Bring Rhyme and Reason to the Illogics of Life
Join Frank and Zoya for this pivotal 5th episode.
What axe does Frank have to grind with what personal experience he and Zoya both share?
What harm can labeling someone with a condition do?
What’s the big deal about accepting a label as opposed to finding a cause?
How do you know if something’s wrong if you don’t know what “right” is?
Find out all the and more on today’s episode! Tune in now!
Join Frank and Zoya as they get into an episode based on Frank’s love of the Foo Fights song “Best of You”.
What do “hot vampires” and toxic friends have to do with your very survival? Listen to real-life stories from F and Z that answer that exact question.
Wondering who might be getting the best of you without your knowledge? This is the episode for you!
The majority of people are rational, sane and willing to help, not to mention support and empower others, helping them not only when they are down, but lifting them higher when they’re up. Or at least that’s how Frank and Zoya feel life should be.
But, in life, we encounter people who only calculate to stop us, to hinder us, to get the best of us and nowhere is it summed up and described better than in the lyrics to this song.
Find out what Frank and Zpya have experienced the best things to do in this case and how to be empowered to BE the “Best of You” as opposed to letting someone get it from you. Tune in now!
Part 2 of 2, Rhyme Heals for Reals is the upside to Rhyme Healing All Wounds and the entire concept behind the genesis of the show.
What does the healing power of rhyme have to do with anything?… EVERYTHING!
Join Frank and Zoya as they explore the healing, inspiring and uplifting powers of music and the importance of those who create it, and what its implications are in not only creating a civilization but how important it would be to protect creators and performers of music.
Tune in now!
WHEN RHYME HURTS – We all know about the healing power of music, but can it be damaging? Frank’s “sheltered life” gets challenged by Zoya in this pivotal episode where she points out the damaging influence music can have.
Part 1 of a 2-part series on the healing and damaging power of music, there is a lot to learn, positively, about where to go from here. What songs and artists are spreading harm? Which ones are uplifting?
Tune in now and share in the discussion!
“They say” “time heals all wounds” but, who are “they” anyway? And since when has time healed one wound? Music and the arts on the other hand? VERY therapeutic.
Such is the premise of the show and discussion in this episode 1 which sets the tempo for what the show will be.
Join Frank and Zoya for the genesis of the show. Frank and Zoya talk out their backgrounds and the problems so many must face in life where they’re confronted with unusual solutions that only make matters worse. Listen to the discussions of their backgrounds, including Zoya’s battle with drug addiction and involuntary commitment under age.
Find out how the show is meant to help elevate and lift people above and exterior to their problems and how we can put rhyme and reason to solutions.
“Not to worry… time heals all wounds…”
…said everyone, everywhere in attempts to console and condole someone who had a sizeable loss or some sort of emotional breakdown of painful magnitude.
Bold words of promise for something no one can really guarantee and that in all likelihood is but a fraction of reality, if of little use to anyone going through any rough patch of Life.
For all its reassuring value, is it really true that time is somehow the great and powerful healer and, if so, healer of ALL wounds of ANY kind, ANYWHERE they exist?
Even if so, is there anything one can do about the suffering? After all, as time goes by, suffering continues. Granted the amount of suffering that goes along with the experience, doesn’t time actually prolong the sting of wounds by leaving us to wait it out? Is that the best that can be offered someone in this kind of pain?
All while encouraging us to “forget” and to believe that time erases these experiences from existence when instead we blot out more and more of our memories in lieu of being able to face up to them.
As a performing artist, I beg to differ with this “time healing” thing, as the songwriter and performer in me say otherwise, which is also why I started this “Rhyme Heals All Wounds” crusade in this online magazine on the subject in testament to it, completely faithful in this premise.
You see, the years spent concurrently to my music career, my parallel run as an audiophile, have taught me to trust in music, in rhythm and rhyme, to reach for, lift and elevate from depths of “not me” to what can only be described as “all of me” or a complete version of what we natively are.
Which is what drives me personally in performing and “tuning in” alike.
No, music isn’t who or what I am, but it’s ALMOST ME and it’s close enough as far as I’m concerned having given it and received it convincingly to the result of feeling better, being more inspired and feeling more myself, to say nothing of having provided this to others through my writings and performances. And therein lies the “healing” quality I can’t ignore…
For it’s abundantly clear to me and is my sincere conviction that “rhyme” is the far better, faster, longer-lasting healer than any stretch of time could ever HOPE to be, and it’s something that performers and audiences alike somehow hold as true, and is something we must STRENGTHEN…
…rhyme meaning special things to me and perhaps everything to you!
I don’t mean rhyme need every time be sensed by someone’s ears.
Contrarily it’s commonly more something far more dear.
Inherently their schemes do nothing to make words ring true.
Yet, emotionally, and tonally it wakes some part of you.
Rolls off the tongue unclumsily to warm the way you feel.
And all at once and suddenly your hurt begins to heal.
Why is it that song feels more alive than what they say?
What makes what poets contrive land just in such a way?
Do my words penetrate and make you “feel” the words rather than just hear them?
Likely you felt something a little more than if I had merely explained.
I’ve chosen to illustrate my first point, that rhyme itself is a healer, with a bit of lyrical magic, and demonstrate what happens when you are subject to this kind of expression.
If you’ve ever listened to a passionate, moving symphony by a great composer and become “emotional” or alive with feeling, you understand the phenomenon. Maybe it was from the ballet or opera, or even hearing Cold Play perform “Fix You” live.
Perhaps in reading the first eight lines above, you experienced a small amount of that same feeling and maybe understood my point better than if I had just outright told you.
It’s the quality of sound that conveys the emotion. And by relating to that emotion in this fashion, with an innate sense of connection to it, you respond by intellect PLUS emotion.
But, it isn’t just the rhyme. And it isn’t just the music. It can be expressed in many ways and forms.
All of which are immediately identifiable by a steep rise in emotion, a more spiritual experience.
And, though rhyme directly demonstrates such a response, it actually is also an analogy or even a metaphor for all things that bring us to higher states of “feeling ourselves” or at least feeling good, or better than we’ve felt prior.
Let’s start with the obvious question:
What do I mean by rhyme?
You may think you know. But there is so much more to rhyme than words that sound alike in tonal quality. There are other factors that make “rhyme” present, even where there may be no sound available.
Michael Jackson was an influence of mine growing up, blaring though my sister’s Sanyo stereo system and, yes, there was rhythm and what you could call rhyme. But turn the sound down and watch him dance.
I was watching a dancer I know, quite recently, at an event I attended and later on in a few videos. She had such an observable solidity of rhythmic motion. I could “hear” the rhythm without sound, but with certain regular repetitions of motion, I felt the rhythm too.
And I felt myself just feeling good.
Here is another form of rhyme.
This from a guy who doesn’t like to dance, the one who likes to CAUSE dancing from the stage and has little interest other than absolutely needing to make dancing happen for others from behind the drumkit and with my songs.
And yet, watching her perform, I felt as inspired as hearing one of my favorite songs.
Here is “rhyme” in a rather less-than-conventional form, rearing its head, to once again, save the day and make everyone feel elated.
In that we need to deal with our problems, head-on, we can’t just forget them altogether and let time rob us, incrementally of our memories, albeit painful to retain them. Not practically, anyway, if we wish to experience continued enjoyment of Life itself.
Time tends to rob us of our experiences when we let them wither this way and so, downward bound, we wither along with them and often lose the parts that matter most.
But rhyme, while not the end-all solution, is certainly better than some alternatives.
I’ve always maintained, all these years as a musician, that I would never perform under the influence of any substance. And I’ve kept to it, never faltering these several decades of performing, composing and collaborating.
It’s not that I’m some kind of Puritan or prohibitionist, or even that I’m better than those who don’t follow this rule. It’s because, from experience, music (playing, listening, whatever!) makes me feel closest to who I am and that is such a transcending experience. I could never imagine blunting or deadening that in any way.
I’m simply not capable of doing otherwise.
And that’s just the point, isn’t it? Deadening the pain vs being free from it altogether. Probably the subject of my next article, but something to consider just as a concept. Deadening the pain only prolongs healing, making time the incidental “healer” people claim it to be, when at last all that’s gained is forgetting, which is a loss in and of itself.
Becoming “spiritually” yourself, by ways and means of getting out from under what is cloaking who you really are, you become the master of your domain, one which is natively happy and full of life.
And “rhyme” (be it music, dance, performance art, etc) comes the closest to reminding you of your underlying self, the one that’s been shouldering all the things you hoped time would miraculously erase.
Those “chills” you experience or the all-consuming feeling of serenity, peace and happiness when you saw that operetta, listened to that symphony, saw that ballet or modern dance, Katy Perry sing “Firework” that made you feel “more you”? That’s “rhyme”and it’s healing power, even when you’re not in particular or dire need of it. And the real challenge with it would be to try NOT to be healed in some way by it.
That is what I live for and to create.
P. T. Barnum once summated, “The noblest art is that of making others happy.” and THIS is what all artists believe. And, in that I believe all humans believe that all humans are artists at their core, that everyone has this as a goal to some degree.
It’s so powerful that it can heal countless times more than any time could ever hope to effect.
Rhyme is what gives you your native power and potential back and, though not an end-all to all that ails you, is certainly enough to hold you there long enough to focus on other spiritual advancement of the most basic but emotionally powerful kind.
And I would recommend this “rhyme healing” to anyone…
…even you!
