This year, it’s increased dramatically. Like many who make their living in the lovely unstable music industry, I have no health insurance…which is mostly why I’ve had to ignore my increasing pain. About a month ago, a good friend of mine got me in touch with a chiropractor she knew, and he was willing to work out a payment arrangement that wouldn’t bleed me dry. So I began getting treatment for the first time since this has started happening to me. Since then, I’ve had some days with less pain that I’ve experienced in years. There’s still bad days, but the doctor is treating me pretty aggressively, and I think overall I’m heading toward the right direction.

All this has made me realize just how much life has been sucked out of me during the last few years. It’s near impossible to focus on a task when your entire mental capacity is fixated on how much pain you’re feeling at the moment. At times I’ve felt defeated and depleted, and being productive has been near impossible on occasion. I’ve fought through it, but it hasn’t been easy, and it’s at times made things a lot less joyful than they used to be.

If I didn’t care about accomplishing anything, I guess I’d be content…happy, even…to just take an abundance of pain killers and let the days pass while I feel “good” (or at least nothing). The problem is, there’s been days I’ve had to do just that, and while the physical pain can be masked for a while, the internal frustration I feel as I’m not being productive grows exponentially in those moments. It’s nearly as bad, if not worse, than dealing with the physical pain.

Anyway, hopefully I’m actually on the road to recovery.

It’s been a strange year. I’ve accomplished some things beyond my expectations of myself, and yet I feel behind in some ways. Sometimes I feel like I’m balancing on the thinest wire imaginable…holding off both gravity’s doom and my own threat of collapse. All because I must feel that I’m moving toward the end of that wire, even though I can’t always perceive what it looks like. And when I reach the other side, I imagine it’ll be worth it all to look back and see the depth of the journey taken. I guess that’s why I keep going.

What I feel is a mixture of sadness and peace. Grandma Bert was my last living grandparent. You don’t get to choose who you’re influenced by in your life. At least, not in the early and most formative stages of your existence. Grandma was one of the toughest and kindest people I’ve known…and I feel fortunate to have had her presence affect me.

She and my grandfather had both lived through The Great Depression and World War II. You could tell when you were with them that, like many in their generation, they respected things like hard work and responsibility. My grandma once had told me that her own mother used to feed the neighborhood children as much as possible when one of them would come over to play, because many of them were largely without food in their own homes. That sense of generosity was clearly something that stuck with her.

My grandma was someone who rarely spoke an unkind word about anyone, and yet she was never fake. When you said something that made her smile, it instantly made you feel important.

In my early twenties, when my band got signed, she loaned us the money we needed to buy our van. Soon after, at the end of one of our first tours, we had to drive home from across the country in mid-December. It so happened that as we were on I-5 late at night there was a heavy snowstorm, making the freeways impossible to drive, and my grandmother put us all up in her house. I remember feeling bad having to call her at midnight, but she was happy to host everyone. The next morning, she made a huge breakfast…it was the best meal we’d eaten in months. I think she enjoyed making it for us as it much as we did eating it.

My grandfather died of heart failure over 15 years ago. Before that, my grandparents had spent much of their time in retirement traveling to the California desert, which they loved, and playing golf together. They had been married for most of their lives and were clearly in love. As devastating as it must have been for my grandma to lose him, it was obvious that she never expected anyone to feel sorrow for her. I think she was the kind of person who accepted what life brought and saw little value in questioning the things that can’t be changed or in surrendering to anything resembling self-pity or laziness.

A few months ago, when my grandma was diagnosed with thyroid cancer, her response to the doctor was, “I’ve lived a good life and had wonderful memories. If it’s time to go, then it’s time to go.” And after 92 years, for her, it was.

Last week I visited her in the nursing home (where, thankfully, she only had to spend the last couple weeks of her life), knowing it would probably be the last time I got to see her. After I’d been there a while, she was too tired to stay awake, and my dad and I helped her get into her bed for the night. It was difficult to allow the visit to end, but I kissed her on the cheek and told her I loved her, and while holding in my tears until I was outside, I accepted that it was indeed time to go.

I love you, Grandma. Thank-you.

Ex-champ Kobayashi crashes the stage at Coney Island hot dog contest

Recently, I did something that I’ve been avoiding for the last 15 years. I drove through my old hometown.

I haven’t really made great efforts to avoid it. I think at some point I just realized it had been a few years since I’d ever seen it (my parents moved away shortly after I graduated college, so I don’t have family there anymore). And then a few years after that, I realized I just really didn’t want to see it. Then a few more years passed, and I became scared to see it. After yet another few years, I started to become curious about seeing it. What would it feel like? How powerful would the emotions be that would likely come flooding after going a decade without seeing it?

What’s the big deal, you ask?

We moved to Acme when I was 9 years old, and my dad became the pastor of a small church there. Acme consisted of a fire station, a general store, two churches, a post office and a grade school. It was/is basically the definition of a hick town. Inside the walls of the little church I grew up in, I witnessed people “speaking in tongues”, falling backwards (what they call being “slain in the Spirit”), speaking out prophecies, shaking, crying…and other odd things that most kids don’t grow up perceiving as normal. I learned to think of myself as a bad (“sinful “) creature…someone who was separate from the rest of the world (what we called a “sheep among wolves”). The experiences I went through in that portion of my childhood ingrained me with concepts that contributed to a lot of personal problems later in my adult life. For a long time, I was bitter that that place ever existed.

By now, I’ve mostly dealt with those demons, and I’ve learned to accept that colorful part of my history for what it is. We all have different pasts, and we all learn from them and become the people we are, in part, because of those experiences. But there is still a tender part of my insides, sort of like a deep bruise, that associates some dark parts of my personality with that church building. Not that it was all bad, but negative outcomes have a way of overshadowing silver linings.

So, a couple weekends ago I saw it again. It’s not even a church anymore. I looked at the front lawn where I used to play football with neighborhood kids, and I peered through the glass all around the front doors and saw where all the pews were we sat in three times a week. I saw the river we used to play in with our shoes on to avoid cutting our feet on all the rocks. I saw the General Store I used to ride my bike to and the post office and the fire station across the street. I saw my old house, and I stopped and walked along the train tracks we used to put pennies on to let the train roll over and flatten.

And you know what? I felt almost nothing. All those intense emotions I was expecting…they didn’t really come. I didn’t experience heavy déjà vu or a lot of the familiar feelings I feared I might, because…something was different. The scenery was nearly identical to how it existed during my childhood, but I wasn’t. I was no longer the scared kid who was constantly trying to manage the fear and the unrest inside my discontent little brain with inadequate hands clinging tightly to a weak safety net of religious guilt and piety. I’ve moved on.

And that changed the whole picture.

And…well…eventually, I ended up crying during an rerun of House MD. I’d like to tell you it was the fever or the cold medication I was on, but it wasn’t. It was the following words a famous elder jazz musician spoke, alone, to Dr. House after deciding he didn’t want to be kept alive, having lost the ability to play music anymore:

“The reason normal people got wives and kids and hobbies, whatever, that’s because they ain’t got that one thing that, that hits them that hard and that true…the thing you think about all the time. Thing that keeps you south of normal. Yeah, makes us great. Makes us the best. All we miss out on is everything else. No woman waiting at home after work with a drink and a kiss; that ain’t gonna happen for us.” (House MD, “DNR”)

I think there’s a portion of myself, much bigger than I wish, that fears the validity in those words.

• Factory farms are even more cruel to animals than I knew.
• Factory farms and the government’s influence on the corn industry practically forces all of us to eat very unhealthily.
• We’re running out of oil, and there’s nothing to replace the amount of energy we currently get from it.
• There are many people smarter than I who also don’t believe in religion or in God.
• If you believe in yourself and work really, really hard and never stop…you very well still might fail.

For whatever reason, I’m always drawn to dark subject matters, but I think I may have reached my limit for a minute. Tonight I’m moving away from the screen of bleakness for an evening and getting a (unhealthy) burger and a beer. Life is depressing in a lot of aspects, but it’s also short. Too short not to take a step back once in a while.

I just finished watching Food, Inc. To be honest, I’ve put this film off for a while…mostly because I’ve feared giving up some of the convenience that comes with being ignorant about things like how our food is sold to us (not that I knew nothing about it before).

Whenever I read a book or watch a film about a subject like this, I’m overwhelmed by the amounts of immorality and abuse a massive amount of people will put up with without standing up for themselves. Why do we let ourselves get screwed all the time? Why does everyone accept the way things are? Why is it so daunting for people to ever band together and say “Enough!”?

Laws are, at a minimum, supposed to protect us. Protect the innocent from those that would do them harm. It’s not illegal for you to get drunk, but it is against the law for you to get behind your steering wheel when you’re drunk. Because you have a right to kill your own brain cells, but you don’t have a right to kill me in the process.

But so many of our laws don’t protect us at all. In fact, they’re much the opposite. They actually enforce a way of life that consistently inflicts harm on most of us and on the world around us.

I think perhaps the most evil of man’s inventions is the corporation. Corporations are like people without souls. They make decisions based solely on their own welfare…and with no regard for who or what gets stepped on in the process. They’re self-serving viruses. And we give them control of everything.

You put your healthcare, your food production, your transportation costs, your money management, your environment and even your government all in the hands of people who only view you as a number in their profit and expense column. Why would people do such a thing? Animals allow people to treat them with with cruelty and disdain because they have no choice in the matter. Why do the rest of us?

Here are four things I think would be different if that weren’t so:

• Factory farming would be illegal.
• Health care would be universal.
• Products made by children in sweat shops would be illegal.
• Cars that burn fossil fuels would be taken off the streets.

The reasons that each of those things aren’t so have nothing to do with a what a better way of life is or what is a loving way to treat humans (and other facets of nature). They have everything to do with corporations and money. In other words, it’s not that how things are is what’s best for everyone; the way things are is what’s best for a small amount of people who are getting wealthy because of it.

And it’s one of the grossest ironies, to me, that those rich people have somehow duped most of the religious people into believing that they’re on the same team. Religious people fighting (passionately) for things that both go against the book their religion is based on and against their own best interests must be nearly the textbook definition of absurdity.

This morning, I turned the TV on to watch the news for a bit while waiting for my nephew Benson to wake up enough for me to get him dressed and out the door for school (I’ve been helping out my sister a bit over the past week or so while she is at the hospital with Luke). I am not much of a TV watcher or a news junkie. I keep up a little bit with political stuff from a few websites, but not a ton.

Anyway, here’s what I learned in 15 minutes of the morning news:

• Sarah Palin said something stupid again.
• Yes, it’s still true that Tiger Woods did something stupid last week.
• Those stupid people who crashed the White House dinner said something more about why they did it.

I remember when I was a kid and my parents would watch the news. It sounded boring and I didn’t pay attention to much of it, but I usually assumed it was about something important. The few times I’ve watched TV lately, though, I find myself more perplexed than interested. I assume other people find this stuff interesting, or I guess it wouldn’t be broadcasted.

I suppose more than anything else, I don’t like the feeling that I’m being sold something. Tiger Woods is probably one of millions of men alive on the planet right now who’ve cheated on their wives, and yet because everyone is talking about his situation I’m somehow supposed to believe it’s important. Because if I think it’s important, then I’ll keep watching all sorts of different people talk about it and wait through commercial breaks to see more people talk about it, so that I’m not missing out on anything regarding the subject…oh, and also so that advertisers can show me what they want me to buy in between all the stuff people are saying about it.

Harrumph.

So, because I have been in working-from-home mode for so long, I have a usual routine after waking up that (most importantly) involves making coffee before I do just about anything. I own this ultra-cool coffee maker with an integrated grinder and built-in satellite radio technology that tells the weather every day (yes, I know, you’re jealous; it’s a prototype and was a Christmas gift from a good friend who works at Microsoft), and each morning before I am fully awake I fill it with beans and make my morning drug.

Today, however, I drove downtown, parked by the studio and walked to one of the many Seattle coffee shops within spitting distance to feed the morning addiction.

Whammo.

This is real coffee. The stuff that we brag about in this town. This is the reason I got hooked on caffeine in the first place!

My taste buds know good coffee. I’m from this city. I’ve been to Italy. When I was a Nashville resident, I was considered a coffee snob by my friends because I considered Starbucks a last resort. And yet, in the last several months, somehow I’ve slowly dulled my senses to the point where I haven’t minded the store-bought liquid mediocracy I’ve been filling my cup up with each morning.

I think when you settle for less than stellar, sometimes it takes contact with the real thing in order to realize the deficiency in how you’re living.

See ya next year.

When I went to Europe earlier this year, it wasn’t until the third week I was there before I finally felt like I was mentally on vacation. Then, I realized it was the first time I’d truly felt like I was on vacation in my life.

Someday I’m gonna get better at that.

In the meantime, I do actually have eight things to be working on:

• finishing my solo record (I’m getting close now, I swear)
• finishing the new Grammatrain record (pretty sure we’re looking at spring of 2010 to release)
• launching two new websites (one for my solo material and one for my production company)
• producing projects for one band and two solo artists I’m currently working with
• a mound of paperwork sitting in my living room taunting me…which probably amounts to at least another eight things contained within itself.

I used to always wish there was a magic ‘pause’ button I could press to stop the rotation of the earth and let me get everything done I wanted to without the pressure of time on my mind. However, I’ve sort of started to realize how that mentality is very much living in a moment that is not now, which is a pretty unfulfilling way to live. Obviously, I’m someone who needs a few different things going on to feel engaged, and the more I’ve accepted that the less frustrated I’ve been with life.

And with that, I’ve got to get to work.

Later.

So much of what makes us who we are is out of our grasp. You don’t control what environment you’re born into or what you possess going into it. Life sends you to this world in the manner in which it pleases, and the particular blend of mushy chemicals and matter contained inside your skin are what you get to work with for the duration of the time you’re here. Some individuals are tortured while others are serene. Some are strong and others are disabled. Some get happy homes while others experience permanently life-altering and mentally-damaging trama in their youth.

I’m not saying that we are all completely victims, but I am saying that none of us completely aren’t.

It’s often said there are no atheists in foxholes, but their presence will certainly be felt on Metro buses soon.

Seattle atheists are putting up advertising placards inside downtown Metro buses for the months of November and December.

Mike Gillis with Seattle Atheists shared some of the messages that would be featured on the ads. “One of them by Thomas Jefferson, from one of his letters is that, ‘Religions are all alike, founded upon fables and mythologies,’ another by Ben Franklin, ‘The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason.”

Gillis says the ad campaign is designed to counter the common assumption that this country was founded as a Christian nation.

-MyNorthwest.com

I don’t have real strong feelings one way or another about the issue, but I do find it a little interesting. Personally, I tend to mostly agree with both of those quotes. Whether it’s proper or constitutional to allow them as advertisements on a city bus is another issue. I suppose it depends on whether advertisements for your friendly neighborhood church can also be found sharing space on Metro bus walls. The few times I’ve found myself on a local bus I’m usually too busy having random conversations with other passengers about whatever Sounders game we’re on our way to to really notice who’s proselytizing what around me.

Separation of church and state is something I view as extremely valuable…and I think you should, too, regardless of whether you’re looking at it from the “church” side or the “state” side. Both facets of society should be protected from the other’s influence. However, this one is sort of a mind-twister. If a city bus is public property, then it probably shouldn’t contain religious messages. But atheist messages are anti-religious messages, so they’re okay, right? But they’re still promoting a religious stance (and an organization whose purpose is based on their view of religion), so doesn’t that make them religious messages, per se? Which means they’re not okay? Ouch. It reminds me of last week when my nephew asked me to explain “the number infinity”. I kept trying to distract him by changing the subject to Star Wars.

To sum up: As a taxpayer I’m mildly outraged, while as an agnostic I’m somewhat pleased, and as a passenger I’m just in a hurry to get to the game and really don’t care. Scarves up.

That sounds overly simple and obvious, perhaps, but there’s this sense I get when things are too comfortable…like I’m dying. It’s like the feeling when you’ve eaten too much junk food or watched too much bad tv at once. Your mind and/or wasteline has started transforming into mush and you can feel yourself getting more and more behind of where you should be…or at least where you’re capable of being. You need a change. A turn back toward the right direction.

I think the older I’ve gotten, the more in tune and the more sensitive to warning signs of this I’ve become. Balance has become more a part of my life at this stage in life than it used to be, and I’ve somewhat learned to accept and react appropriately to things. There was a time where I let myself die internally without realizing it was happening…and after learning what that was like and living through the aftermath of it, I think I subconsciously vowed to never let it happen again.

There’s a good distance in life between the middle of the road and the cliff on either side of it, I think, but you can still drift all the way over the edge if you never pay attention to where you’re going.

Or, as I like to say, all things in moderation…including moderation.

Starting tomorrow.

I watched my nephews this morning while my sister had an appointment. Luke had just laid back down in his bed to go to sleep before my sister left, so most of my sitting-time consisted of watching cartoons on the couch with his younger brother. Luke’s sleeping patterns are far from smooth, so every few minutes he would call out for me or for his mom (as he often does), and after I would enter his room, he’d go back to sleep. Then I didn’t hear anything for a while.

I decided I should check on him, and what I found was him on the floor, in the middle of a seizure. Luke has had countless seizures over the past couple years as a byproduct of his brain cancer. I’ve only witnessed a few, but this was the worst I’d seen and the first one I experienced while he was in my care. Often they’re mild and he is only “out” for a minute or two. Not this time.

The image won’t leave my brain. His face was frantic and stretched. His eyes were open so wide they no longer looked real. Unable to speak, he held his little torso upright with his arms, twitching and turning his head erratically. His jaw was grinding louder than you would think humanly possible. He couldn’t respond to anything I said to him and was completely unaware of anyone else around him or of the fact that he had just thrown up on himself or the floor underneath him. It was like someone was sending a constant and violent surge of electricity through his body, to which he was helpless against.

For several painstaking minutes (which felt like an eternity), the boy that is my precious eight-year old nephew had been replaced by something that seemed out of a horror movie, possessed and animalistic. Eventually he struggled to speak but could only make occasional guttural sounds and malformed words…usually followed by more silent twitching. I’m sure that I was watching him fight to come “back”. Finally, and slowly, he did.

I don’t understand how my sister lives with this constant nightmare, and I hate that she and her youngest son have had to become so used to it. I wish there was a way to speak to the boy inside of Luke…the one whose spirit has now been greatly suffocated and mutilated by those horrid tumors. I would tell him that I am so sorry. I am so sorry that he has been treated so unfairly and with such unforgiving cruelty. I am so sorry that so much has been ripped away from him and that he constantly has to fight.

Mostly I would tell him how much I love him…and how much his existence has permanently changed me.

This was no sanctioned stunt; it was a renegade covert operation…and one that landed its perpetrators in handcuffs immediately after. After six years of secret planning, Philippe and his partners succeeded in breaking into the WTC at night like bank robbers and extending a wire across the two buildings in the dark…all so that in the morning Phillippe could walk 1,368 feet above death and ground and awestruck pedestrians for 45 minutes.

How did people respond to this? According to Phillippe, the main question he heard afterward from people was “why?”. He said he found this response baffling…and American.

Maybe it was my lack of sleep, but I found this to be perhaps the most profound moment of the film. In his mind, this was simply something he had to do. You could feel his utter obsession from watching him talk and work. For him, it was art, it was an accomplishment…it was a moment that he needed to be in and make happen. Both the 70′s footage of his achievement and his reflective interviews portrayed a man alive and electric when engaged with this absurd stunt. He couldn’t not do it.

How often do we do something for no other reason than that we just need to? And how much of our lives do we spend doing something that merely has a socially acceptable answer to the question “why?”. Which one makes you feel more alive?

“I Am The Six O’clock News” was a poignant song Larry wrote in 1972 about the media’s coverage of the Vietnam War, and this was the song of his that we recorded and performed that night. To meet him, talk to him and play with him was to be next to this figure that made you intrigued, inspired and unsettled. With a presence nothing short of electric, he screamed the words “Media Lies! God tells the truth!” into his microphone while we trashed out the last chord of his song on stage, young rockers that we were.

In his hippy/spiritual language, he tattooed a mantra on my brain that night, the gist of which I’ve seen re-proven time and time again since.

This morning I finally watched the online clips of Michael Jackson’s memorial service…and found myself incredibly moved by a couple of moments, most undeniably (of course) his daughter’s tear-soaked words. And it reminded me of Larry’s proclamation that night. The media is cunningly clever at infusing nearly everyone who watches with an eerily passionate opinion that someone who they don’t know is either a pedophile or a saint…mostly because it’s how they gain their cult members and sell ads. Yet, the truth is found in the tears of a crushed little girl whose daddy is dead and gone.

I think it’s a shame that in our time we have to try to not be so blinded by sensationalism that we miss the life behind its noisy curtain.

Sometimes I wonder what drew me to this whole music thing in the first place. I often think there was a great deal lacking in my life as a child that the language of music somehow made up for. It’s interesting that the times I am drawn to write or play music the most are usually when there are other things my brain is consumed with that don’t completely make sense. Music has an undeniable power to comfort, awaken and be therapeutic.

When I discovered music it was like finding an untapped language that I didn’t realize I could already speak. I remember being obsessed with sounds and feeling like I had no choice but to make rhythms and melodies with them. I can recall tapping my foot in time on the plastic floor covering in the back seat of my parents’ car and trying to make it sound exactly like a kick drum. I also used to bang on their closet door because to me it sounded like a concert bass drum. And for some reason, I was infatuated with playing my brother’s eyeglass frames like a hi-hat…to the point where I would sometimes wake up in the middle of the night and steal them from his bedside table while he was sleeping just to play rhythms with them. I’m also fairly certain I gave myself TMJ by constantly moving my jaw to songs playing in my head.

I’ve been thinking lately about how the experience of music changes the older I get. It takes more to “wow” me than it did when I was a kid. I’m sure the songs I wrote then largely sucked, so maybe that’s not a bad thing…

Music still plays in my head and I’ve never really stopped directing most of my life around the pursuit of it. Admittedly, though, it can take more effort sometimes to put myself in a musical environment that is inspired and satisfying the more time goes on and the more life I’ve lived…but I always inevitably do. Maybe that challenge is the thing that keeps it interesting.

I think some people get sidetracked with using music to get famous, earn awards or make money…and almost without fail they sacrifice that thing about music that made me excited as a child. I’ve earned my living as a musician for the vast majority of my adult years, and after thousands of shows, hundreds of recordings and an infinite amount of hours spent on it, once in a while I have to remind myself of that obsessive kid. Fortunately, he’s still there.

After reading a bunch of the internet screaming on Facebook about Obama’s speech yesterday, though, I finally watched it for myself last night. It left me asking the same question I was before I saw it: What are all these people so upset about?

Actually, I’m pretty sure I know what they’re upset about.

Barack’s speech was excellent, in my opinion. It was respectful and challenging. He incorporated quotes from the Koran, the Talmud and the Bible, as well as American forefathers. It lacked superiority or piousness and focused on grasping common ground between people of different cultures and religions. Its message: ‘Enough fighting. We all want peace, and there’s no reason we can’t have it.’

And this is what bothers people. Namely, fundamentalist religious people. I think the majority of religions probably started out as good ideas…or at least with good intentions. They all basically stem from people trying to figure out the way that the world and the universe work and how we are best to live inside of them. However, once Systems are erected, there emerges a “right” group and a “wrong” group, and the “right” group needs the “wrong” group to be wrong. It’s part of their self-identification.

Convince people that they’re going to hell if they follow anyone else and they’ll likely kill for you, or at least hate for you. They’ll be afraid not to.

I think this is why holy wars exist. Some people need to believe that others are damned in order to feel that their own existences are validated. And those people probably can’t stomach that a United States president would quote Muslim scripture to a Muslim audience and say anything to them besides “you are wrong and we are right”.

Get with it, folks. Humanity is progressing, and the old fundamentalist attitudes are being seen for the damage that they have caused throughout history. The message in your Bible is “Love one another”. Why are you so afraid to do anything but the opposite?

Having toured for probably half of my adult life, I have eaten in a *lot* of diners. There is something about them that I love. They generally aren’t cool. No one is trying to be trendy or impressive or act like they’re better than other diner patrons. The stools and booths are boring and unstylish, and mostly everyone there is just concerned with eggs, bacon, and newspapers. And (bad) coffee.

They’re also mostly filled with old people. Some of them are talking to each other, but most of them aren’t. Usually the conversations are pretty relaxed…having to do with sports teams, weather, yards or TV shows. Even when there’s spirited ones about politics or news, you generally feel like as soon as the check comes, both parties will stand up, smile, go about their days and mostly be unconcerned about the heavy matters they were just discussing. The old couples that are in there hardly say two words to each other the whole time. And they seem peaceful.

Often when I go to these places, I feel like I can already picture myself at that stage in life. Sort of. My head is still filled with lots of noise and commotion today about things I want to accomplish and haven’t done yet. But the older I’ve gotten the less I’ve cared about being cool or with it and the more I’ve cared about feeling peaceful. Familiarly cooked eggs and daily coffee (and good friends) have provided more joy for me than receiving a Grammy or getting publishing checks in the mail ever have. I suppose that by realizing that, I’m on my way there.

But you have to have history before it’s time to relax. And in that department, I still feel like I’ve barely begun making progress.

The idea of this is completely horrifying to me today. I’m trying to imagine a state of mind in which I would find it amusing to maim a creature who had done nothing to harm or threaten me. I can’t.

I wonder when that changed.

Artists are primarily a bunch of fragile and reactive slaves to our own emotions. The thing that makes me feel alive is transforming something internal into a piece of music and (to a greater degree) getting to transmit that piece of music to someone else. Whether it’s performing in front of a crowd, recording a song that someone will eventually listen to, or producing a track for another artist, this process fulfills my biggest need. It is a connection and a function that most artists think we were born to live inside of; in fact, the very thought of existing apart from it seems exactly like suffocation.

As a result, artists seem to pay way more attention to how they “feel” about things than many people do…often times too much and at the expense of our relationships with others. Artists create largely out of a desire to make their environment a better one. We generally feel unsatisfied with our surroundings, and so we want to contribute something to improve them…or at least make ourselves feel better about our place inside them. I think this is why some of the greatest songs ever written have been inspired by heartache or times of war (I know there’s some great songs written about things like love, too, but I think the principle is still the same).

What often makes this situation a catch 22 is the constant longing for motivation. We incessantly need to feel unsatisfied so that we can create something to satisfy ourselves. It’s not the actual solution that satisfies, it’s the process of creating the solution…and if we’re satisfied then there’s no need for that process. Ever heard of post-tour or post-studio depression? The high is in that moment when you just nailed a performance or a recording…when something beyond words happened and you felt it. There have been songs I’ve recorded that have brought tears to my own eyes upon my first listen back. It is a sacred moment when all the pieces seem to align, emotion and sound become one, and life suddenly feels worth all the pain and lost love and disappointment and heartache just so you could create and experience those three minutes and thirty-five seconds.

But when it’s over, the afterglow eventually fades, and like every other drug, you just want more of the same.

The addiction to this is as annoying as it is rewarding sometimes. I hate that the colors of the walls in my house cause me as much distress as they currently do (I serioulsy think that if my living room was yellow instead of green I would wake up wanting to write songs more often), and I hate that having to fill out financial paperwork is such extreme torture. I think there’s a way to accept this whole process for what it is and be able to function inside a number-and-charts world, rather than constantly feeling like a rudderless boat in its storm…hopefully not at the expense of being vital.

Somehow I missed Arcade Fire’s Neon Bible album in 2007; I think maybe I skipped through some tracks when it came out and it didn’t do much for me. This week I stumbled on a link to their website and was fairly blown away with the trippy interactive video stuff attached to their moody songs. It instantly sucked me in and made me want to get the record, so I did. I put the album on a couple times while I was doing things at home and became bored with it both times. The psychedelic visuals had made it a different experience, and for whatever reason I wasn’t feeling it while listening to the music on its own.

After attending a friend’s show in Fremont tonight (a couple days later), I drove home and gave it another try. For whatever reason, the dark moving highway under the glow of streetlights is the right environment for Neon Bible. It felt perfect this time and I loved it…to the point where I had to remind myself not to close my eyes and end up smashing my car into a guard rail.

I find it interesting that a piece of music can have an appropriate place, or at least a more appropriate place, to be experienced. It makes me think of the possibilities musicians have today to present the music they create to their audience, and how maybe it’s important to really ponder the best way to deliver a particular album to people in the 21st century before just throwing it out against the wall, in typical fashion.

People inside the music industry might be screaming that the sky is falling, but it also could be that today is an exciting time to be an artist…with a bigger canvas than has existed previously.

One of the people I met was this attractive young woman who worked for a television production company of some sort. We talked about some of the places we had both traveled to and music we both liked, and before long she made it pretty apparent that she was “interested” in me and would like to get together sometime. Those moments are usually fun, when you’re both smiling about something that has nothing to do with what you’re actually saying, and that’s pretty much how it was. And then…after about 45 minutes and a couple of drinks, she chose to reveal that she is currently in her second marriage (which, duh, is “not going well”) and has a child with her current husband.

Fail.

(There is a funny story that took place immediately after that moment involving me texting my friend, who was trying to be an honorable wingman, that it was time to abort and move on while he ignored his phone and unknowingly prolonged my agony. Remind me to elaborate sometime.)

Anyway…besides being yet another annoyingly unclassy moment in mid-thirties-singlehood, this encounter made me think about how we each present ourselves to people. We all have things about ourselves that we don’t want to reveal to everybody we meet. There are things in my life that no one reading this blog will ever know, unless you’re one of two or three people who are my closest friends in the world.

Each of us presents the best version of who we are to somebody when we care what they think of us. When I first meet someone, I don’t normally start the conversation out by telling them about the time I was on antidepressants several years ago or the night I drank too much Fernet-Branca and woke up on some stranger’s lawn with my phone and dignity missing the next morning. Eventually, though, if the other person gets to know you they get more details of who you are and your presentation gets replaced, at least partially, with the real you. First impressions are everything…until they’re over with.

Putting your best foot forward is one thing; what you can’t do in life is put a fake foot forward. False advertising gets you nowhere, whether you’re selling your band’s CD, a miracle drug, your vocational skills or yourself. All you end up doing is wasting time on bogus packaging and phony marketing that no one is impressed with and that will not produce much of any results for you in the end.

Try being who you are and maybe you’ll find someone who is actually interested.

…which has nothing to do with what I’m writing about.

In the past, something I’ve gotten stuck obsessing over more than once is timing. There is a lot of our lives that is in our control. Time never is. There’s a brilliant scene in The Curious Case Of Benjamin Buton where the narrator describes in detail every seemingly meaningless event that leads up to one of the main characters getting her legs crushed by a taxi while crossing the street. It’s an almost painstakingly elaborate reminder of just how many circumstances in life we are all victims to, and the fact that there is little to nothing you can do about it.

It’s hard not to get stuck pondering “what if’s”. Life is a series of events and outcomes that consistently stack on top of each other, until one day you realize you have a whole windy past to gaze back on that has put you exactly where you are in the present. I don’t know how many times I’ve strained my neck looking behind and wondering how different today would be had certain events not happened or been changed. But wondering about parallel universes where I may have made alternate choices or experienced different circumstances is mostly a waste of time.

I’ve certainly made my share of bad decisions, but that is how we learn…and yet it seems the junctures in my life that I obsess over are not ones that were in my control, but ones that I had no dominion over. I know I’ve written this before, but I used to envy my white German shepherd, because I imagined that he lacked the ability to over-analyze things about his life. Animals react to instincts; they eat, sleep, shit and fuck when they feel that it’s time to, and thus is the simplicity of biology. When you see a dog with three legs, he doesn’t appear to be upset that most other dogs have one more leg than he does. He appears to simply have adapted to having to walk with three legs.

I guess the trick mostly, then, is to keep walking.

So it was when I was a child. I was taught things like God and sin and heaven and hell; they were concepts that were supposed to make sense out of a world bigger than man can fathom, and for a while they did. Religion and myths have inspired some of the greatest art in history because of what they represent. It’s beautiful to think of allegorical figures that conceptualize love or fertility or death or strength. It’s dangerous to make those things literal…and it almost unavoidably turns into nations bombing each other and people hating people.

I can accept the tragedies in life that I have experienced and been touched by. It only takes a few minutes of watching Animal Planet or looking out your window to recognize that life is full of hardship and cruelty and obstacles. We are each born with what we are born with, and it’s not fair and it doesn’t promise to be. You don’t know if tomorrow you’re going to fall in love or get hit by a bus, and it’s likely that you won’t deserve either extreme, should either one happen to you.

The problem for me with the concept of a god (or God) in charge of all of this is mainly one of accountability. God can’t be both all powerful and all knowing and yet also be off the hook for creating mass murderers or for giving my innocent little 7-year old nephew brain cancer and slowly taking his life from him. It is true that Nature is unstoppable and wild and will always rule over man, whether we want to accept it or not. However, to ascribe a name and personality to it, I think, is to make it something more cruel than it is.

I purposely left my computer home (a decision that I only occasionally questioned). What I was trying to avoid was being in some incredible city like Rome or Florence while spending hours updating and checking statuses on Facebook in my hotel. Once in a while it would have been nice to have been able to write (I did manage one post via my iPhone while on a train), but I think overall not having a grid-plug with me was part of the freedom I needed to feel.

I don’t travel enough. In fact, I probably don’t take enough breaks. There’s always something to do, something to accomplish…some reason that I feel compelled to keep my nose an inch away from whatever project(s) I’m currently on so that I don’t realize my biggest fear of dying without enough to show for my time on Earth. In actuality, working really hard without stopping to get any perspective is probably like pushing your car through an unknown city at night. You might eventally get to where you’re trying to go, but it would probably be quicker and more enjoyable if you’d stop once in a while to refuel and look at a map.

Photos

Of course, as a result of working 16+ hour days all last week to finish our EP on time and then flying straight to Nashville to work, I ended up getting sick. Fortunately, Friday was the worst day and at this point I mostly just have the lingering stuffiness and fuzzy head feeling…nothing a few liquids can’t get me through.

It always amazes me how something as small as a virus can take over your entire physical being and control everything. I wonder how often that is the case with us when it comes to our mental condition. How many times have I obsessed over something that is minor, in the grand scheme of things, to the point where I’ve allowed it to dictate my entire attitude and demeanor…sucking all my strength away? I know I’ve debilitated myself in the past over thoughts and self-images, more than I care to remember. I’d like to believe at this point in my life that I’ve mostly risen above that and that those moments are rarer and shorter than they used to be.

1. left my boarding pass at the ticket counter, which I discovered after going through the entire security line,
2. left my guitar in the security center, which I discovered after I got all the way to my gate, and
3. left my coat and scarf on the plane, which I discovered after I left the terminal.

Needless to say, I’ve been trying to catch up on sleep since I got here in between working. I think I’ve still got a ways to go.

This time through, I am staying in a part of town that’s very close to where I lived 10 years ago…right next to my ex-wife’s old employer and many of the places we used to eat when we were here. Down the street is another area that I later spent time at during a blurry, reckless trip here with my ex-girlfriend when I was sort of angry at the world and living like I didn’t care whether I survived each day.

While I’m here, I’m listening to a CD that I made of my old band’s songs that we are performing next week…so I can remember the lyrics. The first time I came to this city was after we signed our record deal to meet people at the label in ’95 and begin the next phase of my life.

Suffice it to say, there are no shortage of memories while I drive around this town…especially when listening to the soundtrack of yesteryear.

So, today was my first day off (in as long as I remember), and after dealing with one studio-related issue in the morning, I decided to finally go see The Wrestler (a great movie). This may have been dangerous, considering the state of mind I’m in this week.

Every musician worries about approaching the day when they’re past their prime…I’m sure that many non-musicians do, too. For me, the fear has never been the arrival of that day…after all, it’s nearly unavoidable, and in the right circumstances it almost sounds like a relief. The thing that makes me tremble, though, is the idea that I won’t have accomplished enough by then. Maybe there’s never enough to accomplish, but to conceptualize an existence where I’m alone with nothing but a handful of old, decaying awards and antiquated CD’s is suffocating.

The thing that matters in life is people…and so often we sacrifice our relationships with them in order to attain something that we don’t even know that we’re gonna attain. But it’s a two-edged sword. People let you down…while, for me, music never has. But music is only there for you to so much of a level. I’ve expressed some real emotions and some extremely deep portions of myself through music…more than I’ve ever been able to do with a person. But so often what I’m expressing are emotions having to do with how lonely life is and how much I’m longing for some kind of connection with something or someone that never exists. It’s kind of a comforting force that still feels a little cold in the end.

You can be standing on the ropes with your arms in the air, playing the part of who the screaming faces in the crowd want to believe you are, while only you know that your heart is dying inside. If the only part of you that’s alive is the part that gives something to an audience, eventually there must come a point when there’s no reason to go on. I guess that’s what scares me.

I’m turning 37 in a few months (that number looks bigger to me on the screen than it feels when I say it out loud). I used to dread getting older. There are things I dislike about aging, but they’re all the typical cliches like getting tired earlier, slowing metabolisms and disappearing hairlines…and, honestly, none of those things matter to me much. I’ve kind of started relishing the aging process now, at least mentally.

All the sayings are true: youth is wasted on the young and hindsight is 20/20. But it’s how it’s supposed to be. You can’t fully appreciate today if you don’t have the reference point of yesterday. When I lived in Southern California, many of my native friends from there thought it was the apocalypse when one of those rare occasions would occur where the sky was gray and rain started falling. Living in San Diego was like living inside of a postcard almost every day–sunny, clean and aesthetically nice. In Washington, where I grew up and have now returned, the sun is a moody bastard that comes and visits when it feels like it…and when he does you fully appreciate his presence and take in every UV ray like a delicacy. If you were from San Diego, you’d just consider the sun part of the wallpaper.

I’m old enough now to have experienced some real highs and some real shit. I’ve experienced low times that I thought I wouldn’t survive and high times that I thought I’d never be knocked down from. Once (at least), my entire world fell apart. Through a combination of a very few very good friends, some inner strength that I somehow found, and probably some luck, I’ve survived and have proved to myself the truth in another saying: Whatever doesn’t kill you does make you stronger.

I’ve always noticed that many people who were formerly drug addicts, combat soldiers or are tragedy survivors have this look in their eyes that I used to envy. There’s a state of being that I think some people reach, where they’ve stared death and hell straight in the eyes…and after crossing that barrier, nothing can scare them. I’ve started to feel that way in my mid-thirties. I remember my twenties as being filled with fear and anxiety…hoping I was doing the right thing but constantly scared that I wasn’t (and, often times, I wasn’t).

I’d like to think that today I make better decisions than I did ten years ago, and I think I mostly do. But, the reason you couldn’t drag me kicking and screaming back to my twenties is that constant fearful feeling I had. I still fall down occasionally, which probably won’t stop, but I’ve gotten back up enough times now to quit worrying about the ground so much. Sometimes the imagined impact of falling paralyzes you so greatly that you end up not going anywhere in order to avoid it. And then you’re no more alive than a rock or a trash can.

Okay, I’m out.

I just finished changing strings on my acoustic guitar…something I would have kept putting off were it not for the fact that I have a solo gig tonight, and my guitar was strung up for a weird recording tuning that I used in the studio last week.

Playing an acoustic guitar with new strings feels to me like going on a first date. There’s no history, no depth…and no warmth. It’s all uncomfortable shiny resistance to bending. You have to manhandle a guitar with new strings more than one with broken-in ones to get something real out of it.

Old strings=Nick Drake. New strings=Jack Johnson.

So I’ll have to wait for another week or two for my acoustic guitar to feel like my guitar again. The one that likes to hang out on the couch with me with the TV on in the background while I’m in my pajamas…not this one that just wants to look all sparkly in the expensive clubs at night.

Tragically in life, by the time you figure out the value of comfortable old strings you also realize their inability to be manufactured. There are definitely certain sizes and varieties which your fingers will more easily feel an instant connection with than others, but there is no quick way to get that familiar peaceful feeling with them until you’ve endured the breaking-in period…regardless of whatever “connection” you think you’ve found.

What were we talking about again?

In 1995, we recorded our first Grammatrain album for a label. I think the whole thing took about 3 weeks, including tracking and mixdown (and I’m currently stressed about finishing 5 songs in another 2 weeks that we started about 2 weeks ago!). We mixed our album at Seattle’s Bad Animals in the B-room at the same time that Alice In Chains were recording their self-titled album in the main tracking room there.

Their room was highly off limits, and they were like ghosts…rarely or never seen by any of us mere mortals. Only once while we were there did I catch a single glimpse of any of them. One afternoon, I saw Layne walk down the hallway, through the front door, get on his Harley and leave. That was it.

Bad Animals was where all the big Seattle bands recorded back then, and we felt priveleged and probably a little cocky to be there. AIC had been working on their album for several months at that point, and there were legends floating around the facility about them. The main one I remember had to do with their starting and stopping times. The day I saw Layne leave, it was probably around 3 or 4 in the afternoon and he was leaving for the day. One of the engineers told me that when they started their record, they were coming in to the studio around noon and leaving around midnight. Eventually they started coming in around 1pm and leaving at 1am…then 2pm to 2am, and so forth. After a while of this progressively staggering schedule, they were coming in to the studio at midnight and leaving at noon. The record took so long to finish that eventually they ended up back to their original schedule of coming in at noon again.

This always amused me…because it meant they subtracted a day from their lives.

Creative time goes at its own speed. If I’m staying awake late to pay bills, mess around on Facebook, or watch TV it’s often work to keep my eyes open. But if I’m recording a guitar solo or working on some exciting part of a new song, I’ll go hours before I’ve realized that any time has passed. I suspect the body must release something like the artistic version of adrenaline (which is, perhaps, just called “adrenaline”) to keep the mind going when it thinks it’s on to something. I love that feeling…though it sometimes sucks the next morning.

Anyway, it’s almost 3am and I’ve had a productive and long last few nights…so I think I should go to bed before midnight starts feeling like noon.

]]> http://petestewart.wordpress.com/2009/02/27/burning-the-midnight-oil/feed/ 0 petestewart http://petestewart.wordpress.com/2009/02/26/iloks/ http://petestewart.wordpress.com/2009/02/26/iloks/#comments Thu, 26 Feb 2009 09:52:40 +0000 petestewart http://petestewart.wordpress.com/?p=52 ]]> Sometimes technology pisses me off. There’s this invention in digital audio land called an iLok. It is basically a small copy protection device that plugs into your USB port and allows you to carry your plugins or audio software from computer to computer and use it. I have an iLok that has licenses for software that I own and use in the studio…so when I am going back and forth between home and the ManFort, I have to bring it with me to be able to work on my songs in both locations. The fact that you’re able to use your software on multiple computers because of this small little piece of technology is cool…right?

Except that I have forgotten it several times now when driving from one location to the other. Tonight, after pulling into my driveway a little after midnight following a 14-hour recording day, I realized that I had again left it at the studio…which was irritating, because I have a lot of editing work to do tomorrow which I’d frankly rather do while wearing pajamas at home drinking coffee than at the studio. I figured I’d deal with it in the morning…until I logged onto Facebook and saw multiple posts about the snow dropping tonight. Sure enough, I looked outside and the ground was starting to whiten. Damn. No iLok tomorrow morning + snow on road = stuck home not being productive. I’m stressed out enough regarding deadlines and such at the moment without adding extra time getting nothing accomplished.

So, I just finished driving round trip BACK to the studio to grab this stupid thing that is the size of my thumb that I can never seem to quite drill into my brain the importance of bringing with me each time I leave there. I swear if someone offered me the ability to implant the contents of my iLok into my forehead to avoid the amount of gas I’ve wasted on repeat trips like the one I just did again, I’d pledge my allegiance to them and whatever Big Brother government they represented.

Btw, I just booked a show yesterday at ToST in Seattle for next Tuesday the 3rd. Probably the last thing I have time for right now, but I always enjoy doing acoustic shows (even when I don’t have time for them), and the opportunity came up so grabbed it. Kelly’s band, Lloyd’s Rocket, is playing next door at the Hi Dive right before I go on, so it’ll be a double whammy night. Good times…

Anyway, I think I needed a day off today both physically and mentally, so I gave it to myself. And I saw a pretty amazing band at the Sunset Tavern. I’ve spent the rest of the night waiting for muscle relaxers and red wine to kick in so I can go to sleep (and I am a little annoyed at the fact that it’s almost 1am and I’m feeling neither of them).

That’s about all I got for ya today.

At age 18, practically days after graduating high school, I bolted for Seattle. I couldn’t wait to be in a real city where I could be in a band and play real shows with real people watching. I still spent my first few years of young adulthood somewhat secluded in church-land, but I managed to make it out into the real world with a couple bands I was in. Pioneer Square was where much of the cool stuff happened (I’m dating myself, because it mostly sucks now). You could pay one cover charge and visit several clubs, all within blocks of each other and all containing bands that were good more often than not. The Colourbox was one of the main clubs we played when we started Grammatrain. Back then, I saw all the main Seattle bands everyone thinks of now (Soundgarden, Alice In Chains, Nirvana) as well as a bunch that you’ve maybe never heard of and many that I don’t remember. What I do remember is loving the feeling that Seattle always gave me.

I now live in the lower unit of a duplex in Kenmore, definitely not the coolest part of town. The upper unit is occupied by my sister and her two boys. In addition to the availability of The Manfort (the studio in North Seattle I mostly work out of these days), the unique opportunity to be that close to my sister and nephews was the big catalyst to finally getting me back to my beloved city. This morning, I woke up, made Dunkin Donuts coffee (I always feel like I’m breaking the laws of physics when I do that on the West Coast) and went upstairs to visit with them. I *love* that I can do that. I’m very sure that if you asked me to rank the most important people in my life whom I would do anything for, the top three spots on that list would be occupied by them. I have serious doubts about whether I will ever have children of my own, but the kind of love I have for my two nephews I’m fairly certain is a valid glimpse into what it must be like to feel that kind of a bond with your own offspring. I remember the moment I recognized that feeling inside of me.

When I lived in San Diego, my sister and her kids came down to visit on a trip that was paid for by the Make-A-Wish Foundation (more on this in a moment). Part of their trip was getting to go to Sea World, so we spent all day running aroud the park watching shows, feeding animals and eating lunch by Shamu. Near the end of the day, we were walking from one end of the park to the other to catch the dog-and-cat show. My youngest nephew is Benson. He’s five now, so he was probably three…and for whatever reason, he insisted on me carrying him everywhere we went. Being an uncle who rarely got to see his nephews then, I didn’t mind one bit (nor would I now). At one point during this eternal walk across Sea World, I looked down at Benson who was in my arms, to see that he had fallen asleep with his head against my chest. In that moment, I realized I would without hesitation take a bullet for this kid, and there was an emotion inside I’d never felt before that has been there since when I look at or think of either of them.

Lukas is my oldest nephew; he’s seven. When he was two and a half, the worst thing I’ve ever seen in my life happened and he was diagnosed with cancer. At that time he had a tumor that went the entire length of his spinal cord. After several surgeries, a wheelchair, literally countless visits to the hospital, a multitude of seizures and multiple rounds of chemotherapy, he has survived thus far but not without a fight and not without scars. The cancer eventually spread from his spinal cord to his brain and has robbed much of his personality and cognitive skills. There is nothing fair or logical or right about his situation. I couldn’t even begin to recall how many times I’ve cried over him in the last five years. Sometimes I’ll be doing something completely unrelated and a random thought about his situation will pop into my head, and I’ll instantly find myself holding back tears. There is no way to put into words what kind of complete sadness and grief exists when you see something that awful and evil happen to someone that innocent and pure while you are absolutely helpless against it. You will learn what it really is to weep if you are ever unfortunate enough to experience anything like it.

Writing and playing music is what makes me feel alive. It’s always been that way, and I can’t see how it ever won’t. Being a brother and an uncle is what makes me feel important. The future is so often a cloudy mess, and it certainly is in this case. One of the things I’ve struggled to learn in life is to accept the small amount of control we have over things and make the most of them without obsessing over them. I can’t remove Luke’s tumors or give him his brain back. I can’t fix things for him or his brother or his mom. All I can do is just be here instead of somewhere else…and I don’t know how much of being here is really for my benefit and how much of it is for theirs. My overly analytical personality often leaves me unsure what the hell I’m doing during much of my life, and in this case I’m just glad to, for once, know where I want to be and have the ability to make it so.

www.lukasvoss.com

Luke

Benson

What this means is that I have a deadline. Deadlines are good because they mean that I finish things that I start. Deadlines are bad because I enjoy imagining that I’m going to finish something sooner than I actually will.

But, let’s visit the subject of recording rock guitar for a moment. Recording rock guitar is a simple art, but it’s an art nonetheless. There’s a certain amount of scientific methodology to it and there’s a certain amount of just going with your gut and checking your analytical brain at the door. Balancing those two aspects is where the art lies.

We (i.e, Kelly Lichtenwaldt, best friend/engineer/studio-owner, and I) tried out an array of mic pre’s and speaker cab/microphone combos for what amounted to an entire day before I began recording keeper tracks. I don’t usually spend quite that much time getting a tone dialed in on a project, but this was a bit of a special occasion. Kelly and I (i.e., mostly Kelly) built “the magic box” last fall, which consists of 8 mic pre’s and 3 EQ’s that were all pulled out of an old 70′s Ward Beck mixing console. We were of the belief that this magic box would sound good, and Sunday was the day we were able to finally test that theory.

Fortunately we were right (3 out of the 8 pre’s need some work, but that leaves 5 magic ones…more than enough to record guitars with).

So, after finishing the great mic-pre shoot-out, I’ve finished the main guitars on two songs. Two songs that contain an abundance of testosterone. I’ve got more to say (and hopefully more intelligently), but I’m seriously falling asleep on my MacBook at the moment, so with that I’ll be calling it a night.

Oh, we’ve uploaded a couple of webisodes with some studio footage (it’s called “Grammatrain: Behind The Tracks”. Get it?). I’ll post them below.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Like many, I’ve found myspace to be progressively more irritating over the last couple of years (perhaps that’s called growing up?), and my blogging has become less and less frequent. In fact, I think the only reason I haven’t deleted my myspace account is because there are precious writings of mine which only exist in the fabric of my myspace account that I have been, so far, too lazy to copy and paste onto the safety of a hard drive somewhere for preservation’s sake. I need to get on that…

So…I have a half-hearted theory that finding a new home for blogging will awaken both my need and discipine to write. We’ll see how that works out.

To start with…an update is in order:

My old band, Grammatrain, is currently recording an album…for the first time in 10 years. We signed to a Christian EMI record label long ago, made a few albums, toured all over and endured the ups and downs of professional musician life. Since that time, I’ve (mostly) grown up…and many life changes have occurred. It’s a unique experience that we’re actually working on something together this many years later, and I feel that I should be documenting it.

Since the time of yesteryear, I have:

• gotten divorced (I was married at age 20 to a girl I met at age 19. we stayed together for over 10 years).

• renounced my faith in Christianity. Some have written condemning emails to me since then which contain a disturbing line of thought that one’s belief in such things is a choice…as opposed to simply the recognition of what one thinks is true. I’m sure there will be more on this later. Suffice it to say that transformation has been one of the most painful processes in my life to date.

• won two Grammy’s and a Gold Record for albums that I have produced and written on.

• lived in Seattle, Nashville, San Diego, Los Angeles and now am in Seattle again.

• experienced a lot more than I would have dreamed…both highs and lows, good and evil, dane and mundane (I’m pretty sure ‘dane’ doesn’t mean anything, but I thought that sounded clever).

Lately, I’m struck with thoughts of how maturity and loneliness have seemed to go somewhat hand in hand during my latest chapters of adult life. I went through a rather reckless phase when I didn’t care much whether I lived or died…in fact I think I often hoped for death. I experienced things that I suppose I needed to, and yet I’m glad those things are in the past and not the present. I have managed to reign in much of the beast within, and in doing so have landed in a place that is often filled with quiet. To me, quiet equals peace, but it also often equals loneliness and isolation. I have certainly not lost my ability to love, rather I think I’ve gained more of an insight to what love really is than I previously was capable of understanding…which has sort of raised the bar of when it’s real and when it isn’t. So, I often pour myself into work and music. Music, it sometimes seems, might end up being my bride forever and ever. This thought scares me from time to time.

I feel that I should elaborate more eventually, but not tonight. Hell, I don’t even know if this URL will remain active in the morning. In fact, I don’t even know if I actually typed this correctly and whether or not it is even a blog yet, being the wordpress newbie I am.

I took three muscle relaxers because my back is particularly angry with me lately (it hates Pro Tools), so I’ll end it there before they start talking instead of me.

Good night, John Boy. Good night, Mary Ellen.

-p