The Answer is Always Right Here

It was in a noisy, crowded bar in Vancouver, BC after playing a show with the political punk band I was in at the time when I heard, and understood for the first time, those words.  

We had taken separate cars up and half the band had gotten times messed up, resulting in a rather frantic and immediate entry to the stage once everyone had arrived.  No sound check.  We just plugged in and went.  Sometimes that’s what you have to do.  

We stayed after to see the other bands, though noisy bars have never been my thing.  I don’t have the ears, or the voice, for it.  I don’t want anyone shouting in my ear, and I don’t want to shout in anyone else’s ear.  It just makes me cough, anyway.

My mind wandered, as it often does in proper pendulum fashion....a wide and graceful slow motion swoop back and forth between past and future.  (Isn’t it inevitable that it has to pass through the present each time?)  

If the grass is always greener on the other side (in the other tense?), then our Selves are always better over there, too.  If we can remove ourselves enough with a projection onto the future then maybe we won’t be burdened by us when the time comes.  If time heals everything then eventually it will just take the parts of us we don’t like away.....right?  Instead of removing the Big Bad Wolf of our ego and judgement, we would rather wait for time to take away everything that provokes it.  Typical ;)

Whatever answers we may seek, we can only find them right here.  This moment.  Even if the journey is 1,000 miles long there becomes here eventually.  Nothing can be discovered outside of now.  In fact....nothing can be said, felt, seen, experienced, feared, sung, drunk, heard, touched, celebrated, broken, destroyed, or even noticed outside of now.  

Once discovered, NOW is a vast and infinite canvas...yet we spend so much of our time trying to create our Life's Masterpiece safely hidden on the edges that don’t really exist.  You have all the room you need to create your incredible and unique work of art.  Don’t worry about taking up someone else’s space.  There is room in the moment for everyone and if we all could get together there, well, I dare say magic might happen.  (And I dare say it does.)

"About" Me

i just started a business.  i followed the suggestions of some good (and impressed ;) people and i started a photography business.  what else could there be for me to talk about right now?  it was an interesting process writing the “about” section for my shop, and i was a bit surprised by what came out.  truth, of course, but which version?  every word we use has its own input, its own shade of color and as i go about excitedly ironing out wrinkles and overcoming obstacles in this new endeavor i keep coming back to these words that i wrote.

It's the Little Things

After being a song writer for so many years i've learned a few things. With exceptions, of course, when you write a really good song, you know it. You've gotten enough feedback, you've known what it feels like to open up and exhale something as beautiful and as close to truth as you've ever known. I've learned that no one can say exactly the same thing exactly the same way. 

It was a dewey morning in Bellingham, WA, at my then partner's family farmstead, when i noticed a tiny little weed in a dormant barrel planter in the yard. Each one of its tiny little arms had perfect balls of dew at the ends and it was like a magical fairy christmas tree, radiating an unbelievable amount of light and joy and beauty....to no one but me. I pushed a button, and that beauty was captured, my own story added to it, simply by being there, simply by noticing.

The joy of photography is unparalleled for me. I can feel the same kind of rush as i do with song-writing, but photography is somehow more pure. It's far less of a struggle to get to "the heart of the matter." There's no way for ego to really enter into it. The picture was already there. I just took it. 

I don't have a fancy camera. For what i do it hasn't been that important. I work with what i have, and for now enjoy being able to have a camera wherever i go. I do plenty of photographing at music shows and other events, but i shoot when i want to and can put the camera away when i choose. I'm the unexpected photographer, and, for now, prefer it that way.

It's a fine line. If i'm always in photographer mode, sometimes i can miss the experience at hand. I try hard not to regret missing a great shot. I try hard not to let photographing the life around me take the place of living it.

my shop can be found at http://www.etsy.com/shop/LetThatSongbirdGo