Melissa Etheridge Shows Her Spirit

All there is
Is atoms and space
Everything else is illusion

There's back to the beginning, and then there's back to the beginning. It doesn't get much more elemental than "All There Is," the brief, swirling invocation of the essence of the universe with which Melissa Etheridge opens The Awakening, the ninth studio album of her singular career.  It's a journey full of joys and tears, portrayed in songs that are at turns powerful and playful, at once confessional and engaging, personal and universal. In other words, Melissa Etheridge at her creative peak and the most open she's ever been...

What freed her to be so open?

"Cancer," she says, unhesitatingly. "The huge, big fireball that shoots you through fear. I ended up on the other side of that, and I thought, 'I did it! I went through chemotherapy! Look what I did.' And I didn't go through chemotherapy to not do what I love. So y'all can come with me or not. I'm having a blast."

Etheridge acknowledges that her 2004 breast cancer diagnosis and subsequent treatment, understandably, brought some perspective to her life and achievements.

While undergoing treatment, Etheridge revisited her past records start to finish, in order, over a period of weeks.

"I would listen, stop and talk about it -- 'Gosh, I remember when I wrote that, when we recorded that, I remember why I wrote that.' "

From the later perspective, even such mainstays as "Come To My Window," the 1993 song from her multi-platinum album Yes I Am that rocketed her from star to superstar, were full of new revelations, as if the Etheridge of then was speaking to the Etheridge of now.

"So when I started writing this album, I thought, 'If I'm going to be speaking to my future self, some day driving in a car and hearing myself singing on the radio, what would I be telling myself? What message was I saying to myself?' So I wrote down the line, 'I'm sending out a message to myself / So that when I hear it on the radio / I'll know that I am fine / I'll know that I am loved.' And it was that simple!"

It was her own little artistic experiment in time travel, but other inspiration came from a growing interest in real matters of time and space. One day she strolled into a bookstore and in the philosophy section was drawn to Ken Wilber's A Brief History of Everything, which explores the intersection of quantum physics and spirituality. That set her on a path of more reading, more thinking and a lot of writing, some of the results providing key elements for The Awakening, notably "The Universe Listened" and the closing "What Happens Tomorrow?"

"I told the universe I wanted fame and fortune and was given that," she says. "Then I wanted love and got that. The Awakening as an album is the spiritual side coming open."

And The Awakening is - literally and figuratively -- the album of her life. Atoms, space and everything else. The universe listened to Melissa Etheridge.

-- article from melissaetheridge.com

Comments

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