I'm sick of Google

Google is awful.  They're probably going to bad-list my websites because I'm calling them on being Big Brother.

My blog has bee moved to my website:
ww.bethbillingtonmusic.com/blog

Lost in Winter

I started writing this song a year ago. That seems to be my phase, which makes sense. It does take time for the ideas to grow and mature.

Anyway, so this song was birthed out of the "good girl" complex a friend of mine explained to me. She was doing what everyone else in her family wanted her to do, and at one point was so exhausted she literally drove off the road. She was inexplicably unharmed and realized that she almost DIED trying to be a good girl and please everyone.

I'd been drowning in being a good girl. My grandfather had died, and instead of getting to grieve for him, I had to suck it all up and sing Danny Boy at his funeral without crying, un accompanied.

We moved to a new city to help Jen's Grandparents and try to get jobs since I'd had no luck for about a year in Boulder. Her grandmother took a turn for the worst within a month and died a few days before my 30th birthday (which is in December). The viewing was on my birthday, and I was conscripted to sing Jesus-songs at her funeral. I called some 'friends' for comfort and all they did was go off about a new house they were buying, and they were too busy to let me come over to do something fun and life-focused on my birthday.

My parents guilt-tripped me into going to church with them a week or so later, and I sat through the whole thing angry as fuck. I tried to sing along but the words in the carols were just so religious.

The next few months, the time I should have been using to look for a job myself, I spent remodeling the house of previously noted 'friends' who were really abusive. I kept telling myself that they were being mean, or rude, or manipulative because they were stressed about having their third child and didn't have a house to live in. They asked my partner and I to make food and be on child-care duty for the birth, so we didn't look for jobs for fear that we'd get hired and be unable to help. They were really good friends, right? We thought they were family. We were not "allowed" to drive farther than an hour away from their home for over a month in case the baby came. Who was weeks late, into May.

As time dragged on, as the snow came and went, as the sun came out more and more, I started hoping for the growing season. I couldn't wait to grow some veggies. Our Colorado season is short, so we have to set them out and in and out and in for months before it's warm enough to put them in the ground. I miraculously found a job at a garden center and began my own labor. I had a few three-day weekends that we could have gone camping, before the summer rush was on and time-off was just a joke. But we couldn't leave town because of the baby.

I had songs I was writing. I had a labor job. I had bills to pay and other people to 'help.' I was waiting for the paycheck, which was immediately used. I waited for the next one, gone too. The tomato plants we bought were looking pretty sick from the lack of sun due to the freak storms which took the apple and cherry blossoms from all the hopeful spring trees. One night, exhausted, and unable to leave town or get into the mountains for peace, dead-brown petals filling all the town's gutters, I felt like those little plants. I was yellowing and drooping from lack of sun and nutrients, having no stability of my own, no place to sink my roots.

And I remembered, Meme (Jen's grandma) had said to me, to us, "Girls, why are you here, hanging around the dying? Life is for the living. GO."

Life is for the living. Not for the dying. Not for the unborn. Not for giving to others and waiting to do anything for myself. Was I actually living?

Life is is for the LIVING.

Go.

Lost in Winter. Click to listen and Download for Free.

I have been waiting, I have been delaying.

I have been lost in Winter, waiting for Spring

I have been waiting for the living to die

I have been waiting for the unborn to live

I have been Lost in a single point on the Circle.

I have been waiting, I have been delaying.

I have been lost in Winter, waiting for Spring

I have been waiting for the sun to come out

I have been waiting for the money to come in

I have been inside, outside, moved around,

Hoping for solid ground

I have been waiting, I have been delaying.

I have been lost in Winter, waiting for Spring

I have been waiting to begin what I began

I have been singing songs I swore I’d never sing again

And Meme said, “Life is for the living.”

Oh Spring,

Did you get lost in the mountains

after the apples bloomed?

I did too.

Let It Go

So this song started when I was 16. No shit. I have always been this bizarrely kind-hearted person: if someone hurts me, I don't destroy them back. I could. I could utterly destroy someone emotionally and I choose not to. But somehow I find people who become a friend, then something ridiculous happens and I end up in some sort of argument and I find out that they have no idea what kind of character I have. They have no idea what kindness I'm capable of.

This summer I lost some friends who abused my kindness. It ended horribly. They literally read their own meanings into everything I said, and the only way to make them stop was to cut it all off and walk away. I then had to start the process of tying the loose ends of my heart. I tried magic, I tried meditation, positive chants (my "chant some lies"), but it just reminded me of other times I've been hurt. The only thing that heals is Time.

One of my friends is going through a breakup because of betrayal. I thought the words might speak to her too. She's trying to move on, but losing a relationship is more maddening than losing a friend. She's trying to do all the 'right things,' but at the end of the day, she still has a broken heart. The only thing that heals is Time.

Let it go (Click to play)

close the door; turn the key

hide my face so you can’t see

always knew, but now it’s true

I could wipe my eyes away

living words play again

something I have never been

your words and sick, and I despise them

but words are all they are

Let it go, but it stays

and it hurts you anyways

trapped inside my own mind,

like I can’t leave the past behind

I cast a spell, I cut the ties

I burn some fires and I chant some lies

doesn’t matter what I try,

the only thing that heals is time.

I’ve heard it said, “What goes around

will be worse when it comes around”

but you take revenge, hit when we’re down

you drove my face into the ground

but how can I say a thing

to hurt you back for what you did?

I’m devastated, that all these years

you never knew me.

Let it go, but it stays

and it hurts you anyways

trapped inside my own mind,

like I can’t leave the past behind

I cast a spell, I cut the ties

I burn some fires and I chant some lines

doesn’t matter what I try,

the only thing that heals is time.

the only thing that heals is time.

Kink in the Hose

This song started awhile ago, and then combined with another story in my life to become what I hope to be a very helpful, hopeful, influential, and empowering song.

I was gardening. I was obsessing about the latest political ridiculousness and financial messes in our nation. There was a kink in the hose, obviously. I was amazed at how such a small bend in the rubber could completely stop 40 pounds of pressure behind it. I thought, "That's what we need to do. We need to kink the hoses which keep feeding the problems."

I had one line and a melody for almost two years with nothing else to show.

The rest of the song came after an interaction with a billionaire who wanted to hire me. I didn't want to keep supporting Big Oil, and I didn't want to work for a gay man who exploited gay people by not giving them the marital benefits he and his Life-partner shared.

I was chewing on the incomplete chorus for months. Then one day, at my temp garden job, my friend got a rock in her shoe. It was driving her crazy and she had to stop what she was doing to get the rock out. I about shrieked with excitement -- it was the perfect metaphor! Being a rock in the shoe of the bigwigs we disagree with will force them to stop...maybe only for a few minutes, but if there are enough rocks in enough shoes, and enough kinks in enough hoses, good things will start happening.

So there are two versions:

Kink in the Hose

Kink in the Hose [Street Party Mix]

I also made a big, long explanation of my actual stance on the Occupy Wallstreet and 99% thing. I support the Movements, but I am not a socialist. The End. Go here to read more...

Freyja Cried

I wrote this song about a year ago hoping to capture the beauty I feel in aspen forests.

Click here to hear or download for free.

Freyja is a goddess in the Old Norse pantheon who fell in love with Odin and cried tears of red gold for her unrequited love. I was thinking of the red-gold leaves of aspen which are tear-shaped and was struck by the idea that they could be part of a greater myth. We have few myths in America other than the 'American Dream' and other pointless and unromantic cultural stories.

As I started writing a little poem about it, I was also struck by the notion that I'd only heard of male entities 'sacrificing' themselves for the good of the people. Were female sacrifices invalid, or unimportant, or just lost in the waves of time due to the illiteracy of women? Freyja had to give up on love to be the fertility goddess, and because her lover was already 'married.' I like to think we could close the loop and offer honor to the sacrifices and duties of women, who offer their bodies and minds to the generations to come.

Freyja cried, she cried tears of red-gold.
She cried for unrequited love; this is her sacrifice.
TIme passes, does Freyja still cry?
I know she cries for unrequited love.
This is her sacrifice.

I walked in the mountains,
I walked in the forest,
and I saw her flattened tears
held up in the arms of the aspen.
Tears of gold, and red-gold
lifted back to the sky for a blessing
before falling softly, and feeding green to come.

Her.

New song up!

And after I walked away from the computer for a bit, it all fell into place. How d'ya like that?!

Listen to or Download for FREE!

Black Black Night

recording

Recording is lengthy.

grr.

I'm truly blessed to have everything I need to record, but it's pretty hard trying to figure it all out alone with no background in music programming/mixing. I just spent two hours trying to re-record the main vocals to a song which is otherwise done. It will have to wait for another day as I can't seem to get my mixing right.

Whenever you hear from bands how exhausted they are from 'recording' and you think to yourself (as I once did), "oh, so you sat on your ass and played for fun and got paid? Poor You!" know that it really is exhausting.