Life Through Music-"Hedegraad" Featuring Lukas Grahan (Happy Home)

The holiday season always makes me think of the idea of home. For me home is that place that you hold as your space in this world. This above all things has always been very important to me. A place that no matter the world that is going on around you it’s that space that you hold that you can be yourself in the center of this craziness we call life. 

Home has always been a focus for me for as long as I can remember. Life is a very crazy thing that is always throwing something new at you because it’s rapidly changing. The only way that I have been able to deal with life’s changes all these years is having a stable place that I can center myself. This importance of a happy home has become more relevant to me as I have gotten older and especially now that I’m without both of my parents. They say that home is where your heart is and my heart has become the most important thing that I have in this world. Therefore, home has just as much importance in my life as I move forward. 

I was lucky as a child growing up because I always had a stable place I called home. It wasn’t always easy or perfect, but my mother worked hard to maintain a stable home as much as possible. When I look back I remember a wonderful home that I was a part of. When I was old enough to move out of my mother’s home and out into the world I took many of the things that I had learned growing up to instill that same greatness in my own space. 

In the time that I have live on my own I have been very fortunate to have had only two roommates. I have escaped all the horror stories I have heard of what it’s like when a situation with a roommate can go bad. My first roommate was my older sister that I have always had a strong connection with throughout my life. After our first round of living together we took quite a few years living apart from each other before we decided to move in together again. This time around I’m even more thankful than I was the first time that we lived together. Life is quite a bit different for both of us than it was when we last lived together. This time around we have helped to recenter and support each other. This kind of stability has been much needed for us both during this tough year of 2014.

I know I have mentioned it before, but to be more direct 2014 for me has been a shit storm of bad things that have happened in my life. Truthfully I can’t wait for this year to be over. 

Don’t get me wrong there has been some great moments and events that have been sprinkled throughout this year that have made life more tolerable. One of those wonderful moments came over the summer when I moved back in with my sister. In fact moving back in with my sister went so well it kind of scared both of us. Like we were still looking over our shoulders waiting for something to go wrong. So far the second time around living with each other is going great. Well, other than me eating to much of certain foods of my sisters on occasion and my struggle to get my sister to unload the dishwasher more than she does currently because she despises unloading the dishwasher. Overall though I couldn’t be more happy with the place that I currently call home. 

The song I picked to accompany this topic of home is a song that a good friend send me a while ago and probably thought I forgot all about it. Well, I didn’t forget about it. Sometimes it just takes me a little while to come around to getting to it. I love when others share music with me and especially when those songs hit the right note that strikes an emotion within myself. The song is called “Hedegaard”(Happy Home) featuring Lukas Graham. Lukas Graham is a Danish musical group consisting of Lukas Graham Forchhammer (vocals), Mark Falgren (drums), Magnus Larsson (bass) and Kasper Daugaard (keyboard). You read it right. LOOK OUT! Derrick Heine is now going international with my music selections. The version I first heard was the one that I will post on this entry right above the lyrics. I love this version of the song because there is such an uplifting big sound that the song holds and the live version helps build on that feeling. Really the song speaks for it’s self so lets go to the lyrics. 

Happy Home

Mama called about the paper turns out they wrote about me

Now my broken heart´s the only thing that's broke about me

(I have had much heart break this year for sure.)

So many people should have seen what we got going on

I only wanna put my heart and my life in songs

(Well, not in songs, but I do put a lot into these blog entries.)

Writing about the pain I felt with my daddy gone

(Yeah I definitely do. Some you have seen and some you haven’t.)

About the emptiness I felt when I sat alone

(Yes, I know this well.)Thankfully it’s not as often as it use to be.

About the happiness I feel when I sing it loud

(Yes, when I really let the music push that what’s in me out into the world I feel amazing. I do this mostly when others are not around though.)

He should have heard the noise we made with the happy crowd

Did my grandaddy know he taught me what a poem was

How you can use a sentence or just a simple pause

(We talked about this a lot in my public speaking class. How important and powerful a pause can be.)

What will I say when my kids ask me who my daddy was

I thought about it for a while and I'm at a loss

(I think about this a lot and I too am at a loss much of the time. Not just with my father, but my mother now as well.)

Knowing that I´m gonna live my whole life without him

I found out a lot of things I never knew about him

(I know I couldn’t have had them forever, but both left my life too early. It’s sad how much more I learned about them after they passed away.)

All I know is that I´ll never really be alone

Cause we gotta lot of love and a happy home

(Because of things that both my parents instilled in me I will always work hard to keep a happy home.)

Magazines are writing stuff but I don´t ever read them

Some of the folks I used to know would see and start believing

That I would pass them by on streets and never reach to greet them

I still remember folks even though I rarely meet them

Don´t you know I miss the times when we used to hang

(I think about those that have come in and out of my life more than I share. I reminisce about both current people in my life and people of the past people that have touched my life. I really hope they all are doing so well.)

Before twenty deep depended on a single man

Before a single heart was broken by a single blow

(This is how I have always been even before my heart was broken with “two” heavy blows to my heart.)

Before all our careers depended on a single show

I grew up with a lot of love in a happy home

(Yes, I did.)

Now I got a lot of cash and I'm on a road

I realize privacy´s becoming difficult

It´s all right now but what about when I´m old

I know my good friends now they´ll last

the same ones that stood by me when my daddy past

(I really have such a great core of friends and they continue to grow. This was proven to me very blatantly when each one of my parents passed on. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. Great friendship is one of the greatest gifts in life.)

All I know is that we´ll never really be alone

Cause we got a lot of love and a happy home

I write a lot of songs will anybody ever read them

(I will never be alone that I know. I do hope my words written transcend both time and space.)

You hear them on the radio but will you really read them

Why do we have our idols and why do we wanna be them

After we see them on TV we really wanna meet them

Don´t you think they miss the time when they used to hang

Before a fan base depended on a single man

Before a single heart was broken by a single show

Who´s gonna stand who´s gonna fall I really wanna know

(Some people come and some people go.)

I grew up with a lot of love in a happy home

My daddy use to play me vinyl but now daddy´s gone

(Yes, he did and it was one of the greatest things I loved about my father. I truly think he was the best version of himself when he was behind the turntable doing what he loved the most. Thank you for sharing that with me dad.)

I used to practice with my mommy on the piano

I still get nervous every time I know she´s at a show

Now my family comes first before everyone

I had the perfect dad I wanna be the perfect son

(Both my mother and my father did their best to be as good of a parent as they could or knew how to. I think I turned out pretty well so I can’t complain. I try my best to be the best son and person that I can be.)

Though I really feel sometimes I am on my own

I know I got a lot of love and a happy home

So, my message to you this holiday season is as you make your way through the craziness that is the holidays please make sure you take the time to appreciate what it is that makes the core or the home of your life. This is important for many reasons, but especially because you never know how life will change your life in a heartbeat. I love you all and I hope you are taking excellent care of yourselves.

As always I send this to you with so much love and pure D-lite. = )

Feels good to be back.

Well, hello there....its been awhile hasn’t it. If you haven’t been following me on Facebook then you wouldn’t know that I have recently started going back to school. It took me a long time to make that decision, but after one term I feel like it was a good decision for myself. I'm still not quite sure what I am going to school for exactly, but I think working that out while going to school will help me. It’s been very nice to get that feeling of encouragement and that feeling of being smart again. It’s building confidence to push me to higher things. Things like trigonometry and calculus use to be things I thought of as only what the “smart people” do. I have broken through that feeling after talking to my math teacher last term and a coworker who is a math major. I don’t know if I will be the best at them, but I know that I'm no longer scared to take them on. That kind of thinking has been a very good improvement for myself and I am proud of myself for taking that step. 

So the two classes I took this last spring term was a math class and writing class. Math is still at a review level for me so I don’t want to talk about that much. What I do want to talk about is my writing class. Because I have found through this blog that writing is a good outlet and a powerful tool for me. I am a man of many ideas and thoughts and its very nice to have an audience that enjoys and respects that. So, I know there isn’t millions of people reading this blog, but I want to take the time to thank those that do. 

So thank you for listening and being a part of my life. = )

So, I haven’t posted an entry since March and that was very shortly before I started school. I didn’t however stop writing, my writing just became writing of a different sort. I’m out of school for the summer and want to take this time to catch you up and share the many things that are on my and have been on my mind over the last few months. I plan to share as many blog entries that I can over the summer before I start school again in the fall. So to kick things off I thought I might share one of the three papers I wrote for my writing class. It is the one I'm the most proud of. I got a B on it and I was a little discouraged by that at first. As I explained to many people who helped keep me stay positive about my writing that in the past I have gotten B’s I want to get A’s. I’m not just in school to “pass” I want to excel. I kept at it and didn’t get the A+ I wanted till the last paper and thankfully that one was worth the most points towards my grade. I did however learn a lot trying to push myself to get that A. It’s always a lesson and I am in school to learn.  I will say goodbye for now and pass you off to my paper about the feeling of place. What is place to you?

As always I bring this to you with love and pure D-Lite. = ) 

Home Within a Home

I have lived here in this apartment for over 3 years now. Everything inside this place is connected to me. From the moment I wake up in the morning to get ready for the day, to when I walk through the door after a long day of work. I have worked hard to make this place I call home. It is not the structure itself or the location itself that makes this place I live on earth my special place. It really is so much more.

Every year I take a step back and reassess my apartment and take time to get rid of anything that is cluttering up my space to keep things open. This was an important thing to keep in mind when implementing some feng shui techniques in my apartment. It’s as simple as walking through your front door and as you do, think about these thoughts, “Do I feel welcome? What are the first things I see? How do I feel when entering this place?” When I walk through the door of my apartment, I feel blessed to have a physical place to rest my head and that this is where I belong. The first thing that I see when I step into my home is my kitchen where I spend much of time cooking meals for myself, my family, and my friends. It is a place I feel very at home in because of the time spent there. The feelings I get when I enter my home are relief, freedom, and happiness. Not only do I feel free to be free and open in my apartment, I try very hard to allow those that come into my space to have the same freedom. To have a place that is free to say how you feel, be who you really are, and to be open to anything. The author Terry Tempest Williams in her essay “One Tree” talks about being humbled by the presence of this beautiful cottonwood tree near where she lives when she says, “In the presence of this tree, I am reduced to exactly what I am, simply another life form” (Williams). Walking into my place is very humbling to me. There is no distractions from the outside world. In my apartment I am surrounded by the things I love and things that make me who I am. No matter what life is outside my home, here in my home I am extremely humbled. Not only does my space provide a base of who I am, but my home also has always been a tool to help expand on the person I am. 

There are many physical things in my apartment that have become a part of what is home to me. Many of the things in my apartment are reminders or reflections to myself of who I am. Reminding myself of the things that make up who I am is very important to me, as it makes me feel at home within myself. Music is an important part of my life and has always been part of my home. Besides my CD collection taking up a big portion of the living room, there usually is music playing in the background. That has been carried over from when I was at my father’s house growing up. There is something so relaxing and refreshing to me about music playing. Even the simple things like sitting on my couch and looking out the window brings such peace to me. The plants on my patio are always inviting and welcoming to me and help keep me connected to nature even though I live within the city limits. Then there is my extremely comfortable bed that I love so dearly as well. Because what is having a place to rest your head if you don’t have an excellent place to actually do that? These things help me keep track of who I am no matter where I go and that is why I feel they are important part of my home and that I feel I can pack my home up and move anywhere. 

There are many great things about the environment surrounding the location I live in currently. But if I was given the opportunity to live in a different location, whether similar or very different from where I live right now, I assure you my home would still be very much the same. You think that by living in Oregon my whole life I would completely feel at home here. It’s true there are many great things about Oregon I love, from the vibrant green that fills the state of Oregon during the days of spring to the leaves changing to brilliant colors of yellow, orange, and red in the fall. I also like the fact that I can experience so many different geographical locations without leaving the state. Being able to drive about an hour or two in any direction can give you a nice change of scenery. I have lived in many places within this state since I left my mother’s nest and each one of those places I lived in had things that I find important to a place I call home far past where is was located. Okay, so what if you had to live in Antarctica or in the middle of the desert instead of the lush green vegetation that makes up Oregon. Would that change what is your home? No. For me home is a lot more than the beauty that is around where my home may rest. I have traveled many places and each time I come back to where I live, its not just the beauty and wonder that the state of Oregon has that makes me feel home again. It’s walking through the door at my apartment that gives me this feeling of place. Other things that I like about living where I do is having a family that lives close by so that they can be a part of my daily life, having my own space to create or play, and also a place to just be. Speaking of a place to just be sometimes I will turn everything off in my apartment and open all the windows so that I can hear the freeway near by. That sound of the freeway over the years I have spent here has become as soothing to me as a river flowing down a mountainside, constant and never ending. In the essay “Homeplace” by Scott Russell Sanders he takes a moment to talk about the spiritual side of connecting to a place through words he found from a Zen master named Thich Nhat Hanh. Sanders translates in his own words what that lesson from the Zen master said by saying, “If you stay put, your place may become a holy center, not because it gives you special access to the divine, but because in your stillness you hear what might be heard anywhere” (Sanders 103). This idea of carrying a feeling of place within yourself no matter where you go I think is very powerful. I also feel that if you learn the ability to create that space for yourself in one place you can create it anywhere, it doesn’t matter the location. See having a place in this world to me is more about what travels with you than where exactly those things you bring with you rest or are placed in this world. 

So it may seem that it is my apartment that I call my home from the reasons that I have mentioned, but that would be a little misleading. The fact that I feel at home in my apartment is true, only it’s not the actual apartment I live in itself that that gives me that feeling of being at home. It’s not the airplane landing on the ground of the state I lived my whole life that gives me that feeling of home. It’s not the physical things that I have within my apartment. It’s what those things mean to me that I carry with me from place to place. I have lived in several places in my life and each one felt like home when I lived there. In fact, many people who have visited the places I lived in have told me that my place feels homey. This holds true for the good places I lived in to the not so good places I lived in over the years, each place I have made my home. The items I have or specific things I do to make my home in any place I live have moved with me and have been learned over the course of my time here on this planet and is always evolving with me as I go. I do believe it is important for people to look outward in life at the world around them that makes up or interacts with what they believe to be their home or place in this world. I find it more important to go inward as well to create a home within yourself that can travel wherever you are, because I believe until you find a place within yourself, no matter where you go, it will never feel like home.

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Works Cited 

Sanders, Scott Russell. “Homeplace.” Seeing & Writing. Ed. Donald McQuade and Christine McQuade. New York: Bedford, 2000. 101-104. Print.

Williams, Terry Tempest. “One Tree.” Wood Notes Quarterly Summer. 2001. Print.