​I still have this thing where I apologize for my creative process. Or I don’t talk about it, keeping it to myself for fear that I might make someone in my audience uncomfortable. But as the ice sheets of hibernal contemplation slowly melt away, I’m struck by a series of questions. What if the act of self-expression that comes with setting forth one’s creative agenda authentically isn’t merely personal, but essential? What if it’s not an indulgence, but a responsibility?

Somewhere in my pre-teen years this tendency (to apologize—lie, even—about who I was) was crystalized within a conversation I had with a young friend at the time. He had asked me, out of nowhere—a stroke of inspiration no doubt—whether I would rather in my life be principled, or popular. After far less thought than the question really should have warranted, I remember—or rather, my mother reminds me—saying that I’d rather be popular.

​I look back on that time with an air of Javertesque recrimination, pitiless to the inherent errant nature of youth, and accusatory—castigatory even—towards my ongoing attempts at that age to make people like me. This heedless quest turned me into a cruel, inhumane being, one who would just as soon turn on a friend or vulnerable colleague to score cheap social points as he would pet the head of an approaching dog.

This whole way of being led to a wholly regrettable existence. Some say that when you hit your sixties, people you knew from your youth start slowly dying away. The whole sentiment seems a bit of a cliché. Unfortunately, for a miserable group of us, we seem to have reached that age in our mid-forties. People have left us, neither fortuitously nor in favorable fashion, and knowledge of their struggle, their illness, has become our pain, our quiet anguish to work through. Regret takes on a whole new meaning in this theater, knowing that our unkind words and actions truly can never be reconciled.

What can be done? How can the soul be not merely soothed, but changed, lastingly, so that we learn from our behaviors rather than repeat them? Here is where I remember the term “metanoia,” to which I was made aware by the book “The Jesus Mysteries” by Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy. The work elucidates that the gospels, written by Greek scholars, would have used the word metanoia in the context of renouncing “sin” from one’s life. The common English translation is what we laypeople know as “to repent,” which conjures images of apology and/or feeling sorrow and looking for forgiveness, which is a handily straightforward thing to administer by a body ecclesiastical.

​Harder for the clergy to dole out is the other translation of metanoia, which is, essentlally, “to have a fundamental change of heart.” This understanding of the word struck me as far more potent, because rather than simply saying sorry (then being “forgiven” by some force often external to the situation), this definition requires one to be accountable for one’s decisions. It’s all well and good to smash the neighbor’s window while playing carelessly, say sorry, then do it again the next day. More difficult, and much more impactful, is it to change your behavior, take more care while playing, and keep everyone’s houses intact.

The world, in this commentator’s opinion, asks for too much meaningless saying sorry, and far too little making actual substantive change. Thankfully I was given the opportunity for that fundamental change of heart shortly after my cruel behavior, when a seemingly-harmless prank by two friends destroyed my reputation and turned me into a pariah overnight. (I might talk about this later, although in twenty-first century hindsight it reflects perfectly well on me, whereas it would probably be considered character assassination, of these two individuals plus a fair number of members of my year in my house, for having acted so ignorantly, so we’ll see.) At the time, the feeling was excruciating. I was already being beaten up pretty badly by the terminally racist older students, and having no safety net in my own year made being in school quite close to unbearable. Tragicomically, my parents were too busy starting other families to notice (cheap shot maybe, but true.)

Somewhere in there I made a choice, to stop vying for attention in all the wrong places, realizing, as a certain green-skinned iconoclast might put it, “If that’s love, it comes at much too high a cost.” I don’t know how self-aware I really was, but there came a point where it just didn’t make sense to be unkind, whether to achieve social status, out of sick self-satisfaction, out of revenge, out of fear, or any other logically fallacious reason for doing so. Yes, there were still going to be people out there making an art out of being cuntwads (technical term), but that didn’t mean I had to be one of them.

Which brings me back to the subject of apologizing for one’s process. The shift in paradigm, from sitting down and shutting up, to recording then posting online every moment of your life, might be a generational thing, the former being something that people my age and older stick to because it’s seen as proper. But as the age of not just self-validation but active self-promotion lumbers on, I wonder if we, the more seasoned members society, need to change our mindset, and come to understand the act of self-expression as more than just aggrandizement.

We create the new not by fighting the old but by making it irrelevant, so declares the widely-known quote by Richard Buckminster Fuller (which I’ve, somewhat ironically, paraphrased here). For me, the act of doing what I do, putting together ideas, music, and story day in day out, is a subtle prayer in the only language that I know: positive creativity. Old fart (and getting older) that I am claimed to be, I have faith indisputable in my continued nimbleness of mind, that can recalibrate for the better should the circumstance of my life direct it. Everyone should be so lucky. Yet I believe everyone is.

​Your power to create is infinite. Your power to summon the light is intrinsic. People are worried about the world because they think it’s a mess. And they’re partly right: right now, the world is a mess. But being worried about it has never been and never will be the way forward. I look at what is going on—everywhere—and I’m remarkably grouse free. I imagine it’s because I’m of the mind that if others are misbehaving, I can’t necessarily change that, but I can still choose the way I behave. One act of self-expression, when that expression is a moment of kindness, of productive positivity, is worth a dozen acts of cruelty, and at least a hundred gripes and complaints. We are so lucky to live in a time when there are shining stars, when there’s a universe out there that we can be conscious of. Express yourself, boldly. Harness your creative spirit and become one with luminosity. Love your process, and be your shining star.

​Travel safe and talk soon.

Quote source: Here Comes the Sun (Harrison), The Beatles

-Indigo Girls

​Ok, so we may have overdone it.

Finding ourselves each poorly at year’s end could be a signal to my wife and me that we pushed a little too hard over its course. It’s been a building year, with practical decisions abound and processes set in motion, destined not to see completion until the following year or later. Still, these years happen from time to time—rather, more often than not—and I’ve learned to relish and respect them as much as I do the roller coaster periods of high output that inevitably follow.
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We’re used to the long game. We chose it, and it nourishes us in a way that expedience never has and never could. That’s not to say there are no downsides. There are times I fall prey to avarice, envy, and other negatives unbecoming of a person living immaculately. I take ill-guided solace in lack and the zero sum game, believing for a second that another’s success is tenable only in a world that guarantees my failure. To that end, I believe in the inevitability of failure-on-my-watch, see no triumphant end to my journey, and succumb to despair and languish in gloom and sorrow.

​If there’s a prescribed way out of this sinkhole, I’d like to know what it is. Right now the only antidote for these moments of which I am aware appears as a combination of two things: 1) embrace madness and the lack of logic, and allow yourself to be an “unreasonably happy” individual. World imploding and doomed to catastrophe? Smile, darn ya, smile! And 2) to quote the character Dory from Finding Nemo, “Just keep swimming!” These moments of depression are equivalent to the psyche trying to escape the gravity of a black hole. Your only hope is to achieve escape velocity (which is, I dunno, probably the speed of light?) before you reach the event horizon, a near impossible feat, made more impossible if one doesn’t even try. So, boop-boop-diddum-boddum-waddum, swim and swim as fast as you can.

​The long game values authenticity, growth, and self-awareness more than anything, more than money, more than status, more than influence and fame. It’s a lonely life, because for the most part the world is entirely predicated on these very things. I remember there came a point when I stopped giving a rats about which ones of my former classmates sold platinum or were nominated for Oscars. I remember realizing, in that moment, how it all just didn’t seem so important anymore.

There are two aspects to this mindset. The first is knowing what you are here to learn, how you are intended to grow, both from a spiritual level as well as a practical one. Understanding what life lessons are yours, uniquely, to tackle, provides one with a sense of direction. Everything else fades away. The second aspect has to do with a phrase that I used earlier: living immaculately. This has to do with treating others with respect, grace, and kindness. Ultimately, our only lasting impression in time is the energy output of our interactions. Our achievements will eventually crumble to dust, and even absolute fame cannot stop the grapevine from misattributing our deeds (just ask Richard III). The interactions themselves are quickly forgotten, but the energy generated by them is eternal. Imagine what a world we’d live in if everyone who believes in a religion said, “Hey stranger, you think differently from me, and that’s okay.”

In my last blog, I wrote about a condition that I have that makes it imperative that I practice living immaculately, not just patroling the energy that I generate, but also carefully curating the outside energy that comes into my space. I remember what is surely a mis-quote of former US Secretary of State Colin Powell, in reference to then candidate Barack Obama’s religious beliefs: “The correct answer is, yes, he is a Christian. The right answer is, it shouldn’t make a difference whether he is a Christian or a Muslim.” Possibly the smartest thing any US cabinet member has ever said. How far we’ve come.

To this, I submit: I curate my relationships, whether friendships, work-relationships, or other, very sincerely and very selectively. Why? The correct answer is because, as a suicidal, negative and destructive energies could easily seep into and overcome my consciousness with thoughts of self-harm. But the right answer, and what I submit to the world this year, is that people should curate their relationships, sincerely and selectively, because people deserve to be treated well. All people. Even the shit ones. Especially the shit ones. Immaculate living postulates that if everyone treats others with kindness, grace, and respect, then everyone will be treated with kindness, grace, and respect. For no reason whatsoever. Just because.

And by doing so, maybe we’ll turn the world from a place overflowing with misguided billionaires, clueless award winners, musclemen, and warlords, to one overflowing with compassion, harmony, and balance.
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Travel safe, and talk soon.

WISHING YOU ALL A HAPPY 2025!

Quote source: Watershed (Saliers), Indigo Girls

-The New Christy Minstrels

I recently came across a quote, a line spoken by Keanu Reeves in the role of Frank from the movie Destination Wedding, which I’m paraphrasing here: “There are eight billion people in the world. So when one of them behaves badly towards you they’re actually doing you a great favor because they’re saving you time. They’re telling you that they’re not worth your while. They’re freeing you to say, thank you for the information, I will now move onto to the seven billion, nine hundred and ninety nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety nine other people, some of whom may have some value.”

The end of the old year greets me with the scent of betrayal, the sense of dejection, of goals exceeded, yet still apparently so far out of reach. When people promise you that they have changed for the better, yet the noxious, poisonous behaviors still persist, where is the threshold of compassion? Must the winds of forgiveness undermine the years of hard work you’ve done to heal your soul? There are eight billion people in the world. Must we return to the same ones, time and again, if the ultimate result is that they cause us pain and take us away from our journey?

I should back up. In 2019, my life went into free-fall. My medication for bipolar disorder all of a sudden wasn’t enough to contain the mania and the rage that had been insidiously plaguing my home life, and I checked myself into an inpatient unit not once but twice in the span of three months. The programs in there were intense to say the least; I had small but measurable consolation knowing that legendary songwriter James Taylor had made the trek before me in the very same ward. When I came home, I was beset by chronic anxiety, and it took the better part of the rest of the year to normalize me to being in the world outside once again.

One thing that was determined while I was inpatient was the fact that I was, in a word, suicidal. Now the concept of suicidality is oft misunderstood; it’s worth understanding that this condition manifests in manifold ways. In some cases (my case) it presents similar to alcoholism, where the patient is dependent, in some way, not on the substance, but on suicidal ideation. What this means is that in the same way that a recovering alcoholic is self-aware enough to know that there’s never “only one drink,” a suicidal knows that whereas a non suicidal may have a random thought one day of jumping off a bridge (know as intrusive thoughts), when the suicidal has similar thoughts, they last for days, sometimes weeks, and can grow and sprout into terrifying detail concerning the means, methods, wheres and whys. Something about the ability not just to harm oneself (that’s a different thing) but to end one’s journey once and for all, is captivating to the suicidal.

One can understand why. The greatest constant in the world is uncertainty, and there’s a certain comfort in knowing that if things get too dicey, you can reset the game (or end the game, if reincarnation’s not your thing). It’s a compulsion, and it takes work, a lot of work, sometimes hours of focus at once, chugging away, double tasking as I somehow try and complete the work of striving musician and artist at the same time, to turn the mind away from what for the suicidal are scarily reassuring nihilistic mind patterns.

Here's how this relates to Keanu Reeves getting a pedicure. It takes a staggering effort for the suicidal to live a life that even comes close to what you could call normal. More often than I care to admit even to my wife, the first thought in my mind when I wake up rings along the lines of, “you know, that lower limb on our Sycamore—I reckon that’s probably strong enough.” Fucked up, right? That’s how it goes. And I’m not about to spend the next four hours trying to meditate my way out of this, so I get up, turn the mind as efficiently and as unswervingly as I can, and I get on with my day. I have time for me. I have time for my wife. I have time for my work. These are the gifts I give myself.

What I don’t have time for is people treating me poorly, gracelessly, and disrespectfully (and neither should you, by the way). Bad enough that 60% of my mental radio static is self-generated existential threats, the last thing I need on top of that are people telling me why I don’t measure up to their expectations. I’ve given up a lot to create a worldspace based on mutual respect, support, and validation (the good kind), and I will not give it up easily. I’ve sacrificed success, longstanding communities, old friendships, all in the name of mental healing, all in the name of just making it through to tomorrow. I’ll admit, at times it has been painful, but I wouldn’t change a thing if I had to do it all again.
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I have to live immaculately. The only other choice is death. My mind must be clean, well-oiled, and quicker than a fisher cat chasing its prey. I must constantly learn how to express emotions more and more healthily. I must communicate with compassion and with precision. I must love with all my heart, even if that means it sometimes breaks. And most importantly, no toxicity must enter my worldspace. This is the killer of souls, the breaker of the foundations upon which the suicidal’s daily work must rely. I will not bow to this energy. Never again. There are eight billion people in the world. I will find those whom I value, and who value me.

​Thara m'er thoul.

Quote source: Today (Sparks) , The New Christy Minstrels

​I recently came across the concept in Buddhism of the “eight worldy winds,” a group of four opposite pairs that cause turmoil in our minds: pleasure and pain; praise and criticism; fame and insignificance; and success and failure. From an evolutionary standpoint, part of the human condition seems to be to chase one of the pairs, and flee the other. Awareness of this tendency was collated into the teachings of Buddha over 2,500 years ago, and still has relevance today.

I used to think that the way through these headwinds was purely through the practice of “equanimity,” or calmness and composure in the face of struggle. The idea was, through practices like breathwork or visualization, if I could keep myself composed during moments of stress, then I could see myself calmly through to the other side. But lately I’ve come to value a complementary aspect to this practice, that of “resilience.” Resilience interacts with the worldly winds in a different way, granting the individual the agency to respond as it needs to in the moment. While equanimity urges one to be the calm in the middle of the storm, resilience steels one’s will to keep getting up no matter how many times the storm knocks you down.

The term mindfulness gets thrown around a lot in spiritual and psychological circles, and no more so than in Dialectical Behavioral Theory, or DBT. When I started learning about DBT after my second inpatient stay, I found the pure mindfulness exercises the hardest things to grasp. While I had practiced meditation on and off for the previous decade, the equanimity I had found in doing so was brittle, and fragile to external forces. As such, I would ping-pong between the two states, that of unrelenting calm (from time to time) to that of utter turmoil (more often).

​With the addition of the term “resilience” into my mindfulness practice, I became more adaptable in the face of life’s storms. The winds may continue, but I would choose what actions I take in response. Here the word “agency” comes back in full force. To some of you, the term “wacky waving inflatable arm-flailing tubeman” may ring familiar—to others, check out the link below. This motion, that of being tossed about by the wind, arms a-flailing, comical and ridiculous, can’t help but feel similar to the experience of a soul in turmoil.

​In a curriculum of equanimity alone, there’s a certain shame to being this thing, helplessly tossed about by the winds of misfortune. But in a practice of mindfulness that includes resilience, we give ourselves space to be that thing, that wacky waving inflatable tubeman from time to time, to hold ourselves with compassion, to know that it’s ok to be bowled over by a particularly strong gust, that we have the option of getting up and facing our trials, in all their seemingly sisyphean glory, once and again.

​Modern pathology (especially technopathology) seeks to reduce our resilience, to turn us instead into dopamine-craving zombies. But it doesn’t have to be this way. In fact, one of the most profound ways I was able to practice agency was in taking control of my relationship with social media. For those unaware, I have a spectacular tendency towards comparison. Indeed, it is a talent, for finding ways to compare myself, and always infavorably I might add, to individuals with whom I have nothing in common, neither circumstance nor experience, and after which the inevitable self-flagellation occurs for my not being of sufficient quality, not being up to scratch, essentially, for not being enough. Add to this a nasty case of bipolar disorder, and the years surrounding 2010 (or, for that matter, any of the years before 2019) were not a good time for me.

​So in 2013 I did the unthinkable—or at least what seemed radical at the time: I deleted my personal facebook account, and vested my professional page to comrades and allies who were willing to help manage it largely on my behalf. Nothing happened, of course. Nobody cared. Why would they? They were too busy spending time on facebook. But there was a nice kind of relief about the fact that the sky didn’t fall, that it didn’t suddenly rain fire because I had defied the law of Zuckerberg. I got my life back that day. I chose me.

Now, I’m not at all saying this applies to anyone else. I know a lot of people who derive great utility from social media sites like facebook. I’m just not one of them. My predilection towards comparison made me an easy mark to be exploited by the dopamine trail of crumbs that comparative social media sites provide. But now, thankfully, I was free. This seemingly small decision became an eye-opening example of how I might make the choice away from default behaviors that are harmful, and pick a new adventure, an adventure of my choosing.

​To me, a mindfulness curriculum that includes both equanimity and resilience provides the psyche with both the time and the space to cultivate a sense of “enoughness,” one that is independent of external circumstance and validation. This in turn allows for the blossoming of agency, ensuring that I have the tools to show up, time and again, in the face of life’s unpredictability, that I have the option of engaging with the world’s complexities rather than seeking escape, that I am whole and balanced, and empowered to act for the benefit of all.

Travel safe and talk soon.

Quote source: Stronger (Martin, Rami), Britney Spears

​I was once asked by a friend: how can I teach my children to live without fear? This sparked a wonderful conversation wherein we explored the nature of fear and eventually concluded that, when boiled down, it came in two distinct varieties. The first is the kind of fear that tells us to run, immediately, when being pursued by e.g. a bear, lion, or other predator or dangerous situation. The second kind is the fear that keeps us up at night, fixating on whether we’ll ever get the perfect job, find love, or live up to expectations (often our own, masked as those of others), at or by some arbitrary point in our lives.

The second variety of fear was the one she wanted to minimize in the lexicon of her offspring. As we dug deeper into the subject, we realized that to eliminate even that kind of fear was, in some ways, to miss the point of what it meant to be alive. Even that kind of fear was part of the tapestry of natural human experiences sometimes referred to as the emotion mind. The emotion mind can be instrumental in letting us know when a situation isn’t working for us, when a change is needed in our lives. Perhaps not so drastic as to run away from a chasing panther, still, these emotions are often the inkling that a solution is what we require.

But, we thought to ourselves, isn’t fear the thing that holds you back, that stops you from taking action? And while, yes, this is sometimes the case, fear’s argument can work in both directions, by paralyzing one into non-engagement, which can be disastrous, but also by pushing one into impulsive action, which can be equally destructive. The key seems to be to temper the expressive flare (or flair? Woo!) of the emotional mind with logic and reason, which are the specialties of the rational mind.

As our conversation waned, my friend and I contemplated the fate of our children (mine theoretical, hers very much real), and what it might take to survive a world where fear seemed endemic to existence. We then looked to our own experience. We live in a world of fear, presently. The world moves inexorably into a state of environmental non-sustainability. Idiots with nuclear capability run the world’s cadre of nation states. Childrens’ identities are being mined in the greatest ongoing wealth transfer event since Columbus set sail. Saying nothing for our children, one could argue it’s terrifying now.

​Yet we persist. Let’s for once not be humble. Our lives are a shining example of what happens when resilience meets wisdom. Wisdom, or wise mind, to use dialectic language, is merely the sum of the emotional and rational minds, what happens when we balance our emotions, including fear, with objectivity and reason. Resilience occurs when our efforts surpass our resources and we exceed the expectations set forth for us by our circumstances. That is what it means to live without fear. It’s not that we will never be afraid. It’s not that we banish our emotions from our metaphysical sphere. It’s that we turn each day into an exercise of wisdom and resilience, we turn each day into a shining example of what it means to be alive, no matter what the circumstances, no matter the restrictions placed on us. That’s what it means to live without fear. We have somewhere between three and five years until our fortunes change. Go and make the most of it.

Travel safe and talk soon.

Quote source: I Will Survive (Peren, Fekaris), Gloria Gaynor

Salut.

It seems like just yesterday that the new year began, and now in the blink of an eye we’re almost passed January. Somewhere along this forty-five-and-three-quarters-year journey I learned a funny trick, which was to calculate the amount of year that had elapsed in the form of a percetage, to wit: at around 4pm on January 4th, you’re 1% through the year. I think the psychological goal was to make the year pass more slowly, with each incremental unit of the percentage calculation being 3.65 units of the standard measurement of time (the day). While I’m not sure this exercise really succeeds at slowing the perception of time, it can be an interesting re-contextualization of one of the things we humans likely take most for granted: it’s passage.

​It’s possible I may have “run out” of 2023, like Johnny Topside before me, running out of drill fuel (ten points to Ravenclaw if you get the reference). Until then I’d been to-the-letter rote when it came to my “Watershed” posts. No matter what ill may have befallen the other blogs of the year, the last one, always written on December 31st, had never eluded me. It became a sort of annual ritual, considering, then summing up the year’s events, pushing my observations and thematic musings to the precipice of philosophic moralizing, then taking a step back, doing my best to remain genuine while not taking anything too seriously. After what must have been the better part of a decade of doing this, surely it had become habit.

So what was it that was different about 2023?

The very end of 2023 must be looked at in context of the rest of 2023. In that vein, December 31st 2023 proved itself no different from every other day of that year. And, in keeping with how I felt on every other day of that year, I woke up on December 31st with absolutely nothing to say. (Of course, critics of my blog might say: and that would be different from usual how?) But as the seconds ticked away and midnight gradually approached, I felt panic sneaking in. I tried to push through it, stepping back into writing-exercise territory, free associating, outlining, but nothing was forthcoming. Eventually, in the dying last minutes of 2023, I came to the conclusion that the best way to deal with this would be to just accept it.
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5…4…3…2…1…

And that was it. The sky didn’t fall. The quantam didn’t solace. The earth didn’t swallow me up. Just as on November 8th 2016 (remember that day?), the sun would rise, the day would begin, and people would get up and continue on their lives as per usual. And so would I.
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Our current society will tell you to structure your lives around externals. To live a life that’s “connected,” that’s “current,” indeed, that’s “confraternal,” (I *heart* thesaurus) you must obey the external cycles that are imposed on you. You have to tweet about a current event hitting the news cycle within 24 hours, or else you’re “not relevant,” you have to have a 2024 opinion about, I don’t know, anything, from the Kardashians (Cardassians?) to the cost of the latest NFT, otherwise you’re “obsolete.” You have to listen to the right dozen podcasts and have at least as many reddit threads, tiktok is the new instagram baby, and god help you if the only platform you are on is facebook.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not anti-social media, mostly because I don’t think that it is the actual problem. It’s a tool, and I believe it serves a very useful purpose. Viral marketing has likely introduced some wonderful, community-centric businesses and organizations to the world at-large, and for that, social networking earns our thanks. It’s not the tool itself, but rather we who go down the rabbit hole of externals, with current society acting as our enabler. I’ve been down this road, retreating into the warm yet toxic embrace of outer-directedness, and while it took no small amount of clawing and scratching (and not the good kind #weeds) I was glad to finally find my way if not fully than at least mostly out.
 
The question then remains: how does a population, a “current society,” built on a foundation of obeying external cues, teach itself to think freely from them. I have an inkling that this is the society (among other things) that we are going to have to become in order to fully embody the next stage of our evolution. There’s a chance I’ll be devoting some of my own personal and professional blogosphere to examining this, thus I’ll be signing off soon, before this becomes a tome. I’ll leave you my very warmest of wishes for a continued happy and healthy start to 2024, as well as the thoughts that broke me out of my shell and got me to start writing again. I don’t think they’re anything super profound, but, hopefully, they’re helpful:

• Live by your cycle.
• Focus on what you are doing.
• Be the agent of your own life.

Travel safe. Talk soon.

This has been one of those years where it’s just never quite felt like the right time to post on this site. Personally, there’s always been something more pressing going on. Globally, the same; whether through cases of political scandal, civic heartlessness, or outright armed conflict, fear and alarm have gripped the world with stunning efficiency.
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About halfway through the calendar year I considered writing a post about peace. Now, as anyone who even vaguely knows me knows, my relationship with the subject is ambivalent at best, though to be fair most of my nuclear wintering finds itself directed either at “that asshole Gandhi” or else at those pesky so-called “empires” of Austria and Venice (those were MY city-states!)—either way, in life, mercifully, I am generally more of a peace-monger.

As with eastern philosophy my understanding of peace begins with non-striving. Letting go of need or desire, it is said, frees one from one’s agenda. This allows one to see more clearly what really is, not what one wishes were there. It’s a freeing perspective, one that can lead to profound spiritual insight and powerful personal development. 
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It also, in my humble opinion, rather misses the point of why we’re here. 

We, the sentient inhabitants of planet earth, I might posit, are not here merely to impartially bear witness to events as they unfold. This may be a means to a particularly worthwhile end (enlightenment…so I’m led to understand) but a means to an end still it is. Whether we observe it or not we are born into duality: light and dark; hot and cold; Marvel and DC, and so on. We have at our very fingertips the power of decision.

I’ve heard duality referred to as a false god. And overall I agree with this. The paradox of opposites may be solved with the cunning use of dialectics: “I love and accept all that I am, *and* I can improve.” Without this approach I may never have escaped the bedlam that was my existence prior to age forty-two. And yet, despite the clever appropriation of everyone’s favorite coordinating conjunction, I stand by my assertion that duality’s status as de facto metaphysical pariah can and ought to be repealed.

To say that duality is a false construct is like saying that human beings have no sex (mind out of the gutter, please, I’m talking biology). Metaphysical convictions from a number of schools of thought may understand this to be true on the “soul” level, but that does little good to an organism who depends upon meiosis to sustain the very life that allows it to contemplate such matters in the first place. Practically speaking, a metaphysics that embraces duality is much more useful to us than one that eschews it. How so?
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It’s often touted that by zooming out from the duality of our daily lives, we get to a place called unity. Here we are at one with the universe and all is at peace because events take place not to, at, or before us but rather through the unbiased prism of our consciousness. But what this observation fails to reflect upon is that, if you stay in this state for long enough, you eventually have to go pee. 

Peace is not the absence of intent. Rather, it’s absolutely dependent on its executor making a very specific choice under varying and often uncertain circumstances. I know I have the tendency to drone on about how yoga isn’t the cure to the world’s ills. This time I’m taking a different route. Any practice that provides a participant with a safe space to bring their mind to somewhere that chooses lovingkindness over cruelty is good and well in my book. Just remember, just because I can pretzel my way into yoganidrasana, doesn’t mean I’m better than you.
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I am not a pacifist because I am anti-war. I understand that in a dualistic metaphysics like the one to which we humans on earth belong, conflict is not only a sanctioned form of dispute resolution, but in many cases is a necessary one. (Or we could all make like bonobos and use sex as a means to negotiate our differences—feel free to take to the gutter, and, if need be, remain there for the remainder of this post.) That we have taken conflict and turned it into the hideous art form it is today is regrettable, but I have no qualms against its existence any more than I do the existence of inclement weather.

Nor am I a pacifist because I am a pushover. As a matter of fact it’s this part of duality that I have a problem with. While dualistic language with intelligence combines to create the likes of Plato, Kant, and Meister Eckhart, dualistic language without it quickly devolves into demagoguery, jingoism, and unrelenting stupidity. There’s a broken belief right now, one that no one seems either willing or able to challenge, that you’re either a military hawk, or a colluder. I reject this summarily, because it’s moronic. Being a chest-thumping loudmouth doesn’t give anyone a monopoly on strategic intervention. If there’s a bully, you bet I’ll intervene. I’ll speak gently, dulcetly, kindly even, lulling them into a false sense of safety as I quietly sew their ass cheeks together, feed them miralax, and wait for the results. 

We are souls living a human journey; the early 00s was rife with this kind of sentiment. In a post-9/11 world, we craved the oneness message, hungered for any philosophy that transcended the unstable and shockingly terrifying world we suddenly found ourselves living in. But it’s as though we all stopped at “we are souls” and forgot the second half, equally important, that we are all living a human journey. As such, we are prone to disagreeing, we are vulnerable to each having our agendas collide with those of our neighbors, no matter how noble our intentions. In this life, this human life, we are, in short, dualistic beings.

And as such we approach peace, not as the only truth available to us, but as one of many options, and because we choose it to be, we choose to focus our attention, we choose to train our consciousness on creating life and prosperity, not murder and destruction. This is our authority, our license to create the world, any world, that we envision—in a world where our lives are small but our words and actions reverberate through the cosmos, what have we but our convictions?

I am a peace-monger in humble ways: because I choose not to engage in a motor race with the car behind me who thought going the speed limit was too slow; for the simple act of giving a smile and a nod to the grocery clerk who made a well-intentioned but awkward attempt to connect. I am a peace-monger not because it is the right thing to do, but because it is my right to do it, my right to see the world I see, and make choices.

This is the world I see. This is the choice I make. Choose peace. 
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Yes. That’s probably the kind of thing I would say, if I were to write a post about peace. Maybe another time, eh?

Travel safe. Talk soon.

Title Inspiration: Pipes of Peace (McCartney), Paul McCartney

We no longer live in a world where to be someone of renown means to have produced something of actual quality and value. I need to remind myself of this day after day, knowing that the only way one can change an existing system is if one accepts it in the first place. This is an important first step for any changemaker, possibly even more so than realizing that change occurs less by fighting against existing circumstances and more by creating ways and means that render them irrelevant.

There is a sharp divide between those who seek to do this (produce something of actual quality and value), often quietly and far in the background of major events, and the exalted influencers of today, those who revel in their ability to execute what they espy as exceptional (but that this writer sees more often as sophomoric), such as “playing the top ten songs on the radio using only four chords,” or “re-harmonizing the Beatles’ masterpiece ‘Hey Jude’.” One might argue that none of these bring benefit to humanity, and one might be right. These are activities that bring aggrandizement to the ego and self-image of their performer, and little else. I have very little time for this, which likely means I have very little time for 95% of the developed world’s Gross Creative Output aka GCP.

A thought experiment was once put forth to me by a friend of mine. A quick-witted entrepreneurial jack-of-all-trades hailing from Canada/the People’s Republic of China, he asked me and a few other friends who were over for drinks one evening to consider the dueling, conflicting goals of a) a writer, b) an editor, and c) a publisher. The writer, he said, if they’re being true to themselves, should only care about putting the story down in as authentic and accurate a way as possible. Once this is achieved, the writer in pure form will care about nothing else. 

The editor, on the other hand, if they’re being true to themselves, wants the book able to be enjoyed by as many eyes as possible. As such, they go through the text and make changes to meet this criteria, and in doing so, may in fact alter the book in a manner such as to move it away from the writer’s perfect version of the manuscript, thus creating conflict between the two individuals’ visions. 

The publisher, he went on to say, if they’re being true to themselves, wants to sell as many copies as possible—they don’t care how authentic the manuscript is, nor do they particularly care about the readers’ experience, so long as they can sell enough copies to have made the investment in the project worthwhile, so they create a spanking, shiny cover (which the editor might hate) and find celebrities (whom the writer might hate) to write praise for it on the opening pages. They get the writer on talk shows (which the writer, perhaps an introvert, hates doing), and they make available an audio book version (hiring a famous actor, and director, to interpret it, thus negating all the work that the editor did). 

These three goals are in direct conflict with one another, yet done in the correct order they create a synergy and a process via which an idea goes from nothing to success.

This is where the thought experiment ended, and, at that time (being around 2002), there was very little else to think about; in order to create art, one still needed to go through gatekeepers, publishers, record labels, distributors, and so forth. But then, somewhere in the mid-00s, seemingly out of nowhere the "Creator Economy" sparked into existence. People began to be able to simultaneously inhabit all three of the roles proposed by the thought experiment’s rudiments. You now not only had people who believed they had something to say, but who were furnished with the tools to create, from start to finish, content which would become the platform through which their ideas could reach the world. How marvelous!

Of course, as with anything, there are ups and downs.

For better or for worse, the old way, with its editors and publishers, was equipped with a built-in system of appraisal; at least two sets of eyes (and likely many more) other than the writer’s would read the manuscript and decide whether it was a worthwhile project to invest time and money into. On one hand, this might mean that many books (films, music, etc.) that were ahead of their time or in other ways risky might have been passed over, but on the other hand, these eyes could act as a sort of filtering system, only allowing through content with something (they believed was) meaningful and valuable to say.

Is the fact that this system of appraisal has all but disappeared a good or a bad thing? The question is mostly irrelevant; for creators and the audiences they reach, the new way is here. A massive democratization of creativity is upon us, and, sadly, in this writer’s estimation, humanity hasn’t much risen to the occasion. There’s more junk on the internet than there ever has been. Products like BandLab, while believing (and genuinely so, I believe) themselves to be bringing power to the masses, merely make making music a casual affair; taking the challenge out of the creation of art also strips the endeavor of its magic, and much of its meaning. 

So what is there left for the real craftspeople in this new frontier of ready-made, boil-in-the-bag ersatz creativity? I’d like to think that, for them, remembering that there was a time before machines started making chairs and tables and silverware, that these now-commodified goods were once produced painstakingly by passionate and proficient women and men. There will always be space for quality and value—remember this. Just because Ikea exists doesn’t mean that the hunger for beautiful and personal hand-made furniture has abated.

​We the conscious artisans of the world must hold on to this, this faith in higher humanity. We must not succumb to what the sellers of slick and synthetic would have us believe, that the success of their new reality should see us surrender to second-class citizenry in the creative landscape.

I end this year, this back-breaking year of love, labor, and deep loss, with a blessing. To quote (or rather paraphrase) the Jester himself:

To all you true creators: remember how special you are, and know how much you are supported. The counterfeiters and false prophets may reign for the moment, but soaring through the cosmos are the angels of the universe, crying out in passion and delight to remind us that we remain, forever, heaven blessed. Our song, the beautiful adventure that we set forth for the benefit of humanity, is fundamental, and unchanging. Remember this, always. 

Travel safe and talk soon.

HAPPY NEW YEAR, TO ALL, 2023.

Title Inspiration: Watershed (Saliers), Indigo Girls

Art is not easy. So many people think they are doing it every day. I’m not saying I know the difference between who are and who aren’t; to paraphrase John Cleese’s Pope Julius II, “I may not know a lot about art, but I know what I like.” In today’s anti-normative world, it’s truly impossible to say which one of a so-called pop artiste dressing herself up in bubble wrap, a rapping idiot-savant calling himself Jesus Christ, and a sixteen year old girl clothed in a tube top and little else singing “Sweet Child ‘o Mine” is art, and which isn’t (do any of them have to be?, is to me the obvious question).

Having this kind of discernment has, on the surface, very little use in today’s surface world. But I believe there is a purpose to being able to tell the difference between those in it for vainglory—Bruce Lee would refer to their journey as the Art of Self-Image Aggrandizement—and those who are in it for true excellence, and the truth that comes with it, for the sake of not merely making an impact on the world, but making a positive one, at least so far as their beliefs and conscience can guide them. I think what makes it easier to tell who’s doing what is to consider the concept of *effective art*.

What is this thing that I propose exists: effective art? I believe what makes effective art effective is that it touches us in a way that is significant. But what does this mean? Effective art (think of a song that still makes you cry even after you’ve heard a thousand times) creates a process through which the audience member not only passes but is also changed in a way that is both indelible and irreversible. Aristotle speaks of mimesis in the Poetics. Mimesis is a large part of this process. By employing the mimetic aspect of art, the artist may create a work that is somehow both broad-reaching enough to apply to all persons yet specific enough that one person will feel as though the work of art has been created just for them.

Because of this personal connection, the viewer will come to see themselves in the protagonist, and will share in their failures and their success. This brings us to the second part of the process, which is catharsis. Via the experience of the protagonist’s highs and lows, the viewer (or listener) experiences the artistic journey not only as the trials and tribulations of another person, but as part of one’s own story, and at the point of conclusion, the viewer (or listener) feels a very real sense of having been transfigured, cleansed, or else having experienced epiphany on a deep level. This is one of the ways the artist can employ their skill and acumen for the good, by creating and layering positive change (which, note, does not assume a “happy ending”) in the conclusions of their art. 
​

I find I can often tell between art that is created by the artists for themselves and art that is effective by locating where I experience what I often refer to as “the tingles.” When a work of art is high intensity, our autonomic reaction is to feel that intensity somewhere in our physical body. I’d wager that all of us have cried during certain movies, songs, theatrical performances, and many other expressions of art based on our preferences (visual art, dance, performance art). In my experience, art that truly touches the soul can be felt in (of all places) the sides of the arms, and the shoulders. Almost without fail, when I notice a tingling sensation there in my body, emotional catharsis is nearby, whether it manifests in the form of a deep cleansing breath, laughter, or crying.

In contrast, art created to serve the artist’s ego can be felt almost anywhere else. I’ve been confounded by this in the past, watching films or theatrical performances and feeling stirred yet also feeling a sense of emptiness and not knowing why (I’m looking at you, “Hancock” (2008)). I’ve felt my head swell in agony over a protagonist’s dramatic fall from grace. My heart has bled over a main character’s crippling anxiety. I’ve even cried watching a community be destroyed for hypocrisy and lack of oversight. But one common factor insists itself upon these three scenarios: I never felt anything in my shoulders, nor did I feel something in the sides of my arms. It seems so odd that this—the precise location of “the tingles”—be the determining factor. But, sure enough, when the dust of high emotion settled in each of these (and, certainly, many other) cases, I was left with a feeling of having witnessed something created not for the benefit of my edification, but instead for its own thirst and need for attention.

And herein lies the danger, and is why art can so easily by hijacked and turned from an activity that is intrinsically benevolent to one whose sole purpose is to fulfill a narcissistic personality’s need for self-image aggrandizement. I disagree with the (relatively recent) adage that “the head can be persuaded, but the heart is not so easily changed” (I think it’s from “Frozen” (2013) (he says, having seen it seven times)); it’s actually fairly easy to manipulate the heart, just look at how many toxic relationships remain unexamined due to family loyalty. There’s not really anything that can be done about this. As we perfect the expression of form e.g. the play, the song, the novel, the movie etc., it becomes easier for art pirates (to coin a phrase) to plunder these forms and mine them for their own selfish needs (see “United Passions” (2014)—actually, don’t.)

I would humbly put forward that awareness is the best weapon under these modern day circumstances. For me, a key component to a better life as an art consumer has been to be relentlessly conscious of the art I was consuming. I found when I was willing to question what was placed in front of me, I became far less willing to leap into the jaws of the predatory pseudo-art that found it way into my purview simply because its creators owned all the distribution outlets (now who might I be talking about? … I still like Frozen.) It’s certainly made me less hip—to this day I have never heard the radio offering known to many as “Uptown Funk,” in fact I’m not sure I’ve heard a new song since 2012, except for that Mendez/Cabello duet from a few years ago (to be fair I was just out of inpatient and was trying to find my roots among free humans by listening to *anything* that came on the radio) and something by Taylor Swift about how some people need to calm down—I actually like that one.

No, I’m not a doom and gloom, everything after 1986 sucks, kind of guy. There are always new, wonderful discoveries to be made as a consumer of art (the jewel that is “Ted Lasso” to name one.) I wonder if we’re not on the precipice of a new *slow art* movement, perhaps similar as to what happened at the transition from the 80s into the 90s, except, hopefully, a little wiser, and this time truly shedding the skin of artifice for a new kind of authenticity, where artistry and artisanship find their place again among the pantheon values of self-expression. For better or for worse I think the “influencer” is here to stay, at least for awhile, and it might be that all you need to do is film yourself eating cereal with hot sauce to be called a “creator” but to quote Keith Carradine: it don’t worry me. (Nashville (1975))

I do what I do the way I do it (this is a surely a quote). No amount of sanitized prefabricated mindless cookie-cutter entertainment can take away my love of creating art to help others. I was told at a young age by an uncle who would turn out to be one of the strongest influences of my early creative life that I should always remember to give back to society. At the time I was busy getting the crap kicked out of me by racist mobs in a Dickensian all-boys boarding school, but, thankfully, the words stuck with me. Art is the greatest blessing (shared; my wife, obviously) that I’ve received in my already pretty blessed life. It seems a natural choice to pass it along.

Some might still call me unsuccessful, and in some ways they’d be right. I have no community of crazed fans (yet/who cares, my wife would say), I have no mantelpiece full of trophies or awards (again, yet/who cares, she’d say, because she’s amazing). But in the past seventeen years, I’ve had the time and space, away from the joneses, away from the restless throng, to gruelingly put myself through the ropes; I’ve gained mastery over the fundamentals of harmony, counterpoint, lyricism, rhyme, wordplay, music production, storywriting, MIDI programming, arrangement, transcription, voice, performance, and many more areas of study that, in my opinion, form only the very basics of what it means to be an artist, a real creator. At least that’s what I think. And sure, maybe all of this is not a route to success. But I believe it to be a path to self-mastery, and, with that, a means to unlock the secret to wellbeing and abundance, in a world that truly needs it.

Travel safe. Talk soon. -AF

Title Inspiration: The Gambler (Schlitz), Kenny Rogers

One of the advantages of being unsuccessful is that very few people, if any, want a piece of you. I remember well my days of pseudo fame—you know, the kind of which everyone is said to experience fifteen minutes. I remember the unspoken imperative that you at all costs keep up with the Joneses, the incessant expectation that your itinerary be scheduled around this allstar compilation album audition or that appearance at so-and-so’s fashion awards run, rather than your actual needs as a human; all of this turned my young brush with celebritydom into an exercise of being chewed, swallowed, and spat out, time after time, at the best of times.

I remember being asked once, in my state of pseudo-ascendancy by a pseudo-gatekeeper, what I wished to be. Now, I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up. But I knew at the time that giving this answer would bear little fruit, so I turned to the closest and most genuine response that I felt would suffice, and said that what I wanted to do was write songs, I wanted to be a songwriter. We debated the subject for some time (meaning, he spoke and I listened, this is Asia after all), and eventually the conclusion was drawn that I would only be a songwriter when I wrote songs and got paid for doing it. That would be my one definition of success.

I carried this charge around with me in my young life as a musician. When I left the bright lights of Malaysia’s cultural capital in 2005, I also left behind a burgeoning career, a move that many friends, even close ones couldn’t comprehend. I didn’t have the guts to say it at the time, mostly because it felt laced with a sort of John Lennon-esque man-child helplessness that I had long sought to avoid. But the fact of the matter was, I left to be with someone, for love if you will, specifically the love of a kind and beautiful woman, wise beyond her years, who looked deep into my soul with all its charred scars and fetid wounds, and said: we can do this.

The years went by. I remember hitting thirty. Still, not a cent from anyone for the songs I was painstakingly writing in my home basement studio. Young puppies became pets in their prime, who became mature dogs, their love unflinching, their attention unwavering. I miss the ones we’ve lost to time, and cherish that moments I am spending with all of them, but especially the oldest ones, who despite our general avoidance of the subject we know are over the proverbial hill. Hairs turn grey, joints become more brittle. And need I mention the colonoscopies? (Well, I’m still just forty four, but I hear their approach like the tick-tock of a hungry crocodile hell-bent on horrors untold.)

So here I am, in my mid forties now, the amount of money I have been paid for my songwriting (or other musical work, for that matter) since I arrived on these shores unable to buy me lunch at the local deli. I live with my wife, who has remained married to me now for reasons unknown for seventeen years, on a decidedly unflashy New England farmstead with six dogs, three goats (one more on the way), two horses, and an open door to those dear to us. I’ve written, say, a hundred and five songs give or take, from orchestral works to acoustic ballads, some organized into sprawling rock operas and musicals, others barely a minute long, just enough to get a single idea across and hopefully elicit a smile.

<sidebar> Don’t ask how I live. The answer is not a soundbite. Separate from my wife’s professional and business successes, which are considerable, my financial situation is a stultifyingly tedious and rancidly complicated tale involving a patriarch who is richer than Trump (and possibly just as disagreeable), and a grandmother who died far too young. The bottom line is I find myself in a place where my day-to-day needs are more or less taken care of (more of less) </sidebar>

Still, it’s a far-cry from being Malaysia’s new “it”-boy who could write his ticket and command a six-figure salary for a month’s work (somehow, don’t ask me). And for my life’s circumstances, my interlocutor that day at lunch would surely insist that I am not to be considered a songwriter, because the cumulative offerings I have received for said activity are too paltry. Now, the lifelong student that I am likes to say silly things like, “What do we really know for certain? Can we be really sure of anything?” 

But in this instance, I’m pretty sure of myself when I say: you know, I don’t think he was right.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Title Inspiration: The Gambler (Schlitz), Kenny Rogers