II. | QUEST OF BLUE |

— welcome back, clouds —

I’m more than beyond happy to meet you here again!

The past months felt like a real-life rollercoaster, and writing these lines feels like a new beginning. With new beginnings come change, and a refreshing one concerning our newsletter: its frequency.

As for now, I will let my creativity lead the way and not a monthly deadline—meaning the newsletter’s following issues will drop when a new part of the story is ready to be shared.

Doesn’t it feel like our getaway just became the delicious cookies a friend surprises you with on a sunny Sunday afternoon at the park?

Cookies taste better with music, don’t they?
Find all the songs we explore in this newsletter in its dedicated playlist!
CLICK HERE and make sure you save it in your library!

Now, back to our getaway…
I heard one of history’s most badass voices leads the path today…

|| FROM POETRY TO THE STORY ||

The last time we met, every living soul fell asleep after a strange event occurred, and our narrator was dreaming about society’s past.

As we meet today, we discover our narrator’s dreams are more than dreams—some looked like flashbacks of something long forgotten: hope.

Among them, a dream showed a cloud crossing the universe to reach Earth. It was flying peacefully in a delicate dance with smiling eyes as Janis Joplin’s voice was weaving “Kozmic Blues” from a place that seemed buried far away in the sky.

When our narrator heard that song, a fierce electric wave swept every inch of the sleeping body.

It felt like a wake-up call.

Then, as the electric wave vanished, a few sentences appeared on the skin—as if a poem suddenly tattooed itself on the body:

Your call!
What does it tell us about our story?
What does this dream mean? And what about that dancing cloud?
CLICK HERE to share your craziest thoughts.

I’ll share the best and funniest answers in the next issue!

|| INTO THE MUSIC: JANIS JOPLIN’S “KOZMIC BLUES” ||

As a whole, Janis Joplin is the definition of a liberation statement—a fierce voice in a fierce body, personifying the rejection of what society expects a woman to be. Born an outsider in the early 40s, Janis Joplin didn’t settle for the perfect Texan housewife role life foreordained her. Following her urge to sing her heart out to express what was burning her guts, she embraced her own revolution, where she embodied her masculinity as strongly as she allowed her power, sensuality, and vulnerability to fill up every room she set foot in.

Yet, Joplin served as an unconscious feminist symbol, living on her own terms and calling out the young generation to question presumptions. She was oblivious to the feminist movement, as she was to most activism of her time. When asked about the women’s liberation movement resenting her, she said: “You are what you settle for. If they settle for being somebody’s dishwasher, that’s their own f—king problem. If you don’t settle for that and you keep fighting it, you know, you’ll end up anything you want to be. I’m just doing what I wanted to and what feels right and not settling for bullshit, and it worked.”

Gifted with a unique electric stage aura, Janis Joplin is widely renowned for her role in the rock scene. Yet, her guts call her a blues singer. She fell in love with the genre when she was about 14 years old, discovering the voices of legends such as Bessie Smith or Ma Rainey. With a voice like you’ve rarely met before, there’s no doubt she’s the heiress of the queen of the blues era—she’s the blues of her time, in every song she sings, whether a rock one, a folk one, or a traditional blues.

“Kozmic Blues” is one of the two songs she wrote for “Got Dem Ol’ Kozmic Blues Again Mama!”, her debut solo album released in 1969 after she left her former band, Big Brother and the Holding Company, and the only solo one she released during her lifetime. “Kozmic Blues,” as well as the other tunes on the album, marks her new harmonic adventure. Here, in contrast to her previous psychedelic rock records, Janis Joplin dedicates her full artistry to soul and blues—taking her path to the music she first fell in love with as a teenager.

Janis Joplin passed away from a heroin overdose in 1970, soon after completing the recording of “Pearl,” her second solo album, and joined the infamous “27 Club”. With a fierce will to live her own definition of freedom, unmatched artistry, and without even trying to be one, Janis Joplin became the legend she is—the very first woman rock’n’roll superstar who led the way for women to take a new spot in the rock scene.

|| BRAIN FUN FACT ||

Music has many benefits for human beings. With every issue of our getaway comes a new fun fact and a resource to learn more about it:

Are we about to throw out our painkillers?
Rumor has it that moving music may reduce pain.

Researchers from McGill University in Montreal, Canada, released their impressive conclusion.
Find the complete study on Frontiers in Pain Research’s website or a summary on The Guardian’s.

|| | WORDSTOBEMUSIC | VOL.2 ||

Last Summer, | wordstobemusic | vol.2 dropped featuring 25 poems created while I was immersed in and inspired by live music performances. Among them, in a tiny venue called “Au Raisin”, Rachel Croft inspired me || muddy sweetness || as she gave a very touching solo performance.

A few hours before her show, I had the chance to chat with the British singer-songwriter—an interview I’m more than delighted to share with you today!

Press play to fall in love with Rachel Croft's authenticity.

Grab your edition of | wordstobemusic | vol.2 to discover who inspired those 25 poems.

|| WHAT THE STORY INSPIRED YOU ||

Following || life beat ||, our getaway first issue, Arjan Tupan shared his thoughts on what our narrator saw in the dreams, and I must admit I kinda want to live it! Here are the few lines Arjan shared with us:

“She found herself at a now-defunct jazz festival in Maastricht, The Netherlands, where she saw Nina Simone perform and Miles Davis. James Brown and Art Blakey. And Phil Collins had a big band, within the smaller rooms of the venue, everything else, from upcoming niche artists to the local music school students’ jazz band. It was a different time, then, a time of promise, a time just after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War. A time during which the music reflected the positivity and promise that seemed to permeate every fiber of the universe and was thought to last forever.”

|| OUR COMMUNITY RISES ||

When Miss MacD shared "The Black Boulevard" video poem, I instantly connected with it. I mean, whenever there’s music involved, I’m all in!

|| CONTEST ||

The drawing lot has spoken and chosen Arjan Tupan! He submitted a song that I absolutely love, Arrested Development's Mr Wendal. I spent hours dancing on it, but no poem popped up in my mind. It's funny how music works its magic, isn't it? Maybe next time ;)

It’s time to get a chance to win some NFT poetry! CLICK HERE to suggest an album or a song!

In the next post, I’ll share a poem inspired by a piece of music you submitted {chosen by drawing lot}. The winner will win the 1/1 NFT poem.
The trick? If the album or song doesn’t inspire me anything, there’s nothing to win.

After all, our relationship to music is subjective, isn’t it ;)?

|| THANK YOU! ||

Thank you for reading! 

I hope this little getaway put a smile on your heart!

If you'd like to support the project, you can subscribe to this newsletter, collect this post, | wordstobemusic | vol.2, or any of my other works.

☁✒


S.