She Don’t Know Me

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This is the official Star Wars trailer, released a few hours ago:

“But I do”

Rey:
“People keep telling me they know me. No one does.”
Kylo Ren:
“But I do.”

If you’ve followed the new Star Wars trilogy, you know that Rey has every reason to feel alienated. She doesn’t know who her parents are. And she’s also confused because she can feel this force inside of her, which she describes in The Last Jedi as “Something inside me has always been there, but now it’s awake and I’m afraid.” 
Whether Kylo Ren is so sure he knows her because he knows about her heritage? Or feels he knows all about her because of their Force bond?
Or perhaps because he’s just good with the ladies?
We ll have to wait until December 19 to find out.

But the truth is of course that Rey is right.
No one really knows her.
Or you.

But the biggest problem is not that others don’t really know us, but that we don’t really know ourselves. We’re all haunted by Forces within us, that may have stayed dormant for decades, until they are suddenly awake.
And usually they are awakened by facts or circumstances that need severe processing by themselves already.

They don’t usually awake on a quiet Tuesday morning, entirely by themselves.

On an interesting side-note about when Rey’s Force was awakened: 
Among Star Wars fans in general, and in particular among the ones who call themselves “Reylos”, from the by us perceived pairing of Rey and Kylo, it is believed that the reason The Force awakened in Rey in the first place (The Force Awakens, 2015), was because Kylo Ren set foot on Jakku!
The desert planet where she lived.

Kylo’s ship lands on Jakku, the door opens and a heavily masked and cloaked Kylo Ren enters the Star Wars trilogy, and awakens The Force inside of Jakku resident Rey.
Kylo being the trigger to The Force awakening is Rey, is how (we) Reylos explain the title The Force Awakens.

Our Reylo prediction for the new Star Wars is that this bond and history between Kylo Ren and Rey, will be explained.
In the novelization of The Force Awakens, Kylo Ren actually says upon seeing Rey: “It is you!”
Implying he has heard about her, has a shared history with her, or perhaps he’s a few years older and he saw her being brought to Jakku.
Most likely because she is part of a prophecy, or otherwise so powerful, that she cannot be raised somewhere her enemies would find her.

All in all, the reason Rey feels no one knows her, is not so much a consequence of other people not having a good enough understanding of her. But of her not having a good enough understanding of herself.
First because of her missing parents.
And then because of this Force awakening.

To make matters worse the last of the Jedi (masters of the Force) has stopped believing in himself and has locked himself onto a desert island, and the only one who is eager to connect with her is Kylo Ren.
Who is described in all Star Wars lore as “a dark side warrior”.

Rey and Kylo have uncontrolled and spontaneous Force Skypecalls, where they suddenly have an intergalactic connection.
The only one who understands Rey, is the one the entire Universe has instructed her not to date.
No wonder Rey is confused.
But.

To then say people don’t understand who she is?
That’s where she goes wrong, right?
That’s where we all go wrong.

The people around us can only reflect the truth we hold about ourselves.
If we don’t know ourselves, believe in ourselves, trust ourselves?
Very soon, the only one who can look us straight in the eye, really connect with us, and bring us further on our path?
Is a dark side warrior named Kylo Ren.
Saying in that husky, seductive voice:
“It is you.”

I’ll take it.

~Suzanne
Rock Star Writer

“She don’t know me” is a Bon Jovi song from their first album.
I added the video below.


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If That’s What It Takes

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I used to see it VERY clearly:
But not anymore.
I knew I was going to change the face of yoga, and most of all – I was going to change how people view it.
From something with limited applicability, something learned from someone else, to something limitless and personal.
Something unique and creative.
Something YOU create by stepping onto your mat, putting on the music of your choice and just take it away.

I imagined you’d already practiced with YouTube videos from Yoga with Adriene, or taken a few classes in your town.
Perhaps you weren’t able to find a studio or class times to suit your need.
These blogs on how yoga doesn’t have any rules, and that finding inspiration within yourself is the key, would strengthen your belief in yourself and protect you from looking outside of yourself for guidance.

But like I said:
I can’t see it anymore.
Not the BIG picture.

I can see the small picture, of me keeping this blog on as a hobby project, and helping the occasional student who wants help designing their own practice.
But I can’t see the big picture, where I change the face of yoga.

And the main reason is that I think I m autistic, and if that is the case it means that my entire frame of mind is different.

In the light of my autism, the reason I failed as a yoga teacher, and the reason teaching stressed me out becomes extremely simple:
Because teaching yoga, especially as a woman, is what we autistic people call “super neurotypical”.
It means all social standards, unwritten rules and expectations apply to me.
And then some.

I ve seen different transcripts of a neurotypical conversation, versus a conversation between two autistic people. Two autistic people talk by alternating having a monologue about a certain subject.
They have a high density of information.
It is content driven.

Two neurotypicals have conversations based on making each other feel good, have a low information density.

The reason I can’t see myself changing the face of yoga anymore, is that yoga already has the perfect neurotypical face:
It is based on making you feel good and has a low information density.

In my defense: I do make a good one-on-one connection, where we immediately get to the core of what it is that moves you and inspires you.
But if you just “brush by me” or come into contact with me, without me being able to tune into you personally?
My presence could have a terrible effect on you; You may unexpectedly feel the pain of knowing you’ve been living the wrong life.
And then what?

Can I then still say Rock Star Yoga is great, because it provides an inspirational, personal approach to yoga and doesn’t have the limitations of taking group yoga classes in normal studios?
No.
I say: “I wish you had never met me, because I ve only made things worse.”

My autism diagnoses is telling me what I have known for a long time: That most people are better off not knowing me.

That it’s only the one percent within the one percent, who will absolutely thrive knowing they can design their own yoga, just like they can design their own life.
My clarity, my presence, and probably my mental makeup because I m autistic are just as great for them, as they are highly disturbing for those who are just Googling “yoga”.

I no longer want to change the face of yoga, because I believe its current face is perfect to most.

But then how do I reach the one percent within the one percent, without disturbing yoga for the others?

~Suzanne
Rock Star Writer

afterthought 9 December 2020

This post was written 14 months ago, and I still don’t know the answer to this question.


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Burning Bridges/ We Don’t Run

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I always thought Bon Jovi’s 13th album Burning Bridges (21 August, 2015) and their fourteenth This House Is Not For Sale (in shorthand “THINFS”) had been released a lot closer together.
But due to THINFS being pushed back, they were ultimately over 14 months apart.
Months which were spent rebuilding 50% of the bridges which were commemorated on Burning Bridges.
Unfortunately, this was the 50% where Bon Jovi had split with their record company.
Not the 50% where Bon Jovi split with its other front man, Richie Sambora.
which will probably always remain an enigma, although I do think they will get back together.

All in all, Burning Bridges was an album Bon Jovi didn’t want to make, and the last song, Burning Bridges, makes that abundantly clear:

Sayonara
Adios, auf wiedersehen, farewell
Adieu, good night, guten abend
Here’s one last song you can sell
Lets call it burning bridges
It’s a sing along as well
Ciao, adieu, good nacht, guten abend
Play it for your friends in hell

song Burning Bridges

The song Burning Bridges and the album with the same name, were their goodbye to Mercury/ Universal Music after a 32 year collaboration. But they kissed and made-up, as Jon put it, and fourteen months later THINFS was released by Universal again, this time on their label Island music.

In a clip I found on YouTube (sound-only) Jon cryptically referred to Burning Bridges as their latest record, but not their next.
They didn’t release singles from Burning Bridges, there was no art work, and Jon delivered it in a brown paper bag.
Since I assume files are sent digitally nowadays, the picture of Jon delivering the master tapes in a brown paper bag to Universal manually, could be him exaggerating.
But I don’t know.

Burning Bridges was the only album almost entirely without art work

But Burning Bridges, although low-key presented as an album “for the fans”, was not a bad album at all.
And without any videos or art work, it had a nostalgic bootleg feel to it.
The fans loved the songs, and I’m your man is a personal favorite of mine.
And the band itself loved the song We don’t run so much, that they put it as a bonus track on their next album THINFS.

We don’t run, that song that was on Burning Bridges, but brought over to their next album as well,
has also been played throughout their entire THINFS tour (2017-2019).
So Burning Bridges wasn’t a bad album.

The song We don’t run contains a direct referral to the album Burning Bridges:

I’m not afraid of burning bridges
‘Cause I know they’re gonna light my way
Like a Phoenix, from the ashes
Welcome to the future it’s a new day

from the song We don’t run (live)

Today I used the album Burning Bridges as the soundtrack to my yoga.
And it reminded me of a somewhat related story, about the rebirth of my yoga practice.
In July 2018 I quit teaching groups, closed my yoga studio, and looked forward to practicing yoga just for myself and start enjoying myself on the mat again.
But none of those things went as planned.
14 months later, I still own my yoga space for teaching privates, but I didn’t really get my mojo back for my home practice.
Not until today!

Today FINALLY after 14 months, “it’ dropped.
Just like the THINFS album, my renewed home practice, Rock Star Yoga, was born much later than I had anticipated.
As if the release date kept being pushed forward, because it wasn’t done yet.

We often think we can speed new things up by marking the ending of the previous.
But it cannot be rushed.

Fourteen months is a perfectly normal time frame, for a band to reinvent itself after marking losing Richie Sambora who had been with the band for thirty years.
Just like fourteen months was normal for me, after quitting teaching after 15 years.
You can’t whip yourself into a new, finite shape, no matter how much you would want to.

“The Burning Bridges record is our latest.
It’s not our next.
This is sort of the end of the cycle. Not the beginning of the new one.
2014 was a pretty traumatic year for me. And I’ve come through it. ”
Jon Bon Jovi, July 2015

When Jon Bon Jovi started giving promo interviews for THINFS, late 2016, he said he had had three very bad years.
Counting 2015, the time of Burning Bridges, as one of them. He wasn’t done yet; All he had done was burn the bridges.

No one knows how long it will take for a new band, a new yoga, a new life, to rise from the ashes.

But for the lucky ones, it’s fourteen months after burning the bridge. 

~Suzanne
Rock Star Writer

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Livin’ on a prayer

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She says, we’ve got to hold on to what we’ve got
It doesn’t make a difference if we make it or not
We’ve got each other and that’s a lot for love
We’ll give it a shot

from
Livin’on a Prayer from Bon Jovi

I once had a conversation on Twitter (under my pen name) with a politician who started following me, because my bio said I was inspired by Bon Jovi.
He added:
“As a true socialist, I do think Tommy and Gina deserve more than just each other.”
Naturally, I agreed.

In the Netherlands, entire social structures have collapsed. Tommy and Gina would be worse off now, than in 1986.
Yet that was not the reason why I used to experience a totally unfamiliar desire for my life to end, whenever I went looking for a job.
I knew this was not just strange but also ungrateful:
Tommy and Gina would have been THRILLED to even have a job!

The two characters from Bon Jovi made me realize more than anything, that I was not seeing clearly. That somewhere in my head, two circuits were connected that shouldn’t be. Or not connected, where they should have been.
Either way, it puzzled me.

First I thought it had to do with the type of job.
And that if I could find the ideal job, I would be okay. But then when I did find that, my response was the same.
And the thing I tried after that?
Same response.

By the time I had dealt with unexpected suicidal thoughts three times, I decided to see a doctor.

Now, just to give you an idea of how overtaxed our health system is (could this perhaps be because health care is the only government funded social structure still in place?!) we are now at the point where suicidal thoughts are normalized. It has taken me several visits to the GP to get the right referral, and I m still nowhere near actually getting help. February 2020.

So perhaps it is a good thing that I did not wait for that, and tried to solve my problem best I could, by trying on different diagnoses. The one that fit me like a glove was Asperger syndrome, autism.
The results of looking at my life through the lens of autism, have been nothing short of phenomenal.
When I imagine an autism-friendly job, with highly specialized work, uninterrupted work flow, and minimal to no social interaction?
Bring. It. On!
I honestly can’t wait to start.

Once I designed a job, bearing in mind the strengths and the weaknesses connected to autism, my despair completely disappeared.
It was hacked.
I m good to go.
And I was very surprised that I wasn’t half as hung up on doing my purpose work, my writing, as I thought I was. But this does not mean that I m giving up on my dreams!

My dream is to earn a full living publishing my books.
I write under this name, Suzanne Beenackers, but the majority of my work and all the books I ve already published are under a pen name.
My goal is to have a full income publishing under both names, but this will require careful planning.
If I start working 40 hours for an employer, then how will I do that?

That’s why I ve made a list of priorities, which may come as a surprise.

priorities next to a full-time job

I will start full-time employment as soon as possible, and until that time I will work full-time publishing my books.
Either way, the years where I could wake up and start writing and creating, are over, at least for now.
But I no longer consider that a problem.
After all, that’s how everybody lives.

And I ve devoured more books on how to make your side hustle work, than there were Bon Jovi songs on last night’s set list.
(Rio de Janeiro)

So now that I will be working a regular job, what choices will I make for my free time?
At number 3:

3.  work on my business

If I one day want to make a full income from my books, I need stay in communication through social media and write or create something every day. 

2. Physical exercise and keep my house clean

Yoga, fresh air, and a clean house are important for my mental health. I m absolutely prioritizing that.
Unless of number 1!
Then I choose number one 🙂 

1. social life and sexuality*

This was a difficult decision because prioritizing fun sounds so frivolous. But ultimately I know this is right. And that if I wouldn’t make this my number one in theory, I would still do so in practice.

I will always choose seeing a friend, doing my volunteer work, or teaching a yoga class to my old students, over my other leisure time priorities. 
And my sexuality*, has an even higher priority.

Because my entire creativity, my vitality, and my entire lust for life, is rooted in my sexuality.
Without that, nothing would work.

This doesn’t mean that I need a lot of lovers or anything like that. It simply means like I need to feel, like I have a lot of lovers.
Which is a different thing.
But I need to be in a state of constant expectation, and excitement. There is no other way to put it. And it really hardly even matters what (or who) I have to “show for it”. As long as I feel on top of the world as a woman, and fully owning my power and my sexuality, I m good to go.

The politician was right.
Tommy and Gina do deserve more than just each other. 
But it’s good the know that technically, you don’t even need that. 

~Suzanne
Rock Star Writer

* Still unsure of what prioritizing sexuality means, if it’s not sex?
Here’s an example:
Jon Bon Jovi and a fan on stage, yesterday night.
It’s sexy, it’s loving, it’s very consensual.
And it takes a hell of a lot of practice:

 

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Lost Highway

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Jon Bon Jovi also lost his highway, but only literally because he was on a boat. He played on a cruise Runaway to Paradise, Palma de Mallorca

I just wasted an hour creating videos (for my pen name account) and I deleted all of them.
It seems the thing I want to share is just not ready to come out by spoken word, without becoming heavy.
I say becoming heavy, because I don’t feel that heavy.

When I go on dates with friends I talk about it very candidly, and we always have a good laugh over how I had to try out using different words at the GP, to describe what my mental health complaints were, in order to get the right referral.
Narcissism?
Suicidal thoughts?
I wanted to know what was wrong with me, and although my off-the-cuff self-diagnose was manic-depression, I could see how my defiant pose could also indicate a personality disorder.

I m on #day10 of trying to get a mental health diagnose, if I start counting this journey from the first consultation at the GP that was literally a request for help.
Because this depression has been going on for 18 months and I ve contacted the GP before. But only to inform her and keep my file up-to-date in case I would get a crisis.

I wanted to do this now that I still had bandwidth to do so, instead of having to tell a congruent story when I was already having suicidal thoughts, already homeless, or when the only thing I could say was:
“Put me on Prozac or any opiate you ve got because I ve accepted a normal job and need to forget my purpose work and everything I came to do here on this earth or I ll go mad.”

She had offered in-house,”light” mental help then too.
Something that initially appealed to me!
But when I actually sat there, with someone who clearly did not understand my problems, I was overwhelmed with a “shoot me now” feeling, that wasn’t beneficial for my mental health.
I never went back.

So if I count outside that brief flirt with getting help, my real journey started 10 days ago.
Despite promising myself I would not put my life on hold until I had a proper diagnosis – I can feel that I AM doing just that! Putting my life on hold.
For seven days I ve been absolutely convinced I have autism.
Absolutely.
Convinced.
It all made sense.

I have a male brain.
I value being in my inner-world way more than in the outer world.
I am totally allergic to small talk.
And super comfortable having a deep connection with others, even strangers.
For me it’s so much easier to really connect on an emotional level, than to engage in superficial “emphatic conversation”, which I find energetically draining.

Friends know I am not the right person to talk to, if you need a shoulder to cry on. But I m a brilliant friend if you want to go for coffee and discuss your deepest fears, spontaneously surfacing, and have a laugh over them.
I show my feelings openly and freely, and only hide them because I know people feel uncomfortable if I show my real self.
However, teary eyed me is only one side of that coin: she is tied to Lighthouse Self!!

And Lighthouse Self is not always welcome so I often leave her at home.
But sometimes when I m out, I get into the zone and start feeling really good, unexpectedly, and I can feel the light switching on!
And then hiding my true self becomes like pulling the light cord of lighthouse.
I want to shout: “I can’t hold this for long! Go away!”

Having unexpected lighthouse moments when you’re around people who feel threatened by that, is a nightmare for all parties.

But my most autistic side is actually the soft side of the coin, the vulnerability.
These moments when I just unexpectedly cry looking someone in the eye, or listening to music or watching a movie. Sometimes I just cry caressing my cat.
My emotions are so close to the surface, it costs me even more effort to hide them, than it costs me in the lighthouse situations.
I ve learned to toughen up a long time ago.

Autism also explained why the profession of yoga teacher (for groups) was not the right one for me. I cannot make a personal connection in a group.
The same thing that makes it so very easy to teach one on one, is what made it straining to teach groups.
Now it did get easier over the years!
And now I have a few residual groups, old-students from the studio. And this goes really well.
Last two years of normal studio life was easier too:
Because we all knew each other.

So the more intimate the setting, the easier I find my work as a yoga teacher. Because there I can make a real connection, and autistic people communicate on an energetic level.
So I thought I had cracked the code to where my mental health problems began:
In this neurological condition called autism.
But then today: Whoops!
Totally swayed to the other side.

I started reading on highly gifted people with autism, and also on highly gifted people mistaken for (also) being autistic.

And after being convinced for a whole week that my upcoming test for intelligence – I will be tested on autism, intelligence and personality disorders – was just a formality, because I m certainly not brilliant in pattern recognition or math – I did a 180 on the whole autism thing….
No.
No autism.
Can’t be.

High intelligence, or highly gifted, explains for my problems way more than autism does.

For instance:
I know perfectly well what people try to establish with small talk. I understand them. But I m interested in deep and or intellectual conversations.
About your life, and how you’re hacking things, and emotionally developing yourself.
It’s tempting to shame myself for not being interested in other people, when in reality, if those people make good jokes, or reflect on their lives, or know many things about many things, I LOVE to talk about them too!

I ve discovered about half a year ago that I can’t remember experiencing any problem conversing, putting on a mask, or having to hold on tight to the cord of the lighthouse, when I was talking to someone a bit nerdy.
Which usually means intelligent right?
We’d always get along.

That was the first time I saw a neurological explanation, for what was basically not being able to function in normal society.
But it wasn’t autism, that was intelligence.
Yet the past week, when I projected it onto autism?
Oh that felt so much better… 

Because if I saw myself as autistic, someone who was wired differently, I would be incapable of doing things that were practically second nature to others.
And I would have to figure out the manual to myself, because autistic people vary vastly. They come with all sorts of talents and sensitivities, so you can’t copy paste.
The only way to deal with autism is to weigh every aspect of your life, everything you do and don’t do, and ask yourself:
“Is this decision or habit mine? Or based on what the world says I can or cannot do?”

Autism gave me a validation.
Both for my talent to make a real connection with people easily (autistic people communicate from an emotional level), and to let the tears come whenever they want.
But autism also explained why I felt drained to make small talk. And in such a charming way….
“I m autistic, sorry.”
But if I m “only” very intelligent?
Or “only depressed”?
Anything else that is not as disarming as autism, then I lose my hall card, right?
I can no longer dodge situations when neutral, accessible human interaction is required, without suddenly coming across as horrible and arrogant.

So I m back to square one.
I have no idea when the testing and the diagnoses will happen, but I m counting on 6 months. 

At times like this it’s good to remind myself of why I wanted to get a diagnoses:
To get some perspective on why I am so stubborn in needing to do my purpose work. Even if it is never going to make me a cent, not in life nor after death.
Even if the worst case scenario, of giving it my all and never being recognized in any way, I want to stand tall and say:
“But I did what I came here to do.”

After wasting ten days, it’s time to do just that.
Yoga, this blog, and everything else I came here to do.
Before I really lose my highway.

~Suzanne
Rock Star Writer


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Keep the faith

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I have no idea what Jon is doing here but I need more of that

When you’re just a few weeks in to having your own Rock Star Yoga blog – fangirling over Jon Bon Jovi and Nikki Sixx, sporadically using the word “yoga” or entirely omitting it –
[*note: in 2019 the blog was called Rock Star Yoga]
there is one thing you really don’t want to do;
To go through your Bon Jovi hit titles too quickly.

Or maybe there’s two things you really don’t want to do:

1. To even name your Rock Star Yoga blog posts after Bon Jovi songs in the first place.
Imagine the fuss of keeping a system to avoid double titles at some point.

And
2. To then go through your hit titles too quickly.

You want to save that Living on a Prayer, Keep the Faith and Bad Medicine, for the days you can make them count.

And something tells you that day isn’t going to be your average Wednesday in August, just a few weeks after starting this blog.

So naturally, when I found myself leaping for the big guns, I hesitated.
Especially since I m pressed for time, and I can’t write this blog post to include everything that happened the past week.
In fact I intend not to.
In short?
I tripped.
Fell off the Rock Star Yoga bus.
It was a very modest trip, I didn’t end up with a needle in my arm and a thousand dollar a day habit, like Nikki Sixx in 1987.
So a little perspective is in order.
But nevertheless I was disappointed that I still had so much internal shit to deal with.
This time it had to do with work.

Over the course of a year, I have made the decision to get a normal job three times, and all three times it gave me thoughts of death as a good thing.
Now for clarity sake, I call these suicidal thoughts although they were premature and (thank God) don’t actually count as that.
So don’t freak out, because I didn’t either.

I just saw them as a sign that I was about to do something that made me want to end my life = a warning to not go do that.
Which in my case, was that I was about to go to work.

So, the first time, which was 2018, was a job that was not right for me, and the location was far away, so I needed to commute.
The second time it was a good job but I changed my mind when I discovered it was already taking up mental band width.

I didnt want a job, which required thinking about it after 5 P.M.
By the time I pulled back I had already been energetically lining up with that company for five days. I had promised I would think over the weekend about our work agreement.
Until I realized I didn’t want to think about anything else but my own business.

And I know sacrificing a weekend was a one-off investment, that ultimately I would get paid for this.
But I just couldn’t see how five days of unpaid energetic alignment with my ideal employer (which he was) was ever going to result in me getting a job that had boundaries.

Which lead to attempt number three:
Let’s leave them diploma’s at home and do simple work.

However this became rather unpleasant when I realized that a four day workweek here, would cover 50% of my monthly expenses.
I don’t want to work 5 days, because I want be able to accept private clients/yoga classes on the Fridays. And I need that money too, in particular with a low paying job.

But that I would sacrifice 80% of my workweek, to get 50% of the net income I need (I have business expenses for my yoga studio too) was not motivating.
And the thought that I would basically be throwing away 80% of my life NOT doing my purpose work (which is writing/ creating videos under this account and my pen name), was not very appealing either.

So this made working a low paying job a recipe to stress myself out. With every minute away from my desk not doing my purpose work and also not making enough money to pay the bills.

After giving it a lot of thought I therefor decided I will use my retirement fund, to pay for this phase in my life.
This way I can do my purpose work, and I can teach “normal” yoga on Friday, and the rest of the week I can write these blog posts (among other purpose work) and build my rock star yoga business.

So Saturday morning I was still under the impression I would go regular job hunting.
My spirits were low, I had migraine, heart complaints and my breasts were so painful it was as if I was in some sort of violent period.
Which I wasn’t.
Yet as soon as I pulled the plug on the idea of regular work, and decided to break the bank/ pension fund:
Poof!
Gone were all the complaints!

The moment I chose ART and TEACHING YOGA, no matter what the consequences would be?
I was fit and happy.

I went on a short holiday and then the mourning came.
It was a mourning for the loss of a life I never had, which I can compare to something I had been warned for, but never felt:
The mourning for children you didn’t have.

It is said that even women who never wanted children, may experience a sense of loss, for not having them. I never had that, but I think this compared.
I never wanted a normal job. My resistance towards it is as old as my academic diploma. And yet because everybody else seemed fine with it, I always assumed it was a Plan B for me.
Knowing there isn’t a plan B, is daunting.

What if I lose my house? What if I can no longer take care of my cats?
And yet after a few days of crying, and letting it all sink in, I feel light as a feather.

Some people will think that the title Keep the Faith means that I have faith that it will all work out well.
That is not true.
I don’t know if this choice leads to a 7-Figure business or to living on the streets.
Keep the Faith means:
Trusting that your choice is the right one.
Regardless.
* dramatic pause *

On a brighter note!
For this blog I chose a photo from Jon Bon Jovi, hanging by his microphone stand. It was flashed to me on the “Stories” timeline on Facebook:
A feature I never quite understood except that if you want to save it you have to be really quick.
The Jon Bon Jovi story photo from the Bon Jovi’s Stuff page kept buzzing through my head…
There was something strangely erotic about a collapsed Jon Bon Jovi with his hands high above him, holding on to his mic (see top of this blog post)

Providing no Jon Bon Jovis were hurt taking this picture – my imagination is running wild with very good things

It reminded me of another photo of Jon Bon Jovi on stage on his knees. A photo I had saved, I knew that.
Pity I had not been able to save the standing one…
When it was 4 PM and I still had not forgotten Disappearing Collapsed Jon At the Mic, I started Googling it.
But there was no way I could find it.
When I was browsing through my downloads to get the one from Jon on his knees, I suddenly saw it!
I had been able to save Jon with the Mic this morning, after all!

When Googling it again, feeding the file to the Search bar, it didn’t come up with similar photos, nor a date or place. So I have no idea where the picture is taken.

But I do hope that after my downfall, my collapse, and the days of hard work, I too will end up exhausted but satisfied and happy, my hands together, high above me. Or collapsed on my knees, head down.
And look as erotically charged as Jon.

I have faith.

~Suzanne
Rock Star Writer


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(These arms are) Open all night

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I can confirm these arms are always open for cuddling, licking, fetching, scratching, biting, playing catch, hide and seek. Because I am her love child. ~Flipje

“This title, Open all night, we’ve used about five times.
We finally did a song on the Bounce record, called Open all night. Great title, we never could get it right.”
Jon Bon Jovi, 32 min 28 sec 

So apparently there were five songs called Open All Night.
But even if you go with the three that were released, you’d have trouble distinguishing them.

The only mainstream version of Open all night is, like Jon said, on the album Bounce.

The Box Set, 100,000,000 Bon Jovi fans can’t be wrong, is for the fans and has two other versions: Open all night and These arms are open all night.

Three different songs, but they’re all ballads which makes them similar.
And although the title of the song on Bounce is “Open all night”;
Those lyrics say These arms are open all night.
Adding to the confusion about which song is which.

All-in-all Bon Jovi is open all night, usually with the arms included.
And it’s something that inspires them.

And lap sitting you have to tell them lap sitting too lap sitting is great it’s not just about the arms it’s also about the lap sitting because I am her love child ~Zaza

I’ve listened to all three songs, and here is what I found.

For clarity’s sake, I m going to assume the protagonist of these songs is male, and preferably Jon Bon Jovi, unless he specifically says that he is Jones and he drives a dented red Chevrolet then we go with that.
And we’ll assume the other person is a woman.

So here’s the three different songs:

1. Open all night
at 100,000,000 Bon Jovi fans can’t be wrong
live version Atlantic City 2004

Is about a girlfriend who has left to make it in the world and her boyfriend waiting at the bar, telling her not to worry.
Open all night refers to the boyfriend being open all night, meaning waiting for her.

2. These arms are open all night
at 100,000,000 Bon Jovi fans can’t be wrong
live version Borgota 2004

Is about a man who introduces himself as “Jones” and informs us he has a dented red Chevrolet, and gives a woman he met at the bar a detailed description how to get to his house.
Now if Jon Bon Jovi would try pick me up with this:
“These arms are open all night
If you need someone to talk to
A hand to hold onto and if it feels right
These arms are open all night”
That would be a Hell YES! if ever there was any.
I would feel completely seen, wanted, desired, and although I m not a night person at all, I would make an exception.
However.
This song explicitly identifies him as not being JBJ, but as “Jones”.
And I m actually surprised Jones sees the headlights of the woman behind him following him, because he confesses (out loud?):
“God only knows how long it’s been that I been this lonely”
Would not make me feel wanted at all….

For each their own I guess, but I m more than just a warm body and the shorter the encounter is gonna be, the more I want to feel that this man will do anything to be with me, because he desires me just so much it’s driving him mad.
Which brings me to:

3. Open all night, main version, Bounce
album recording

There is a reason this is the one that made it to the main studio album.
It starts with a verse where Jon – Jon’s back! I like him MUCH better than somebody who introduces himself with a surname Jones – shares with us that he saw us coming from a mile away and noticed our poor little heart was bruised black and blue.

Then we get a verse where he tells us that he too, has been hurt. He knows how it feels. And that the last thing we need is another pickup line, so he’s not going to do that.
Wait.
Maybe I should just quote this. Here are those verses:

“I saw you coming from a mile away
Trying to hide behind that pretty face
Bet my last dollar baby you been bruised
Poor little heart all black ‘n’ blue

Last thing you need’s another pickup line
You must have heard them all a thousand times
God only knows what you been through
Believe me I been broken too

It aches, it breaks, it takes your breath away
I’ve been around that block a time or two”
…
Okay, if there is a woman now, considering to NOT immediately go with Jon, she’s lying.
We just got picked up in 2,5 verse.
Bring in the chorus:
“Baby, I don’t want to fall in love with you
I try, try, try but I can’t get around the truth
Please don’t say my name, give this heart a break
I don’t want to make the same mistake but it’s too late
I’ll leave on the light
These arms are open all night”
Song number 3 wins. Jon gets the girl.
This is such a no-brainer that I feel like an idiot even going through the rest of the song, but I will do so, as a sign of song-appreciation.

So we had Jon buttering us up with perfect verses and bringing it home with the best pickup chorus in the history of rock music and then we have:
(Take it away Jon)
“I got your taste in the back of my mouth
I want to reach in and pull it out
And I’d be lying if I didn’t say
When you’re this close I’m afraid
Of the way I’ll feel if I touch your hair
The way I’ll miss you when you’re not there
And that I’ll see you when I close my eyes
It’s too late, I’ve crossed that line“
Not only did Jon have us at “Baby, I don’t want to fall in love with you”
He now burns the very last of our entire defense system to the ground,
by admitting he too has fallen hard for us.
That he didn’t want to fall in love, he wasn’t looking for it, he wasn’t needy or lonely, and yet it happened anyway.
*soft sigh*
Isn’t life beautiful?

Are we now not all dreaming of being swept off our feet by someone we don’t want to fall in love with, but we just can’t help ourselves?

In another documentary, Jon speaks about his mixed feelings of singing ballads in front of a live audience. The interviewer tells him that the crowd was completely quiet the other night, when Jon sang his version of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah.
Jon answers:
“There is a ballad called Open all Night, on Bounce, that I love for that reason.
But it gets the polite applause at the end, because it’s not that..”
*makes energetic hand gestures*
(18 min 30 sec)

After this analysis of the lyrics of Open all Night on Bounce, I don’t believe Jon. I don’t believe anyone would not get it, if Jon sang this live.
That was not a “polite” applause.
That was “God that hurt please play a rock anthem to make it go away.” – applause.

It was a crowd with arms that were not just open for Jon;
They would have given them both to have him in it.

~Suzanne
Rock Star Writer


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These arms are open all night (Live)
version on 100,000,000 Bon Jovi fans can’t be wrong:

Captain Crash and the Beauty Queen from Mars

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“My heart’s like an open book
For the whole world to read”
~Nikki Sixx

I was going to share everything.
After all, I am just like Nikki Sixx, an open book.
And as far as I have secrets, I review them regularly, if they still require to stay hidden.
Usually they don’t.
They re just my ego telling me I won’t be loved and successful if I share that side of myself.
When really?
Does the world need another great pretender?
Rip the band-aid.
Bare your naked soul to the world, as my favorite online coach Katrina Ruth calls it.

In the context of taking honesty to a whole new level, I was going to share this weekend’s stunning photos of Jon Bon Jovi in a crispy white shirt, which were taken on Saturday.
It was at an annual fundraising for the Apollo theater, and the photos bore the mark of Getty images and the photographer.
However.
Because the mark was always on the right of the photo, and Jon Bon Jovi was always standing, watermark-free, on the left side, I was already doing a decent job cropping him out, to make a collage with the older one;
A photo of Jon in a crispy white shirt last Saturday and a 90s (I think) photo taken by an anonymous photographer. Also of Jon in a white shirt, sitting by the pool.

Until I realized this is how I could get into trouble. By using photos from a press agent.
It took until I clicked on a version that had actual price tags onto them, before I snapped out of my Paint job and was like:
“You know what? I ll blog with the anonymous, retro shot of Jon Bon Jovi at the poolside to make my point.”

In case you need a visual of the pictures that blew my mind this Monday morning, just read on we’ll get to that.
I didn’t see current-day Jon in white shirt on the official press release of Getty Images, nor on the website of Harlem’s Apollo Theater.
I saw them on a Facebook page for Jon Bon Jovi fans.

Now, this in itself is a small miracle because I don’t spend much time on Facebook. The only social medium I like is Twitter, because it allows much better conversation, and is based on your personal interests. There is also less censorship on Twitter, it’s an adult thing, and you don’t have to use your real name.
You click with other people on mutual interests, it’s as simple as that.

Facebook gets about half a post to seduce me to spend time there, before I click to my notifications and start handling my messages and my pages.
Half a post, that’s all.
Today the JBJ fan page hit me with this one.
(For the fans check post 2, which has the other photos taken this weekend)

The specific current-day Jon Bon Jovi in white shirt photo that blew my mind was this one.

It really was so profound that I found myself kind of needing to process that, and it slowed down starting my day. It was impossible to think about anything else until I knew WHY I liked looking at Jon Bon Jovi so much.

This weekend I already had a long conversation with my mother, to ask her if she could please share her take on male beauty with me.
Because I never see it coming, until it’s too late.
That men are swiped off their feet by beautiful women?
A given.
But how many women are aware that they are swept off their feet by beautiful men?
Or are they not?
Am I an exception?

And what is it then, this mysterious thing we call male beauty?

The last question was a good one to ask my mother, because she’s always much quicker in determining it. I even have a case of my mother saying someone was beautiful, and me simply laughing about it.
And then becoming completely smitten later on.
She knows stuff.
I don’t, not before he has already done his enchanting work.

Together with my mother we came up with a few characteristics.
Teeth, hair, and overall attitude.
I was the one adding “teeth”.
How he holds himself was definitely numero uno, when it came to being an attractive man.
Great teeth, great hair and a strong on-screen and off-screen presence, are as much part of current day Jon Bon Jovi, as they were his traits on the undated photo near the pool.
So nothing new there.

And then it hit me!
This is a cookie jar thing!
Beginners mistake!
But let me explain.

If you re on a diet and you refuse something that is offered to you, for example a cookie from the cookie jar, this costs energy, causing your willpower to plummet.
If after that somebody offers it again, you will not only take the cookie. You ll probably take two, three or a two fists full of cookies.

And in that light, it suddenly made total sense that my Monday morning had a startup delay from one current-day Jon Bon Jovi photo in a white shirt.

Because a week ago, someone sent the first retro shot of Jon by the pool, to me and I tried to resist.
I tried to pretend that barefoot Jon by the pool with his shirt open, was something I could also not swoon over.

Please note that this whole “acting like a grown-up” pose, was taking place during my Rock Star Yoga fallout.
[*note: in 2019 the blog was called Rock Star Yoga]

I was not practicing yoga.
I was not writing for this blog.
But I was super busy wondering where the inspiration went.
(where do you think? could it be sitting by the pool perhaps?)

Pondering over why was I no longer caring for doing yoga to Bon Jovi music and then write about it.
(Uh, maybe because you’re ignoring that cute photo?)

Hard lesson huh?

Inspiration did come to me during that fallout from doing yoga or writing for this blog.
Yet in hindsight?
Oh, it came more than once.

I said in the previous blog (Fever) that I had strong feelings for Nikki Sixx and I wrote an erotic story under my pen name.
Or perhaps I left that out, because I/my ego wanted to keep that from you, but that’s what it was.
Full-on erotica.
I had inspiration in spades!

But I thought it was inspiration that wasn’t fancy enough to share here. I didn’t want to be the weirdo yoga teacher who only practices if she feels inspired by male rock stars.

So I said “No” to the cookie of letting Nikki Sixx inspire my yoga and Rock Star Yoga blog; I said “No” to Jon by the pool inspire me;
And I tried to take the edges off, by taking that inspiration over “to the other side” of my blog under my penname.
The non-fancy side.

Yet, this morning, the cookie jar came again!

I had no more willpower left to resist and let it have me.
Thought about it for as long as I needed to think about it, which was one Monday morning.
And then I wrote this long blog post about the stunning appeal of Jon Bon Jovi wearing crispy white shirts.

Moral to this story?
Take the damn cookie.
And take it the first time.

~Suzanne
Rock Star Writer

Captain Crash and the Beauty Queen from Mars is a Bon Jovi song from Crush (2000)
And was played on almost concerts on their most recent tour.

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Fever

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“Fever” is at played at 47:10

With my last yoga practice, over a week ago, I made two mistakes.
One was to even have a yoga practice, even though it was already 11 PM and I knew I would want to write about it as well.
[*note: in 2019 the blog was called Rock Star Yoga]

This resulted in going to bed at 4 AM.
Yes, I had done my yoga, and nourished the soul by writing about it.
But I had also completely wrecked my biorhythm.

The second mistake was that I was doing yoga listening to a Bon Jovi concert on YouTube, on my phone and  accidentally looked at the screen mid-practice.
I was immediately hooked and couldn’t put it down anymore.
In my defense: It was sleeveless-Jon.
Someone who rarely gets a No from anybody regarding anything, and this was no exception.

I couldn’t take my eyes off of him and finished my practice placing the phone on strategic places watching the show, as I went through the moves.
You can read about this first time doing yoga while watching a concert here.

I learned from the first mistake, in the sense that I now didn’t practice yoga at midnight anymore. In fact, I didn’t practice it at all.
But ultimately, after I got over the initial crankiness that I had lost my yoga practice yet again, I realized it was time well spent.
Because I was still holding back.
It was still not right.

I had invented Rock Star Yoga;
A method where you design a self-practice based on who you really are and what you really like to do. But in no way was I hurrying to my mat, the way I hurry to my computer to write out a story that I have in my head.
I wasn’t spending every waking minute on my yoga mat, the way I watch Nikki Sixx interviews on YouTube while doing the dishes.

Soon after my 4 AM yoga bender, yoga dropped off the list of Things I Really Wanna Do, where Nikki Sixx now dominated place 1, 2 and 3.
Even Jon was, for a day or four, nowhere to be found, although I still listened to Bon Jovi music.
But my personal obsession with him was definitely less prone, and I knew this also kept me from going back to my yoga mat because my entire rock star yoga practice (so far) had been based on listening to Bon Jovi during yoga, and because I was in love with Jon this worked really well.

Now that I was in love with Nikki Sixx, things had come to a halt.
Things?
Yoga!

My own homemade Rock Star Yoga, which I was sure would inspire me for the next 20 years, just like Madonna had gotten me through the first two decades,
vanished the moment Nikki Sixx entered my heart.

It’s a long story how he got there but he was there now, and I spent the week largely writing about Nikki Sixx, and all the sexual feelings he stirred up.
I did this for my other account, my pen name, and this is what did get me up every morning, hungry to start writing.
And that’s how I learned my lesson.

Because unlike other yoga teachers, I do not believe that doing yoga should be a discipline. Something that you may feel like doing one day, and maybe not the next, but that it doesn’t matter because you have discipline, and you do it anyway.
Or they do it anyway.

Because to me, there is a difference between yoga and penicillin.
Yoga is like writing.
Yoga is like sex.
And therefor the only correct way to do yoga is if you just can’t NOT do it.

If you don’t care how many appointments you have to cancel, how many hours of sleep you have to miss. If the thought of not doing it is simply unbearable because you just want it so badly.
Until you feel that?
You re trying to make things happen, and it’s not Rock Star Yoga.

And it wasn’t just the yoga that I had screwed up, because I wanted to be a polished disciplined version of myself that I am not.
The writing too, for this site, was not the right from the heart, unfiltered, non-tampered, style that I had been using for my penname account.

So it became clear to me, that the key was in how much liberty I gave myself in writing under the other name, versus restrictive I was when it came to this account and to doing yoga.
As long as I would hold back even a little bit, it was never going to work.

For example:
I initially didn’t even give myself permission to switch my affection from Jon Bon Jovi to Nikki Sixx, because it “messed up this site”.

Same with yoga.
There really is only ONE way to do yoga!
The way I want it, when I want it, and how I want it.
And this may change every day, just like my writing under my pen name changes every day.

I cannot afford to hold judgement over whether or not it’s a bad thing that I watch the screen when I practice or not.

Tonight’s practice, with a 80 minute video A Night With Bon Jovi (1992, MTV) started out not looking at the screen.
But then there was a behind the scenes intermezzo, and I just couldn’t contain myself and had to watch.
And poof!
Gone I was! Again.
Hooked to watching.

But this time I was no longer ashamed. I was grateful. So grateful to live in this age of technology, and free concerts to watch. Grateful that I could watch this band in their prime, and let their zest for life infuse my practice.

Over the years I ve studied at least four yoga lineages, who help women to stay young and their sexual organs healthy.
One of them is even officially called:
Hormone yoga.
(!!!)
These yoga methods for women’s health are legit, perhaps even evidence based. If you teach them or practice them you belong with the Pros. The people who take yoga seriously.

Rock Star Yoga is about letting all of that go.

If you want to start living a life that sets you on fire, you have to stop distinguishing between what’s so called good, and what’s so called the bad way to do it.
You have to embrace what YOU love.

Not the soulless, lifeless version what everybody else says you should be doing to stay young and fit and healthy.
Look for the overwhelming desire to do it, or as Charles Bukowski said on writing:
“If it doesn’t come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don’t do it.”
and
“if you have to wait for it to roar out of
you,
then wait patiently.
if it never does roar out of you,
do something else.”

Don’t do yoga unless it roars and comes bursting out of you.

~Suzanne
Rock Star Writer

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Work for the working man

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video: memorable performance and video of “Work for the Working Man” at the o2 in London 2010, night 10 (not night 11, as uploaded by hAnD90)

If it hadn’t been for this blog*
I would not have done my yoga.
[*note: in 2019 the blog was called Rock Star Yoga]

Yesterday and the day before that were both slow, extremely hot days, and I practiced at nighttime with my balcony door open.
And tonight I was out for the night, so when I came home I wasn’t exactly brimming with excitement at the idea of going to my mat.
However.
This is Rock Star Yoga.
And the rules of Rock Star Yoga are: Do something that works for you. Inspire yourself. Put on some music. 
Make it FUN.
So I did.

For inspiration I turned to hAnD90; a Bon Jovi channel on YouTube that uploads remastered material.
They had just uploaded a concert and it looked promising:
A Bon Jovi show from 2010, shot at the O2 Arena in London.

I put it on while I was trying to come down from my night out, and doing the dishes.
The sound quality was good, and the video quality too, although both suffered from being shot from the stands/ far away.

The video was a wide shot of the entire stage, and you could hear voices of people standing close to the recording device.
But I liked it.

After the dishes I dedicated the second half of the concert, to my yoga practice.
And for the first time I decided to do yoga with headphones.
It was already past 11 PM, the balcony doors were open, and I didn’t want to make too much noise.
I tucked my phone into my pants, playing the video, and as long as I didn’t do inversions or laid on my back, my yoga practice would be okay.

The past two days I only did very gentle yoga, but I had enough of keeping it so calm, and did standing poses and sun salutation inspired poses.
But then, transferring into lying poses, I made a mistake.
I intended to take the phone out of my pants, and place it on the floor next to me, and do my inversion practice with shoulderstand, bridge and plow pose variations.
But I looked at the screen and-
OMG!
It was sleeveless Jon!

Sleeveless Jon only comes out when things are getting heated, and this year he has barely come out at all.
This House is Not for Sale tour 2019 was already in week 6 or 7 when he finally made his debut appearance.
And I turned out to have a VERY STRONG reaction to sleeveless Jon!
It was probably a good thing we didn’t get to see him at Goffertpark, Nijmegen, because I m unsure if I would have been able to concentrate.
Maybe I would have relapsed into my 80s fainting thing, and be dragged to First Aid for some water.
But here he was.

And not only was Jon sleeveless, in the new upload from hAnD90 he was wearing his Let it Rock t-shirt!
A t-shirt I knew from two live recordings from my favorite Bon Jovi songs;
Let it rock (live) and Dry Country (live)

So while doing yoga I accidentally watched the screen and saw I now had a whole show with Jon wearing his sleeveless lavender colored top.

The beauty of this light color is that you can see him working up a sweat.
In hindsight I find it remarkable that I can drool over Jon Bon Jovi working up a sweat, and at the same time being a lazy-ass lizard myself, when temperatures in my living are above what I find ideal to actually do something on my yoga mat.

I was only halfway into my practice and I was now confronted with Jon Bon Jovi in the lavender T, something I had watched dozens of times because Dry County and Let it Rock had been my favorite live videos.

Yet I just couldn’t put my phone down again.
I was magnetized.

Bon Jovi played the O2 in London twelve times in 19 days.
Let it Rock and Dry County were not played in the show which was uploaded by hAnD90. But I just checked and “my” Let it Rock video and Dry County live were indeed filmed at O2 too.
Just on other nights.

So during the second half I watched the screen while doing yoga. Whether it was a lying twist, a wide-angle seated pose or a forward bend;
I managed to put the phone somewhere I could watch the pretty boring wide shot of the stage, with a 2 centimetre high Jon in a lavender shirt.
Yet I was glued to the screen.

I could not see the sweat here, because it was such a wide shot. But I could see his grinding hips, the powerful dance moves, the wide spread arms.
At one point he practically makes love to his microphone stand, or he’s making an elegant way down to study the set lists taped to the floor.
Or both.

For my long relaxation, I did stop looking at the screen.
The entire three song encore ( When we were beautiful, Wanted dead or alive, Livin’ on a Prayer) I just lay on my back with my eyes closed and listened.
Jon appeared, even with closed eyes.
He was wearing the lavender shirt and he was sitting next to me.
It was the Keep the Faith Jon, from the early nineties.
I liked his hair (pretty similar to 2010, slightly longer) and especially his golden earrings. They were so bold.
Jon stayed next to my mat, and we talked.

I don’t know which lesson was more important:
To not look at my phone halfway into my practice.
Or to realize that what distracts you only does so, because it’s already inside.

~Suzanne
Rock Star Writer

video: Bon Jovi | Live at O2 Arena | Night 11 | London 2010
Work for the Working Man is number 19
(the set list in description box video)

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