---- Steemit Open Mic Week 97 – Cope Cover – Audioslave – I Am The Highway ----
Hey guys this is my second entry open mic steemit I have chosen to cover “Audioslave – I Am The Highway“, This is for Steemit Open Mic Week 97.
For me, what this track represents is the conflict between what others think of us and what we know we are in ourselves. From the perspective of others we can often be seen as vehicles for progressing their lives and story, as an item of use which is one dimensional. But we are more than that, we are bigger , better and greater than the roles others assign to us.
We may be used and abused in a number of different ways , and while many may see us as something we are not, we should always be cautious of taking on perspective and believing it to be true. We are not what we are told we are... we are what we choose to be.
This track is a reminder to never let other people define who you are, friends, family, work mates, society, government, the social norms or anyone for that matter, YOU are the one who gets to define who you are.
There are also lines in the track which speak about moving at your own pace and separating ones self from others "friends and liars" , this reigns true for me also in my current situation, being alone is better than being surrounded by the wrong kind of people. However, there is still the conflict of not wanting to be alone and being lost in the presence of others... this song speaks to me on more levels than i can express at the moment.
i hope you enjoy my cover of Audioslave – I Am The Highway.
much love in all your directions
~Cope
if you would like to vote for my entry please click the link HERE for Steemit Open Mic Week 97 post, then scroll down to the comments section, find my comment featuring the video above and upvote it. much love and thank you in advance :)
I Am The Highway
Pearls and swine bereft of me.
Long and weary my road has been.
I was lost in the cities, alone in the hills.
No sorrow or pity for leaving, I feel, yeah.
I am not your rolling wheels – I am the highway.
I am not your carpet ride – I am the sky.
Friends and liars don't wait for me,
'Cause I'll get on all by myself.
I put millions of miles under my heels;
And still too close to you, I feel, yeah.
I am not your rolling wheels – I am the highway.
I am not your carpet ride – I am the sky.
I am not your blowing wind – I am the lightning.
I am not your autumn moon – I am the night… the night.
Yeah!
I am not your rolling wheels – I am the highway.
I am not your carpet ride – I am the sky.
I am not your blowing wind – I am the lightning.
I am not your autumn moon – I am the night... the night.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I love how you've let your voice be the key part of this recording, with the guitar as a quiet support behind it. Beautiful vocals. Your written introduction to the song is very moving- I'm fighting this feeling at the moment in my life- where I've slid into the role that others around me have prescribed for me- and I know that breaking free of it and being true to myself is going to be both exciting and terrifying. Perhaps your song can be my anthem for this change :)
Thank you for a wonderful, inspiring start to the day. E x
Thank you for the support and the amazing comment @eveningart, Many times when we force ourselves to take on the roles friends , family and society assign to us we feel unease, this is commonly referred to as cognitive dissonance. Basically it is the conflict we face when we have discrepancies in our beliefs, actions etc.
The long and short is that for many of us, we spend much of our time trying to curb our very nature to conform to what others believe of us.... and it is killing our very soul, creating stress, bringing us down. it is because we are suppressing who we are and not being ourselves. this can be detrimental to our psychological state and in turn our physical state as well via somatization and other factors.
What we have been conditioned to overlook is that we have the right to choose our own path. We dont have to tolerate others forcing their autonomy upon us. It may mean that people close to us will be unhappy as we make decisions which they do not approve of, but it is not their life to live. i wrote an article a while back on which delves into that area i will link it for you if you are interested it is entitled Detaching From Toxicity
Making these kinds of changes means we start becoming more congruent within ourselves, it can seem scary and daunting , however it has been described as being more liberating than anything else. The process itself takes time, and we are human, we will regress from time to time, but the more we try to move towards a more congruent and autonomous self the closer we get to achieving it :)
Again thank you for your support and comment, i am so happy to hear that my cover of Audioslave - I Am The Highway had such a positive impact on you, much love and copious hugs in your direction :)
The song is priceless and so are the words you decided to leave under the song.
I hardly find my words to actually write something qualitative on here because reading all these rows, with your song in the background, made me tear up which doesn't happen too easily.
But I do believe that no one could actually say it better than you did: We are not what we are told we are... we are what we choose to be.
@gabrielatravels thank you so much for your support and the awesome comment. What you have written is extremely qualitative, you have expressed yourself perfectly and to be honest your comment made me short of breath and tear up also. Its because the moment i saw the words you had written i knew we had connected on the same frequency across any sense of what would be classed as reasonable measurement, such as time, space, etc.
This is a perfect example of the power of human connectivity, through congruent self expression we can inspire, touch the souls of others, share parts of ourselves we may hide form others in day to day life, we can find our tribe, like minded people who remind us its ok to be yourself as difficult as it may seem at times. We find kindred spirits who have faced similar demons , who have empathy compassion and understanding... we find humanity.
Yes, "We are not what we are told we are... we are what we choose to be." This can be a difficult thing to do at times, choosing what we want to be, due to the influences of those around us impacting our decisions etc., but if we are striving to be ourselves and be happy then to quote the great Dr. Seuss
Again thank you for taking the time to check out my cover and your insightful comment, much love and hugs in your direction :)
Many thanks from the bottom of my heart too, for taking the time to read my comment and also reply with such a touching message. Definitely made my day. 😊
Much love and many hugs sent back at you!! ♥️
WOOO.. yes Cope.. yessss!... that one is a hard tune to pull off ! specially on acoustic format !.. great job mate ! you got some skillzzz :)
Thanks @pechichemena, in all honesty i was trying to reduce the guitar to focus n the vocals, but it kinda bit me in the butt. im pretty self conscious for the most part and it was hard to push my voice when the guitar was so faint while recording, BUT i see it as a moment of growth, it may not have been just as i wanted it to be, but it has taught me more about my voice than i have learned in the many years of performing.... us hoomans, we are a resilient bunch, we adapt where we need to.... if we truly want it :) thanks again for the love and support, much love in your direction.
haha love the approve picture!!
Agree with you @pechichemena !!
:P
Love it cope. Thanks for sharing the tune :D.
thanks for da support mang, much love in your direction :)
🙌 😻 💛 💛
Thanks for the support @steemityourway , much love in your direction :)
Man, Interesting thought process. Other's perspective affect us, I know it should not. This song is so well written. It reflects a deep sense of freedom .
thanks mate, yeah i think that even if we dont have the direct experience of the person or people who wrote the original song, it connects with us for a reason and if we can acknowledge the reason we can channel our emotion into a track that literally has nothing to do with us BUT we feel it in our own personal way that is the power of music.... i believe at least anyway :) much love in your direction and thank you for checking out my entty and your comments :)
Amazing vocals... I also read the intro about being ourselves. I have a song in my channel that is called "No matter what they say". And what can I saw. Be the dream and not the dreamer! We are all layers and layers deep. Sounds amazing. Congrats.
I listened in my phone and hurried to the studio to the vocals stand out so beautifully!!! I love your voice! I have a weak spot for male voices. Just the right ammount of reverb, and wow, stands out so clear! :)
thanks for the intro message in text too, kind of needed to read that
Thank you :) Yes, the way i see covers of music is that even though it has been written by someone else and may have a different meaning, when you cover them , the emotion you feed the song is up to you , its how we connect our soul/spirit to the performance and have the feeling in how we express ourselves in the rendition. its all up to us how we interpret it :)
I checked out your track "No matter what they say" and found it to be expressing similar emotion to what i have fed the cover i have done. i enjoyed listening to it but that is not surprise i have listened to a number of your songs since we joined helpie :)
Thank you for the love and support :) much love in your direction :)
Aww that is sweet thanks, and also for listening with an open mind. I believe messages shifts and become personal with each. I rarely do covers and when I do is because I have them linked to chilhood memories and most what feelings and emotions I had back them. I recently covered Fly by supersweet Serena @paintingangels , and I do not know if it is because I feel we are kindred spirits but despite sounding so different han her lovely origina, I felt the feeling became my own too
yeah sometimes we just have that resonance with music and also other things.... we just on that same frequency and it speaks to us on that level, it bonds with us, becomes part of us, its a very powerful force when we find a harmonic that compliments our soul :)
Great cover to a great song. Respectfully following.
Thank you very much for you support :) much love
Thanks. Can you do me a favor? I just started a Youtube page at the link below:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6KV9eRHRBt7IZnBXQg2DOg
Visit it and like and subscribe if you like it.
Bro!!!
This is such a stellar performance!
You fricken nailed this! I love Chris' vocals and songwriting (I'm such a big Cornell fan) and I think that you, not only did it justice, but put your own Cope stamp on it!
Awesome work bro!
@nathankaye Thanks for the hella kudos mang!!! yeah i have been working on being able to push my vocals to get there, Chris Cornell had a funky way of singing, using lots of little things that are simple enough to do on their own but then combining them makes it so hard, for me at least, to replicate how he sings. but that is what makes it so satisfying when you manage to pull it off :)
I admit it took me a long while to figure out some of the tricks of being able do what he did, hella respect. That is why i wanted to minimize the guitar and focus on the vocals a bit more, we were saying when we met up though.... im listening to it and picking all the bits in it that are mistakes and having a little cringe at it, lolz. but we are our own worst critics :) all good though cause even them lil mistakes are part of me and who i am , so i gotsta own it.
much love in your direction mate :)
Most of the time what we perceive as mistakes or flaws in our own performance or abilities aren’t really mistakes, but rather flaws in our own self-perception.
That being said, as long as the mistakes you hear/see are not used as ammunition to bring yourself down, they can be great fodder for self-improvement if, as you say, you own it work on it.
Anyway, you know all this.
Personally, I think it’s the so-called mistakes and flaws that give you/things their unique character and reflect an imprint of who we truly are; imperfect, flawed beings journeying on our path towards a state of perfection that already exists within us, flaws and all.
Anyway, what I heard you do was awesome!
Loved it!
yeah , you get it ;) much love mang :)
That is just so beautiful Cope... When you first said you were going to cover this song, I was excited!!! I just knew your amazing voice would do it justice! That guitar playing is spot on as well! Love it!!! <3
Hugs @rockchickjen, i originally started strumming this song pretty hard, i needed to so i had the confidence to push my vocals to hit some of them high notes at the end there, i run out of puff on them notes, i can hit them on their own, but singing it in the track its like right at the end of my breath and i couldn't do it for a long time, lots of practice. but anyway it ended up I minimized the guitar to try focus on the vocals more. thanks for the kudos, much love in your direction :)
I get that!!! Chris has a huge lung capacity and range! But you nailed it! It's amazing! <3
yeah, takes some getting used to when you aint been pushing the lungs that way in a while, lolz. thanks again, much love :)