins. Immediately I thought of my cousin when it said that my heart can be a rainbow bridge connecting me to the inner child inside and would help heal old wounds in a loved one's heart.

The very next cards I pulled, together, were the mermaid and a whale. So now the mermaid is being confirmed, so are my feelings that it is connected to my cousin. The very next card I pulled was the merbaby, which was a little boy. My cousin was pregnant with a little boy. And now, this card with the Mermaid pulling her heart out of a treasure chest. She is healing the wounds of the past.

My intentions of going to this school were both for my personal healing and to bring into fruition the way that I will honor my cousin's death. Being in this school is helping me heal my own wounds. I am learning so much about who I really am and who I'm meant to be. This involves very clearly, my future which will be the healing that I will help others to find, the way I am being helped to find mine.

By using the healing light I have found in the way that I have explored and approached Lisa's death, I am sharing that light with others. This is the way I honor her death, this is the way I take away that awful darkness and the way such an awful tragedy becomes a healing act.




So last night I was looking at the Five of Hearts and noticed something about the treasure Chest. Look at the lid. Particularly the side of it. It is in the shape of a Bell. My aunt's name is Isabel but we always called her Aunt Bell growing up. In my meditation at school I found the gift in the treasure chest that my Aunt Bell Gave me, the very gift that represents my voice: The Chaka Khan Mouth.

Finding my voice and using it in my calling is the way in which I heal the wound that is the death of Lisa, and the way that will heal the wounds of others who have lived through destruction and loss. The Mermaid, which represents my cousin is pulling out a winged heart which is helping her heal the wounds of the past. Everything is so beautifully connected.


This morning my Aunt Bell passed away. The levels of what this gift means to me, the gift of my voice represented by the Mouth of my favorite singer, and how it all came together so divinely is BLOWING. MY. MIND. I am so incredibly sad that we weren't able to finish the conversation I had been wanting to have but before going to school, I did have an amazing conversation with her where I told her about my past and how I came out of it and how I healed through forgiveness. I told her about the way that I have dealt with her daughter's death and the way that I would be bringing honor to something so otherwise senseless.

She opened up to me about some of her darkest fears and some of her biggest regrets. In this conversation she really took to forgiveness and expressed that she was not holding grudges against people who did her wrong. She didn't have the life she wanted or needed in these last days but she knew she had my love. I can't tell you how much I loved her. So so much.

This is a picture of us at my grandmother's 80th birthday:



I love you Aunt Bell. Thank you for accepting me as I am and for the love you always showed me. I will always remember your laughter and how much it made me want to laugh, just from the pure joyful sound that it was. I will always remember those childhood days in your house during the holidays where we ate the best food which was cooked with so much love. I will always remember all the love you gave me and now you are together with Lisa and Anthony where your true healing can begin. THANK YOU FOR MY GIFT! Oh My God, how priceless. I am eternally grateful that I had you in my life and I will remember you always.....

Can't wait to see you in the Garden....



.
[Edited 2/5/10 11:48am]
[Edited 12/5/10 15:03pm]
[Edited 12/5/10 15:15pm]

Awww sweet story. You and your grandmother look so sweet there. RIP to your granny.

Timmy84 said:

That's my Aunt Bell It's so wild because that party was the last time I ever saw my cousin alive. This is a picture of my grandma with the grandkids:



In this picture I have my arms around my grandmother and my cousin Lisa. Both of them have passed and now my Aunt Bell. that party was full of so much loving for my grandmother and with each other. I am SO HAPPY I have these pictures. In a way I feel that something at this party deeply connected me to these 3 people. I don't know exactly what it is but something feels totally connected about it. I need to explore my memories of this time....

SupaFunkyOrgangrinderSexy said:

Oops. My bad. Aww @ both grandma and your aunt passing away.