The Power of the Playlist

This summer has been awesome.  I have enjoyed every part of it, but today exceeded the awesome level.  Prepare for an incredibly happy post.

One of my dearest friends is spending the summer in Montreat.  Conflicting schedules and sucky cell phone service have kept us mostly out of touch for the past two months, minus some texting back and forth.  I did some research and discovered a little place called Spruce Pine, about 35 miles outside of Boone and 45 miles outside of Montreat...AKA the perfect halfway point for us to meet up.  We picked a little place called The Tropical Grill.  My expectations for some tiny caribbean restaurant located in Spruce Pine, North Carolina were low, to say the very least.  Man...I was So. Wrong.  If you live in Boone, you totally need to take a little trip to downtown Spruce Pine.  It was amazing and absolutely overflowing with local character!  I will likely be back this weekend.  Much exploring needs to be done.  

Cafe de leche, mango salsa, a killer outdoor seating area, and Caroline made for a totally awesome night of reunion.  

My drive home was equally epic.  Kyle has always told me that I am super empathetic about song lyrics.  Some people like to read really sad books and cry about them, I like to listen to music lyrics and pretend I wrote them and sometimes cry about it.  Just kidding.  I don't always cry, but it absolutely dictates my feelings if I'm alone and completely focused on the music...that's why I'm the playlist queen.  I have roughly 315 playlists on my Google Music account and things are about to get real.  The playlist is a very powerful tool and should be chosen very wisely.  Check it out:

Before I left Spruce Pine, I chose my "Summer Tiiiiiiime" playlist.  Seemed appropriate, right?  The sun was just starting to set and lighting was getting to that pinkish-yellow point.  I put my windows down and Desert Father carried me down 194.  This song is beautiful and you absolutely must listen, because Josh Garrels is actually the jam.  Not kidding.  The High Country is absolutely beautiful.  The combination of this song and the sunset just made me smile and thank God for life.  I am so fortunate to live here, surrounded by beauty and endless places to just go.  Boone is truly the melting pot of so many breathtaking surrounding towns.  I am clearly singing a different tune than I was this past winter.  I even think I could live here.  Who am I?

As I was thinking about how grateful I am for life, Usher was killing it with his rendition of You'll Be In My Heart.  Guys...this is a beautiful, beautiful song.  I started thinking about how easy it is to walk with Jesus when everything is going well...when things get hard I tend to want to fix them myself and I tend to block out my one true provider.  I was thinking about how I almost always think I have cancer, or some other disease, and how I was just so incredibly thankful for that very moment, no matter what.  My prayer is that no matter what, I will always be thankful and recognize that my plan may not always be the right one.

If you know me, you know that Christina Aguilera is one of my favorite people on this earth.  I pre-ordered her last album (Lotus)...which came out in 2012 so...still in that stage of my life.  One of her most beautiful songs, in my opinion, is Bound to You, which she sang in Burlesque (awesome movie, by the way).  I always tell Kyle this is my brain aneurysm song.  I will belt this song, and I mean belt.  I literally feels like I am going to burst into a million pieces when I sing this song...you should totally try it.  Totally liberating experience.

Just as I was making my left onto 105 with 13 miles separating me from Boone, Shake Me Like a Monkey came on.  Ahhhhhh....this song.  Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds live at Las Vegas, too good.  I thought about my dear friend, Martha, and the Dave shows we've been to.  I remembered the first time I heard him perform this song live in Virginia Beach and I thought about how careless we use to be.  Martha and I have shared many good times and now hold many memories thanks to ol' Dave.  Now we have such different lives, and that's okay.  Life goes that way and you work a little harder to make new memories.  I'm excited for new memories and future Dave shows to come.

Once I got closer to Boone and was passing through the Foscoe area, it was pretty much completely dark.  A tiny gas station was lit up from the glow of a singular lamp post and I saw a parked pick-up truck.  A couple was sitting in the bed with their legs dangling over the tailgate.  Sara Evans, and myself, were belting out Slow Me Down  and I felt a pang of grief in my stomach for that couple.  Slow Me Down is one of those songs that I have literally cried to.  I was thinking about why they were sitting in that parking lot and why they appeared to be having a very serious conversation.  I imagined that they were having one of those awful talks that can define the new precinct of the relationship.  It can make you or break you, but most of the time it breaks you.  I imagined all of those awful times where my heart was broken into a million pieces and I was sad for them, but grateful that I have moved past the boundaries of being "unsure" of my relationships.  Then I decided that maybe they were just having really awesome conversation and wanted to stay parked in that parking lot.  I thought about how I would never do that because I would be "recreating" or caught loitering.  Then I was jealous that they probably weren't worried about what anyone was thinking about them sitting in that parking lot all alone under that street lamp. 

My strange day dream about the mysterious parking lot couple disappeared when Angus and Julia Stone took it away with The Devil's Tears.  This song has a special place in my heart.  This is one of the first songs that came on my Iron and Wine Pandora station that I noticed was a song that Kyle frequently played on his guitar.  It's one of my favorites that he plays.  When I miss him the most, I lay down, put my head phones in, close my eyes and let this song flood my ears.  It sounds just the same as when he's here, but not quite as awesome.  This song always takes me to instahappy and instafeels.  

Just as I hit Boone, my ultimate Boone jam flooded my speakers: Hanging On.  Ellie Goulding.  My girl.  I decided long ago that this is easily one of her most beautiful, thought provoking songs.  Ellie Goulding has a way of making me feel incredibly hype-happy and then sad-strange at the same time, kind of like the Weeknd, but this song especially.  It's so epic.  The build-up is out of this world and I tend to think about it in the same way I think about the lyrics, naturally.  I think sometimes it's easier to keep the waters calm in relationships, even when we don't want to.  Once the build-up happens it leads to an explosion.  Truly unhealthy, but I think it's an amazing artistic touch that this song is able to portray that so well.

Anyways, if you're into music, maybe I have enlightened you in some way.  It was just one of those nights where I just felt like I needed to write about it.  I'm feeling incredibly thankful and I hope this post finds you the same way.  

It's the little things, like the power of the playlist. 

Happy summer, friends.  Enjoy it and don't let it get away from you.

     

Call it Propaganda...

Controversial content ahead.  Please, keep reading :)

Readers, for those of you who personally know me, you know that our country's food production system is one of my favorite, most passionate topics to discuss.  When I first became a vegetarian, and then vegan my sophomore year of college, I didn't consider myself an animal right's activist.  I chose to eat the way I did because it was more sustainable and healthier for our planet than choosing to consume animal meats, which takes roughly 13 pounds of grain to get 1 pound of animal meat to your table.

I recently saw this video and if you have 6 minutes, which if you're reading this then I know that you do, please watch this short clip:

Maybe you can watch this and it doesn't change your mind about the production of meat at all.  If that is the case, I want to ask you how?  Maybe you think this is propaganda, as many choose to take this stance when videos or books come out regarding animal slaughter, but how long can we keep turning our cheek the other way and calling it that?  I am aware that PETA sells the propaganda pretty hard, but do your own research friends.  I truly feel that this is more serious than we want to think, I mean come on, I'm writing a blog post about it (joke), but seriously.

Here's how I see it... Lemme break it down.

We, as a nation, have very little regard about where the foods come from that we stock our fridges with, feed our children, purchase at restaurants, and put into our own mouths.  We just don't care.  We've created this complete dissociation with the foods we eat, especially our animal products, and where they actually came from.  We're detached and emotionally uninvested in the nourishment of our bodies.

Allow me to further elaborate on this idea of dissociation with our foods.  Classic example:

Many people watched Black Fish and signed Sea World petitions and straight up mourned with these whales.  I'm not attacking you, I was one of them.  But there has to be that connection to the rest of our systems, especially the meat production system.  We can cry, and cry, and cry as we hate on Sea World and how they contain these killer whales in these tanks that are comparable to the size of a bath tub for a fish of that size, but yet, we don't connect the dots.  You can probably pay something like 99 cents to get some chicken from McDonald's that was never granted the liberty to stand on it's own two feet due to growth hormone injection and rapid increases in muscle size.  Thanks to growth hormone, we can produce full size chickens in somewhere around 25 days so that we can keep feeding our hungry, hungry, underweight country (lol -_-).  McDonald's can't sell their food that cheap for no reason, my friends.

Further, our country is quite frankly facing a healthcare crisis.  Our demand and need for healthcare is so dang high, but yet we care very little for our bodies.  It's too much work.  It's expensive.  We're very uneducated.  I mean, really.  Care and know what you are putting into your mouth.  If it has more than 5 ingredients and you can't pronounce most of the words, I'd probably put it down.  Help your body, friends.  I don't care how old you are, the decisions you make now will absolutely effect your future health. 

I truly feel like there is a solution in making our food production and purchasing system more localized.  This would solve environmental issues by creating a more sustainable way to purchase the foods we want, as well as helping to boost the local economy.

I understand that local, humanely raised, hormone-free meats are expensive, and that's why many people don't buy them, myself included.  Because I can't afford those types of meats is why I choose to continue eating a plant-based diet.  I don't think I want to raise our children vegetarian, nor do I want to remain completely vegetarian, but I just can't afford to buy the kind of meats that I am willing to put in my body, or the bodies of my future children.

I really hope this impacts you in some way.  I want to challenge you to take one day a week, maybe Meatless Monday, to not eat animal meat.  It's so incredibly easy.  And please, friends, don't eat fast food.  It's not food.  I don't consider myself to be a judgmental vegetarian by any means, I just want our country to stop giving into this demand for these quick, chemically enhanced solutions that has been labeled as "food."  Work a little harder and spend a little more money on the right foods.  Better yet, start your own garden or support the local farmer's market.  If you have the means for it, raise and butcher your own meat.  Use your noggins, you smart, able people, you.

*Stepping down from my soapbox now.*

Thanks for reading, friends.  I hope this blog post finds you healthy and well.  If you're interested in reading an awesome book about both sides of animal consumption, check out Jon Safran Foer's Eating Animals.  You can buy it here, or you can borrow my copy.

"Let food by thy medicine, and medicine thy food." 
                                                                                                                             -Hippocrates