It’s Snowing Tumbleweeds, I Think

My post today is not really about any thoughts or ideas at all.  It’s simply just to say that my body and mind feel completely exhausted.  After two shows in one day (BBQ Battle in DC and Tortoise and Hare in Arlington), I had some really strange dreams last night when I finally closed my eyes.  It didn’t stop there, though.  I felt out of it all day today, as if I was living in a dream.  That’s such a strange feeling and can only mean one thing – my body is fatigued.  Along with a headache that lasted all day today, I closed my eyes around 6pm and fell asleep for a couple of hours.  The strange dreams continued!

My dream last night had to do with some kind of apocalyptic, extreme weather pattern.  It started sunny and bright and I was in a house I’d never been in before in my life.  I looked outside and all of a sudden, it started snowing giant-sized hail.  Imagine snow in the shape of tumbleweeds, falling from the sky.  The snow resembled that.  From there, the sky morphed drastically into different lighting patterns.   At one point, I was walking around the house  (that eventually would resemble the house I grew up in) and started seeing things that didn’t make sense.  For example, there was a deer in what used to be my study/studio.  The rest of the dream is now a blur, but I do know that I rarely remember my dreams.

The way I feel today was totally worth it.  Our shows were amazing, thanks to our fans!  A new fan from yesterday’s show said to me “I had a bad week, but witnessing your show made me feel so much better.”  That is the absolute best compliment to receive and the reason why I just can’t stop doing what I do, extreme dreams and all.

Once Upon a Magician

I had a run-in with magic this evening and it reminded me of all the wonderful things in life that boggle my mind and I like it that way.  As a musician, I see the inside of the songs everyone will sing.  I know very well the hours and sometimes days spent on a single 3-minute song that will become the anthem of someone’s summer.  Most listeners have no idea how much time, money, and energy went into a record and I’m sure they’d prefer it that way.

I, for example, love movies.  I know it can take years to finish some movies.  A movie production doesn’t even begin to compare to an album production.  I don’t know much about the behind-the-scenes of movies and I like it that way.  I like to walk into a movie theatre knowing very little about a movie and let it take me somewhere far away from my fold-down seat cushioned seat and popcorn crunching neighbor.  This is the beauty of art and entertainment.  We just want to like it and be entertained – no explanation or details needed.  We want the ‘here and now’.

This stands true also with me and magicians.  I love the feeling of being in awe of a magic trick.  We’ve all seen some tricks in our lives that blow our minds.  What a great feeling that is!  If you knew how he/she did it, would you enjoy magic as much?  It’s the most entertaining, yet dying art-form out there.  And why?  Maybe it has something to do with the amount of time, focus, and patience it takes to hone the craft (the magician tonight had trained himself to speed-read and was able to tell me what my card was simply from flipping through the deck in about 2 seconds!).  For the audience, maybe it has to do with our lack of satisfaction from simply being amazed.  The times I feel I can let go the most are when I’m being entertained by others.  So, let’s  just let go and simply believe.  A judgement-free and critical-free place awaits us…. blisssss.

What time is it and is it over yet?

I will be keeping this short because I spent the evening writing.  Then, I wasted a few hours looking up random music videos and live performances online.  I could really waste my entire life doing just that.  I’m as much a fan of music as I am a musician.  I have stared at a computer screen for way too long.  How do I know?  This text is looking mighty blurry.  So, I will leave you with these few and final words for the evening… I hope I wake up tomorrow and don’t hear a single thing about U2.  They just played Baltimore earlier tonight and it was like God himself descended upon this city, taking over the radio airwaves and the local real estate.  I love you U2, but I think we should see other people for a little while.

Momma Said Knock You Out

There are certain films that stay with me beyond the credits.  The Fighter is one of those movies.  The story of a screwed up family and a passion for boxing.  You get the feeling that the family has become so dependent on having a boxing champ in the family that without it, they’re lost.  How many of us feel like without certain things in our life, we’d be lost?  I’m pretty sure I’d be in the same position, minus the part about the crack-addicted brother.  I don’t have a brother.

Is it OK to become so dependent on greatness and success?  What if in the eyes of others, we’ve “failed”?  Should that matter, really?  There’s a beautiful balance of humbleness and wanting in Mark Wahlberg’s character in the movie.  He starts off as the guy living in the shadows of his champion brother.  I know what you’re thinking “waah, waah…. cry me a river”.  The way they developed the story is much more complex than that, though.  It’s everything about his life that makes him think this way.  His family, friends, the townspeople.  Those of us who grew up thinking we were shit have to rewire the circuits in our brains entirely to move forward.  It’s the lightbulb we thought was burnt out, only to have someone else show us it wasn’t screwed in all the way.   All this time and all we had to do was twist it a little to the right (or left).