Alexandersmap

    Category: Music

    • The Communal Nature of Creativity

      “Your dreams don’t belong to you. If you hold on too tightly to them without recognizing the mutual and communal nature of creativity, your work will probably not have significant impact in the world.” — Drew Holcomb

      Writing a blog doesn’t feel communal, it feels more like a drawing out of oneself something internal and placing it out in the world for the reader to do with it what they will. The fact that almost 8 billion people will ignore it isn’t even the ego hit one might believe it to be, it’s not even the fact that it won’t ever reach the level where it’s a blip on the radar for those almost 8 billion people. Ego isn’t creative, it’s only role is to fuel the audacity to publish anything at all, and then let people in on the secret. After that it awkwardly gets in the way and is best pushed aside.

      The communal part of blogging is when you click publish. The work is then out there for others to interact with. For random strangers who stumble upon it, it’s a chance to hear a new voice and accept or reject that voice on their own path to finding out. For the loyal subscriber, it’s a choice of whether to let the steady drip, drip, drip of a daily blog become a part of their daily conversation. And for the inner circle of family and friends who read what this character has to say, it’s a chance to reconcile the person they know with the words they might be surprised by. I’m just as surprised, some days.

      Writing a blog isn’t thought of as collaborative. It’s the writer’s thoughts and opinion put to page, and not generally the product of the community with which that writer engages in. And yet we are the average of the five people we surround ourselves with. The influence of my community is as clearly reflected in the work that I produce as any book I’ve ever read or experience I’ve had. In fact, many of those same books and experiences are being had by that community and discussed over beverages now and again.

      There’s no doubt that music is one form of creativity better expressed communally. Lennon had McCartney and was the better for it. And then he had Yoko, and took his work to a different and far more personal place. When one looks at his entire body of work, we see his transformation as the influence of those around him ebb and flowed. The chorus naturally reverberates more than the solo artist. That doesn’t take away the power of the individual artist, it amplifies it. For art to speak, it must engage with others, which means that the artist must also engage with others. So, hello and welcome! Nice to have you here. Drop a comment.

    • Moving Forward

      A long time
      It’s taken me
      But I’ve figured out
      Now to some degree
      This life
      It happens fast
      I’ll enjoy the time in this hour glass
      Yes I will will will oh yes I will
      
Yeah, I’ve looked
      And what I see
      It’s not what’ve been
      It’s whatcha gonna be
      ‘Cause this world
      We’re walking through
      It’ll dig you out
      Or will bury you
      — Layup, I’m Alive

      The other day my bride and I went out to a local place for dinner and conversation. We secured two seats at the bar right away and celebrated our small victory with cocktails. The gent at the barstool next to me was talkative and we began chatting about the menu and local restaurants and eventually got down to the truth of the matter. He was divorced and alone on a Friday night and missing his wife and kids. He was filling holes in his life wherever he could, but not the biggest hole in his life. Not yet friend, but keep moving forward: This too shall pass.

      Bono and U2 wrote a song about his friend Michael Hutchence from INXS after the latter’s suicide. Hutchence seemed to have it all, but spiraled into a place where he killed himself despite fame, fortune, good looks and good friends. As Bono observed,

      You’ve got yourself stuck in a moment
      And you can’t get out of it

      The whole point of being alive is to grow and to keep reaching for our potential. There will be plenty of setbacks and hurdles along the way that make it all feel meaningless and futile. It’s all part of the climb. Our story in the end is not who we were, but who we become despite it all. The trick is to keep moving forward to that someone better. It’s usually closer than we believe in the moment.

      Moving forward doesn’t mean forgetting the lessons of the past. For those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it, as George Santayana stated so well. We are the sum of all of our parts; the good, the bad and the ugly. It takes time to find all three within us, and to push aside the aspects of our identity we don’t want to dance with anymore. The thing is, when we take that weight off our shoulders we become lighter on our feet, more nimble, and in turn, more alive.

    • Reminiscing

      Friday night, it was late, I was walking you home
      We got down to the gate and I was dreaming of the night
      Would it turn out right
      Now as the years roll on
      Each time we hear our favorite song
      The memories come along
      Older times we’re missing
      Spending the hours reminiscing
      Hurry, don’t be late, I can hardly wait
      I said to myself when we’re old
      We’ll go dancing in the dark
      Walking through the park and reminiscing

      — Little River Band, Reminiscing

      I may write about it now and then, but I’m generally too busy living in the present to dwell on the past. That doesn’t mean I don’t fondly reminisce about the best days, while cringing now and then at the worst days. Life lessons, each and every moment along the way.

      The benefit of a journal, let alone a daily blog, is seeing just who you were then. Who had those dreams and aspirations, doubts and fears? How did it turn out in the end? How have we turned out, this work in progress marching through time?

      Reminiscing isn’t simply living in the past, it’s rewinding ourselves to another version of us and seeing what we’ve learned through our experiences since then. It’s not so much dancing in the dark as putting a spotlight on progress made. Though dancing in the dark to the right music sounds lovely too, don’t you think? What tune are we singing lately? Will we reminisce about it as fondly?

    • So Apart We’ve Grown

      One of these days
      I’m gonna sit down and write a long letter
      To all the good friends I’ve known
      And I’m gonna try
      And thank them all for the good times together
      Though so apart we’ve grown
      — Neil Young, One of These Days

      Talking to an old friend, we asked each other about other old friends. Who have we seen? Who has drifted away? How are the kids? It was a reminder of the person I used to be who danced with the world in the best way he could at the time. We’ve grown so far apart since then. Yet we’re still the same in so many ways.

      The thing is we’re all becoming something more as the layers pile on. Those layers either smother who we once were or keep that person warm for the day when we fling off the years and dance like it’s 1999 again. Like a tree, those growth rings differ year-to-year. Some years are better than others, some are distinctly harder. We reach for the sun in good times and bad and put the seasons behind us, until one day we look around and wonder where the time went.

      One of these days, we’ll all get together again. We won’t miss a beat, I expect, just as we didn’t miss a beat last time. Somewhere deep inside us is the person we were then, thrilled to come out and play the part once again. Sure we’re all so very different as life rolls along and sometimes over us all. But there’s a spark of energy between old friends that remains to rekindle the flames of our youth. A time before mortgages and divorces and funerals for people we thought would be here with us now, in this very conversation, talking about who we were then.

      Those conversations change as we grow, from who we want to be when we grow up to who we want to be now that the kids have grown up. That’s a lot of growth to catch up on some day when we get back together with those old friends. Now is just another growth ring we’ll laugh about (perhaps someday). We all know that the future is coming for us soon enough. But those growth rings make their own music. And we have so very much to catch up on.

    • Where the River Meets the Sea

      And inside every turning leaf
      Is the pattern of an older tree
      The shape of our future
      The shape of all our history
      And out of the confusion
      Where the river meets the sea
      Came things I’d never seen
      Things I’d never seen
      I was brought to my senses
      I was blind, but now that I can see
      Every signpost in nature
      Said you belong to me
      — Sting, I Was Brought To My Senses

      Nature is a highly effective lens from which to see the world. When we look at the complexity of even the simplest of things—say a leaf or a snowflake, we begin to see the truth of our place in it. We may feel small, but we ought to feel equally complex and an essential part of the universe. We are billion year old carbon, after all, brought together in this moment to dance with the present.

      There’s a part of me that feels a natural end to this blog on the horizon. There’s a part of me that sees it continuing for as long as I do, for the clarity it brings to my days. It brings me to my senses, such as they are, and raises the game by forcing me outside of my own head again and again. Why stop now? And so every day, eventually, there’s one more blog post to ponder or dismiss awaiting the universe.

      All these ideas flow into the larger ocean of ideas that is the connected world. That there’s some turbulence there is natural. That ideas settle and are often diluted in a vast ocean of thought and opinion is inevitable. That we are a part of the great and infinite conversation is essential and assured so long as we click publish and let our thoughts swim.

      Thank you. See you again tomorrow?

    • The Truth Is

      And you know that when the truth is told
      That you can get what you want or you can just get old
      You’re gonna kick off before you even get halfway through
      Why don’t you realize, Vienna waits for you?
      — Billy Joel, Vienna

      Today I deleted an old manuscript. The truth is, it was never going to get finish where it was, and it was holding me prisoner. Stephen King once said to kill our babies, and so one more dance with the muse has turned back into bits and bites to be used by someone else on some other project. Or perhaps it will be my phoenix, rising from the ashes after incineration. I don’t know… I’m just happy to see it go.

      One day perhaps the blog itself will end in just such a way. Here today, gone tomorrow, like a distant memory of that paper once written in school that felt essential in the moment and less so as the years go by. There are days when I wish it so, but push on anyway. For the other writing to have the elbow room it needs to grow, perhaps it’s the final solution. After all, you can get what you want or you can just get old.

    • Choices

      A friend asked me which five songs I would choose if I could listen to no other song but those five for the rest of my life. An impossible task, really. Beyond your wedding song, if you truly loved it, what do you choose? Hard rock? Dance music? Introspective music? Singalong songs? Jazz? Classical? Death metal? Do you go with the first five you think of? The five most played on your phone? Or do you mine a little deeper, knowing that this is for keeps and there’s no time for casual affairs?

      When I put the initial list together in my mind and reviewed it, I noticed that my two favorite bands weren’t represented. Yet I could do the same five song exercise with either band and have a hard time deciding what to leave off. Another friend of mine once asked me to rank the best albums of a band we both love from best to worst. The worst is easy, but what do you choose as the best? It depends on your mood at the time. It’s the same with ranking songs, isn’t it?

      Imagine putting a list together like this, not as an ice-breaker, but as truly the only five songs you’ll ever hear again. Imagine the pressure, the last minute switches. The forgotten gem that you’ll regret excluding forever. Having to choose when the stakes are real sucks. The hard part is always what you must leave behind when you choose that other thing.

      The exercise should lead us to gratitude. We ought to be grateful that we don’t have to choose. We ought to be grateful that our days are filled with an abundance of choice on what we eat, what we read or watch, where we live, and yes, what we listen to. It’s truly an embarrassment of riches for most of us.

      It should also lead us to evaluate what our choices have been thus far in the game. We aren’t here for all that long, yet we remain frivolous with what we do with our time. I’m well aware that I’m choosing to write this blog at this moment instead of taking a long walk in the woods. Which is better for me in the moment? We must choose wisely, but then accept the choice that we’ve made if it’s working for us. Happiness is not found in constantly changing our mind about what we want.

      Life can never be about having everything. Just enough of some things. Things like beauty and love, engagement with the universe and the active pursuit of better. That’s the soundtrack to a great life. Something we can dance to.

    • A Dream Won’t Chase You Back

      If you got a chance, take it, take it while you got a chance
      If you got a dream, chase it, ’cause a dream won’t chase you back
      If you’re gonna love somebody
      Hold ’em as long and as strong and as close as you can
      ‘Til you can’t
      — Cody Johnson, ‘Til You Can’t

      In America, this week is always distracting. There are so many moving parts before Thanksgiving: Ingredients to purchase and prepare, people to check in with traveling from near and far, furniture to plot out in anticipation of rooms filled to capacity, cleaning (so much cleaning!), and for some of us, work to reconcile before the holiday break. This week is a hectic, wonderfully stressful mess that some of us love more than any other in a year full of blessed weeks.

      We build the life we most want, don’t we? But we can’t control everything, we must be open to the changes the universe presents to us. Who won’t be at the table this year who was there last year? Who won’t be at next year’s table? It might just be us. The underlying message is to do what must be done now. That could be rightly viewed as the overall theme of this blog for most of the last five years. Tempus fugit. Memento mori. Carpe diem.

      Most of us postpone the call or the question or simply beginning what is so much more important than what we’re doing otherwise. Most of us waste time. Henry had some advice for such moments:

      As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.
      The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.
      — Henry David Thoreau, Walden

      We ought to feel the urgency of Thanksgiving every week. Perhaps we’d be exhausted and collapse on the couch eventually, but then again, perhaps we’d condition ourselves to living a larger life—full of love and a wee bit of conflict, anticipation and conversation, and something sweet to cap it all off with before you clean up yet again and look ahead to the next big thing. We aren’t here to kill time, we’re here to make the most of our time together before we lose our place at the table. By all means, seize it (because it won’t chase you back)!

    • There ‘neath the Oak’s Bough

      Now there’s a beautiful river in the valley ahead
      There ‘neath the oak’s bough soon we will be wed
      Should we lose each other in the shadow of the evening trees
      I’ll wait for you
      And should I fall behind
      Wait for me
      — Bruce Springsteen, If I Should Fall Behind

      “The wand chooses the wizard, Mr. Potter.” — J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

      The song If I Should Fall Behind is forever a part of my identity, not just because it was our wedding song once upon a time, but because we’ve used it as our guiding principle. In this way, I wonder sometimes if the song chose us, rather than us choosing the song. It’s always been there in the background, whispering just how to keep this thing going year-after-year.

      Relationships are built on patience and each person carrying their share of the load. Sometimes one person carries more than the other, but over time it just seems to even out. There’s no score-keeping in a healthy marriage anyway, and the sooner you realize that the sooner you get to the serious work of foundation-building. Foundations matter a great deal in happy homes.

      Time is a bear that throws all kinds of bitter twists into an otherwise magical life. We get distracted by the madness of the world and spend more time than we ought to focused on a transactional life of people and titles and things that ultimately don’t matter as much as the person you committed a lifetime to. But when both of you carry on, patient and present, everything else falls by the wayside.

      We built a home five years after that wedding on a plot of land deep in the valley with a large oak tree in the front yard and another out in back. Neither of us thought of the line in the song, we just liked the oak trees and the feel of the land they grew on. We’ve called that spot in the valley ‘neath the oak’s bough home ever since. It’s funny how things work out just like a song when you put the work in to make it so.

    • It’s Probably Magic

      “The appearance of things changes according to the emotions; and thus we see magic and beauty in them, while the magic and beauty are really in ourselves.” ― Kahlil Gibran, The Broken Wings

      Who said that every wish
      Would be heard and answered
      When wished on the morning star
      Somebody thought of that
      And someone believed it
      And look what it’s done so far
      — Paul Williams and Kenneth Ascher, Rainbow Connection

      It took several days, but the bluebirds and cardinals finally found the feeders again. They’ve been elsewhere lately as the feeders came in for the summer. With a bit of short day trickery I’ve moved the feeders closer to the house, that we might see flashes of color and motion during stick season. Attracting beauty is often a matter of simply meeting it halfway. We must do the work to realize it.

      Lately I’m bursting at the seams with magic. I’ve been filled with the stuff from reading a few gorgeous books in a row, meeting with some magical people I haven’t seen in some time, and in conversations with one remarkable woman that I see most every day. Some days you look around and see that life can be truly magical if we just open ourselves to experiencing it.

      Now don’t believe for a moment that I’m not aware of the million tragedies unfolding around us in dark corners around the world. A heart can only break so many times over the foolishness, madness and anger of humanity. To carry on in this world at all we must find and shine a light within ourselves. That light may in turn offer hope for others navigating their own stormy seas.

      Sometimes it feels like so many bad people never seem to get the comeuppance they deserve. But we don’t know what their shriveled up souls are invoking upon them in quiet moments. It’s best to focus on finding the light within ourselves, aware of the darkness but never allowing ourselves to be lost in it. We aren’t here simply to be witnesses to the behavior of others, but to contribute our own verse, if only to tip the scales back to beautiful.

      We come to realize that we’re purpose built for reflection. We shine back on the world what the world gives to us, but this works in reverse too. When we bring light to the world, it comes back to us in spades. When we bring darkness, karma catches up eventually. This is the eternal hope of the universe, that any of this matters, and the person we are gets what we deserve. That belief is deceiving, of course, for so much of the good things in life seem so far out of reach when we always want something more.

      The thing about magic is that it’s found in the leap between what we believed was possible and what we encounter. Sure, sometimes we find it in sleight of hand trickery, but it also applies when we encounter the person we are becoming and the larger work that we are creating. There’s magic in art, and in performance, and when we rise to meet our essential role it’s a beautiful encounter indeed.

      Now I’m no magician, and the jury is still out on the work that I produce in this world, but I love to dabble in light and song and a bit of magic now and then. Life isn’t meant to be a spiral into the abyss, but a climb to possibility and contribution. We play our part in our time, and show the way for those ready to see the magic of becoming for themselves. This isn’t wishful thinking, but purposeful transcendence from the norm. Simply put, we attract what we believe. We know that it’s probably not magic, but surely it can be magical.