Tranquilized Dreams

This is such a fun psychedelicesque tune! It has a lot of sociatal commentary and wild experiences written into one song. This was a last minute addition to the album as I always thought of it as too obscure for release but we all had such a blast recording it that it's become a favorite! The whispering background vocals were impromptu and done in my last recording session. I didn't want it to end and I cried like the sentimental soul I am when it was all over.

The inspiration for "Tranquilized Dreams" began by drinking dirty olive martini's at Wilshire with an incessant gold dangler. Every time I tried to change the conversation to something other than his piles of money he found a way to bring it right back to his real estate portfolio or ridiculously expensive watch - UGH. So I finally left the annoying gold dangler at the bar. On my walk home the first verse, "Hey Mr.Imbecile I've taken another pill so I can conversate with youuuuu..." just came to me. I drunkenly scribbled down the lyrics before falling into bed that night.

The chorus was fueled by the last presidential election. "The sandpiper blows a thousand winds. Rumors run a hundred days. Oh I have been mislead."

The second verse is about politics and a general frustration with the status quo. "For the insurgence breeds our ignorance and the time is spinning round. We tranquilize our dreams. Feeling Edvard's scream, know too damn well what it is about." Come on, we've all been there!

For the beginning of the third verse I was having a long distance romance with this man that kind of reminded me of a young King Tut. I admit it's kind of odd but he did and he drank a LOT. "Young Tut came to me, Egyptian revelry, then the gold became the wine."

Then I was stuck for a bit. I couldn't figure out how to wrap it all up so life did it for me! I was at Euphoria, a raw food restaurant on Main St. in Santa Monica, when this Eastern European man, gold chains and all, named Apollo asked to sit next to me. He was far from the typical crunchy looking patron and I was intrigued so I said, "Be my guest". What happened next no one could have possibly predicted.

Within five minutes of talking to this man he tells me how his brother had recently died and he himself didn't believe in an afterlife. I looked him straight in the eye and called his bluff, "But you feel your brothers spirit with you don't you." The man just bursts into tears and he is NOT happy about it. "Yes I do, all the time," he exclaims through stifled sobs. Obviously embarrassed, he tells me he is usually the one who reads the woman, not the other way around. Then he tried to get all old school macho on me by telling me that women need to be hit sometimes to understand their place in society. Well he didn't faze me. I just kept holding the space of love and letting him release his pain. But that is where "Apollo's had his fun" comes from. No more beating the women you fools!

While this is all happening I have this incredible experience of feeling these gorgeous white shimmering wings start to unfurl like a furn from my back. Then I see them come around and surround the man and I! Here I was in the middle of a restaurant, pen and paper in hand, trying to write the last verse of this song when a guy named Apollo shows up out of nowhere and these healing energy wings come out of me and surround us in light!! "Wings unfurling shimmering white." Life just came right in and wrote the last verse for me. Seriously, I couldn't have made this stuff up if I wanted to!!

In order to wrap it all up on a positive note I extended the chorus in an attempt to empower myself and all of us, "I have been misled, oh how we have been misled, oh how I have been misread." Because you just never really know what we are truly capable of in any given moment!

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