Yes, this is filler, and serves absolutely no purpose other than to demonstrate how weird.. I mean, open-minded.. I am. Countdown of my last.fm’s last 60 songs (not including repeats).

Drum roll, please.

1. Dead or Alive – You Spin Me Round (Like A Record)
2. Leela James – When You Love Somebody
3. Roy Hargrove – A Day In Vienna
4. Prince – Purple Rain
5. Motorhead – Overkill
6. Lina – Don’t Say Nothin’
7. Herbie Hancock – Sly
8. Floetry – Imagination
9. Marvin Gaye – I Heard It Through The Grapevine
10. Alice Cooper- Poison
11. Lenny Kravitz – Again
12. Marilyn Manson & The Spooky Kids – White Knuckles
13. Theory of a Deadman – Not Meant To Be
14. Garbage – Androgyny
15. Daniella Cotton – Devil In Disguise
16. A Perfect Circle – Pet
17. Angie Stone – Wish I Didn’t Miss You
18. Method Man & Redman – Cereal Killer
19. Melissa Etheridge – Come To My Window
20. Dionne Farris – Laughing & Crying
21. Emily King – Moon
22. Bob Marley – Burnin’ and Lootin’
23. The Veronicas – Leave Me Alone
24. Creedence Clearwater Revival – Bad Moon Rising
25. Macy Gray – Okay
26. The Cliks – Oh Yeah
27. Gladys Knight & The Pips – Every Beat Of My Heart
28. Amel Larrieux – Down
29. Buju Banton – Not An Easy Road
30. Celtic Cross – Darshannon
31. Ledisi – We Are One
32. Billie Holiday – Blue Moon
33. Lynyrd Skynyrd – Sweet Home Alabama
34. The Velvet Underground – Rock & Roll
35. The Slack Republic – Wait For Me
36. Audioslave – Cochise
37. Velvet Revolver – Fall To Pieces
38. The Isley Brothers- Footsteps in the Dark
39. Marilyn Manson – Tourniquet
40. Ginuwine – So Anxious
41. The Deadfly Ensemble – Black-Capped Chaplains
42. Los Trabantos – Wuj
43. Beat Circus – The Gem Saloon
44. Gogol Bordello – Copycat
45. The Cliks – Eyes In The Back Of My Head
46. Joss Stone – Right To Be Wrong
47. Les Nubians f. Talib Kweli – Temperature Rising
48. Habib Koite & Bamada – Kanawa
49. Smash Mouth – All Star
50. Katherine McPhee – Neglected
51. 24-7 Spyz – Grandma Dynamite
52. Teena Marie – Out On a Limb
53. Papa Roach – Broken Home
54. Dixie Chicks – Not Ready To Make Nice
55. Meredith Brooks – Bitch
56. Jennifer Hudson – You Pulled Me Through
57. Me’Shell NdegeOcello – Lilliquoi Moon
58. Soundgarden – Outshined
59. Linkin Park – Given Up
60. Sheryl Crow – If It Makes You Happy

So what do YOU think?

So I’ve been listening to the blues lately. All modern forms of music come from the blues. Country. Rock. Metal. R&B. You have to understand where you have been in order to know where you are going. Having said that, and knowing that today is a celebration of poetry, here is my offering:

—————————————–

blues calling

maybe it’s the wind that chills me
maybe it’s the lack of sun
darling i know you hear me
from behind these prison walls
i built them
to keep you out
but instead they trap me in
my pick axe and shovel
ain’t helping much
i need you to tunnel in
free my heart
hold me love me save me
free me
from this cage of misery
maybe
just maybe
i don’t need you
to come and save me
maybe oh Lord maybe
this is a lesson i need to learn
i’m in the valley
and you’re on the hill
looking down on me
please lift me up
but you turn away
telling me to climb
tough lovin’
is the way of you
and maybe i need to stay
buried in this gray despair
until i can find my way
free my heart
unchain me from this blasted misery
free me
hold me love me save me
take my hand
guide me to safety
i know that you can hear me call
i must find a way
through this hampering mud and silt
bring back the sun
bring back the rain
to wash away my tortured pain
free me
please
free my heart
hold me
love
me

Well, hello there, dear reader. How are you? I am writing you this letter because I want to keep you informed.

What am I doing? Currently, I am reading Scars of Sweet Paradise: The Life and Times of Janis Joplin by Alice Echols. Very interesting. On the “to read” list, I have:

• Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain

• Delta Blues: The Life and Times of the Mississippi Masters Who Revolutionized American Music by Ted Gioia

• Heavier Than Heaven: A Biography of Kurt Cobain by Charles R. Cross

Heavy stuff.

In the meantime, look forward to Short Story Fridays. Poems will be posted on random days, just to keep you in suspense. Book reviews, artist spotlights and whatever strikes my fancy are future additions, insha’Allah.

So, Eid Mubarak, happy birthday, Happy Rosh Hashanah, and whatever else I may have missed.

Thanks for reading what goes on in my head. Special thanks to my international readers (I see you, Belgium! What’s up, Indonesia? India, Iraq, Malaysia, what’s good? All my UK peoples, heeey!) and my stateside people (Georgia, Maryland, Texas, California, Ohio, Pennsylvania and MICHIGAN!).

Until next time,

~Sumayyah~

“Weird.”

“Abnormal.”

“Strange”

And my personal favorite, “blasphemer.”

In Islam, music is an extremely controversial issue. There are people on both sides of the extreme, from the very conservative “only Qur’an recitation is permitted” to the very liberal “listen to whatever you like and play it very loudly.” Having been raised surrounded by music, having sung in a choir in my youth (until I learned that I could not sing to save my life, but that is something else all together), and currently being married to a hip hop artist, I tend to fall on the liberal side of the musical fence. Life without some form of music would be, to me, very dull. However, if for some reason I am unable to listen to the beat, I am still capable of reading about it.

I am now the proud owner of this book. It’s big. It’s heavy. It’s a small piece of metal heaven. Biographical sketches, full color pictures, a listing of the best albums and songs… Lovely. Even though I’m still learning the difference in all the sub-genres, I know that there are songs I like that fall into every category. Industrial has Nine Inch Nails, Electronic has Emilie Autumn’s “I Want My Innocence Back.” My musical taste, however, is not limited to the entire rock/metal catalog. My last.fm station is all over the place – from opera to country to rap. I imagine myself to be an open-minded individual. (I could be wrong.) I grew up with my mother’s Motown records, I came of age with with rap and reggae, I “discovered” jazz once I began to mature, and as my writing started the evolutionary process, rock became my personal soundtrack.

Music, for some people, is like air – necessary for survival. And let’s face it, there is music no matter where you look. Nature has some of the most soothing sounds. Laughter is considered music. The heartbeat of the one you love is music. Yet you will always find those that zero in on a certain genre or sound and deem it inappropriate for public (read as “youth”) consumption. Every generation, for good or bad, attempts to protect the next generation by outlawing or limiting exposure to whatever is new and untested. The ones that do not approve of rap and metal, their parents did not approve of rock n’ roll, and their parents did not approve of ragtime and jazz. I am sure that, somewhere, there was a group of parents trying their best to run Mozart out of town.

So, for all those that give me the side-eye for listening to “strange” music, I will say this: someone, somewhere, hates your music choices, too. You have the freedom to choose what to listen to, and the right to decide who you are going to be.