Episode Twenty
Podcast Episode 20 – STOP AND SMELL THE ROSES & WAKE UP AND SMELL THE COFFEE
By: Elizabeth rose
Interview with Laurianne Fiorentino
Intro
Segment 1 plan (~15 minute)
How we can RESTORE respect, kindness, strength and integrity into several systems. In Laurianne’s case, the Music and the Arts is a bit easier to restore these characteristics, but still good to reaffirm and talk about.
THEME FOR SEGMENT 1: Does your music offer you a place of Gratitude, and if so How?
Does your music offer you and others opportunities to “Wake Up.” And if so, How?
Elizabeth
With us in the studio is Laurianne Fiorentino, Hi.
Laurianne
Hello there.
ELIZABETH
For the Stop and Smell the Roses and Wake Up and Smell the Coffee Podcast number 20. I should say whole brain podcast, and we’re about ready to roll. So the first question I have for you, since Stop and Smell the Roses is a lot about gratitude, is your music, since we’re mostly focused on that today. You have been a healer of ortho-bionomy in the past. You have been, well you are an artist, and a painter, and a photographer, and you are the director of the San Miguel Chapel here in Santa Fe, which is the oldest church, right?
LAURIANNE
In the continental United States, yes, still on it’s original foundation, still serving Catholic Mass.
ELIZABETH
Wow, so how old is it?
LAURIANNE
- It was built in 1610. The roof was burned in 1680 during the Pueblo Revolt. Then the Spanish returned, after the Natives pushed them out of the country, they returned in the late 1600’s, so 13 years later, and it was rebuilt. That’s in 1710.
ELIZABETH
I know we’re digressing a little bit, but how did you become the director of the San Miguel Chapel?
LAURIANNE
Let’s see. I think it was 2017, I played a concert there, and I loved the sound of the room. I had recorded 2 concerts in the Santuario de Guadalupe, which is twice, or three times the size, and I really wanted to play there again, so I was working with Michael Kott at the time, the cellist, and I suggested that we do an elemental series, you know, the 4 or 5 elements, over the summer, and his response was “oh, you mean like oxygen and plutonium?” And I was like “wait a minute, that’s 119 shows, let’s do that.” So I started once a month there. Then I became the concert coordinator, which is the person that books concerts and vets people who want to do shows there, and I open up the chapel and prepare it, and host the show, and then I close it up. Steve Paxton, who did that, he moved out of town, so I became that. Then during covid, I was around, so I did some videos for the chapel preservation, and I also built a website, because it was covid, and I love doing that stuff. So then the director emeritus, David Blackman, who had been there for 20 years, had to step down and we created a job description and presented it to St. Michael’s High School, the owners of the school, owners of the building since 1859, and they approved a job for me. So I did it. I’m thrilled. It was really cool.
ELIZABETH
So back to my question about gratitude and music. Does your music offer you and your audience the opportunity to inspire gratitude in your life?
LAURIANNE
Well, I haven’t been in my audience, ok, so I don’t quite know what their experience is. I can tell you that I feel grateful, to be able to connect to the source of my inspiration in music, and to share that with the person I play with, Michael, and it just feels like there’s a lot of connection there, and I would say that connection is my solution to disconnection.
ELIZABETH
Connection is a very real thing, even when you’re a human fallible being, which you say you also are. I like that. Ok. You pass the test of what you’re grateful for. So let’s segue into the elemental series a little bit more. You do this series with Michael Kott, and do you have a special guest as well?
LAURIANNE
We used to have a special guest, and, before covid I didn’t have a full-time job, so I had time to go looking for people and I have to produce a new show every month, so after covid now, occasionally we’ll have a surprise guest, but we take an element, we arbitrarily choose an element, and I’ve actually assigned the monthly element for the next 3 years. I try to go from different groups in the periodic table to put a variety in there and then put unknown, weirdo elements next to common ones that we’ve heard of, so that we can mix it up. And I do research or I don’t do research, I just look on the internet and I gather information about the element, for instance, does it bond, is it volatile, does it stick around, does it last long, what’s the half life, does it have a color, does it bend, does it have any magnetism? And then I take those qualities and I look through my own repertoire of about 100 songs and I choose a setlist from that and then I’ll choose a couple of cover tunes that people can recognize.
ELIZABETH
So it does give you some order, some organization to work with?
LAURIANNE
Yea, it gives me a little room to decorate.
ELIZABETH
Now, Curious, with Michael Kott being the cellist that you collaborate with, do you mostly decern… is it mostly your decision what each show is made of?
LAURIANNE
Um, well, I have the element already designated and Michael hasn’t yet, um, uh, objected. He did pick an element. We’re doing a show in Pagosa in October, and he wants to do sulfur for that one. But he does come up with some songs to do, and he has some ideas… I am the boss, so we’ll get together once or twice before a show and then we do it.
ELIZABETH
And so the show, again, is at the San Miguel Chapel, the first Friday of every month, at 6:30pm, is that correct?
LAURIANNE
Yes. So, um, like last show was iron, so there are things that iron relates to. Steel and malleability and heaviness. So we did put some songs of mine together and one song we brought in from the public is… we did Miley Cyrus’s song Wrecking Ball as a ballad and we did City of New Orleans being a train. The Iron Horse. And then there was a poem that I wrote, sitting at the foot of Ayres Rock in Australia. I did not climb Ayres Rock. I sat on a bench and this poem came out, so since it’s a red, red rock full of iron, I used that, in that particular show.
ELIZABETH
That’s beautiful. So in segment two, Wake Up and Smell the Coffee, we’re definitely gonna get into the restoration project, and I have a couple more questions to ask you about music. Is there anything else that you want to say right now?
LAURIANNE
No, I’m following you, Elizabeth.
ELIZABETH
All right, we’re gonna take a break. Actually we’re gonna play one of your songs, from… I think we’re going to play “When I’m an Angel” now. We have played Simple as the Sun, When I’m an Angel, Digital Radio, Trouble, Tear Drop, already, and perhaps you will… what’s the best song, do you know? From When I’m an Angel, to coincide with gratitude?
LAURIANNE
You know, put me on the spot… I’m gonna leave that up to you, Elizabeth, it’s your show.
ELIZABETH
Thank you very much, and we’ll come back for segment two.
When I grow up I want to be an angel
I want to fly away, I wanna watch over every little baby
When I grow up someday
When I get weary, and I feel so small
I can barely stand on my own
When I’m An Angel I promise I will carry
All the troubles of the world away
Until then I’m gonna walk by the river
Knowing my thirst for you will be broken
Oh, When I’m An Angel
I’ve been living for a long long time
Battered by rage and warmed by your sweet love
I wanna rest easy in the shelter from the storm
Before my wings carry me away
When I grow up I want to be an angel
And leave my bones by the old oak tree
You’ll know I’m gone when the rain starts a comin’
Water like promises over the ground
Segment 2 Wake Up and Smell the Coffee
Segment 2 plan (~15 minute)
THEME FOR SEGMENT 2: Do your musical adventures (present & future) contribute to strengthening yours/one’s frequency/vibe. And if so How?
Do your musical adventures (present & future) contribute to inspiring integrity (decency, virtue, forthrightness, honesty) in yourself/others. And if so How?
ELIZABETH
We are in our second segment of our whole brain podcast, episode number 20, Wake Up and Smell the Coffee. So my first question to you, Laurianne, is, Does your music offer you and others, opportunities to wake up?
LAURIANNE
I would say from audience responses that I’ve gotten, one person came up to me and felt like they had just been to a retreat and then another couple said “this is music to wake up to.” And I was like, “oh, ok, well…” So, waking up, what does that mean? Does in mean connecting more to more parts of your brain? You mentioned whole brain, and this ties, I’m just gonna say, this ties back into my degree in college. I got a BA in performing arts, right and left brain studies through performing arts and management. I designed my own major. And I’ve been doing… I look back now and I see that that’s what I’ve been needing for myself, is to light up more of my brain, instead of just a corridor of a degree that’s all ready set up by somebody else. And so, I had a lot of reorganizing I needed to do in my own person, in my body, in my brain, about redefining common words that I had been using in a way that wasn’t helpful to me, and so I’ve used language and music to reorganize, you know, reinvent the wheel for myself.
ELIZABETH
And that’s helped you to wake up?
LAURIANNE
It’s helped me to… stay here.
ELIZABETH
So, if one were, for example, in Santa Fe, to come to your Elemental concert, one of your concert series, will they wake up?
LAURIANNE
You know, I’m not sure how people respond to that, but the elemental series keeps me on my toes. I have to produce a show every month, I have to learn about the element we’re doing, I have to understand the feeling of what it might be maybe to be that element, and since the elements on the periodic table are the are one of the smallest definitions of what our universe is made of, including ourselves, for instance, iron, we talked about iron. Iron comes from meteorites, and we have 4 grams of iron in our bodies, in our blood, so the connection that you feel towards the fact that we are, indeed, in fact, or scientifically described as “one with” instead of “one” and “one of” rather than “one in” or “one on”. So those connection words with elements that have always been confounding and “gosh, what’s that one about, or I don’t even know, I’ve never heard of that one…” and as we become familiar with them, we… they see that the world… the connection between things that we didn’t think were connected actually have this real, tangible relationship.
ELIZABETH
Awesome. We’re gonna switch gears now, and talk a little bit about the restoration project, which is something that I’m doing, and I am asking Individuals in different sections, like, I’d consider you the music and the… You’re representing music and the arts. So I’m asking you, and I’ve already asked John Whitsell this question as well, and he took on respect and kindness, just spontaneously right away, so because the restoration project is about reinfusing, reimbuing those areas, the systems that we already have set up in society, like education, banking, music, the arts, nutrition, health, on and on. Can you please tell me how you see strength, and how you see integrity in music being restored, so being highlighted in a way that individuals can raise their frequency of strength and integrity?
LAURIANNE
Yes. It seems a little complicated, but let’s see… I wanna say that often we look outside of our own brains and bodies for answers that are actually… we embody them by nature. And then we get back to nature and the elements and also the strength of the… I hate to say universe but, you can’t have one thing without having other things. There is always a connection, and acknowledging those connections can… you know… well, gee, I’m connected to… that right there makes me less wobbly… less unsure… less doubtful… less unsettled. Because, let’s just say I’m not connected to anything. Let’s just look at that. There’s me, and I’m outside walking around going “where am I? What is this about? Who are those people? What are they doing?” and it becomes a question, and the question creates doubt and uncertainty and instability. However, if we look at our own definitions of community, within myself, like all the voices in my head that tell me things, there’s a community there, and somebody’s running the show. And so if I can find that, and listen, and then make a choice… “I’m going to… oh I hear you… all right, yea yea yea… I know, I know I’m an idiot… but I also I’m gonna try this over here, rather than doing the same thing that you, one part of me, has been telling me to do.” So I create a unity within myself, that if others… Let’s say you clean up your yard and I clean up my yard, we’ll have a clean neighborhood. But I might be tempted to say “why don’t you clean up your yard over there?” without doing that. So it’s a long process. To restore something you have to acknowledge what you think it used to be and why isn’t it that thing now. By calling it “restore” you might be saying that you recognize that it is fractured. Maybe recognizing that it isn’t fractured… so fractured might mean with cracks, or falling apart, which loses integrity, right? But I think if we see it as, you know… When synapses in the brain connect to each other, they’re little explosions. They’re little sparks.
ELIZABETH
Always been fascinated by the synapses in our brains…
LAURIANNE
They’re violent. They’re not just like “ladidadida I think I’ll rub your shoulders…” No, it’s like “boom”. So when we see fireworks in the sky and we go “Ah” we’re seeing that that’s me, that’s the brain, that’s what we do. We have this…
ELIZABETH
Awakening…
LAURIANNE
So, well, you know, awakening… So I went into a lot of word definitions, and awakening implies asleep and asleep implies that it’s not useful, but actually sleeping is very useful and necessary to rebuild. So people may be sleeping to rebuild for the time when they are ready to get up and do something different, so I wouldn’t say that being asleep is a crime or someplace you don’t want to be. And so when you say awake and asleep, you’re making a dichotomy and I like to value the different parts of all of us.
ELIZABETH
See, right away, I want to use the word restore instead of rebuild. Kind of one of the same, to me.
LAURIANNE
What about unveiling? What about revealing? What about discovering? You know?
ELIZABETH
Sure, all of that.
LAURIANNE
Because it’s a process of recognition, right? You recognize… It’s like “oh, that’s my brain up there in the fireworks.” You know what I’ve been seeing lately?
ELIZABETH
What?
LAURIANNE
Watching TV shows or watching netflix or something, and then driving on the streets, is that, this sounds horrible, but when you have a sore on your arm, or an infection, right, it kind of sticks up a little bit, and it’s red and all the bloods trying to get there, and your capillaries are going, well what about cities being like little sores on the earths surface? And all the roads and people in their cars are cells bringing and taking back and forth. I’m just going “woah, woah, wait a minute!” And then I have to like, you know, have a cup of tea. Because what if everything’s the way it’s supposed to be?
ELIZABETH
I think it is. I think it is the way it’s supposed to be and here I’ve come up with this notion that all these systems need to be restored, well, I don’t know, maybe just take it up a notch. That’s what this second segment, Wake Up and Smell the Coffee is, take it up a notch. Improve on those areas, not where the cracks are, cause we’ve heard from Leonard Cohen that the crack is where the light gets in. Ok, I’m switching gears entirely, again. I want to talk a little bit about integrity.
LAURIANNE
Integrity.
ELIZABETH
Yea, cause you seem to be a good person to talk to about these things.
LAURIANNE
So integrity, I’ve had problems with different words, because I intellectually may think I understand them, but how do I actually absorb them into my cells, you know?
ELIZABETH
And the question specific to you is do your musical adventures, your present and future musical adventures contribute to inspiring integrity? Do they increase decency, virtue, forthrightness, and honesty in yourself and others? That’s what I have.
LAURIANNE
Well well well, how am I supposed to know that? Um, I think I explained this to one of the musicians who’s actually going to play tonight when, maybe when we play music or present a visual stimuli, we present an opportunity to maybe jiggle the jar of the world so that the silt kind of comes back up and you can see it, and then it settles somehow, which I don’t have control over. But it may settle into some place slightly different.
ELIZABETH
You don’t have control over it?
LAURIANNE
No. Slightly different. Slightly different settling, right? It may not settle into the exact place it was. So if it settles with a couple grains over there and a couple of grains over here, then something has moved. And movement can… you can choose… or just ride the movement and being more connected, you might make a different choice. I don’t know.
ELIZABETH
Ok. Now we’re going to segue into… would you please introduce from this album, the song we’re going to play, we’re going to play Dance, Dance, Dance, not the song, it’s the poetry of this gentleman, right?
LAURIANNE
Well, Daniel Ladinsky wrote the book “The Gift” and he… in the description he says it’s poems from Hafiz. I love the book, I love the poetry. In a way it’s not crucial to me that it’s hafiz or it’s not, I just love the way the words play together. So I created this CD with 62 poems from that book, and each track has 3 to 5 short poems to it over a piece of music that holds it in space.
ELIZABETH
And did you create the music, as well?
LAURIANNE
Yea, the music was recorded in my house. It was a little underground, and I had Jason Ordaz and Gregory Gutten and Myself and Matthew Vaughn on violin, and we just… I just pressed record and we would just play. We didn’t have an agenda or a topic. When you do that you listen to each other, and in this particular record I’m playing the Egyptian oud, the Japanese koto, Native flute, an ocarina, and also hand drums and violin. And so, when I wanted to get background music for this poetry project, I was like “what am I gonna use? There’s that session that I never used for anything.” So I went back and I chose a piece, I would just play the piece, turn the microphone on and read. It was not planned when I would say a word, when the song would end, when the poem would end, and these pieces where the music… for instance the first piece is like… I say “When the violin can forgive the past it starts singing…” and then a violin comes in. I didn’t plan that.
ELIZABETH
Are you sure?
LAURIANNE
I’m sure! I didn’t listen to the track before I used it. So this particular song, dance, dance, dance, it’s track number 16, it’s the last track and it has 4 or 5 poems on it.
ELIZABETH
Thank you so much.
LAURIANNE
You’re welcome.
ELIZABETH
And thank you for your commentary, I know it was kind of forced upon you. Not really forced on integrity and strength and waking up and gratitude. Thank you.
LAURIANNE
I am eternally grateful to be able to have this conversation with you and to stand in my own integrity as I use language and try for you and me to understand what definition of that word is to both of us, so that we could talk about it.
ELIZABETH
Well, language is both a blessing and a curse, as far as I see.
LAURIANNE
It’s an art. It’s an artform.
ELIZABETH
Thank you.
LAURIANNE
Thank you.
ELIZABETH
Laurianne Fiorentino, and if you want to go to her website, if you want to learn more about her, you can go to lauriamusic.com
LAURIANNE
Lauriamusic.com
ELIZABETH
Or you can go to lauriannefiorentino.com
LAURIANNE
That’s right.
ELIZABETH
And there’s lots of great things that you can traverse on her website, even though you may not live in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and you might not get to come to one of her elemental series with Michael Kott, cellist. I call him Cellist extraordinaire, cause he is an extraordinary cellist, as you are, an artist, as well, so, well, thank you again.
LAURIANNE
Thank you again Elizabeth. Bye.
ELIZABETH
Bye.
a wine bottle
fell from a wagon and broke open in a
field
and that night 100 beetles and all their
cousins gathered
and did some serious binge drinking
they even found some seed husks nearby
and began to play them like drums and
whirl this made god very happy
and then the night candle rose into the
sky
and one drunk creature laying down his
instrument
said to his friend for no apparent
reason
what should we do about that moon
seems to as most everyone has laid aside
the music tackling such profoundly
useless questions
[Music]
every child has known god not the god of
names
not the god of don’ts not the god who
ever does
anything weird but the god who only
knows
four words and keeps repeating them
saying
come dance with me
come dance
don’t surrender your loneliness so
quickly
let it cut more deep
[Music]
let it ferment and season you as
few human or even divine ingredients can
something missing in my heart tonight
has made my eyes
so soft my voice so tender
my need of god absolutely
[Music]
clear
[Music]
the ear becomes alert when music says i
am over here
the eye goes on duty becomes viable
when beauty whistles and points to her
dress on the ground
god has sent out ten thousand messengers
announcing a great bash tonight some of
the planets are hosting
where the lead singer is god himself
but most of those couriers have become
drunk
got waylaid disoriented to the hilt with
such
exalted news and can no longer remember
the time
and the place what does that have to do
with you
plenty
[Music]
i wish i could speak like music i wish i
could put the swaying splendor of the
fields into words
so that you could hold truth against
your body and dance
i’m trying the best i can with this
crude brush
the tongue to cover you with light i
wish i could speak
like divine music i want to give you the
sublime rhythms of this earth and the
sky’s limbs
as they joyously spin and surrender
surrender against god’s luminous breath
hafez wants you to hold me against your
precious body
and dance dance dance
you
