I Tried Something Different And It Worked. I Labeled It Change!

“Neglecting to broaden their view 
has kept some men doing one thing all their lives” 
(Napoleon Hill)

Everything gets labeled on how you want to describe something. You look at a flower peeking it’s face out of the soil and you can easily say, it’s a hyacinth or it’s a rosebud. You listen to a sound of music and you can identify it as R&B, Jazz or Pop music. And so, thinking about this made me think about myself and how I label myself when giving a short description about who I am beyond just the face and name.

When asked to describe myself, usually the first thing I would say is that I am a singer-songwriter from Brooklyn, NY which is true. But, I write more than songs.  

Poetry Writing

I have been writing poetry since the fifth grade and recently, I authored two poetry books: The first was titled “Pulchritudinous” and the second “And Then There Was the Music; Poetry & An Essay.” Check out my author page on Amazon Author Central here: https://www.amazon.com/Stephanie-Jeannot/e/B076N7XYC6

Songwriting & Writing Compositions

I write compositions. The first one I ever wrote was quite recently when I found myself with this melody in my brain that I just had to write down on paper but what I wrote was more than just the words, but the chords of the song on paper before even recording the tune into what it came to be. Thankful that I had good friends who helped me to complete the tune entitled “God is Love” which you can check out on Spotify here:  

Blog Writing 

I write blog posts which surprisingly enough has been getting so much love lately and I am so thankful that people actually are interested in what I have to write. Thank you all who take the time to check out my blogsite. If it had not been for my college professor in his teaching of Professional writing, I never would have started writing blogposts at all. But he made us all start a blog site and this was my first one, if you are interested in checkign it out: https://stephanayjnotes.blogspot.com/.

Playwriting

And so, writing has always been my thing. But what I never did was found such an interest in writing something that I researched “how to” do it. It taught me how to place my words on the page, the font face to use, how to space things out and everything. And that is how I wrote my first play and the production of it was performed live this weekend for the first time.

It was nerve wrecking. It tested my faith. It brought tears to my eyes and made me work harder than I ever had at anything before, but I got through it.

For the first time ever, I wrote a little play, “And Then There Were The Ladies of Jazz;” a production that I could have never have been able to see come to life if I had let go of God’s unchanging hand. 

And Then There Were The Ladies of Jazz;

A Women's History Month Celebration

by Stephanie Jeannot

the cast of "And Then There Were the Ladies of Jazz
From left to right: Rachiim Sahu, Stephanie Jeannot. Napoleon Revels-Bey, JAzz E Matt,
Dalthannette Munlin, Danny Dalelio, Stacey Haughton, & Charles Bartlett.

The setting

The first television series by a person of color: The Nat King Cole Show on NBC

The Cast

Host: Nat King Cole  (Jazz E Matt)

Co-host in celebration of Women's History Month: Ella Fitzgerald (Stephanie Jeannot)

All-Star Band

Trumpet: Louis Armstrong (Charles Bartlett) 

Louis Armstrong

Saxophone: John Coltrane (Herb Lewis)

Piano: Bill Evans (Danny Dalelio)

Bass: Charles Mingus (Rachiim Sahu)

Drums: Max Roach (Napoleon Revels-Bey)

Max Roach

Special Guest Appearances

Ella Fitzgerald, Nat King Cole, Billie Holiday and Carmen McRae

Billie Holiday (Stacey Haughton)

Carmen McRae (Dalthannette Munlin)

Sarah Vaughan (Stephanie Jeannot)
Ray Charles (Wayne Holmes)

Sarah Vaughan

I wanted to tell a story and I wanted everybody to hear some historical things dealing with racial and gender identities that these women in jazz had to endure to become the iconic individuals that they are. But I wanted to make it fun and give people something to watch that was interesting and fun. 

I can’t believe we did it. Thank you to everybody who came out to support and for laughing and clapping when I was hoping that these things would happen. You all are so blessed and to have this weight of wanting to see it happen as badly as I did, off my shoulder, is so inspiring to me; Especially after the worthless worrying, the setting up of the room, the three wardrobe changes I did which included trying to come out my shell by putting on my tap shoes, and the singing a plethora of songs that left me feeling weary, but good. All that is left to say is... thank you and God is awesome. 

And to all the people who gave me advice or had their hands in it. So very thankful. And for every circumstance that helped me with getting the costumes together or to printout some stationaries for my guest audience to take home and the putting together of props that seemed weirdly placed into my zine, just for me, at the most awkward time and in such unique ways. And for all the musicians and singers who had to see me get into my crazy... thank you for bearing with me. 

It was fun. It was a delight. It was a pleasure. It was a vision I had as a way of celebrating women’s history month and I am glad to have seen it come to light. And now I am happy to say, I am a singer and writer from Brooklyn, NY.

Thank you so much for checking out my blogpost. God bless! 

Q is for Quotes For Earth Day

Since, 1970, Earth day has been reserved as a calendar day to dedicate to thinking about protecting the planet, the environmental climate, global warming, clean air and drinking water, using biodegradable goods and about the blue marble, for the good of humanity.  

It is a day to consider the oil spill of 1969 in Santa Barbara, CA and Flint’s present day, unclean water. Though we may not all be able to participate in the march for science in Washington, D.C. or may not be able to add ourselves into the 500-mile human chain in France, we can all put our hands into making a difference to this social safari by thinking about Mother Earth  more, loving her just a little bit more and by reducing, reusing, and recycling.

Here are some ways 

you can celebrate Earth Day:

“Close your eyes and turn your face into the wind. Feel it sweep along your skin in an invisible ocean of exultation.” - Vera Nazarian

“Take a quiet walk with Mother Nature. It will nurture your mind, body and soul” – Anthony Douglas Williams

Enjoy the day! “Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished – Lao Tzu

Plant some flowers or a tree. “Trees are the earth’s endless effort to speak to the listening heaven” – Rabindranath Tagore

Sit in the park and enjoy the beauty of nature’s scenery. “Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better” – Albert Einstein

One man’s garbage is another’s treasure. Donate your old clothes to a church or the salvation army or, bring your old, no-longer beneficial to you, items to a swap meet. "You can tell how high a society is by how much of its garbage is recycled."
-- Dhyani Ywahoo

Instead of buying bottled water and throwing those plastic bottles in the trash, invest in a stainless steel tumbler and carry it around with you to keep refilling as needed. 

Some things 

to consider on Earth Day:

“The earth laughs in flowers” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s needs, but not every man’s greed” – Mahatma Gandhi

 “If you do not permit the earth to produce beauty and joy, it will in the end not produce food, either” – Joseph Wood Krutch

“The tress are our lungs, the rivers our circulation, the air our breath, and the earth our body” – Deepak Chopra

“The case for recycling is strong. The bottom line is clear. Recycling requires a trivial amount of our time. Recycling saves money and reduces pollution. Recycling creates more jobs than landfilling or incineration. And a largely ignored but very important consideration, recycling reduces our need to dump our garbage in someone else’s backyard.” – David Morris

 “For many of us, clean water is so plentiful and readily available that we rarely, if ever, pause to consider what life would be like without it.” – Marcus Samuelsson

“There's a lot to be said about what's happening to our ocean, big companies polluting it with their oil and all the raw garbage that's being spilled in there.” -  Lloyd Bridges

 “Nature is a numbers game. We need all the support we can get as our immune systems and health are under assault from pollution, stress, contaminated food and age-related diseases as our lifespans increase.” -  Paul Stamets

“Access by kids to the Internet should be like kids breathing clean air.”  - Nicholas Negroponte

 “The earth is a fine place and worth fighting for” – Ernest Hemingway

Happy Earth Day everyone! 

Here is a toast. 

The Earth is changing everyday.

 https://youtu.be/lIyQEJgnWuE

Let's Change with the earth and as it turns and keeps on changing, change with it and make it a better place for the the here now and for future generations. 

C is for Change

I find it amazing that reading could arm you with a toolbox of ideas and alter the trajectory of your writing. I think it is incredible how opening a book can alter your consciousness and disrupt the way that you think. I am amazed at how literature can lavish attention and generate a smile which is something to cogitate. The fact is true, in every sense that a good library can cause the wheels of your brain to start turning.

Isn’t it wonderful how much reading can enhance the thoughts of writers as they make great strides towards improving their craft? One page of content a day can give a person a daily dose of positive energy and writing influence. One sentence or phrase could click so much that you feel it necessary to write it down. A scribe’s mind is influenced at the heartbeat of written dialogue.

I don’t mind being squandered away by an F. Scott Fitzgerald prose or a Langston Hughes jazz poem. Better to turn the pages on a subway ride than to have a digital device that is magnetizing my eyes. No offense to those who like it better with a Nook but, yesterday I had to take a second look thinking about the 14-year-old girl who climbed onto the train tracks to get her phone and was hit by a train because she went into a dangerous zone for a device that nowadays seem like the most important thing. You read these things in the NY Times and it affects the ways that you think.

The mere fact that reading changes a person, is incredible to me. I took up English as a major thinking it would jazz up my ability. For jazz is an expression of freedom in the manner that writing makes you storm. Jazz is poetry to the ears bedazzled with trumpet calls. Poetry turns to a song and a song into a dance. A book is like the sweetest of the brain’s romance. And its pages the passionate escape between the sheets wrapped up in lust. I am still
amazed how literature has helped my life adjust.

Change is good and you know what I mean if you listen to a jazz song and the flow of it Greets your ear like a waterfall. It gushes so sweet, you get the urge to just wade in it. Change is an inevitable thing. Each new day brings with it life that we must be guided by. Read about your niche each day and you will find changes in the way you flow. The way that you go about your own passion because you found motivation in something you read. The words stuck to your head like the lyrics of a song which can linger on for decades after you heard it. Reading is not only fundamental, but it is worth it.  

Speaking about change, this world is need of change! 


Let’s spread love without limitations. Though we are all different, reading and also seeing the world with our own eyes can enhance our knowledge of all the similarities from one culture to another that is shared, despite the differences. 

We all have baggage, songs and dances. We are all striving to survive this world. We are all brothers and sisters in a sense and we should be united. 

Please check out my original song and tune “Love No Limit” and let’s also pray for unity and love to be shared amongst all the people of this world.  https://youtu.be/Ehbsut02E_g

Thank you for being a part of my world and checking out the C installment to my April writing plan. I consider you all family and I love you with all my heart. God bless you and hope to vibe with you soon. 

When Change Comes, Make the Big Bold Decision to Believe in Yourself No Matter What

"While writing the story of your life,

don't let anyone else hold the writing utensil.

Know the fact that you are enough,

you are worth it and you can achieve

what your heart desires."

- Unknown

 

And remember the truth that we become a little better every day as we go through remarkable changes based on our experiences and that we have a harvest of kingdom fruit awaiting us which we are perfectly suitable to dwell in.

 

“Storms make trees take deeper roots”

– Sharon Lechter

 

A tidal wave of change takes place based on the vibration of thoughts we have about our own selves. While other people’s negative thoughts can become contagious, make sure to make the big, bold decisions to stay firmly rooted in believing in yourself.

“Depression is destructive

while self-confidence and faith are constructive.”

– Sharon Lechter

When your faith is spilling over, there is nothing that can knock you out of the soil. You still stand tall and face the brightness of God’s unmatchable sun. Sparks of possibility seem to never leave us because we are driven by the flames of achievement of being blessed by another day.  

Only God knows what the next leg of the journey will bring but while we are headed there, travel along your path with complete confidence that you have everything it takes to move forward to what is ahead.

I invite you to check out a flashback of a performance I was so blessed to be a part of at Jacob Javitz Convention Center with the Medgar Evers Jazz Ensemble at the graduation ceremony for the 2013 college graduating class. I was experiencing a bunch of anxieties that day having lost my aunt to cancer the day before who left behind five kids under 18 years old. I was so sad about the situation because we were really close and I couldn't belive my little cousins were left without their mother and my uncle had to do whatever he could to handle it. 

After singing before the crowd of 5500 people, I went home, cut all my hair off and started a whole different way of thinking about my life. Change I guess is a real thing when death plays a part. At a funeral about a week back, for a beautiful family who lost their hero, their father, I was asked to sing Sam Cook's "A Change is Gonna Come." A few days later, I lost a dear friend and his family's and friend's lives were changed forever. The whole point is to never lose faith. 

The song I sang at the graduation, which is also a point of change from experiencing education to experiencing the field and having to deal with maybe not landing the job we want with so much competition for the same work,  was "I Am Changing" originally performed by Dreamgirl Jennifer Holiday and it can be found on youtube at: https://youtu.be/lIyQEJgnWuE

Have a beautiful, faith-driven day everybody! 

'Tis Autumn!

Autumn is definitely the perfect time to take in the wonderful beauty of nature. 

I love when the colors of the leaves start to change. Even though I get so cold sometimes that I feel like I want to run away from it all, the mere fact that I am able to see and experience these moments such as the changing of seasons means that things are going according to plan.

Life is an endless development and it is a joyous necessity to include things such as change into the mix. I mean, in reality, we are not able to be sitting along a white sand coastline every day in bikinis while sipping margaritas with salt on the brim. But if we were, we would never truly appreciate the talents of gold we are blessed to recieve with things always being peachy; all the time.

Fall divides the future from the past. It gives us time to reflect back on the year as we prepare ourselves for the time yet to be born in the new year that is about to embrace us. Emotional scars are there for a reason. Some people may view them as glitches. Others may see them as the bare tree branches and the red colors that colored in the leaves that have fallen from those branches onto the ground. But for me, autumn has always been a great time for embracing change and I cherish the memories of it.

Here are some 

of those things 

that I am proud of.

1. I started crocheting and I got so good at it that while I was selling my merchandise at a fall street fair in Brooklyn, NY, a store owner saw my display and decided to purchase hats from me in bulk to sell at his Greenwich Village store. Though the store is no longer open, I am still happy about it because it was my first ever experience of being a creative designer and selling tings I made at that capacity.

2. I took my last sip of alcohol and this year makes three years since.

3. I started my last stretch of college and am proud to say that I graduated with high honors.

4. I sang my original tunes at the TCS NYC Marathon to enhance the athletes' running experience and it was awesome.  I will also be doing it again this year which to be exact will be on the first Sunday in November. If you are running, wave at me singing to the beat of your sneakers hitting the pavement where Bay Ridge Avenue and 4th Avenue meets. I am looking forward to being there, rooting you on.

5. I took my road test, passed and became the angry driver that occasionally writes blog posts about experiencing road rage.

6. I produced a music video for my friend Stuart Thomas for his song entitled “Can We Try to Live” and what went from him wanting to perform the entirety of it in front of a building, turned into a full production. I did all the editing and the video became a video. You can check it out here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIkauL1qfYg

7. Producer Paul Garrod and I went into a park in Wyndanch, NY, and after three wardrobe changes in my car, we completed the filming to the video Paul produced for my song, “Harmony.” You can check it out here: https://youtu.be/Et2DjrOKJAo?list=PLtEabtb9kz4JfOcuFHckwPhoyjqiYJTdq

8. With this year being no different, I walked into the classroom and saw my students singing my song “Time Machine” (off the Finally JNote album) with the small band and it made me want to cry to see them. They know my lyrics. They know my inflections. So happy! You can check out this song and others from the album on Spotify. Here is the link: https://open.spotify.com/track/6PX6lWw1RWc115RkjmU72I

I feel invigorated. I feel alive. 
I feel like I’m getting old. 

But . . . 

I think that we’re gonna be alright. It is Autumn!

Have a great fall season everybody!