Lynette Diaz: Blog

Last week I stepped into the recording studio to work on my EP. I've posted one of the original tunes recorded, 'Don't Give Up', as a sneak peak. Genuinely making progress on an, as yet, unknown completion/release date.

Talk about lessons, big lessons. Talk about grief, wow, in bucket loads and in waves. But something else emerges in the spaces of emptiness. Sitting with the emptiness is hard, but it’s a time of reflection. It’s when the tears flow and the heart aches, but it’s also when the poems come or the light bulb ‘aha’ moments happen. It’s when I feel my connection to something greater and profound. The superficial veil disappears when someone close to you passes, especially one so young. It’s the nitty gritty essence of living that becomes important.

Moving into Winter here in the Southern hemisphere....burrrr...but staying warm by playing lots of heart-driven music around Christchurch in warm venues surrounded by other warm hearts! The city is still experiencing the occasional aftershock, but moving towards recovery.

Normal in Christchurch means lots of road detours, as the infrastructure is being rebuilt, and ever changing landscape, as landmarks...such as tall buildings... gets demo'd here and there and everywhere. Ah, but alas, where there is destruction, there is rebirth and growth. That is also evident all around, including interesting community projects getting under way, people gathering with visions of the future, arts/musical venues getting on with entertaining people. Ever evolving, ever changing!!

Yes, another earthquake blog. What can I say, really? Over 10,000 aftershocks since September 2010 with the most memorable one of them all on February 22, 2011.

I need to write this blog, my brain saturated with memories and melancholy and inundated recently with images of the past year. The NZ media has been reliving that day in pictures and stories for at least a week now, and it brings it all back to the forefront of the psyche again....in some ways, it's even worse, because there is time to process those pictures in a way that wasn't possible when living it in that moment.

Just last week, the Dalai Lama made a special visit to Christchurch. Bringing heartfelt messages of compassion, strength and love to the people of Christchurch. I wrote this message for a friend, shortly after his visit, as she was lamenting on the upheaval in her life.

"What a journey life is...the Dalai Lama was here in Christchurch yesterday and his message for all of us in transition from the earthquake was to remember we are not the tragedy but to remember to embrace our self-respect in order to... move forward..he kept saying rebuild, rebuild...and it wasn't just the buildings he was talking about. Life is a series of quakes that constantly transform and force us to rebuild. Best wishes to you on the journey"