Up From The Deep Water

Once again, swimming in darkness, deep in the downbelow, pressure in my ears, my chest, I can't see to find which way is up. Slowly rising, a little light above, maybe I can make it to the surface before my lungs burst or I just give up and drink in the black water all around. If I do that I'll just sink back and that'll be that, no more struggles, no more pain, no more nothin'. But for some unreasonable reason I keep rising, lighter now, I can start to look around and see bright colored schools of fish swimming beside me, beautiful things. The water becomes transparent, and warmer, and suddenly I break the surface, sputtering, sucking in lungfuls of blessed air, sun on my wet head as I look around. The sea is everywhere, green sea and blue sky. I'm a long way from anywhere, but hey, I can breathe again.

Inspirations (and Intimidations)

I've had a couple of very inspiring (and kind of intimidating) musical moments this past week. The first one was seeing Junior Brown in concert! A good friend and client took Cyn and I to see him at the Ark this weekend. Amazing guitarist! The guy plays everything from Hendrix to Honkytonk to Segovia, all brilliantly...and then switches to his steel guitar and plays that brilliantly. Plus, he has a great singing voice and writes excellent songs. For a while after seeing him I was considering just throwing the guitar out the window and hanging it up. I think that would upset Junior if I did, though, so I won't. But Man! Get you over to YouTube and check him out. Beyond belief.

The other very inspirational event was watching a movie documentary of percussionist Evelyn Glennie called "Touch The Sound". Glennie is a Classical percussionist who does unbelievable improvisatory work, from walls of sound with the Kodo drummers to amazing delicate bits playing with chopsticks on plates, and much more. A very strange and almost mystical thing about her is that she is effectively deaf...her ears register very little sound at all. Somehow she has taught herself to "hear" sound using her whole body, and it seems that the experience is very rich and beautiful to her. The movie is a fabulous experience in itself, a dialog about sound and perception, and a treat to watch. Her duets with guitarist Fred Frith are worth the price of admission, seriously! Easily found at video rental shops and worth the time for anyone who ever enjoys music and sound.

So I have a gig tomorrow with my band The Mobsters...will I bring any of this inspiration to the table there? Well, I still don't have Brown's chops or Glennie's sensitivity, but having experienced a little of that kind of artistry sure won't hurt me. Knowing that there are far frontiers to explore, vast horizons to travel toward...music is an endless quest, a toy that keeps changing shape, an infinite journey into yourself and out into everyone else in the universe. And a lot of fun besides!

The Ever-Shorter Attention Span

Is it because we're all just really busy keeping the hamster wheels moving? Our communications with each other keep getting less and less with all this groovy info-sharing tech we've got going. In the Victorian era people's letters to each other were epic...long, beautifully written, insightful and informative, many of them still worth reading even now by strangers to those long gone friends and lovers. The Brownings correspondence was incredible...later, George Bernard Shaw had many epistolary friendships, long ones (like decades of intense communications) with people, some of whom he never met in the flesh. Ol' H.P. Lovecraft, that shy and crazy guy, seemed to communicate much better by letter...not to mention our old pal Vince Van Gaugh and his bro.

These days we seem to only have time for a brief cellphone call, or perhaps a few words in an email, but most of my emails are pretty darn short! We're a rushed race racing towards a future that's unknown, but we're getting there darned fast. Now we have things like Twitter and MySpace's Status Reports...summing up your life in a sentence and broadcasting it out to the world! Perhaps that will save some time, I dunno. I'm supposedly on Twitter (well, I'm supposedly on a lot of things but really I'm mostly lying on the couch reading comics) and I do fill out my Status Report now and then for a laugh, but I just wonder where all this leads. Will we get to where we just put up One Word every day on some site, and have that represent all our communication to our friends and family? Maybe just One Single Letter. "Yes, I think I'll go with 'Q' today, I'm sure 'X' is already taken"...Man, I just can't say. Maybe I'm overreacting a bit...but if you write me a letter I'll sure write you back.

Mink

Another day of rain in Spring...watching the puddles sprinkle themselves full, the little creeks run with fresh water, and my lawn get high as my knees...things are beautiful and lush this time of year. The wetlands are full of frogs singing their courting songs, and full of herons and cranes eating the frogs, and turtles coming out of hibernation to snarf up whatever it is they snarf. The other day I was driving down the dirt roads to my rehearsal at John's house, and I narrowly missed hitting a MINK! I hadn't seen one before in Michigan, but unmistakably a mink. Cyn says she's seen one too by that same swampland, so I'm guessing that there's a little minky community out there. This one had caught a vole or something and was carrying it across the street...presumably to its lair, perhaps to feed its little minklets. Very cool!

I'm aware these days of being pretty bipolar, and that's reflected in these posts I know. It's like being trapped in a black hole in space...the gravity of the hole is very strong. Sometimes I'll make my way out for a while, then get sucked back in. The good thing is that even in the worst of it I have the perspective that there's a better reality that I'll eventually get to. The bad thing is that even when I'm out of it I know that there's that black hole, exerting its gravity, ready to pull me in again. All I can do is try to keep positive as I can, stay healthy and all, and hope for the best (St. John's Wort helps a good bit too). But little things like mink sightings are very helpful for me, they show me a world outside of my head that is amazing, constant and beautiful.

LastFM, MySpace & Fun

Listening to my library of tunes on LastFm.com...what a cool idea for a music site! Type in the bands you like best, and it starts suggesting other bands, which you can accept or deny, and grow your music library fractally in whatever directions you like. Mine seems to have a lot of great obscure Psychedelic Rock (surprise), old R&B, crazy outsider music and eclectic tunes from musicians all over the world. I dig it! Right now the player is kicking out "Silver & Gold", that amazing instrumental from the old Quicksilver band. Cool stuff.

It's nice too, because I'm finding lots of artists I'd never known of before...Finnish rockers, obscure guys from the 60s I missed somehow, South African Mbganga bands...that's fun. And I've been needing some fun! There's times I'm so busy spinning my hamster wheel that I forget what makes me feel good. I'm starting to try to remember though.

I just recently went over 1000 friends on my MySpace account. While nobody sent me a prize, with so many friendlists in the 5 figures these days (!!!), and even though 99% of those people won't ever write me, it did make me think about what I actually have gotten from the MySpace thing. I've met some really fabulous people...folks that I've become good real friends with, that I like to hang out with, be it online or in person. And I've been exposed to all kinds of very cool music, art and poetry done by really creative artists!! (By the way, I'm STILL baffled by people who ban bands from their friend requests...and some of them are band sites themselves! What the heck are you thinking?) Anyhow, thanks to all of you guys for connecting with me, and sharing your work, humor and ideas with me...it's been a gas! Hopefully, much more to come...good things for us all...

New Day (And Possible Concussion)

I'm starting to feel a little better...sometimes it all just gets to you, yknow? But today's an improvement from yesterday, and perhaps tomorrow will be better still. Cyn (bless her heart) was walking me around the yard showing me her plantings...things are gonna be really pretty if all these trees take. We went into the barn to see if the swallows had arrived yet, and I managed to clock myself a real good one on an overhanging beam! Saw stars and everything. Cyn picked me up off the floor and dusted the hay and horsepoop off me, and I seem OK. I looked in the mirror and my eyeballs seem all right, so probably no concussion or anything. But I've got a really stylish lump on my noggin! Maybe it's knocked some sense into me though...I could use that...

No Way Forward

If there's a wall to hit, I hit it a while ago. Somehow I feel drained of any strength. I can manage an outward show of optimism, but inside I don't know if I see a way forward right now. And I feel exibitionistic writing this out in a public blog, too, but there it is...I think all the pressures in my life are finally coming to the fore. I was denying that they were getting under my skin, but I guess I was wrong about that. Perhaps tomorrow will be better, it often is. Hope so.