Malena Smith – 27 in Maine (The Ride)

(Listen to this song while you read, listening inspired this post.)

Even before you are born your path begins to unfold and your story begins. As we write that story, we walk from moment to moment gathering scraps of magic and if we are lucky, we find joy. Joy that can teach us to pause and sit in a moment for the time we need to be there. If we are especially lucky, we find joy from the tiny pieces of a soul sent out in their song and we are blessed to breathe them in…

Please, allow me to introduce you to, Malena Smith. Her debut EP, 27 in Maine, comes out this fall, and I encourage you to give her music some of your moments, precious as they are, it’s worth it.

Malena is not new to singing but this will be her first solo release. She has a tremendously diverse range of experience, from sharing the stage with Michael Bublé, to singing with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. You will hear that rich experience in each of the tracks on her EP. Each song will breathe a different piece of the magic she has gathered along the way. Her voice is the boon that I needed just now.

It is alarming sometimes how well the universe knows what I need, and I needed to know who Malena Smith is. Even after ignoring an email from her public relations folks for a while. When I decided to listen, I was struck with incredible gratitude in having been given this opportunity to learn about Malena’s work. She is tapping into the magic, and if these are just the first bits… I’m all in. I can’t wait to buy a ticket to see her sing when she comes through the great Pacific Northwest.

Malena’s voice carries her power, and her message of living in the moment. Every track has a different piece of Malena’s spirit but the title track, 27 in Maine (The Ride) struck me at the center of what I needed… today, in this moment.

“Holding on to moments,

Leads to disappointments

Hourglass keeps goin’

And I can’t help but notice…”

Knowing when to let a beautiful moment go and move on is very hard for me. I have always struggled letting moments find their end. With great sorrow and fighting I have learned that if I do not fly when it is time, not only will I find disappointment, but I may cause others to find that as well.

“Time moves faster the older you get

I haven’t found how to slow it down yet

The best parts pass you by

So don’t close your eyes

Or you’ll miss the ride”

A life can be forty years or a hundred, it can also be just a day. We have innumerous ways to parcel up the tiny little pieces of our lives, probably just so we can count and see how far we have come regardless of how fast it goes, yet it just goes faster and faster. The only thing I have found that helps to slow the spin is to mash my face as hard as I can into the moment I need to be mashing my face into. It could be a two-minute conversation in my checkout line or a chat with an old friend. Being present is the only way to circle the chaos that screams around us. Do not let the screaming take your voice or your calm, put some Malena Smith in your ears, give yourself some joy.

I do not have a special line into what Malena thought about when she wrote this chorus, but for me this spoke of embracing every second, finding the thing you need to learn from, is it this person, this song, or is it that book your reading…

I can think of many times that I was faced with a decision that if I had blinked, I may have chosen right instead of left or blue instead of beige or whatever… There are so many times I could have said no to a big leap and just stayed where I was, holding onto a moment. But I took a lot of leaps, and some fell flat but some were the best ever.

I did ask that incredibly beautiful woman with the very long, very dark hair to dance….

What a ride.

Every moment you encounter could be one that presents you a choice that changes the rest of your life. You may be holding on to where you are just because at some point it was very sweet, or you may not know anything else. You may just be terrified of what lies ahead. But time won’t wait, so don’t close your eyes, it may be scary, but it also may be beautiful…

Don’t ignore that email from Karissa….

“Photographs are slowly fading

Souvenirs collecting dust

These are old records I keep playing

Take me back to where I was”

There is such power in this verse… some of my greatest joys are finding ways back to the places where I had stashed souvenirs and songs. It is in those places that I find pieces of Rusty that I need to learn from. My life is filled to overflowing with kind words or memories and each of them had a part in helping me finding the ride that has brought me to this moment, to this keyboard while Malena sings, a magical soul with so many more tiny pieces to send.

“Spent last summer in the harbor

With parts of me I’d never met

I wish it didn’t make me wonder

How many summers I have left”

This verse is exciting and frightening all at once… but beautiful. I can feel the excitement of meeting a new part of oneself, I have felt that. I have also felt the ripple of fear that I have only so many times left around this beautiful world. I am so grateful that I am about to complete my sixty-fifth trip, and I have had the best ride. I am by no means done yet, but I will not be silly and say I don’t think about how many trips I have left. I have found that it can always be exciting if you just mash your face into whatever moment, you are in the midst of. Yes, I am repeating myself, it bears repeating.

Enjoy it, savor it and maybe even devour it…. take it all in and then find your way to the next one.

I remember as a kid I would look so forward to a trip or outing and when they came I never wanted them to end. I carried that practice well into adulthood and only in the last decade or so have I learned to relish an adventure but also relish the coming home and being in that place with that one. Joy will teach us how to pause and sit in a moment, before it floats away to stir smiles in other places. Time moves so fast, but we get the choice of whether we are moved by it or we ride with it…

Malena, in my heart of hearts, I wish you so many moments that will bring you joy in the knowledge that this moment was made just for you. You have deep and ancient power, and your music is from that place. I’ll be one of the adoring fans waiting for the fluttering pieces of your music to breathe life into me.

Listening, learning and growing…

The Dream Edged Cowboy

Inspired by Beta Radio‘s Waiting for the End to Come… start at the beginning.

I vaguely remember that evening when my dad came in from the cold and was frozen. He had been out on Rebel, his sorrel gelding, looking for a few head of steers that had found their way out into a storm that had become a blizzard. I was ten years old, and I don’t remember most of that night, but I remember the steam coming off my dad’s body as he sat by the wood stove trying to thaw out. The next morning, we heard on the radio that last night’s temperature was minus thirty-five with the windchill dipping to seventy below…. I do not know how either my dad or Rebel survived that night, but they did.

I cannot imagine the bond my dad had with Rebel. He had had him since Rebel was two, a gift from my mom’s brother. He always had him, until Rebel passed at an old age in eastern Oregon, far from the plains of Montana, but still very close to his cowboy.

I have several recollections of the dudes that tried to ride Rebel, and my dad would just laugh and climb on another horse and go get them. Rebel liked to run, and they could never stop him. My dad could if he wanted to, but he liked to run just as much as Rebel did.

This is a shot taken on that same ranch where my dad and Rebel rode out into the seventy below and found those cattle…. All because of a dream.

“All the ghosts of my past come in droves
Digging up the last of my bones
Hanging on like the moss on the graves
Then I saw in the air
Floating you, floating through“

On July 3rd, 1930, Don’s voice came into the world and would forever breathe cowboy. He dreams cowboy, he is a cowboy, and he is my dad.

My dad was one of seven boys and three girls, raised through the depression and two wars. All seven of the boys were shipped overseas to fight in two different wars… all of them made it home, some more damaged than others. Dad is the last of all his siblings now, and it makes him a little dimmer when he talks about that. They all gave him pieces of joy, much like my siblings have given me. After my dad and his closest brother Wayne got home from Korea, they rode the rodeo for a bit while looking for work in the northeastern corner of Montana. They both got married and found religion, all around the same time.

Sgirley smiling at Don in their early years

My dad and mom met at the drive-in she worked at in Conrad. I see so much joy and adoration in both of them when I look at early pictures of the couple that gave me breath.

In the early 60’s, Don and Shirley made their way to Portland Oregon, where they both attended Bible School and contrary to my sister Roxanna Lou’s plans, they made me. After Portland, dad did a stint with the Forest Service in the Gifford-Pinchot National Forest and after the arrival of Roberta Lynn in 1964 we headed back to Montana where my Dad worked in the oil fields for a few years before finding that ranch in the shadow of Birdtail, that is where he lived his dream of being the cowboy.

That blizzard… and the stories of Indian Jake. These were the days that I was the little boy who believed his dad had the answer to everything, because he did. He taught me to respect the world around me. and gave me reverence for what a firearm was for. He taught me to whisper to horses, and he taught me that my sister probably could do anything I could, which she did. My dad instilled so many incredible pieces of knowledge in me and my love for all that he taught me, will never grow stale.

My dad is a dreamer, just as deeply as he is a cowboy. He moved us from place to place as he took one job after another, looking for the dream he finally found on that ranch of the seventy below, but it was short lived. My dad made almost no money on that ranch, and in a few years, we moved to eastern Washington, where mom’s brother could help my dad find better paying work.

In many ways that was the end of my dad’s dream of being the cowboy, and in a few years, my parents split and I never lived with my dad again.

“You know me, I’m always halfway in a dream
You know me, I’m always halfway imbetween“

There have been so many peaks and valleys in my relationship with my dad… Anger at so many pieces of rejection and being left alone… but we walked through that.

It started with small steps, always being nudged along by my Susan…

It took years of driving across the state to Seahawk games and bonding over that silly sport…

It took moments of realizing that he is me.

My dad gave me the gift of dreaming, and he gave me the gift of writing… and he hears the magic in music.

“Our bodies wanted to go under
Before we knew that we could walk on water“

Dad is ninety-four and counting. A few weeks ago, I had the joy of bringing him over to stay with Susan and I for a few days. We watched some movies, and I saw the romantic I understood… we listened to some music, and I slammed headlong into myself. I saw my dad melt when I played Jim Reeves and Marty Robbins and so many other artists he asked about… Dad and I will never agree on religion or politics, but we have common ground in a very hard to describe yearning to hear that song… and that song and that song. Again and again and again…

Both of us have spent a great deal of time trying to find out who is talking to us, and we have both found great joy in singing hallelujah. Sitting with my dad for a few days was like looking in a mirror and basking in being home. I saw a man who is kind and who’s spirit is so much like mine. I suppose this should be of no great revelation for me, but it is. I have spent a great deal of time focused on the negative things about my dad, but the moment I let that slip away, I see myself. I see all the things I have considered the best of me, right there in that hopelessly romantic dreamer.

“Hari Krishna, hallelujah
Is there a voice that calls you forward
Out of the noise saying you should stay.”

My dad taught me to seek out that voice, I think we all want to chase something. If it isn’t one god, it is another. The need for people to find a deity in everything astounds me, but I am guilty. Music is arguably my deity, and I can live with that. Music carries the energy of the voices who sing it, and the instruments that play it, and that energy persists.

My dad still dreams, just as hard as ever has. He dreams about the upcoming visits and trips he will be taking, and I saw the wisp of wonder and awe when he talked about riding horses and wandering the plains of Montana.

He still has stories that I have not heard before, and yet, quite a few I have…

He believes he will see one hundred and I do to, I love this man dearly.

“Hari Krishna, hallelujah
Ayahuasca, wheel of wonder
At St. Peter’s, holy water
Veil of wonder, Holy Mother

Hari Krishna, hallelujah
Ayahuasca, wheel of wonder
At St. Peter’s, holy water
Veil of wonder, Holy Mother“

On July 19, 2024, Beta Radio released the absolutely stunning, Waiting for the End to Come. You need to listen to this album from the begining with The Grief Of, through to the end with Waiting for the End to Come, at least once in your life. I found joy and sadness and so much magic. I listened to this album on repeat when I drove the two-and-a-half hours to pick my dad up and again after I dropped him off a few days later… There is something deeply magical about this album. I have said countless times, music finds you, right when you need it and these last few weeks I needed this album. I am so grateful to these guys for letting us live in their energy for thousands of repeats.

This album crept into my dreams and painted the picture my dad and I were trying to describe with our lives. Can you go too far away from what you know? If you get too far away, I hope you have some nuggets of memories like I have with my dad, and they call you to stay.

We are all searching and we are all so badly flawed, yet we are all so perfect.

Float through this album and lay back into the idea of how we seek, and we seek, waiting for the end to come…

My dad loves the story of Will James, The Gilt Edged Cowboy, and in 2009 I wrote a song for him titled, “The Dream Edged Cowboy“. It was right around the time I started to understand how devastating it must have been to look at your only hope of a career drifting away like a weed in the wind. I wanted to show him my grattitude for giving me the gift of being a dreamer. I really don’t like my voice at all but appreciate my badnamtes at the time, Fran and Tim for giving me their support in recording it for my dad. I think he liked it.

I have never had the impression that he was blown away by my singing prowess, and he is not wrong… maybe I can get Beta Radio to cover it.

Learning, listening and growing…

Penny and Sparrow – Mattering Ram

Hope, again.

(Listen to this song while you read this, listening to it, inspired this post.)

This is a song about the stories that connect us to one another and to this day. Penny and Sparrow gave us a song about their stories and reminded me of mine…

I spent some time with my favorite person, wandering the hall of mosses and the beaches of Ruby. The Hoh Rain Forest and the beaches just south of there are sacred for me. They restore me and remind that I am a piece of a star, just like those beautiful spruce with their lichen friends entwined amongst them. This beautiful world will heal us because it is us. We all have a place that refills us, it may be a whole slew of places or just a few… but you have them.

Susan walking in the hall of mosses at the Hoh Rainforest National Park

These are pieces of the stories that brought me to this day…

Stories…

“If you ain’t got love tho, does it even matter….“

Stories are people

When Penny and Sparrow released this song, they dropped these paragraphs of explanation.

“Mattering Ram is at least 15 short stories that actually happened to us. Most of them happen to everybody (over time) and all of that non-fiction matters. Every tail of every snake is tied together in this song so your focus keeps getting pulled in all directions. Here you’ll find pro-tennis writhing alongside antidepressants, near death on huge mountains, naked motorcycle photo shoots & euphemisms for birth control. It hits so hard because it’s all real and recognizable. As honest as life and knee-jerk reactions.

Sometimes things are important for the exact reasons you expect them to be, and you keep eye contact with em’ while they molt and become something else. Other times, you’re wrong and the moon cracks in half while you’re staring at your shoes. Either way it matters.”

This hit me, right between the ears, it rolled me up against the wall and asked me… what are you doing?

I am not sure when a song has rocked me like this. I was almost eighteen the first time I heard John Lennon sing Imagine, sitting in an old boat of car with my friend Floyd. He had told me it would undo me, and he was right. Floyd matters…

This song digs deep like that, even more because I have so many stories now, so many stories. I am getting good at painting with charcoal…

“Guess I think that matters.“

Andy and Kyle are telling us what love is and that it matters. They are telling you about love by giving you stories that belong to them, showing you what love means to them. The stories of your life are the pieces of the love that has made you. The good, the bad and the glorious. Andy and Kyle are reminding us that today is the day our story is written. As long as we have breath, it is the time to write.

Who are the people in your story? Are they making you better or are they just taking the love out of you?

“All of it still matters”

How many homes will have a photo hanging in the front room of someone on a Suzuki, with no clothes? I have a friend named Jonny… I think he’d be up for the shot. It would look just fine on my front room wall.

This is a really simple, and gorgeous song… three chords… three beautiful chords that live to make space for the stories in the lyrics… this is such beautiful magic. It reminded me of the rounds we sang in grade school, its tempo and measure. But it never repeats itself and it just keeps slithering across your soul. Yes, I did play my bass along with it and it sounded beautiful.

You don’t know the future and I don’t know the future, but if we’re honest, we know the past. We have our stories and if your very lucky you have your ancestors stories. We have no excuse in making the same mistakes over and over. But we do…

So many tales to bite and connect to.

“Does it even matter?“

I raced into adult life thinking I knew it all… just like you. I found out slowly and sometimes suddenly, I knew nothing. I still know mostly nothing. But I know joy…

We all have a string of tales that brought us to today. The snakes tail, in the snakes mouth…

“Was it a placebo?
Was it a distractor?
Tell me how the wind blows
Tell me if it matters”

I was an ice cream truck driver who broke the 20 MPH rule…

I made some stuff out of fiberglass and I’m pretty sure there is still a Freightliner truck out there with some of my handiwork holding up its hood.

I hated that farm, and it didn’t really care for me. I found darkness there, darkness that nearly consumed all of my song.

it only mattered in how I drifted, and it mattered in who my children turned out to be.

I loved the ditches and canals of block 18 and 47. I got my first glimpse of what a man like me might look like there. I wish I had paid better attention, but does it really matter?

I searched the spirits, and they gave no sound…

I broke through the bondage of Christianity and I really thought it mattered…

“Does it even matter?“

I tumbled into a world that I believed was forbidden to me. I never got to be a college student, but I walked around the halls of education for twenty years.

but what did I change….

Now I write stories that explore the magic that music gave me when that piece of a star broke away and said I will be Rusty…

“All of it still matters”

I find hope in following Susan through the trails and shores that we are blessed to be surrounded by.

I find hope in my coworkers as they navigate this chapter of their story. I am a soul that matters in this chapter of their life, our permanence does not.

“Either way it matters“

You have this moment to create, give hope and find joy… that matters

I am not going to try and explain the stories that Penny and Sparrow sing about in this brilliant song because those stories belong to Penny and Sparrow. They are singing about the pathways that they snaked through to get to this day. You don’t know Nemo, you don’t know Esperanza…

You have a series of stories that have brought you to this day, no one understands them like you do. Some of them are terrifying and some of them make your heart swell. We all made choices that pushed us to today. I believe the universe would be happy if you listened to this song and found that you matter, because you do….

“I don’t know the future
Shout it from the rafters
You don’t know it either
I don’t think it matters”

I wish we were better at letting our understanding of the past guide our ability to steer us into the future. But then, that would require us to be honest about who we are and what brought us here…and we are not.

We control some of our story, but more often than not, we are just washed up on the shore to drip and sputter and try and figure out why.

Pause a moment… look back over your shoulder and look at your trail… look at your story. You rode a river of stories to get to this day. Look at them, they are medicine for you. They are medicine you can give.

I am surrounded by humanity finding their food, every day I am at work. How primal is that? It is medicine for my soul. People just running from one story to the next at breakneck speed. Most are good and honest people who could create so much joy if only they knew they mattered. I get to tell them they do… We are all hope, you, your friends and the one who bagged your groceries today. All of us create…and it matters. All of us create joy.

If we don’t create, how do we have hope? With everything we see around us, how do we find hope? If we all give up, then what, where do we go?

Listen to this song with your heart wide open and soak in it. There is magic here, really deep, crazy good magic.

Penny and Sparrow, thank you. Thank you for listening to what the music was telling you. Thank you for such good stories that made us smile and recall our own. There is beauty in knowing that the moon might crack open while you are staring at your shoes, and yet, you still got a chance to say pull the goalie…

Listening, learning and growing…

Iron & Wine, Fiona Apple – All In Good Time

Deliberately Random, Post number 35

(Listen to this song while you read this, I listened to it when I wrote it.)

I am sitting at the exact same keyboard I was staring at five years ago when I started this deliberately random effort to understand my weird. That weird, is the ability to become wired emotionally to a particular song. Some would call it obsessed; I am calling it one of my superpowers.

it’s my weird…

I have walked through life thinking that everyone gets it, and wondering, what is wrong with all these people? It wasn’t that long ago that I figured out that the “rest of the world” doesn’t hear music the same way I do.

My weird has brought me so much joy and I am so grateful for all the random things that brought me to this day. Embracing the idea that I can listen to a song on repeat, hundreds and hundreds of times and it ends up a thing I write about and then grow from. My weird makes me cool, and I am going to celebrate myself for a minute. I have been listening and I have been learning and I have grown, I have grown so much… so yeah, I am okay.

“All in good time, I gave it my best
I was alone ’til I found myself
Grew up to be a man more or less
All in good time”

That second line, “I was alone ’til I found myself”, burst into my soul and spun around and around until I noticed it, and then so many things came flooding back. I left Rusty in the back seat a long time ago. Rusty is the one who believes the world is a beautiful place, and without him it’s not. If you have ever set a part of yourself aside, for whatever reason, you’ve been walking alone. I am no expert in the complexity of personalities, but once I invited that part of myself back in, I believed again. I believe that I have value, I believe I have something to give, and I believe that the universe is a better place because I am in it. So yes, I grew up to be a man more or less, but it took a lot of time and a lot of words.

I have written at length about my battles with the entanglement of religion within my spirit, first as a child and then again as I raised my children. When I finally left the church… I exploded away, I couldn’t get away fast enough, nor hard enough. For a time, everything “Christian” evoked a vehement reaction from me, very much like I reacted to unchristian things as a church goer. But as I worked very hard at being honest about who I am, the pendulum has found rhythm. It doesn’t mean my opinion of “church” has changed. If anything, I am more certain than ever that there is nothing for me within the walls of organized religion, Christian or otherwise. But I don’t need to be an ass about it.

There is something wondrous in the universe. I am not sure what they look like, but they know who we are. They are singing and awaiting the energy we will burn into the universe.

The understanding of what is next is the greatest mystery. Some choose to see heaven, and yet, some choose to see nothing at all. In my sixty-three turns around the sun I have only found one thing that has the power to persist, and it is music.

Music is the constant in everyone.

The small and the proud, all have a song…

Music is pervasive, it is magic.

Music can take you to the ledge…. and then ask you to just sit and listen.

“All in good time, I trusted my eyes
Treated my losses like clouds in the sky
Finally picked on someone my size
All in good time
All in good time, I followed my nose
Learned where to bleed when a night comes to blows
Tried on your love, then I folded those clothes
All in good time”

When I started this blog, I was unraveling a career that was seeing its sun set. I struggled to say out loud what I knew in my soul… so I wrote. When a song embraces me, I spend time with it and I listen, I look for the wonder that a song is revealing to me, and I write about it. It might be about a friend that I knew a long time ago or something I see swirling about me today. Sometimes, it is what I see from my side of the cash register, but whatever it is, music helps me walk through it, layer by layer and find nothing to prove.

Where do you want to go and what is it you want to accomplish? Are you just focusing on tomorrow or has the past paralyzed your ability to walk? Did your plans go to shit; did you get hurt? Have you tried focusing on just today? It is the hardest thing you will ever do because staying in the now requires trust. Trust that the past is just that. and the future will unfold when it should. Trust in the now and find what is there for you to see, right inside this moment.

Everything else will come, all in good time.

“Throw your bread to falling birds
Buried friends and wasted words
Something wants to eat us all
Alive”

It is your responsibility to get to know who you are and then embrace that. Let whatever you have inside you burn, let it fly and do the thing that makes you smile. There are so many things in this life that want to eat us alive. They scream at you, in hopes that you’ll shrink from them. Don’t shrink away, you do not have to please anyone except you. Go, create…

You are a creative person! Every human with breath has the breath to create. All of us…

Creating is the act of burning a piece of you into the universe, no one can burn the same signature of energy that you can. You are the most precious of creations because you are you and there is nothing more beautiful than what you created. Go create and burn that piece of you into the stars and let it’s joy lift you up. It all comes in the good and right time.

Loving what you create is the most empowering feeling you will ever experience. I love what I write, I am so proud of where I have arrived. Writing and obsessing over music has set me free. I am giving into the wonder when I create.

Creating is yours to decide upon, trusting in the now and finding that thing inside you that makes your heart sing. It doesn’t matter how hard you have to work on it, and it doesn’t matter how much time it takes. It will make you feel like a star and the very best thing in the universe, because you are a star. You will see it, all in good time.

“All in good time, we fell like a star
We closed our eyes and we opened our arms
Ran off the road in our own stolen car
All in good time”

I believe there are many reasons to have hope. I see them every day, in each of you. Life means so much. Do not squander what each day means… Look everything in the eye and challenge it, make sure it is what you should be paying attention to. Look into your deepest self and see if you find joy. Are you listening, have you grown? We are not here to generate income, we are here to create, and you are here because no other person, can create what you can. I desperately want you to find your joy and create. This is why I have hope and why I will always have hope, if humanity is creating then there is reason to have hope.

“All in good time, I gave it my best
I was alone ’til I found myself
Grew up to be a man more or less
All in good time
All in good time, I drifted away
I ran my mouth ’til I’d nothing to say
You broke my heart, then I was okay
All in good time”

Iron and Wine i.e. Sam Bean, has been a favorite of mine for the last fifteen years, and Fiona Apple is, well, Fiona Apple… do yourself a favor and go listen to “When The Pawn…” right now. What Sam and Fiona have done together is doubly magic. A song that grabs the perfection in each of their voices, and winds around your heart like a scarf…. It makes me a smile every single time I hear them. This is what collaboration looks like.

I could huff and puff and make many proclamations, but I will simply ask all of you to listen, a lot. Thank you, Sam and Fiona, for taking us down this road with you. I will just stay in the now and keep soaking this in…

“All in good time, I trusted my eyes
Treated my losses like clouds in the sky
Finally picked on someone my size
All in good time”

I am trusting my eyes, and I am writing my fantastical biography, savoring every moment of the process. It reminds me of the joy I found when I was in the studio. I loved every moment I played my bass in the studio… It was magical. Writing this book feels something like that, but so much more. I finally picked on someone my own size and found the joy of creating. I have given in to the wonder and I’ll shine as bright as I can.

Should you come through my line at our neighborhood grocery store… or maybe, you just found yourself reading this. I hope you find some of my hope, but mostly, I hope you find joy. It is a beautiful balm for all the things that are otherwise, shit.

To the weirdo’s and freaks I work with, you give me joy every day and I am blessed get to laugh with you while we feed our community. Working alongside you is fuel for my creative fire.

You have no idea how powerful the people are that stock your shelves and bag your groceries. They are magical. So many of them called off their logical life and chased their creative fire and I love them very much.

“All in good time, we’ll remember when
Say our goodbyes and our hellos again
Huff and we’ll puff until they let us in

All in good time”

Find your weird. It is anything that leaves your beautiful mark on the universe. Don’t put conditions around it, just let it be you and listen especially close to that four-year-old you and that thirteen-year-old in you. Say hellos again and be the you that we all need you to be.

I don’t know when I will finish my book or how many more of these posts I will write. None of us can know when we get to fly into the next thing… But while I am here, I will huff, and I will puff all of my findings as I wander and shuffle through all of the music. I will keep the fires of my hope glowing and I will give you my joy.

Learning, listening and growing…

Sons of the East – Head Above the Water

Patty

(Listening to this song while you read, is strongly encouraged)

So you think that you might
Slide away in the night
Get away from it all for once
Take the back seat of the bus going south

This week someone I have known for over forty-five years slid away into the night.

I sat through the service for my stepmother, mostly present, in a surreal state of mind. There were people in that room whom I have known through all the stages of my life. There were people there I didn’t know at all. Mostly it was my dad’s family, which is my reference, not theirs. My youngest sister was there, my Susan, and both of my kids, everyone else was their family. Some of those in that room are some of the dearest people in my life, nieces and nephews, my other siblings… If it weren’t for Kissy, I would have left the bar that night, without my sweet Susan’s phone number… and Steph and Tony introduced me to Cat Stevens… those things matter. Things like that change your life and I know if not for Dad and Patty, I wouldn’t be quite like this.

Tiffany and Shatame, you are some of the most loving people I know… barreling down your road, trying to figure things out. Raising your beautiful children, absolutely no time for yourselves… “Yeah, I know there is a cost…”

Each of you are a part of the story of my life, and you carry something of me. I hope you know how much you are adored and how much I look forward to seeing what you do next.

Yeah I know there’s a cost
You said the same thing all along
And I don’t know if it’s friend or thief
Comes ’round to steal you away

I was almost fifteen when my dad introduced Robbi and I to Patty. I was really pissed off at how happy they seemed. My dad left my mom and us for this new family and I don’t think I have ever worked my way all the way through that. I have carried a grudge for decades after being told not to tell my mom where my dad worked. They couldn’t collect child support from him if they didn’t know where he worked. I am not proud of that grudge, but I will never forget the life my mom had thrust upon her. Just trying to keep her head above water.

Well you try to keep your head above the water
I know it ain’t easy now
So lay down in my arms and let me hold you
It gets better somehow

We are all just trying to keep our heads above water… and eventually, it does get better somehow.

When I knelt next to my dad as the service wrapped up, I saw the tears in his eyes, and I just listened. He was staring at a picture of Patty; he only sees out of the sides of his eyes now, and he had just found the perfect angle to see the picture of her. “She is so beautiful… Oh isn’t she beautiful.”

That is what true love looks like… it does get better somehow.

I am not sure how many of those people in that room I will ever see again. Circumstance and the one that tied us together will dictate whatever thread we glance against in the future. Patty is the one who brought us all to that room. She was a force to be reckoned with, her smile and laughter were something that I had tried to earn. When I was a teenager, I could see the way my dad loved her, and I wanted that too.

You don’t let much get you down
But now your luck’s running out
And the game isn’t easy to play
Let me come and steal you away

Patty showed me how to dance…

I still feel only slightly guilty that they bought me tickets to Tanya Tucker at the fair. I was so in love with Tanya that I would have let anyone sell their firstborn if it meant that I would get to see her. Tanya lived up to everything I had dreamed of, and I was mesmerized by her. They had bought me a seat that was in the front row of the grandstands on the rodeo grounds she was playing in. I invented an elaborate tale of running onto the grounds when she finished. I said I wanted to get her autograph before she got into her limo. I would have made it, but a massive security guard put his hand out and I found myself face up on the ground and she was gone… pretty decent story huh? I have lost count of the number of times I have told that tale, I figured it didn’t matter, Tanya didn’t know, and I just sat petrified in my seat, thinking the whole story up.

Well you try to keep your head above the water
I know it ain’t easy now
So lay down in my arms and let me hold you
It gets better somehow

Patty wanted me to call her mom, she even told me once that God wanted it that way… I never could call her mom, and it had nothing to do with love. She will always be Patty to me, I love her for everything that she was. She was a ferociously good mother; I saw how she took care of her own. She laughed with an abandon that I can only aspire to. She gave me glimpses of what it could mean to think for just me. What I call her does not change the fact that she left an indelible mark on my life.

Don-O is what she called my dad. I saw Patty’s love for my dad when he had a major heart attack twenty-three years ago. I hadn’t been talking to my dad much over the previous twenty years or so…

Kissy called and told me what had happened, and we all ended up in Spokane trying to figure out if this funny, gnarly old man was going to make it. Someone was trying to steal him away and it didn’t happen. I will never forget the love I saw in Patty’s eyes for my dad. She was so afraid of losing him, it was the first time I saw true love.

I met my Susan a few months after that happened and I am not sure I would have been open to finding the love of my life, if not for that night. Watching Patty gaze upon the man I called dad… she loved him so much.

Susan was right next to me this week as I sat there trying to understand what I was feeling. She was the one my dad recognized first; he loves my Susan so much. When he slips away, I am not sure what I will do. He is almost ninety-four and I know he is trying to have a positive look on tomorrow, but I know he loved his Patty with all his heart, and he had to say farewell. He is trying to keep his head above water, but he doesn’t have the one he’d lay in the arms of anymore…

You don’t let much get you down
But now your luck’s running out
And the game isn’t easy to play
Let me come and steal you away

I heard this song on the way to the service and then again on the way home. I have listened to this song a lot since the Sons of the East released it last October. So much magic… I waited, and the story found me like it usually does. It is weird how music finds me in a moment when I need it. Hope these guys don’t mind me working through some shit with their beautiful song.

The gift I have been given for appreciating what music can walk you through is due in part to Patty. She had incredibly good taste in music, and she encouraged me early on to listen to whatever I wanted. When I told her that I had been told that I would go to hell for listening to Queen, she just laughed. I figured out how laughable that was later…

Patty, the last few decades were especially hard for you. The chair they gave you made you feel like your luck was running out. I know you wanted to get away from it all a long time ago, but you stayed. I know it was dad that kept you here, but he will be ok. We are all going to make sure of that. When he decides he has had enough of us, I am sure he will reach out for your hand and follow where you take him.

It is a weird and fantastic process that happens for me when I write about a song. I pick up all these pieces that I have collected over the many years of my life, and I look at them while listening to the spirit of what a song is telling me. I don’t let things get me down, and some of that is not easy but I have a beautiful human next to me, just like my dad did.

So you think that you might
Slide away in the night
Get away from it all for once
Take the back seat of the bus going south

Something changed for me that day. Watching all those people say goodbye to Patty. I laid down that grudge and it just slid away. I didn’t know what to expect when I made the drive to her service, I just wanted to give my dad a hug and to see if he was ok. I wasn’t expecting all this stuff to come up, wanting to be resolved, but it did, and I am grateful. I am grateful for the music that worked into my spirit and washed away bits of pain and grief. I am grateful for Patty, who was perfectly imperfect. I am grateful for the last two decades that allowed me to heal the pain that existed between my dad and me. I am most grateful for my Susan, who quietly holds me and loves me.

Dad is ok but he will slide away into the night. There is a whole gang of folks waiting there for him. He is the last of his siblings and I know he misses them so much. I will do what I can to spend as much time with him as I can and not hold on too tight when the time comes for him to go. The game is not easy to play, and it can drag you down. But it does get better somehow…

Through grief we can find joy. When the magic of music touches you, let it soothe you and guide your steps back to joy. It gets better somehow.

Listening, learning, and growing

Aysanabee – Watin

A Journey

(Listening to this album while you read, is strongly encouraged)

This is a story about the power of music. This is a story about how music is connected to everything. This a story about letting the magic of music reach deep down inside of you and connect you to far deeper things than anything you could ever imagine. This is the story of my experience listening to Watin, by Aysanabee.

Aysanabee is an Oji-Cree singer/songwriter from Ontario, Canada. His album Watin is a creation of his soul, it was inspired by conversations with his grandfather, Watin Aysanabee. I encourage you to listen to this album from its beginning, and do not stop until you have finished it. Open yourself to hearing the truth and let this wrench your soul. I have never experienced anything like this.

Aysanabee opened his spirit and poured his authenticity into his art and then he gave it to us. Thank you, Aysanabee, thank you for being gracious enough to share your journey. I am not the same man I was before I heard your music.

Listening to the conversations of a man rediscovering where he came from has been a chance to take in something truly sacred. There is so much power, sadness, and beauty in this album. I am still sorting it out. This entire experience is an example of the deepest of magics in music. As you listen to Watin Aysanabee’s voice, let it reach within you, let it move you. I know of no other example that can demonstrate the power of music to move you better than this album.

I read with sadness that Watin Aysanabee completed his journey on May 9, 2023. His story will live on because his grandson decided to capture his beauty and weave it into his art. What they both have given us will take me some time to understand.

Music finds you when you are ready to face a truth. It could be a small thing or something that reaches through generations. That is how this is digging into my spirit; it is shining a bright light on the footsteps that brought me here.

I am the tenth generation of Beard’s that have lived in North America. John Richard Beard immigrated to Massachusetts from England in the 1600’s, he was a Quaker and given his father’s issues with the crown, he came looking for religious freedom. The Beards were here before there was a declaration or a constitution, but I know very little about who the Beards were. The little bit I do know is that Beards were hard workers and very dedicated to the service of this nation, but we have never really been that nice. The only stories of my grandfather Beard are those of his cruelty to his kids…and yet there is deep goodness in my father, his laughter, and his ability to dream are some of the precious gifts he has given me, but he has a place that can look away from the horrors of this world and even his own life, if he chooses. I can talk about this because it exists within me too. I know how to turn away if I choose to, but I will not turn away from this. Listening to the journey that these two men took together has grasped me by the shoulders and made me look into the face of colonization and try to understand my role in it.

I will not turn away.

Colonization, a term that will carry many different emotions depending on where your family came from. As a child, I never knew the term to be derogatory, on the contrary, I was taught the value of it, over and over. I was taught that the colonization of the America’s was Gods’ destiny for us, I was taught this in every church and every school I attended. Manifest Destiny is the constitution of colonization. We have to understand this ground that we are built on if we want to do anything worthwhile. Manifest Destiny, Eminent Domain and Documents of Discovery were the licenses by which countless civilizations were eradicated. We have to understand that this nation was founded on principles that will never align with our deeds.

Our foundation is built from the blood of the civilizations we destroyed by colonizing. We must understand this if we are to ever be truly free. We cannot turn away and push it on to another generation. Every day our civilization becomes less civil, children are gunned down at school, at church or at the mall… and we just walk on. I choose to not walk on, I choose to take responsibility for what my ancestors gave me, all of it. That is why I write.

I write so that my kids and my grandkids will never have a doubt about the direction I am trying to point them. This generation of Beard has no excuses because I am here, and I am writing so you can hear me. Do not look away. We all have something we create. Find yours, make it beautiful and pour your soul into it. I am writing because that is what I have to give you. I write to leave you a record…. You cannot say you didn’t know.

How would you survive having your children stripped from your home for the explicit purpose of eradicating your existence. How do you walk away from that?

We are blood thirsty people.

Being honest goes against all of our programming, it goes against all of the things that give me privilege, and privilege has nothing to do with my income status. Privilege is how I am treated by society and acknowledging my privilege requires nothing of me. That is the privilege of privilege. White Europeans know absolutely nothing about the trauma of having your ancestors driven to reservations and schools designed to hold them until they existed no more.

How many of you know the deep scars that move through generation after generation of a people?

Did your ancestors arrive in the cargo hold of a ship to be sold as livestock in this great “free” land?

How many of you know the horror of having all of your property confiscated because you look like the enemy across the sea, and now you live in a prison camp, in this great “free” land?

Remove these things from our history books and you take away any hope we have of surviving.

Indigenous people from thousands of nations lived on these continents for tens of thousands of years before Columbus or even the Vikings landed. They thrived in this land and survived every natural turn of the Earth. In the tiniest fraction of that time, we white Europeans have brought the wrath of this planet upon us all. She is giving us warnings, but she might decide she is done and just wash us away. We really are that insignificant in the grand scheme of everything. Your bank account will not get you or your descendants past this. Even if we get real and give all control of everything over to the stewards who were placed here first, I am not sure if this beautiful world will change her mind. She is angry…

This is not about god, or the end times, no one is going to whisk you away.

Every time I listen to this album, I peel back another layer of who I am and what my ancestors did.

Every time I listen to this album, I peel back another layer of grief for the things that were lost.

Every time I listen to this album, I peel back a layer and find hope.

I encourage you to read the lyrics of this album while you listen. Listen to Watin tell his grandson the words of his people and what they mean, honor that knowledge as you hear it, attempt to understand it. This is a gift, and we should treat it as such.

If you are reading this and hail from a white European family like me, I hope you feel some grief. With grief we might take a step forward, but without it we are doomed to repeat our atrocities and ultimately, we will evaporate. We will wash away like vapors on the horizon when the heat rolls up out of the desert.

We are not Nomads, we have not found the beauty of following the seasons. This is cemented in my understanding every time I have a customer come through my line complaining about the rain and the grey in the Pacific Northwest.

We are not Nomads… but can we strive to be wise? Can we just once understand that there is more to us than just our Bones.

“Slow it down and just feel it out
Take your time digging and reel it out
Slow it down and just feel it out
Believe your words before you shout them out”

“Believe your words before you shout them out.”

Does providing reparations mean we will heal? It will not restore the civilizations that have been lost but I know we have to do something. I do not believe that our nation can survive if we do not deal with the blood on our hands. Listening is our only chance to know the way forward.

I have been listening to this album for over two months now and there have been weeks that I listened to nothing else. I will continue to take this in. I wrote a letter to my grandson while listening to this, he turns eighteen this month and my hope was to give him some keys to walk through the challenges of life. I believe that is one of the steps towards healing. If our grandchildren don’t hear from us, then they are destined to spin their wheels just like we have.

My relationship with music is the thing that makes me weird, and it is that weird that lets me see my role in hope. In examining that relationship and writing about it, I am coming closer to the truth of me. I believe that finding that truth is one of the few things of value I can pursue. Pursuing my truth and supporting everyone’s pursuit for themselves is one step in creating a world we can all thrive in.

We need to find a path to coexistence, but I clearly do not have the answers. We need to stop acting like we know what to do and listen. Listen to what the world is trying to tell us and act on it. Listen to those who have tens of thousands of years of experience stewarding our home and act on it. I am part of the solution as long as I don’t look away and listen…

Listening, learning, and growing…

Katie Pruitt – Normal

(Listening to this song while you read this, is strongly encouraged)

Why is a sixty-one-year-old, straight white male writing about a song celebrating being queer? I am writing because being queer should be celebrated by straight white males. I am writing because I want my fifteen-year-old granddaughter to know she is perfect just the way she is… I am writing because this song is magic.

I discovered Katie Pruitt a few months ago when I heard her EP, “Ohio/ After The Gold Rush”. When I heard her sing After The Gold Rush, I felt like it was the first time I had really heard that song. And then I fell into a Katie Pruitt rabbit hole. I listened to everything she has released, multiples, of multiple times. her music has been front center for a few weeks now.

Normal, is from her album, “Expectations.” This entire album is a gift, every song has its own magic and story, I can’t wait to hear what she does next. She is a part of something really cool happening in Nashville.

I had completely forgotten the pull that Nashville could have on my heart… fourteen-year-old Rusty’s crush on Tanya Tucker. Listening to Tanya those many years ago is what helped me through my parents’ divorce and over the last little while I have found beautiful reminders in Joy Oladokun, Brandi Carlile and Katie. Each of them have dropped little goblets of magic into my soul. The power of music can help you face or unlock things, it can help you learn, and it is awe inspiring. Even at my crazy old age, I am learning.

I recently watched Katie on an episode of “The Caverns Sessions”. What a beautiful setting, and while she sang “Normal”, the tug of words began to swirl through my mind. Words for my granddaughter, words for my younger self and words that heal.

Wasted and worn out and wonderin’, “Where do I fit?”

And scared as hell ’cause I knew I was different

I think that most of us have experienced the hammer of society trying to pound us into shape over the forge of normal. There are some of us who no matter the pounding, could not find our way to normal. I have never felt acquainted with normal; I may never understood normal.

What’s it like to be normal?

To want what normal girls should?

God knows life would be easier

If I could be normal, then trust me, I would

Trust me, I would

There was one time in my life when I believed, I knew what normal was. It was in 1969, I was eight years old and living in the most barren place you could imagine. There was no kindergarten. I went to first grade in a two-room schoolhouse. My first-grade class was me, a third grader, two fifth graders and two sixth graders, one of the sixth graders was my older sister Roxi. She is the one who took this picture. That’s my mom, my sister Robbi is in front of me, and Renee is on my mom’s left. None of us have any idea what was on her hand…

Rusty's mom, Rusty, Robbi and Renee in 1968. Northeastern Montana. Outside their tiny house on the plains

That was it, that time, a little slice in my life where I felt like I was normal.

Not long after this picture was taken my parents took me to visit the School for the Deaf and Blind in Great Falls, MT. I remember making my dad mad cause when we stopped at a stop sign in the city and then started off again, I yelled STOP, which he did. I opened the door I was sitting next to and closed it again. My dad asked what that was all for and I responded, “I had to let Paul in.”

Paul was my imaginary friend.

At the Deaf and Blind School, I found out I was different. I found out that most people see the world much differently than I do. I was born with an optical nerve disorder that prevents it from properly aligning the images that each eye is sending to it. I have a very distinctive squint of my left eye that resembles something of a perma-wink. I have figured out ways of coping and how to work with the tools I was given. But I have never succeeded in being normal, this world was not designed for me.

But when that picture was taken, I had no idea that I was any different than you.

Marchin’ in line in the halls of my Catholic school

Seven Hail Marys if I copped an attitude

And God was a word I had spoken but I hardly knew

Kneelin’ down at the altar with no clue who I was talkin’ to

Stumblin’ ’round Athens with frat boys in hot pursuit

Left me starin’ at the ceilin’, pissed off and feelin’ used

In second grade I had to ride the bus to town. School was a huge building and had every grade, some grades even had two classes each, instead of six students there were at least a hundred… I was the only kid who could not close his desk because his books were four times the size of everyone else’s. They were bigger than coffee table books. I was humiliated but I was also grateful for those books, they made it possible for me to try and keep up. Even in the front row I can’t see the board, but everyone in class knows when you pee yourself. It didn’t really matter though, we moved after third grade, and after fourth grade… I never had access to those big books again and I was both relieved and disappointed. It made it easier to blend in and look normal but lots of things went by without me seeing them, lots of things. I spent a lot of time being scared as hell because I was different.

When I watched Katie singing this song, it struck me that her struggle with “normal” was not that different than mine. She cannot change who she is any more than I can. She should be able to live in a world that is designed for her. No one’s story is the same as another’s but neither of us knows what its like to be normal.

“Did they want what’s best or did they want what’s easiest?

‘Cause I tried my best, but God damn, was I curious

And she had me high as the sun on a Saturday afternoon

With no way to unsee this side of me that she introduced”

I have never really talked about my eyes, not in depth, with anyone. I have tried but I am so used to trying to compensate, that I just hide it, even from myself. Writing it here, right now. Scared as hell cause I know I am different…

We lived in twenty-nine places by the time I was sixteen and in some way that may have saved me. I blamed being new for not fitting in but honestly, I didn’t fit in because I can’t see. I am not blind, I just can’t see a baseball until its about ten feet away, the time it takes my eyes to focus eliminates most sports. When given the tools I excelled academically but those were tiny windows that closed soon after they were opened. Through it all I have joy. I overcame all of that, I have had several weird and wonderful careers, and I am writing the next chapter now. This may be the best of them all.

“The world told us to fit in, but we did the opposite

The world told us to fit in, but we did the opposite”

I thought of my granddaughter Sophie as I watched Katie sing. Sophie is fifteen and just starting to write her story. I cannot imagine what it must be like to be fifteen, right now. Sophie reminds me so much of myself, smarter than most people, trying to embrace her differences and trying to fit in. I want her to know that her differences are her strengths. I don’t want the world to force her into their version of normal. It took me decades to understand that our beauty is derived from what sets us apart from normal. I will continue to encourage her to write her story in any way she sees fit and ignore the noise and the pounding to conform.

I thought of my daughter as I watched Katie sing. I can never go back and be the dad that I should have been. I can never erase the rigid life I tried to convince her was real. I can never encourage her younger self to forget about fitting in and just be Elaine. I remember the joy she faced each day with, but my rules got stricter, and her joy grew quieter… her dad was so busy keeping them alive he didn’t see how much Elaine trying to fix things cost her. I want to be a part of her atmosphere as we grow older. I will remind her that I named her after Evenstar and she just needs to shine… Trust me, I would.

“Trust me, I would

Trust me, I would

I would”

I thought of Atlas, Emily, and Taya as I watched Katie sing. They are all striving to understand their place while grasping for all the beauty they can find. None of my friends are “normal,’ and for that I am grateful. They put up with my way of using way too many words, but hopefully I give them a bit of hope in pursuing who they can be. They are brilliant lights that give me hope for the stories to come. Here’s to ignoring normal and embracing the perfection of how perfectly different we all are.

Thank you, Katie Pruitt, for making this old man cry. Thank you for giving me a piece of your magic that let me open a door that has been closed for fifty-two years. Thank you for being your best self and telling us about it. I am a different man today because you followed your dreams.

I have watched so many people try and avoid being normal and so many of them gave up, myself included. Today I could care less what the world thinks of me, and I am content to just listen, learn and grow. Life can be joyful and full, regardless of how normal you are. We are all just the way we should be…

Embrace that and shine…

Listening, learning, and growing…

Xavier Rudd – The Window

Still Reaching for Hope

(Listening to this song while reading, is highly encouraged)

Twenty-four months ago, the stay-at-home order was issued and life as we know it changed forever. The things we took for granted and the faces we remember should always be cherished, but we can never go back, and I wonder how many of us have reconciled with that…

I hope you are finding joy. This life is the only one you get to kick around, finding joy is really all there is. The last two years have been anything but fun, so, if you can find some joy every few days or more, you are winning ….

I have learned to cherish each day, even more than we did in the before times. This day is the one that demands your attention, and it is this day that will never be lived again. Tomorrow will come for most of us, but yesterday, well, it’s just yesterday.

“Contemplations I’ve held in my hands
Right here beside this window
I’ve seen huge things go by at a glance
Right here beside this window”

I find myself struggling harder today than I did two years ago. Contemplations that just rolled off me, now cling to the outskirts my moods. Working in a grocery store through this pandemic has been my window. At times it has been a beautiful window and sometimes it is just exhausting. I bring my hope to work every day and I try to offer you some joy, but I am struggling. I have seen huge things go by and it feels like we are just squirming and wandering around…

The hate filled rhetoric we see daily cannot be sustainable, yet I see us normalize it, everyday… this is not treading water, this is drowning.

But I will love you my friend

“When the cruel world seemed my only friend
Right here beside this window
Through the severing of heart strings attached
Right here beside this window”

The fear that walks around today is draped in the colors of bravado, but when you see its heart, it is just fear and I will not be defined by that. I am not afraid; I am who I will always be. Right here beside this window…

I still consume more music than the average person and I think I am generally happy but, I am tired. Sometimes, when the rainbow fades, you just see the long road you still have to walk.

I let myself get tired enough to lay down a friend’s trust. When someone gives you their trust, they are honoring you in the greatest measure. It has made me question myself and ask if I have learned anything at all. The noise of the frantic world around us is no excuse and the exhaustion of living through a pandemic is no excuse, I can only pick up who I can be, and walk.

We all have casualties that we can count over the last two years. The millions who lost this battle and then the millions who are just in a daze, pretending that this is just something that the was made up and we will all get back to normal any day now…

we are never going back…

“And when the rainbow comes after the rain before the sun
I feel so real”

I still have hope. I still have joy, but we have all felt a toll. I have seen it in my family and the people I work with, and I see it in the you…

I wrote “Reaching for Hope” eight days after we were told to stay home, I wrote about the chaos and the love that we saw from behind the cash register and there is one thing that has stayed constant. We are all, still aching and hurting and many of us are permanently scarred…so many of us are gone, forever.

People are trying to adapt, at least that is what I think we believe, we are all just as lost and frightened as we were two years ago. We are all trying to find our one piece of hope that we can float on until this world either spins into oblivion or a miracle happens. Either way it’s a ride, isn’t it?

When I wrote about reaching for hope, I wrote it with the eyes of those I see every day. That is still the approach I use today; it is the people I see through my window at your neighborhood grocery store that I find so much hope in. We are all doing the best we can, we are smiling, we are feeding our families and we are grasping at any glimpse of hope we can get our fingers on. We want it to feel so real…and sometimes we find it

“And when the rainbow fades, takes my troubles far away
And I feel clear”

Most Saturday’s I get to say hello to Henry. Henry is two years old; He is the hope of who we will be, Henry still sees life as a full and beautiful masterpiece… Henry is full of life and his eyes are wide open…

Henry’s mom always comes to my line. I don’t know her name, other than Henry’s mom, I am pretty sure she is ok with that. Henry likes to help count stuff and usually hands me a few things. He knows that I give him an adequate number of stickers to examine. Henry is a remarkable young man, taking in everything and so incredibly full of joy, if you are the recipient of one of Henry’s smiles then you are smiling just like me.

Henry does not know the before, he only knows today.

Henry and his mom are living.

Henry is fearless, Henry’s mom makes sure of that,

Henry and his mom give me hope.

What else is life supposed to amount to, being fearless and knowing joy? If I have Henry’s around me, I will keep my hope burning.

We are not lost, we are just finding our footing, we are just getting our bearings…

“And now you sit herе with me my good friend
Right herе beside this window
Where the rains came and the rains they went
Right here beside this window

The upside of all of this is music. So many of our magical musician friends, have taken this time to pour their hearts into creating something to inspire us, to heal and guide us. I am so thankful for the music that is coming out right now, 2022 will probably go down as one the best years for music, ever. We need it… I will not survive without it.

Xavier Rudd released Jan Juc Moon, on March 25, 2022, I found it a few weeks ago. I have spent a great deal of time taking this in, it has given me a hand hold that helps me maintain my grasp on hope. It has given me a view though my window that gives me peace. When I first heard “The Window”, I knew that I would write about it. There is hope and magic in this song, it has helped me feel a little closer to clear. “Stoney Creek” gave me a reason to dance. Xavier has created a wander through his psyche and a glimpse inside his soul, listen to it, from track one to track thirteen, he gives us bits of his soul to carry with us, into the universe. If you listen and let it seep into you, then you’ll carry a piece of Xavier forever. That is this power of a song and it gives me a reason to hope.

When I wrote “Reaching for Hope” I had no idea that we would still be talking about pandemics two years later, but here we are. I wrote about “those” who make it out of this and how they would be defining a new normal. I think about that now, and I don’t think we need normal. I think maybe it’s best to just look out our window, find the Henry’s to walk with, and then listen to what they need. The energy you spend on others is priceless, choose wisely where you spend it.

“When the wax melts and the candle starts to dim
Right here beside this window
I only pray you will be here my friend
Right here beside this window”

The people I work with inspire me. They are troubadour’s, they are poets, and they are still figuring out what life could look like. They deal with issues that would mean nothing to you. In spite of all the things swirling around, they just walk, and they put your favorite tea on the shelf. They might be the kid in high school who just bagged your groceries… they might be that musician who hasn’t written “that” song yet. Some are destined to be doctors and some are animators and some we have yet to see, all of us are very unique and we are each a beautiful thread.

That young lady you just asked to check on your favorite frozen entrée, might be the same women who sits down with you and gives you your options for treatment, just to stay alive. The one you don’t see today will likely be the one you need to see tomorrow.

The joy that I have found in being a part of this group of very special people is unprecedented. They are unique, and all of them have dreams, just like you do. They give me hope just like Henry does, they remind me that there are people in every nook and cranny of this world who care. That is where I get my hope, that is what I give to you, right here beside this window.

I do not know where the next little while will take us, I am not sure what role I will play in it, but I know for sure, the ones who I have walked through the last two years with will always be part of my story. We survived this shit, together.

“Reflections of times well spent
Coming back from this window
And I will hold you ’til the end
Right here beside this window”

Have I loved hard enough? That is what I reflect on when I think of the time I have. Have I loved so much that love will persist? I don’t think I have…. I have loved enough to know that love is worthwhile. I have loved enough to know the difference between a love that will follow on and one that just meets today. I will hold tightly to the one that wants to walk on.

Many of the people I work with to bring you your food, are living the most complicated of lives, we are all trying so hard, to just live. That is the beauty of your neighborhood grocery store, it could be someone who is just breathing in every day and another who is just beginning to understand that the day can have something for them. We are all still trying to figure out where we are and how we are supposed to get to the next today. We are just looking through that window trying to figure out where we are going.

“When my skin dries and my bones begin to bend
Right here beside this window
When the weeds become too much to tend
Right here beside this window”

I hope to stumble onto a song like “The Window” every single day. I like wandering through the magic that is woven into the threads of this song. I find real, and I find clear when I take in the beauty of this song. It is one of the examples of the music that carries me.

We all grow old and if we are lucky, we find some joy and we gather some color for our thread as we walk through this life into whatever is next. This is the truth of what I mean when I write that I am learning, listening, and growing.

I will love you my friends, right here beside this window…

Learning, listening and growing…

Daydreamer – Roo Panes

(Authors note; listening to the song written about while reading, is highly encouraged)

“Pay attention, boy

Stop looking out the window

I’m sorry, sir, but I’ve learned more of love

By wondering where the wind blows”

The first time I heard this song, I knew I would write about it. I was that little boy, staring out the window and wondering where the wind would blow me. I don’t know your story, but I will give you a little bit of mine. There have been chapters in my life that brought me experiences that I never dreamt of living, but I did. They would not have happened, if it hadn’t been for daydreams. Little dreams and big ones, there are so many things I didn’t plan to accomplish and yet I did. So many things I shouldn’t have been able to do, yet I did and so I daydream… for a time I was a farmhand, making barely enough money to feed my family and for a time I was a vice president. They both brought me joy and they both took their toll.

“And truth be told

I wonder where I’d be

If it hadn’t been for daydreams

For the river flowing free

Just beyond the mainstreams”

Over the last few years, I have managed to slide past the mainstreams and find my way into that river flowing free. I have found such a cool groove in my life. I have a partner who is my favorite person in the world, and she makes me a good person just because she chooses me. I hope you can find your favorite person in life; it makes all the daydreaming worthwhile.

I work with the most amazing people at your neighborhood grocery store. We ring up your groceries every day. I love these people, their hearts, their drive, and the fact that they keep coming back. They are what makes the universe beautiful. Every time you walk through our line, there is a chance that magic will happen, I have seen it so many times. We are a place where you can be left to your thoughts or you can have a conversation that gives you hope, maybe I can even give you some of my joy. Afterall it is where you get your food to stay alive… right?

When you are wandering through those thoughts and sorting out who you are and what to do with that… learn to create so you can leave your imprint.

Every single human being can create, every single one of us can. Defining how you create is up to you, it can never be defined by the person sitting next to you. It might be possible that at some point in your life the playfulness just washed away. Take a minute to stare out the window, daydreaming can help you find that little kid again. Be a daydreamer and create, leave your imprint, it is your gift to the universe. Smile at it and dream.

“Well, on the fifteenth floor

I bet you’re wondering where the time goes

And beyond the flashing lights

It feels strange to think the grass grows slowly”

If you’re on the fifteenth floor or the forty-sixth floor wondering where the time went. Just stop for a moment and have a daydream, you can fly away from that place that confines your hours each day, you can fly… and then you can breathe. It won’t change anything you didn’t already know but it could give you hope.

You are a part of the tapestry of the universe and without your thread, it is incomplete. To have hope you must find joy in the wonder of who you are. There is not, nor will there ever be, another you. Leaving your imprint will bring you joy.

Do you wonder where the time goes? Do you dance through the moss and the fog of your daydreams? Did you soar above everything or are you slogging through the mire of a pit full of worry?

“All the birds you never heard

All the words you’d say to her”

All the things you thought that mattered, turn into things that never really did. Truth will keep slithering around your fingers until you stop grasping for it and then it resolves, and you know the truth. Most of us wait too long to listen to the birds and we wait until it is too late to say all those words we should have said. Daring to daydream can help unlock that vision you have for you; it can help you say the things you need to say.

Oh, I wander where I would be if I hadn’t dared to daydream.

Did you find hope over these last two years? Did you see peace or just think about it? We have been loading up your groceries this whole time, smiling and asking how your day is. Everyone has had a shit two years, but here we are. You, the one who walks through my line at your neighborhood grocery store. I am interested in your story and how you are. We all have unique things we give the universe and I want you to know what yours is.

I never knew where the river would lead me, I never knew where I would end up, but I found this cool groove of walking through each day realizing that I have some joy to give and I daydream, it helps me stay in that river, flowing free.

“Do you wonder where you’d be
If you’d ever dared to daydream?
Oh I wonder where I’d be
If it hadn’t been for daydreams”

Roo Panes was the second artist I wrote about on this blogging adventure. Three years ago, yes, all the way in the way back of May 2019. I wrote about his song, Soldier of Hope. Andrew “Roo” Panes is one of my favorite lyricists, I am truly humbled by this man’s ability to bring hope through his prose. “Start small, grow tall… have the heart of a giant but know you’re a man. Start small, grow tall .” His music has given me a glimpse of myself and allowed me to sit and cry and then get up and find my groove. I didn’t know him at all when I wrote that post in 2019, but I know him better now. He sings with his heart and writes a lyric that will tickle the fabric of the universe, this is magic folks, this is magic.

Do you wonder where you would be? I did, as I listened to this song. The improbable, bumbling, tirade of jilted paths my life has wandered, has enriched me, I am who I am because of this bizarre walk I have taken. If I have learned anything, I have learned the value of being creative, leaving my imprint. For me it is writing, it is playing music and it is the joy I give to you as you walk through my checkout line. All the birds you never heard, because you were too busy talking or too busy listening to something shallow and short. Creating breathes life, find out what you create, and then do it. It is you and it is real, even if you daydream it…

Think I will go daydream a bit…

Learning, listening, and growing

The Music That Binds Us

Six months before the pandemic, I started working at my neighborhood grocery store. I took this job to have a flexible schedule so I could write, I did not expect to find such an immensely beautiful example of all the good in humanity. There are literally dozens of people that I have worked with that have shown me the value of being human. Some are still here, and others have moved on. I have made some of the best friends I have ever had in my life due in part to what we just went through and in a larger part to the goodness in these people. I am humbled by the depth of these people, and we are bound for life. I have discovered for every connection I have made with another soul, there is a song that wraps it up and keeps it in my spirit forever, especially for those that have moved on. Yet one more reason that I am eternally grateful for the magic in music.

Let’s be honest, 2020 changed us all. In one way or another it changed us deeply. The challenge we face now is to try and understand what those changes mean and where we go from here. I am convinced that more than a few of the people I have worked with through this thing will go on to change the world…they are giants. I cannot be dismayed or hopeless, there is so much good in the world, I have seen it. I see it in these people that work hard to ensure that you have groceries on your table. Every day we work to give you food, we have risked our lives and the ones we live with, so you can eat. In the end it has been a long and dreadful year, but it has also been one of the best experiences of my life.

“…we did this, through all through this shit, we survived this…”

I did not get a lot of chances for friends when I was growing up, we moved around a lot, I mean a LOT. New schools, new nicknames…I got so tired of being the new kid that at some point I just gave up trying to make or keep friends. I knew we would always move. Then I grew up, I had kids, they had kids… Over that time, I made a few friends that are good and so true. Honestly though, I think I am just beginning to understand what “friend” means.

This thing I do for a daily wage is a gift. This thing I do has shown me the heart of humanity, the things that have made me weep with joy over the goodness of what I saw. The people I have worked with are like the mountains I wish I could climb. I love what I have learned, and I love these people, we did this. fuck yeah, we did this.

If we are fortunate, we will meet people in this life with whom we exchange something. It might simply be the love of the outdoors or cooking, it could be anything, but most of us will find someone with whom you can share something. Occasionally we find someone with whom we can share our spirit with and in turn they share theirs with you. I am not talking about a physical exchange, or even an emotional one, this is something that goes far deeper than flesh or psyche. This requires an authenticity and depth of love that not everyone can bring to bear. If you are fortunate, you too will meet your “people” and if you do, I am willing to bet that there is a song that will bind you forever.

“These are the spirits that are connected to me, they are my people, and I am theirs.”

My friends, the sojourners, the wanderer’s, the ones who took a brief pause and gave me some of their light. I will love them forever and I will carry their love with me into my next life. They loved me despite my scars, they are hope, wrapped in painters and poets, in encouragers and storytellers. These are the spirits at your local grocery store, the people who sometimes are invisible to you. These are my people…

If you have found your people, then take the time to celebrate that you have five minutes with them. You might get a year, you might not. If they are your people, then when you get to talk, it will be just like the moment you last spoke. It won’t be awkward, and it won’t involve guilt, no matter how much time has passed. This is friendship, no one is promised tomorrow, and we all have a path to follow. We will laugh with them when they find joy, and we will weep with them when they are hurting…. Find your tribe and love them right where they are today, you never know, it may be that awkward kid you just met.

In finding my people I have found that for everyone there is a song or sometimes even ten of them and when that song plays, I can immediately see their face or hear their voice. This is the magic I have talked about so much and it serves to keep me connected to each one of my people regardless of where they are right now, figuratively, or physically. Whenever I hear “Bronze Radio Return” sing “Still Wandering” I can hear Adam tell me he is still wandering and it warms my soul…whenever I hear “America” sing “Sister Golden Hair” I am immediately laughing with Mattaya. When I hear the “Eels” sing anything, I am playing my guitar with Fran again. When I wrote about my first friend, my sister Robbi, I used “Novo Amor’s”, “Keep Me” but I could have used a hundred different songs that bring her to my mind, a lifetime of experiences will do that. With my very best friend, my Susan, I could also pick a hundred different songs, but I will always feel her love and beautiful embrace when I hear “Van Morrison” sing “Into the Mystic”.

I hope you find your people as you navigate your way back to your normal. You don’t have to work at your neighborhood grocery store to do it, but you do have be authentic and willing to give as much as you receive. Cherish the music you share together, that will stay with you , just like their love and their support of who you are. When you find your people, you have found a path home.

Listening, learning, and growing…

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