{"id":225,"date":"2011-09-02T10:11:41","date_gmt":"2011-09-02T15:11:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/unorthodoxcreativity.com\/emky\/?p=225"},"modified":"2012-05-24T11:01:24","modified_gmt":"2012-05-24T16:01:24","slug":"a-song-for-nebt-het","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/unorthodoxcreativity.com\/emky\/creativity\/a-song-for-nebt-het\/","title":{"rendered":"a song for Nebt-het"},"content":{"rendered":"

My sister is doing some amazing work with writing songs for Netjeru, and thus inspired, I took the little thing I wrote for Nebt-het<\/a> and a candle and my beloved classical guitar to the bedroom. (J was in the living room, alternately rocking out on his electric guitar or coffee-painting.)<\/p>\n

Let me preface this: I am not a confidant guitarist. I am learning. I know a few chords, and I haven’t played regularly since before the move, so I am rusty in the muscles. I am blessed to occasionally be able to write songs in terms of vocal melody + words, but putting chords to it is still a massive challenge to me, and one I have not attempted more than once or twice, ever. Hell, I can’t even get a strum pattern down beyond a simple 1-2-3-4.<\/p>\n

So, I lit the candle, pulled up the words, and sang through it a few times, then started fumbling with chords. I didn’t set up formal ritual and invite Nebt-het in, but I made it abundantly clear that She was welcome to sit with me and\/or help with the music for Her minisong. Due to several recent silences in response to my invitations, my expectations were low, but to my cautious delight, I got a sense of Her presence fairly quickly.<\/p>\n

Nebt-het, to me, is very tall and very slender, with long slim hands that are cool to the touch. Her color is a velvety purple-tinted medium-light grey. She was constantly behind me, slightly to the left, just as She had been when I lit a candle for Her on Her birthday and wrote the minisong in the first place. After working on it for a while, I figured out all the chords and could, stutteringly, play and sing at the same time.<\/p>\n

I offered Her more blackberry-grape water when She wanted some; it was what I had given Her on the first night. (The color of that drink, too, became Her color.) The candle burned low and blue as I kept going. Despite the struggle of doing something hard and new, I was gleeful. I was putting music<\/i> to words<\/i> and I was the one who wrote<\/i> the words and I could sing and play<\/i> and I even had a strum pattern<\/i>. Holy crap.<\/p>\n

I ran out of energy, and my callus-less fingertips were raw; the candle extinguished itself when She said goodnight to me. I told Her I would do better, keep practicing and make it sound better, and She told me that what I had done was enough. Not in the sense of “no, stop here,” but in the sense that what I had done was perfectly sufficient, completely worthy. I tried to wrap my head around that idea when She thanked me for the music, and I thanked Her (about fifty bajillion times) for sitting in with me.<\/p>\n

I am going to try to get smooth enough with the chords and strumming to record a version so you can hear, but for now, I wanted to record this experience. Whatever comes of it, I am grateful and happy and blessed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My sister is doing some amazing work with writing songs for Netjeru, and thus inspired, I took the little thing I wrote for Nebt-het and a candle and my beloved classical guitar to the bedroom. (J was in the living room, alternately rocking out on his electric guitar or coffee-painting.) Let me preface this: I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8,6],"tags":[42,14],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/unorthodoxcreativity.com\/emky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/unorthodoxcreativity.com\/emky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/unorthodoxcreativity.com\/emky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/unorthodoxcreativity.com\/emky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/unorthodoxcreativity.com\/emky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=225"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/unorthodoxcreativity.com\/emky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":289,"href":"http:\/\/unorthodoxcreativity.com\/emky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225\/revisions\/289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/unorthodoxcreativity.com\/emky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/unorthodoxcreativity.com\/emky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/unorthodoxcreativity.com\/emky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}