Dust off that book...

I've been loving NYC for the last week.  Getting a lot done.  Creating.  Hanging with close friends.  Staying inspired... finally.

I ran across some old blogs, got nostalgic, and decided to post them.  If you've already read them, go no further.

B

1.14.07

ON A RAINY DAY

I have found myself in my room listening to Mozart's Requiem... again... taking a moment to breathe... disciplining myself to evacuate the idea of forcing another pop song. Requiem is bringing me back to my childhood... where music was an untangible, magical, pure form of emotion in it's audible majesty. I'm trying to figure out when the music became so sufficated. Maybe it didn't. Maybe it's just what happens when you're blessed with the beauty of a full-time job... writing songs... with formula... with limits... with simple language... but still... not working my old day jobs that sometimes haunted me. I never asked to be in a pop band... I suppose it was just an extention of some tangent of musical paint splattered all over a canvas like Pollock... balanced but chaotic... and a path was choosen, at least for the immediate future. Yet, it's a form of communication, limits or no limits. I came home from a show last night questioning my passionate contemporaries and aquaintances that just gave it everything on stage. Yet, I was thinking that maybe I should have stayed in my high school band and played awful guitar, and wrote songs with no hooks... is this what it takes to move masses? Do we need to scream and ask others to scream profanities and rebel against whatever we rebel against? Playing dumb? No, I can't follow a trend. Maybe it's just that suddenly your "art" which maybe is or isn't art becomes it's own brand and your inner businessman harnesses the craft until it's whithered out to dry. Maybe that's why I love to paint. I believe that I'm a horrible painter. No traning. Just me, the canvas, maybe Brad Mehldau on the stereo, a glass of Merlot. No one will see it, maybe my bandmates will come by my room and give a nod, but it now fills the void of what I miss. It's magic. No boundries. No limelight. No judgement... and my untrained brush continues to splash the visuals into a frenzy upon the canvas. I never asked to be in a pop band, I was just blessed to be able to squeeze out some form of creativity. My painting won't be written about. It won't be dressed in a suit and tie, or told to simplify or that it is arrogant and superficial. My painting will not get me onto the list, or into social circles, but it will satisfy what I miss. Mozart. It's timelessness. Yet, he put his music out into the masses. To me it's dream-music.... but did it become commercial to him? Wise up. Maybe it's the magic on the external that counts more than the internal.... I never asked to be in a pop band, but maybe after this painting, and writing a composition for my walls to hear... I'll write the simple hook that everyone else has heard over and over before for their own magical place... their own audible painting... and call it a day.

1.15.07

REV. DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.

"Wake up man, we ARE leaving at 8:00!" My eyes peel away the dreams that entertained the last five hours of sleep. The dreams are now replaced by the canvas of cold rain and trees that are just sticks in the ground outside my window. Yet today, Joey and I made a pact to attend the town Service and Breakfast in memory of the almighty Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Snooze.

Thoughts.

Snooze.

Ok. Up. Barely.

Across the room... ughh, too dark and grassy of a green in my painting... fix it later.

Shower.

Thinking.

Dressed.

"Okay, Joey, let's do it. It's raining. Bus?"

"Yeah."

And we went.

We ended up meeting fellow residents, and had a good chat with the local police chief, who ended up at our table. One cadet told us about his beloved son who is still in Iraq. We listen. We think. On this rainy day we're safe at this breakfast. We have to work on a record. This gentleman's son is in Iraq, where he woke up to the building next door to him being abolished by bombs and gunfire. 

Massachusetts state representative Byron Rushing spoke. I took a few things with me, other than the obvious love and peace that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. brought us:

Dr. King was alive for 39 years. He has also now been dead for 39 years. Rushing asked how many at the breakfast were under 39 years of age. I raised my hand. He talked about our generation... my generation... your generation, and it's missed opportunity to live through that civil rights movement in his time and only read, listen, and watch King's speeches. Yet, King's idea of peace must live on. 

It is our generation, you, me, your neighbor, your enemy, that will be responsible to choose to live in harmony, or in spitefulness.
The world is a tempting place. We, as humans are imperfect. I fail every day at being as loving as the God who created me, yet somehow I still feel love and strive to love. Temptation is on every corner, and it's not just material possesion, greed, etc. One of my favorite quote's is actually about the temptation to become bitter... and guess what? The word's came out of Dr. King's mouth:

"Never succumb to the temptation of becoming bitter. As you press on for justice, be sure to move with dignity and discipline, using only the weapon of love. Let no man pull you so low as to hate him."

King's words and ideas lasted past the evil bullet that ended this peacemaker's days on earth. 

We are imperfect, but we can love.

1.17.07

RE-ACQUAINTING WITH THE SKYLINE

I'm lying awake in New York City after parting ways with it for almost a half a year. Trying to decipher what magnetism it is that lures me back time and time again.

Re-establishing friendship. Community.

I used to be almost petrefied of the city. Maybe it was the detail. One of my professors, a few years back, pointed something out to me that I'll always take with me. He always spoke of someone describing a room, and how most of the time, it was usually visual. Yet, as writers, we must not forget the sound, smell, touch, taste, our body, and motion as senses in addition to sight. That's why this city must have been so overwhelming at first. I like detail. Well, I used to.... until I suddenly could not take in every single color, siren, scent of the passing perfume, comfort of my warm scarf, cold breeze, and my excited heartbeat all reacting to so many different changing enviroments on every single block.

I'm no longer petrefied, or weary. In fact, I feel very at home in this city.

Blessed friendship. Community.

It's strange without the love and friendship in this place it used to be a concrete jungle. At times, I often preferred magnificent mountains, or the ocean to any manmade concrete sculpture... but then my un-mademade friends were sprinkled into this wonderful city, into another chapter. 

Another drink after dinner.

The city is aglow outside as we carry on over our glasses.

Our tongues are amazing, twisting languages into love, into compliments, into stories, and unfortunately sometimes into lies.... but tonight, mostly guidance, friendship, advice, compationship... from these words... the wind-up, the pitch... into the ear behind the plate... and tonight was a homerun in re-aquainting my friendships. Re-aquainting with this gorgeous skyline. 

And through it's conversations, stories told, and lessons learned, the future holds our new absence of error, learning from mistakes... and a hope for stronger community. A stronger and more real future.


Bed. 

Sleep.

Dream.

1.25.07

SOMEWHERE OVER THE ATLANTIC

My eyes just went misty, holding back teardrops at thiry-some thousand feet over the ocean, not for the first time, while watching a movie... on a plane... this is ridiculous... that or the director, cast, and crew accomplished their mission...

Or I want to fall in love. Not neccesarily the romantic love. Romantic love is nice, and it seems as if every five years it really gets me... I tend to fall in love with moments, with ideas, with watching people. I suppose that's where art comes in... in the case of film-making, a summary of moments strung together to dance on a screen and make us associate, feel, maybe even fantasize, or become nostalgic through another situation close or far away. Art happens in real life moments, but I didn't become misty watching conversations on the tube yesterday in London... there were beautiful moments.... but when the beautiful moments are strung together, or laid out upon a canvas, or put into a song, they're compressed somehow to make us draw upon our own circumstances to FEEL.

One year, I read Hemingway like it was a habit. Most people that really know me would question, and rightly so, why on earth I could be so addicted to such a dry author. But that was just it. I think nothing like Hemingway... yet, his simple, minimalist language took my mind to a place where it would otherwise not go. Another author could probably take me to the same bullfight in Spain, but Hemingway gave me a different experience... one of carefully chosen words. This is why I think he's a great lyricist's author. You want to say so much in a song, and most often, especially nowadays in a "pop" song, you have a limited pallette, usually two verses, a chorus, and a bridge at most. The chorus is like a thesis statement, the verses are hypothesis, and the bridge sometimes gives the songs character a multi-dimensional point of view. Yet, as much as I would like to go on and on in prose, or talking to a friend about it at the local pub, that's just the beauty of it. These simple, simple words. Only saying what needs to be said. These common every day words jumbled together in one collage.... and it's not always an autobiography. That's why artists need these moments, whether taken from life, or other art. When you can't live, read, listen, observe. Bruce Springsteen put it quite well... he talked about his life not being all that interesting... why would he write about himself when he tours around the world, plays a show, and goes home every night? He writes about the people that we KNOW.... and that is communication in art.

Sacrafice. I've learned a lot in the past few years. What's beautiful to one individual may not raise an eyebrow to his or her neighbor. Sometimes it seems like art, which really is a form of communicating, communicating emotions, can be kept introverted....

(Wait, plane is about to land. Landed. Customs. Baggage claim. Ride home. Say hi to the dudes. Dinner. Rehearsal. Sleep. Wake. Office hour. Scales. Bach. Errands...)

I'm back.... my fingers are crawling at half speed over the keypad after being outside. Getting colder, but the sky has disguised itself well today with some sunshine. Where did I leave off? Rambling about art=communication with it's internal sacrifice to produce external results. Hmmmm... I've lost count of how many songs have been submitted for this next record. I suppose there is a reason for that. Those that have invested in this must filter it's product. I believe that you may not hear some of the most beautiful songs that have been submitted, BUT they may not have any relevance to the masses. There is a reason for these less modernly formulated songs to get axed. I suppose we didn't sign a dotted line to make pretty things that we really like, it's to make ideas that many people like... or at least try to... and I suppose that's why I was in London trying to wrestle three hooks to the ground in the studio, while stepping out to the other side of an imaginary stage, imaginary car stereo system, getting into my "people" mindset and ears, not my "arty guy" mindset and ears. Communicate. My hero's in the sixties did it before turning into timeless creative giants. Focus.

Finally wrote a song about Boston for the first time in six years. I was talking to a friend who works in the film industry in Los Angeles last night. She attended college at Emerson, while I was at Berklee, then moved to pursue her career. She has, whether she knows it or I know it, revitalized my creative battery more than once. She like me, struggles with the everlasting battle of what we think is beautiful art vs. commercialized art. Maybe it's greediness, that we want to only make something that we love, whether anyone else does or not.... who knows. That's besides the point. Anyways, I was talking about what a romantic town Boston turns out to be. I always thought of Boston as a very non-sexy place, in it's brick forest... yet it's character is easy to write about. She said she missed that character... I often find myself complaining about these everlasting grey skies, yet it brings something real out of me. I told her that those grey skies and cold winds must whack me on the back until I spit out some melodies and lyrics about it. And somehow, I had to be across the ocean to write about it. Nostalgia. Maybe I did it. I associated those melodies and lyrics with something that I know and feel. Maybe I got on the other side of the fence for a moment... in the meantime, I'm going to rehearsal before this weather makes me nostalgic for a warm place that I've only visited....

2.18.07

SEASONS

The front lawn is a cemetery, with the dead spring buried beneath white, frozen snow.... so frozen that it's like it's own ice glacier. I was reading about a senator, one who once had tremendous amounts of power, years later, outside of the bold gates in Washington, looking in, wondering how power could shift so abruptly, suddenly making him an outsider. Politics and entertainment have short lived power, which is why, if one is careful, will allow his/her ideas to outlast their actual stay. Just like the dead green grass in the lawn, it's ice tombstone will melt, and the spring will live again.

...

We are having the time of our lives recording in the studio right now. It's natural. It's quick. We're in a good place. We'll see you all when the ice melts...

3.28.07

SKYLIGHTS AND SUSPENSE

The sun is setting and teasing us through the skylights at the studio. I suppose it works out being inside, in the warm climate, and pretending that the sun rays coming in foreshadow a summer... a summer of love...

The new music is pouring out of the monitors as I type, and I couldn't be more excited, because the closer we are to finishing... the closer we are to touring... the closer we are to rocking with you guys again.

I was talking to my Mom the other night about how music is merely icing on the cake in life, un-neccesary for survival , on the brink of superficiality.... YET, it can change lives. Music is meant for our souls, and brings our hearts and spirits together. 

Music is not about us, it's about you... 

...and we can't thank YOU enough for being a part of something special and for the love and support though thick and thin. Let's rock soon, shall we?