Tag: Music

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…

Them Coulee Boys – I Am Not Sad

Our New Dystopia

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

November brought us a lot of sad. Our nation confirmed to the world, exactly who we are. Regardless of the doctrine you currently choose as your own, we know exactly who we are. There are no more excuses or explanations, we are exactly who we have always been.

I have felt them all… the sadness, the anger and the pain.

I have never truly believed in God, but I have believed in my nation.

Then on the evening of November nineteenth, a bomb cyclone descended on my beautiful little city.

I remember shaking my head when I read the forecast. Why do they have to come up with new names? But they were right, it was a bomb that traveled like a cyclone through our forests, parks and yards.

We lost power early that evening, but we had our flashlights and power banks ready. We had all the other things my sweet Susan had bought and said, “just in case”, this was a just in case kind of night.

On that night we felt the unmitigated power of the wind and its roaring that ravaged everything in its path. Our home vibrated and shook for hours and all the while I heard and felt trees on the north side of us, smacking the side of the house, over and over again. I never thought about leaving, not from bravery or any such nonsense, I just didn’t think of it.

It was oddly quiet as I got ready for work at 4:30 that next morning. The storm had stopped shaking us about an hour ago and I wasn’t sure what I would find as I pulled out of the garage. The first tree I saw down was just across the drive. It was laying across the visitor parking spot my neighbor always parks in. He didn’t park there last night.

It was so dark… and there was debris everywhere. So many trees lying in their dying throes, lying as corpses yet to be gathered by the morgue…

My headlights were the only light that morning. They illuminated a parade of debris, limbs and utter darkness. I came out of a deserted roundabout and my headlights landed on a car sitting in the middle of the road, it was completely dark, and no one was anywhere to be seen. I drove around it and passed trees that were mangled, and trees with their root ball dangling in the air. Weeks later, there are still so many that were just pushed off the road, cut into logs or laying where they died.  When I finally turned into the little shopping center where my neighborhood grocery store resides, I was struck with awe.

All of our lights were on… it was a beautiful site.  

By brilliant foresight and a tiny bit of luck, our regional manager secured a generator big enough to power everything in the store and they worked during storm, to get it wired in. For four days, we were the only grocery store with everything running for miles around us. The second of those days I walked around the store giving away bouquets of flowers to random beleaguered customers. I told them I had a little power outage joy for them…

For just a moment, I didn’t think about elections or doom, I just thought about my coworkers, our neighbors and how we were going to walk through this. I am not sad anymore, at least not today.

I believe Them Coulee Boys have something to say to you. I believe this song has some magic for you. This song was for written for you and this song was written for our new dystopia.

“I am not sad anymore

At least not today

See the chemicals have all aligned

And the sun is out to stay

Gonna hold my hands out smilin’

Gonna kiss you on your face

I am not sad anymore

At least not today”

When my anger needed a place to hide, I found this song. When hope was starting to get slippery, I found this song. This song gave me some words to write. “I Am Not Sad” is a beacon of joy.

If you are sad, this song has something for you. If you are happy, this song has something for you and if you are like me… sad one moment and hopeful the next… This song has something for you.

I am not sad anymore, at least not right now.

No one really heard about the storm that roared through my little city, it didn’t make the nightly news or even make much of a clamor on the interwebs. Some would say it’s the result of so few deaths… but I can’t say.

I walked through the parking lot of Hammond Ashley today and it was just so sad. So many instruments lost, the violins, violas … the cellos. Giant stacks of instrument bags and their still singers inside of them. The giant tree that came crashing down on this home to so many creative voices, was still there, broken and twisted into the wreckage of a business that had toiled there since the sixties. Sometimes it is really hard not to be sad.

We are at the foot of so many mountains and I know that on occasion they want to remind of us of their wild. This storm descended upon us and changed things. If even for a moment. Every place I walked today still has trees down, massive trees, tiny trees and so many in-between. It really is like a bomb ran though us…

We had our power restored sixty-five hours and twenty-six minutes after it went out. It was getting really cold, but we are ok, and my sweet Susan kicked my ass in cribbage.

I am not sad.

“I am not sad anymore

At least not tonight

See I found all of my failures

and the ties I try to fight

So, when one hand forms a fist

Hope the other shines a light

I am not sad anymore

At least not tonight”

I am a pluviophile, and I live in the wondrous Pacific Northwest. 

A co-worker and friend called me a pluviophile one day and I asked her what I had done wrong. She laughed and told me to look it up… Probably the most accurate thing I have ever been called.

A pluviophile thrives when it rains, and they thrive in the joy of it dancing across a stream.

Pluviophile’s marvel at the power of dark clouds that crack and roll and define what thunder means to us. Pluviophile’s spend long moments marveling at the cycle of rain.

I am gifted the endless days of grey, and they recharge me. I understand who I am, and I am hoping that the joy I gather in these days of darkest grey will bring you warmth and hope. From my musings, or we may get to meet at our neighborhood grocery store. Either way, I see you and this is what I have to give to you.

“I am not sad anymore

At least not right now

See the ones that go before us

They have truly lost somehow

One hands reaching for the light

Hope the other reaching out

I am not sad anymore

At least not right now”

My city is nestled amongst the beautiful pillars of nature. The trees that live all around us are one of the magnificent reasons we live here. I have a very good friend who teaches that the down branches make good medicine. I believe she is the bravest of them who would go throughout these downed branches and gather all their medicine… just so she can give it back to you.

I have very good friends.

I live on Snoqualmie land. They are the ones I thank for my great fortune that is this most beautiful place. My little city, east of Seattle, sometimes known as trailhead city, and the home to one of your favorite warehouses… it sits, nestled at the feet of its namesake… between a cougar and a tiger.

Those sixty-five hours felt like a week, but I really enjoyed my moments with my sweet Susan. I am not sad anymore… at least today.

here we are

our new dystopia

“And I know I’m gonna feel them all today

The sadness, the anger and the pain

But there’s a debt between us I can’t pay

I can’t pay”

Have you ever looked at the definition of dystopia?  “an imagined world or society in which people lead wretched, dehumanized, fearful lives…”

It feels a bit like we have moved on from the imagined and into dystopia as reality. People leading wretched, dehumanized and fearful lives.

How do we not be sad?

I remember believing that this nation stood up to the oppressor. I remember thinking we were good. I remember when I was naive enough to believe that racism was a part of our past.

I remember the very moment when a colleague told of their lived experience that contradicted everything I knew to its core. It cracked me open, and once there was a crack in that shiny story I’d been taught, the rest began to unravel. I was born into privilege, even though my parents were barely able to feed us, I was born into privilege. I got to make a lot of mistakes that would have ended differently had my skin been darker.  

I have made so many blundering mistakes in unpacking my whiteness, but I will persist, and occasionally I see a few tiny steps that bring me closer to understanding how all of this could end up happily ever after. I believe with all my heart that we can be better, but first, we have to be honest.  

Colonialism, religion, and racism are all kindred spirits, and they are easily identified once you understand the blood and triumph of our history. The Trail of Tears, the enslavement of the African, the enslavement of the Chinese… the Japanese internment camps… boarding schools and the war on drugs, the list is very long.

Throughout every era and age of our history we have committed atrocities in the name of God and country. There have been so many good people who fought and died to change things, yet here we are.

So, what do we do, what is the course ahead?

“I’m not sad anymore

At least not today

See my friends are all around me

And the band is gonna play

Gonna dance with one hand waving free

And another on your waist

I am not sad anymore

At least today”

You… you are the course ahead. From my days as an ice cream truck driver, a ditch rider and especially my time as a technology wizard. In every ramble and bob my path took me, I have seen you. In my checkout line in our neighborhood grocery store, I see you. You are my neighbor, and you give me hope.

I see you and there’s a debt between us I can’t pay…

Each of us will have to make choices that do not include moving abroad or seeing the western states secede from the nation. We have to be prepared for some shit, this is our new dystopia. Our nation may unravel; the rule of law is all but gone and the hunger for unbridled wealth has reached a braying crescendo. The United States could fade into history.

We can choose, as sentient and relatively intelligent beings, to shine a light on the fact that we have two pathways, let this ship slide off into the inferno of forever and embrace the new dystopia… or we could choose to carve out a new path for humanity. One that acts with integrity and with the interest of every being, human or not. We have the collective knowledge to solve a great deal of the world’s problems, but we have to find out how we move forward without capitol. Capitalism is the driver for everything, musicians competing for streams, regardless of the folly of thinking music is a competition. Food, education and medicine are profit centers and even the care of your grandparents is for profit. We could choose to believe in a place where you are more important than profit. We really could…

We could acknowledge our debt to the indigenous peoples. They prospered for tens of thousands of years, and we have unraveled this thing in a few hundred. There is a collective wisdom that we have stifled and drowned out, just to make a profit. Maybe we should change that.

In all verses of the universe, there is only one you, there is no one more important than you. Begin to see the power of you, begin to see that everything and everyone around you is just as unique and just as powerful. I want desperately to find out how to bring our power together. I do not care how you voted or what you think of me, I just want to find out how to enable every soul in finding their own power. I believe we will find our hope there, if we are spending our time empowering those around us instead of building wealth, we could be so wealthy.

No one gets to explain to you, what you is… but you have to be that.

Step back and breathe. You are the most beautiful you.

In each of us there is a song of hope. You may sing it with your voice, you may sew it with your hands or you may solve it with your math. It is up to us to find our song and sing it, very, very, loud.

Listen to the bridge of this song… a beautiful stroll through quietness, strength and joy. Thank you Them Coulee Boys, I am not sad anymore, at least not today.

Listening, learning, 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…

Penny and Sparrow – Need You

My Treasure Chest of Friendship

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

For almost two years, I have been listening to Need You, by Penny and Sparrow. It is the third track on their January 2022 album, Olly Olly. The entire album has played over and over and over… Need You, has been repeated the most by far. It’s story dancing in my ears, wrapped in spells of musical beauty, and it has been so good for my soul.

I knew I would write about this song almost immediately, but I wasn’t sure what it was trying to help me see, so I decided to just wait and enjoy its beauty.

A song will let you know why you need it, when it is time for you to know why you need it.

Music is therapy, it soothes me, it is a place I find wisdom in.

A song is a piece of a songwriters soul floating through the webs of the universe, sowing its magic, hoping it soars…  

When I was ready, Need You told me about friendship. It sang of my longing for something just like this…

“Somehow in the dream you knew that my heart would break

Semi-automatically

You said, “when you can’t find quite enough air there to take

Copy how I breathe”

 

We were doubled up and crying

You were right there by me

Midsummer empathy

See how I need you“

I moved around a lot when I was growing up, and outside of my family, I do not have a single friend from my childhood. I remember so many times thinking that this would be the one that I would talk to for the rest of my life, but it never happened. My dad would find his next dream and we would move, and their part in my story was over.

I didn’t move around as much as an adult, but my ideology did. It moved with each decade and with it, my friends. A friendship based on like ideology is a shallow well that dries up before you ever quench that thirst.

Friendship can follow your financial success, or your failure, the number of friends I had when I was making six figures compared to the number I had when I had to go to the food bank to eat is a stark example. Things like that can make you give up on friendship… I never did.

Listening to this song gave me a moment to open parts of my soul that I have kept closed for decades. It has been like finding an old wooden chest covered in dust. It took some work to get the lock open but what I found inside is astounding. I found so many pieces, from so many friendships and I wept at the richness of my life.

There are little pieces from that one room school house I went to first grade in… Miss Palodichuk in particular…

All of the pieces I have from the very first time Robbi came home, she was my first friend.

There are so many pieces from that little eastern Washington town… all of those friends that I thought would be there for ever… Every piece they gave me is still right where it should be…

I have this precious pile from all of the beautiful souls that I encountered working in education. I am forever changed from exchanging little bits with all of you.

Right where I needed them in my silly life… that is how bad I need all of you…

See us in red and black

Mirrored white ocher hues

I won’t give one thing back

That’s how bad I need you

Friendships can be just for a season, you may need that person for a time and when that time is past, your stories take you on different paths. I know that we could talk all day about the varied reasons that friendships move on. We could get very wrapped up in the mechanics of why that happened, and it could devolve into how shallow one was and so on. It might just be the end of that season. The seed they gave me and the one I gave them has sprouted and it might need to find a different angle of the sun so it can grow. But even after that season is past, I still need them, I need that piece they gave me, it is part of the color of my story, and I won’t give one thing back.

Here is the thing about friendship… you meet someone, a colleague or maybe just someone on the street. There is a connection, a moment.. an exchange… That is all a friendship needs and it doesn’t matter if it lasts for ten seconds or ten years… When someone gives you a piece of themselves, you get to keep that forever.

There is something truly beautiful about being around people that get you. You don’t have to explain your translucent skin or your really shitty eyesight. They read things for you and they let you give them your weird wisdom… I have so many beautiful people that I love so much. Each one is a voice in the harmony of my life, and I am better for knowing them.

My best friend Susan, she gets all of me. She lets me copy how she breaths… I won’t give one thing back. We will follow each other forever…

“Everyone gives up the ghost

Us too

Let it be known

All the proud hours I hold

Are around you

See us in red and black

Mirrored white ocher hues

I won’t give one thing back

That’s how bad I need you”

This song tells the story of a beautiful friendship. One of those I always romanticized and wished I had. I have spent an embarrassingly large amount of time in my life complaining that I never kept friends growing up. Listening to Penny and Sparrow sing of this friendship where you get help breathing and you’ll never give one thing back, I realized I do have that. I am rich with that…

I have taken some time writing this… to sit in this moment and let the magic of this music teach me all it has to offer. When I think about evaluating a friendship based on a measure of linear space spent together It seems rather silly. It doesn’t matter if I know you for a week or for twenty years, your contribution is just as important and all of those little pieces we exchanged are part of who I am today and I would not give one thing back.

I relish the joy of being adopted into my wife’s friendships, ones she has had since kindergarten. When we met it was a foreign concept to me, and I have marveled at their depth of relationship and love, it is exactly what she needed to be the beautiful human she is today. Just like my collection of friends is exactly the pieces I needed to be me.

Andy and Kyle are Penny and Sparrow and I really don’t know a lot more about them, except for their crazy good harmonies and their crazy good music and their crazy good lyrics… They are true wizards… I have listened to everything they have done, so we are friends. Olly Olly is worth listening to thousands of times and more. I am so grateful for Andy and Kyle putting this into the universe. It is the piece I needed just right now…

“I won’t give one thing back

That’s how bad I need you”

I am at a place in my life where I can really dig into the moments. I am not in a hurry to achieve, I have been there, and I did do that. I am content to look into my own soul and write about what I find.

I am finding an immeasurable amount of joy in the friends I have from my gig at your neighborhood grocery store. Some of them are generations away from me, but the richness of their contribution is awe inspiring. I never expected this, I have been fairly ignorant of my good fortune most of my life. But here I am, standing in this moment and knowing how badly I need all of you. The friends I have known, and the ones I have yet to make.

Humanity is so beautiful, it is kind and has enough love to quench any fire. We have to remember that. There is more than enough hate and cynicism to wash it all away, but I have hope, my hope is in my friends and that chest full of friendships……

Music is a superpower for me, this blog is my attempt to try and understand some of that, it is also an attempt to give you some hope. I have hope because there are other weirdo’s like me out there and I am grateful for every one of you.

Create… unleash your wildest idea… when we let our creative energy run wild, the world is better.

Thank you, Penny and Sparrow, for letting these bits out into the universe…

Cherish your moments, they will go past you unannounced. Be less worried about what you achieve and far more interested in who is out there to achieve it with, you need them. When you get those walks at the dog park, the lunch over ramen and the stroll through your own downtown, hold onto that windows rolled down and everything is alright feeling, it is real and it will help you fly. I am flying, no matter what the day throws at me, I am flying and it is in no small part due to the chest of friendships I found, thanks to this beautiful song.

Listening, learning, and growing

Changes – Joy Oladokun

Rusty from birth to grade school, then high school, on the beach as an adult. Working at the college and today
The Changes of Rusty

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

There is an exquisite design to our universe and every day that I pay attention, I find evidence of that. Some call that God, and that’s cool, but it might be more complicated than that. I have found anchors of hope in my wanderings, these anchors show me the signs of perfection in that design. They have come from many places and experiences. One of my most recent examples is Joy Oladokun. Artists like Joy are no accident, artists like Joy define a generation and I am better because I found their music.

There is no “secret” to life, no magic formula, you just live it. The blueprint we boomers gave you is not the answer… go to college, get married, get a job, have kids, retire, and die. There is little fulfillment in this blueprint, and it never accounts for changes. The changes we encounter make us who we are supposed to be.

Life has taken me where it wanted to take me, and I have adapted. It took me forever to understand what made me thrive, and even longer to do it. Joy Oladokun figured that out much earlier than I did, and I am so grateful to have their music in my life. I found it just when I needed it.


I hate change, but I’ve come of age
Think I’m finally finding my way
Danced with chaos at every occasion
looks me up every day
Even when I’m tired and low there is gold in this
River that is carrying me home

I hate change, yet my life has been nothing but change. It started with the chaotic swirl my dad followed in his quest to be a cowboy. We lived in twenty-nine places before I was sixteen and I never learned how to get comfortable. I learned that I am never going to have friends. I have always danced out on the edge… but I have always caught the wave. I learned to lean into the changes, it took me a while, but I learned. I have always survived changes, and I have never stayed the same.

I recently spent a weekend with some of my family, some whom I haven’t seen in three or four decades. They have known me for most of my life and they carry pieces of me, and I carry pieces of them. I love all my weird and intricate family so much.

We gathered to say farewell to my Aunt Donna…

Going home can be a beautiful thing, it can heal in a way I had forgotten. It was wonderous to see the cousins that held me when I was a lost single dad trying to figure out how to get from today to tomorrow. If not for them, my kids and I would not have survived. It was magical to talk about the days when we were young and scared. We had no idea where we were headed, we had no idea at all. We were just living… There was the deepest despair and agony, but there were also great joys, and it was always changing.

This song and my visit with people I love reminded me of how much I have learned from change. Life is dangerous but it is so worthwhile. I am watching closely now, to see what changes the universe will bring next. One of them is learning how to grow old, I won’t stay the same.

I know there will be new things that will make me cry and there will be new things to make me laugh. And it will make me different. I will find gold… I will find hope… I will find joy.


Newspaper says the world’s on fire
People yelling and the water’s rising
It’s easy to feel kinda anxious
Yeah, we’ve thought it was the end of time
We’re still holding on and we’re still trying
Life’s always been a little dangеrous
But I don’t wanna stay the same, so

I’m tryna keep up with the changеs
I’m tryna keep up with the changes

Everything is always in motion; everything is always changing.

I saw my two brilliant kids and marveled at how much they have changed. They have both become caring and powerful adults. It makes my heart glad to see my little girl grow up to be such a beautiful bad ass woman. She has followed no one’s path and she has been shaped by that. It is her time to thrive.

Seeing my son is like looking into a mirror. His pain and his pride are all so deeply ingrained in my memory. I lived the loneliness he feels, and I know the despair. Life can be very cruel; it can etch the heart right out of your soul. He is dancing through the chaos and trying so hard to hold on.

They have both fought their way to this day and they will fight their way to tomorrow. I try to teach them that success is not a title or a big bank account… Success is finding joy, and reaching for every piece of hope you can find.

We are all just trying to keep up with the changes.

was a baby during the L.A. riots
And I’ve seen cities burn again
Cried for the innocent a thousand times
And people still don’t understand
What it like to hope again and again knowing
That heartache’s gonna be there ’til the end

I was not a baby during the LA Riots, I was thirty-one and a ditch rider in eastern Washington. I listened to Rush Limbaugh, home schooled my kids and went to church three or four days a week. I didn’t just dabble in the things that shackled my parents; I did a back flip into them. I alienated everyone with my fiery proclamations of Christs return and how they would atone for their wicked ways.

I tried extremely hard to keep change from affecting my kids. I never let them think. I was strict and unyielding. Most of the voices around me were the ones I chose, they sounded just like me. There was one quiet voice that laughed at me and spoke the truth into my delusional soul. Jeff was a coworker, and he taught me how to back up a dump truck with a trailer attached. He also taught me how to see…

Jeff was somewhere around my age and rode a ditch south of mine. In the winter when the water was not running, we were part of the maintenance crew and we helped prepare the canal system to carry water next season. Jeff and I liked to work, so we got paired together a lot. We were not the ones who needed twenty minutes to get ready for our fifteen-minute break, nor did we leave the job site two hours early, driving four miles an hour to get back into the yard right at quitting time. No, Jeff and I liked to work, and we liked to talk. He disagreed with everything I held dear, and I disagreed with all his liberal ideas. But we liked each other. There are a few times in your life when another being gives you a little piece of themselves that you find later, and it changes you. As I began to unravel my privilege and see the world like it is, there are many times that I heard Jeff chuckle and say, “Russ, it is good to care.”

Jeff saw the world in a light that was leaning into change.

I haven’t talked to Jeff for thirty years, but his quiet grace helped me understand the world around me and know that it is so good to care.

I’m tryna keep up with the changes.

I’ve had a few careers since those conversations with Jeff and countless dances with chaos. I leaned into change, hard…

I rushed into it, and I found hope. I learned that chaos was my dance, and it showed me what life could be. I spent twenty years managing technology in education and I worked hard to kick down the barriers that kept me from my chance at college. I embraced change so desperately that I failed to see that I was leaving my family behind. I never gave my kids any idea of how life really works, I was too busy trying to change the world… That is my worst failing.

I wanted to be a better father than my dad, but my dad was fine. He knew what made him thrive, he was a cowboy, and a good one.

I have found joy and had a rich life by being swept into change, but I still don’t like change.

I feel like I am finally finding my way…. and I won’t stay the same…


Newspaper says the world’s on fire
People yelling and the water’s rising
easy to feel kinda anxious
Yeah, we’ve thought it was the end of time
We’re still holding on and we’re still trying
Life’s always been a little dangerous
But I don’t wanna stay the same, so

I’m tryna keep up with the changes
I’m tryna keep up with the changes

People are yelling about the end. And the world is certainly on fire, I worry for my grandkids.

Our home, planet Earth, is giving us every indication that we need to change, but I am not sure we will. I do not know what my grandkids will find when they are my age. I believe we could change, but I am dubious about our will. I worked for years to sway even the mildest ideas of thinking, like, everyone should be able to use technology, not just the abled.

I have no idea how writing about all of this could change anything but what could it hurt…

I do feel anxious, and I know it’s dangerous.

I don’t want to stay the same, so, I am leaning into the changes. I am looking for the next wave I can ride, hoping not to get washed ashore…. I will keep dancing with chaos. I want to see where it spits me out….

If you haven’t wandered through the catalog of Joy Oladokun, then you need to. Joy is a once in a generation songwriter, singer, and precious soul. In every song, there is magic, I mean every song. I wrote about Sweet Symphony last September, and here I am again. Joy’s voice reaches into you and makes you feel something. Their lyrics will wrap you up, right where you are, and fill you with love and hope. Joy is so amazingly good… I plan on being in their audience as soon as possible, I want to feel that magic in person and let it wash over me, getting me ready for whatever change is next…

On April 28th, “Proof of Life” will fly into the universe.  “Changes”, is a single from that album and “Sweet Surrender” is another. You need to check it out, I have no doubt it will be full of magic and beauty.

I am forever grateful to you, Joy. Thank you for having the courage to be authentic and give the universe your music.

This old man is better because of you…

I found healing in these last little bits of time and I’m sure my Aunt Donna is smiling. She loved very well, and everyone she met felt like they had been seen. I am blessed to have known her. Her passing and the gathering of the family to say farewell ushered in a change, life without Donna.

Donna was a wife, a mom, a grandma, and a great grandmother… she was my aunt, and she was my friend. Everyone who knows her is faced with changing their life to be without her. That is the heart of this song for me. Know the danger of life and its changes but know the joy of riding its wave. Chaos will teach you to thrive and riding the waves of change will carry you somewhere, you just need to be ready…

Will you lean into the changes?

Don’t worry too much about where you are going. We are all headed to the same place, we’re all going to die. We don’t talk about dying much, but it is the only thing to always be true. We all die, and no matter how important we are or how much we feel we deserved better, we will die… Don’t worry so much about where you are going, stop wondering if you are worthy. You are alive and your life is as valid as anyone’s. Put your wet suit on and catch a wave…

Make sure you don’t leave the people that matter behind.

Don’t save anything for later…

Life is dangerous but it is rich, and your life is yours. No matter how many times you have tried to hope and failed, lean into the changes, and never stay the same.

Learning, listening, 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…

Accumulates – David Gray

Being Sixty

David Gray gave me my sixtieth birthday present…amid a pandemic. My family would have normally done something cool, but I chose to stay home and stay safe, and I had a fabulous birthday. I took a few days to spend time with my sweet, sweet wife and contemplate the null value of age. You live, and each day rolls by and on every single day, you find you arrive at today.

I could fill pages with the tales of Rusty and Russell Beard, I have lived a very disorderly life. Only recently have I been able to look back into the eyes of Rusty, the one who lived my todays as a kid and then a teenager. He had it all figured out and at the same time, he had nothing figured out, but it all lead from one to the next and they were all just today. It accumulates, one day after another and if you can, just try and live today, it is simply always today. When I grasp this and take all the memories of the things that I have seen, walked, and completely fucked up. I realize that I am so flawed, yet this is me.

I am honest with myself about the who, that is me…I have looked down from the high rise and stared back into my own eyes. I have seen the greed in this world, but I also saw the deep unabashed beauty of this world. From working in the asparagus fields in eastern Washington, to fixing computers in a kindergarten classroom. I have lived a full life and I am not even close to done, that is what being sixty means to me today. On May 29th of this year, I will see my twenty-two thousandth today. I have absolutely no idea or attachment to that, it will just be today. It accumulates…

I have had so many amazing days in my life, but there was one I had with David Gray. Well not just him and me, it was more like he played Marymoor Park in Redmond WA, and I was in the audience. That night I witnessed the deepest magic of music.  I have never left my seat when I am at a concert, but on that night, I did. I went for a pee and decided to have a smoke. While smoking, I saw a woman weeping. I really wasn’t sure what to do so I asked her, “are you ok”, she nodded yes. We talked for a bit and she told me that her friend told her she was going to an EDM show and that she had never experienced music that brought her soul up so close for her to see…she had never felt the magic of music and how it can reach all the way in. She was so moved by David’s music, all she could do was cry.  We just hung out for a while until the tears were replaced by the joy of what she had discovered, she gave me a hug and went back to her life.  It was not long after that, I was back in my spot and David gave the stage to Caroline Dale.

That night, I experienced the magic of the music in a way I had never known before. Surrounded by the mighty Pacific Northwest, the lights went down, save one, that settled quietly on Caroline. She was sitting center stage, her arms wrapped around her cello, and she played. She gave me a beautiful glimpse of eternity that night. At one point I was convinced that the trees themselves were singing to me… Caroline played, and her notes rode up into the branches of the trees, her voice surrounded us. It was a roar of quiet beauty that sang a song that will be etched in my memory forever. It all accumulates.

That was one of the most spiritual experiences of my life…

“Well, it grips, and it grins
It cavorts, and it gyrates
And it whispers from the wings
Knowingly insinuates
Shines a certain light on things
Emphasizing your least likeable traits”

Being sixty is weird, it shakes you and laughs at you…it grips you, and yes it grins…. Being sixty means the world can swirl around me as it propels me across a threshold, one that allows me to look back at all my failures along with my successes. I am just beginning to understand what the accumulation of all those things adds up to. They can grip you; they can whisper to you and shine a light on things, especially your least likeable traits.  I have accumulated so many whispers and some I have listened to; some were important to my survival; most were just noise. I do not consider myself that special, I am just a strange version of the man I expected, but I am content. Joy is an accumulation of these things that whisper from the wings.  I have accumulated so many tiny moments of joy and they are sustaining. I have also accumulated a vast number of todays filled with pain, many of my own accord. But today, I learn from those todays and I walk into the next choosing joy and the hope that it can bring.

“In the depots, in the silos
On the pallets, in the crates
Down the aisles, wreathed in smiles
In great mountains, on our plates
Like the love of God, it enters you
In all kinds of amorphous states”

We walk through this life wreathed in smiles, the joy from those smiles guide us down paths that have nothing to offer. We never want to hear from those who can see where we really live. That’s where we wrestle daily with the truth of who we are and ask ourselves, what will I ever be? Then tomorrow becomes today and over the years, if you watch and learn from those around you, you might find a love that enters you and accumulates. I am blessed with people with whom I share a deep love and I am blessed with an inordinate desire for music, I am a rich man.

Caroline’s cello playing on this song is haunting and takes me right back to that night. It was not unlike meeting god, that evening in Marymoor… that is the magic in music. When David sings about the amorphous state in this song and I hear her strings in the background, I hear magic. This is the magic of music, it’s like the love of God that enters you and it sings in all kinds of amorphous states.

Her cello will haunt you; it will amuse you. It is the voice of the trees.

“Mindless need is loosed among us
In our homes and down our streets
Singing like some mythic creature
Of great Edеns, through the gates
you can have butter structure
Even wanton destruction
And all of this at very competitive rates”

Brilliance abides around us, but we focus on the dingy bits that lose us and betray our joy. Don’t settle for the structures of Eden or strive for the goals of that mythical place.

It Accumulates… every day that you wake up, you can walk, and you might get there. It accumulates and it is still today…

With Accumulates, David Gray has written something that encourages you to sit back and immerse yourself. Let his beautiful weaving of the album Skellig seep into your bones and lift you. He has been a safe place for me since my sister sent me White Ladder twenty years ago. There is a very comforting familiarity to his voice and how he arranges music and I hear years of thought and a renewed sense of his value for life, today. That resonates with me in a deep way. Like me, I think David is just living today, not “for today”, just today. When I write, I find joy, when I write about music, I better understand myself and what I want from today.  In all my life I spent very few of those some twenty-one thousand nine hundred and some odd days living just for this today. There has always been a tomorrow and it always just turned out to be today.  It can grip you, and if you are listening to its whisper today, you can reach for hope. Today you can breathe a new breath, you know the competitive rates.

I have lived a life that some would say is unredeemable, but I am me. I am the one I was one when my little sister and I laid in our beds and listened to our dad tell us the tales of Indian Jake and what his travels across Montana showed him. I am the same one who saw the people of Casablanca stream to answer the call of prayer on the banks of the Mediterranean. I am that one who lived every single today that brought me to this day. If I have learned one lesson, it is to live for this today, not the one that might come as the sun rises but this one. Who can I give a small piece of hope to, who can I grasp a small piece of hope from? You can suck on the teat or you can give life, this is reaching for hope.

Looking down from the highrise
Staring back with your own eyes
Playing games with the numbers
Messing ’round with the dates
Altering its positions
Muttering sweet propositions
Doing its damnedest to get you
Between the sheets
And you might start out
Kicking and screaming
Pretty soon you’re gonna wind up
Sucking on the teats

My experience and appreciation of music has changed so much over these sixty years. There are so many today’s that I was so blind. I’ve had experiences that changed my thinking right at that moment, but others that I kicked and screamed at, and their changes accumulated over the years, subtle changes in the way you see things, hearing the stories of those around you… seeing the world…it really does accumulate.  Recently, my soul was shaken at how weak and close minded I have been in my life. I watched the HBO documentary about the Bee Gees, and it showed me how foolishly closed minded I was. I had kicked and screamed at the idea of disco versus rock, just like the fools in Kaminski Park. As I look back on it now, I realize just how foolish I was and just how much I missed on those todays. Please do not put music in a box of your own design, let it be whatever it needs to be for those who can hear it. What you think is noise, may be a lifeline for someone who needs it today. We all can point to a time that a song gave us a light and gave us one step forward today…

It accumulates…

I am looking down from that highrise and staring back with my own eyes. I can see when I succumbed to the sweet propositions and how that only led to sucking the teats. If you have had the great fortune that I have found, you will get the chance to at least acknowledge your mistakes, but most importantly you can learn from them and keep listening and then grow. Music is one of the loves of God, it enters you, it can give you a moment in today. It can free you and transport you, just like the stories my dad told us. But you will still wake up to today. You will still have the life you lived and only you know the truth of who you are. Reaching for hope is the one thing you can do with today, you might be able to change one thing or twelve, it just depends on where your today takes you. It could emphasize your least likable traits. But it’s still today, reach up and smile…

Listening to this song I can easily envision a summer night, in the not too distant future, in Marymoor park, David regals us with the beauty of Skellig and when they get to Accumulates, Caroline will let the trees sing once again.

Listening, learning, and growing

People Get Old – Lori McKenna

Have you ever felt like a song was written just for you? No matter how many times you listen to it, you always feel like it is reaching into the depths of your soul and pouring something in. No matter how raw your moment might be, it still speaks. If you have found this in a song then you’re as lucky as me. Keep that song close and burn up the repeat button, let it pour into your life.

You’ve probably already heard Lori McKenna’s tunes, the list of artists who have recorded her songs is longer than your arm or leg. I am so incredibly thankful that she decided to keep this one to herself. Her voice and the musicians she surrounds herself with have created something truly magical. This song does what is should do, it takes you back and lets you see how beautiful your life has been. Some songs take you forward, looking at what you can do and how you can be what you’ve dreamed of. All of these things matter, all of it is the magic of the soul of music. Lori McKenna is an artist I will adore for the rest of my life because, with this one she took me back and let me look forward all at once.

When I listen to this song I experience it from two perspectives, the dad and the kid. I am in that late in-between stage of my life, my dad is 89 and my kids have kids. When Lori sings about riding in the cab of that truck its a kind of duality for me. It takes me back to when I was eight or nine riding next to my dad in Montana. I still remember waiting for that water tank to fill on the back of that truck, and that arrogant horse rubbing his ass on the front of said truck cause he knew we were not going to move quite yet. Yes, we didn’t have running water so we had to haul it in… Fast forward twenty some years and it was me driving down those ditch roads in eastern Washington and my kids sitting there thinking we were flying and the dust behind us would never have a chance of catching us. At the same time I listen and it takes me to today, my kids have run off and made a life of their own, working to feed their kids and searching for what really brings them joy, just like me. I hope they always think of me as forty-five, cause I sure do think of them as kids…

“Someone said youth is wasted on the young” In many cases this is a true statement but I hope for you it is not. Its not for me, I have held on to those pieces of my youth with all I have. That does come with a cost, you are supposed to grow up and be responsible. I had that Timex watch and cigarette and I twirl my youth around my arms like its all I have… cause it really is. Youth, a fond reference to younger, innocent days. When in actuality its just talking about the soul you are supposed to carry, the belief that what you see is not what you have to accept. That beautiful belief that all around you, miracles can happen. So many things can happen that erode and chip away at our youth and so many things do….divorce, death, unemployment and yeah, people get old.

If you have found the time to read this then please take the time to listen to Lori’s song. I hope it can take you where it took me. If I could give you a wish then it would be to twirl your youth around a few more times. Look at what is in your arms, whether its your beautiful child or your own youth that you are trying so desperately to hold on to… gaze at it and love it, cause just as she says… people get old

I am not going to write about the musical perfection in this one because if you can’t hear it… well I can’t help you. What I will write is a simple thank you to Lori McKenna, you took me to a place I haven’t seen for a very long time and I am grateful…you are magical.

Listening, Learning and growing….