February 2015 News Muse & Music
MUSIC
Good For You
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Good for You… your musical adventure for February 2015, sung by Doug Ashdown
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I sold my soul to the highest bidder
Pitched hope against hope some day I’d be delivered
I crawled the streets
Between the light and the darkness
Trying to find some way to fight this
Then I heard a voice
CHORUS
I’m good for you
I’m good for you
I’m good for you
If I’m good for anything
Tell me you’re an angel flying to me
Heal my heart give your love to me
Above the world
Through your grace you complete me
Nothing can defeat me
When I hear you say
CHORUS
You’re good for me
Through the good and bad
In a thousand faces
You see who I am
You’re in my blood
There’s nothing I won’t do
To be good for you
Good for you
Good for you
If I’m good for anything
Get This Album
Including the classic Winter in America
and Good for You,
from Doug’s website!
© Passionworks Music 2001 By Washuntara and Doug Ashdown
NEWS & MUSE
If I’m Good for Anything …
NEW: Click the orange Soundcloud logo to listen to Wash READ this article
If you want to know how you’re doing, look around at the people you spend your time with. Especially your closest few. Are they good for you?
In my early life, with at the very least one broken wing myself, i’d always sort out other one-wingers and hope by some miracle that they could fly for both of us
i hear you now: “How did that work out for you, Wash?”
My point is this. Imagine if someone said to you: if i’m good for anything, i’m good for you. Makes me want to sign up!
“If i’m good for anything” is one of my favorite sayings. Such an Australian way of thinking, too. It’s a fair dinkum, tell it how it is, no bullsh*t approach to life. The phrase doesn’t mean to be disparaging, or self-disparaging. It’s simply the way it is.
What i love about Good for You is the humility of the characters. That’s what gives it its gold. The song’s beautiful foray into what’s good and what’s not good for you at the deeper levels also gives us the sense that both of these characters have worked hard to get where they are, to be good for someone else. They’ve worked through the good and the bad, through a thousand faces of themselves to see who they really are.
i decipher this as being a sure sign of enlightenment, lightened up at least, or in awareness. These kids have been around the block a time or two, and are showing up in the way that i’m aspiring to show up too: with emotional intelligence.
(Speaking of which, if you want more of that, check out my next He She We workshop near Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on March 28 — see the last article.)
That makes for good relationship.
What You Are Looking for Is Looking for You
People laugh these days when i speak to my bar, expectation-wise in matters of the heart, being so low that i trip over it.
This funny little Washism speaks to what i can do now about my end of any conscious relationship.
For years, my bar was set so high with fairy tales, happy endings, and other stories i expected to come true that it lacked kindfulness to both myself and others, starting with those i tried to love and those who tried to love me.
As i lowered my bar, that is, as i realized being in a conscious relationship was an inside job, my love-ability increased. When i worked out that it was ok for me to make mistakes and be human, that reflected out into my relationships.
The takeaway is this: like the song says, if you really want to be good for somebody else, you’ve got to be good for you. Ain’t no way over it, ain’t no way under it, only through.
Makes me want to glue these two strong words together: self and confidence. Why do some folks seem to be born with self-confidence in spades and others have to work their way through the whole deck to get it? However you get the confidence in yourself, it’s a bloody good thing to have in a relationship.
Here’s what’s funny. When the jar is empty and the vegemite is all gone, you’re ok. Like that good book said, i’m ok, you’re ok. i’d like to think we are born with this innate feeling, until it gets knocked or trained out of us.
- Life support for Aussies
There’s nothing wrong with me. Or you! There never was. There’s lots right with each of us, tho some of us come in flavors and stripes that have never been seen before and may never be seen again.
i’m good for me. Even when i forget that.
It’s such a blessing to have built relationships with others to remind you of this — those who can see and hold the light while you find the way (to quote When Was the Last Time). Another way of saying the same thing would be to say you have put wonderful mirrors into your life. Or, plan B, you didn’t do a damn thing and it’s just pure grace in action that they’re there.
At this point in my life i’ve learned that it’s ok to visit hell once in a while, but don’t pitch a tent there. The buddha was right. All the conditions i need, all the conditions you, dear one, also need for absolute happiness-already exist. Right here.
Well, somewhere around here.
Breathe. They’ll get to you if you stop long enough. What you are looking for is looking for you. Peace and happiness, freedom and love, they’re all looking for you. Listen for them.
One of my other favorite songwriters, Don Henley, said it so beautifully: “Learn to be still.” Try a meditation class. Go to yoga, tai chi, find a way to get unbusy. How would that feel, if the last thought of each day came from a place of contentment, from a mind that knows itself to be good, beautiful and true at its core? Good for you. The voice of comfort and self-confidence within. God and all her little angels or minions, right there with you.
Writing Up with Ashdown
- We wrote Good for You on the banks of the
Torrens River in Adelaide, South Australia.
We wrote Good for You on the banks of the
Torrens River in Adelaide, South Australia.
In The Great Book of Troubadours, one of my rules is: Write Up. Work with people who are better — in the words of my nephew Craig, heaps better — than you are.
Douggie Ashdown has the voice and heart of an angel. No wonder he is one of Australia’s premier singer songwriters. (We also cowrote that fabulous song, Mercy on You.)
He’s also from Adelaide, my home town. i met him through another of my cowriters, Australian songwriting legend Al Caswell, when i went back home in 2001 to look after my mum while she was ill. Funny how that works. i went to do good for mum… and the universe did good for me.
i was excited to work with Douggie, because i’d grown up listening to him on the radio. His 1977ish hit song Winter in America was a part of my psychic terrain. (Little did i know how much it would foreshadow my life, both the song and the sentiment.)
The funny thing is, i’ve never sung Good for You myself. i’ve tried as best i can, but it just doesn’t fit my face. The sentiments are true; i helped craft them. i brought the idea to the session that if i’m good for anything then i’m good for you, and we chiseled on it together. But Doug makes this song his own. Bravo!
Making an Omelette: A Heads-Up on Last Month’s Bullying Article
i received so much feedback from you all regarding the “Bully for Christmas” story from Deer Park Monastery last month. So many of you wrote in to say that you have experienced something similar in your lives too.
Dear ones, thank you.
My dear old dad had a classic Australian joke, “You can wish in one hand, sh*t in the other, and see which one fills up first.” That is, without the tools and skills to deal with bullying, what chance do you have?
Resolving and finding peace in matters of bullying — physical, emotional, or spiritual — takes three fundamental things: compassion, skillful means and sheer guts. To this situation, i am now applying fierce patience.
Most have thanked me for speaking up. Others have challenged my inability to be stronger. To take this abuse? I hear both of these sentiments and still believe enough is enough.
One of my mum’s classic sayings was, “Chug, you can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs.” i know she was right. So i ignore the tiny voice inside me that still wonders, as victims do, whether this was in any way my fault.
So for those of you at this same choice point, who can no longer be pushed or bullied, Washuntara says, “Courage, dear brothers and sisters, you do not walk alone.”
Live Wild, Dream Hard, Love Big,
W
OH SO QUOTABLE
“When i found God, it really helped me to believe in myself.
Then i realized God was myself.
Then i bumped into Buddhism and found out i didn’t even have a self.
And as my dear grandfather used to say: Chugger, if you don’t think too good, don’t think too much.
So here i am today, a Buddhist who believes in God, and not thinking about it too too much.” …W
* Chugger is Wash’s boyhood name.
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