Electric Lights Everywhere

I need

2012-02-09T13:49:00.001-08:00

I need to be able to get back and forth between San Francisco often. Anyone have any ideas?

Dig/Dug

2012-02-06T16:47:00.000-08:00

Today the big news at the dog park was a hole in the ground. One dog sniffed around for a few minutes and then started digging the bejeesus out of one spot. He just thought it had potential.

For the next hour, the hole became the most contested, inspected and exalted hole in the history of the dog park. Fights were had, claims were laid via urine (a literal pissing contest), and nobody could get enough of this one spot. I watched it go from another piece of ground in Shelby dog park to Paris in spring... just because of that collie.

I feel like that collie, and I'm digging right now.

Storytellers

2012-02-05T08:52:00.001-08:00

If you sit in a room with six people long enough it will become clear that one person is the best in the room at telling stories, encouraging conversation and just generally being the group entertainer.

If you got that group together with another group of six people, between their entertainers there would be one who was the best. Double the group size again and again the best stands out.

If you follow it all the way up, the leaders, entertainers and innovators aren't necessarily selected by providence. Maybe they achieve their position by chance, but once they are there the only way they can retain the throne is to actually be worthy of that position.

Addicted to Movement

2012-01-25T19:26:00.000-08:00

I've broken through many of the barriers that were holding me back. Being unafraid to speak and be open and reprimand have been the keys. I'm working with a fantastic array of people, and some really incredible things are on the near horizon.

Watching the China BBC documentary really reminded me of how little all the we do matters in the long run, but that it's okay. There were guys that trained cormorants to swim in the water and catch fish. That's cooler than anything I'll ever be able to do, so it's good to keep it all in perspective.

I want to move the world forward, but I wonder if I'm just addicted to movement. Will stillness ever be enough for me? If not, what's the point of progress?

Our first Nashville headlining show ever is on Feb 23rd.

In the wrong light

2012-01-11T08:12:00.000-08:00

When I look at my life sometimes I think it looks like a beautiful painting in progress. Something that when I finish I will stand back from and be proud. I believe I was given my set of skills to finish this painting, and that nobody else in the world can.

When it is done I can imagine looking at my painting in a mahogany frame on a whitewashed wall of a museum in the perfect setting; appreciating every detail. I can also imagine that same painting in a hand made home in the wilderness hanging on a rusty nail and finding it equally worthwhile.

When it's in the right light I tell myself to always remember that I find the piece beautiful.

Then some days I wake up and someone has changed the lighting.

The soft white daylight can be changed to a violent yellow, or a repugnant green. All of a sudden the entire landscape takes on a loathsome nature. I can't see so many parts of the painting, but the ugliest are impossible to ignore. On these days I can't even think of a reason to finish the piece, to even pick up a brush.

Sometimes nobody comes back to change the lighting for weeks. Sometimes It's fixed the next day. There's no way of knowing.

Boots of Spanish Leather

2012-01-06T07:51:00.001-08:00

I started retching during the second stanza, my body didn't know what to do. Most beautiful song ever.

Dylan!!!!

Discouraged

2012-01-03T08:12:00.000-08:00

I can see the future, and it doesn't take much to get there... but the process usually involves a few specialists. Over the years I have had to try to organize specialists in the music industry and have found that to be an incredibly difficult task. I longed to work with people who could do something well and did what they said they would do (my past and present band mates are excluded from this, Jasper excluded from this exclusion). I'm at the edge of a new era musically and in technology, and I'm running into the same entropy, but a little bit worse than before.

I can come up with a plan, find the players, explain the plan, set a time line, get a budget, execute the plan when the pieces are in place... all I need is for the players in the scheme to simply do what they tell me they can do (which is something that they have already done). This just doesn't happen. I've tried cajoling, paying, begging, empowering, bribing, blackmailing, partnering, even horsewhipping.. and people still just won't do it.

I tend not to like to complain on here, but there has been a systematic failure all the way around the horn leaving me with a few hours that were supposed to be spent doing a bevvy of other extremely important things that have all been parlayed. "I slept in" "I'm sick" "My wife blah blah blah" "My dog blah blah blah" "I'm slammed" "I'm stuck" "I'm hungover" "What's in it for me?" "I'm feeling pressured" "I'm feeling unmotivated". These are all things that have been said to me in the last six months by various people. I smile and say that it's okay, but a little part of me dies every time.

Is this why we're in a depression? I really don't look around and see the type of people it takes to turn a nation around. Everyone's entitled, everyone's lazy, and most untalented. If there is talent the entitlement and malaise are magnified ten times. It's all from a "you're special", hands-off educational system. We were all pushed through the pipeline being artificially inflated to think that we're great, but all knowing deep down that in most cases we haven't done anything to deserve the accolades. This makes an inherent unwillingness to do anything, because failure could expose the world to this propagated fraud. We're not special unless we make ourselves special. We are entitled to nothing. We happened to be born into the most prosperous country in the world, and we've collectively decided it's our lot in life to see it rot in front of our eyes?

I want to give up, but I can't. By all accounts I have everything a man needs to live out his days in peace, but I have this desire to see the world be bettered, and I don't think I can quiet that desire.

Just please do one thing you said you'd do today, and send a little thought my way.

Pure Excitement

2011-12-29T08:32:00.000-08:00

Iowa is giving me hope.

Politics have turned into a menace. They've turned into men piloting a machine in the name of the greater good, but really steering it to the benefit of the few.

I have been gearing my life toward a move out of the country within 5 years, because I believe that we are on our way to complete ruin. People who don't understand the foundation upon which our government was founded started to vote for candidates who would loot the most for them. As Ben Franklin said, "when people believe they can vote a dollar away from their neighbor it will be the end of democracy" and lately politics have become about nothing else than what financial benefits are to be reaped from voting.

Ron Paul is a man of principle, and I agree with every word that comes out of his mouth about politics. Please don't spit back something about being racist, because politicians are not meant to be perfect, they are meant to make sound policies. The joke is, even if Ron Paul were the founder of the KKK, his political stance would take all power away from federal government to even make a racist decision.

Our federal aid programs are robbing people of the ability to stand up and fight for their lives. Our impotent public education system is robbing people of their desire to learn and reason. There was no welfare class before the invention of welfare, and people weren't starving in the streets. I believe in the good in people, that if given access to all of their earnings they will support the portion of the population that truly needs a hand up, and they will use discretion in who they help. That is the only way to weed out people who abuse federal systems to feed their addictions. Hitting rock bottom is the only way to ever be feed from addictions, but our safety nets are preventing this from happening with a lot of people, perpetually imprisoning them.

If you don't believe that the system has been absolutely gamed by a growing portion of the population watch this documentary. Or spend an hour in a grocery store looking at the checkout aisles. You will see most people's checkouts be divided into two sections, food that the government purchases, and then alcohol, cigarettes and lottery tickets with cash. You cannot save a country from destruction if you fund addiction for the working class.

We are bound to a broken system, and the only way to get out is to go back to where we started from. I believe in Ron Paul, and I would gladly field and questions or concerns you have about him in the comments.

3 Dog Nights, 3 Post Days

2011-12-13T13:43:00.000-08:00

I must admit that after writing the last post I got a bit wistful about the final days of We The Living, and I mean the full band touring... not that weird folk tour we took right before splitsville.

I was so very unhappy and unable to figure out why. I literally felt there was nobody in the world that could understand the complexity of my problem, but my spirit was bound and I knew no more good was going to come out of the band if I couldn't get to the bottom of my conundrum. We were working as hard as we possibly could yet things kept seeming to get harder. The harder we tried the harder it became, and I was feeling hopeless.

We were playing at a college and our green room (the secluded room you hang out in before the show) was a guidance office at this school. This was the college that Steven Covey's son went to. He penned the book "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" so in addition to giving tons of money to the school, he also gave them tons of copies of the book. I have an aversion to self-help books. I don't know why, but I am skeptical of them.. but for some reason, standing in front of this bookshelf full of books I felt compelled to pull one down and open to a random page.

This was the page I opened to:

It was so concise; so perfect that my jaw dropped. I must have reread it 10 times. How could sheer chance have given me such an elegant answer to my question?

Needless to say I kept the book, brought the band back to Nashville and had a look under the music's proverbial hood. I found too much neglect to rectify and decided it would be best for everyone's souls to start from scratch.

That's a story that nobody's known until now.

Sound of Cancellation

2011-12-13T13:26:00.000-08:00

Apparently there was a show called Hard Times of RJ Berger on MTV and Sound of Love was the theme song to the main couple's relationship, just found this out. MTV pays you a dollar per song and they have it for free for forever, they do this for everyone and always have. Signed THAT deal before they dropped the world "music" from their name. Whoops.

The show was cancelled so.... birds of a feather, etc.

Anyway, here is the first time We showed up, it's the whole last scene's music:

http://www.mtv.com/videos/the-hard-times-of-rj-berger-season-2-ep-10-sex-teen-candles/1664336/playlist.jhtml#series=2211&seriesId=30040&channelId=1

Ressurrecting Estey

2011-12-13T08:55:00.001-08:00

I have been looking for an Estey portable pump organ for years now. I found one in California and bought it from an elderly gentlemen named Blue DeVoy who was glad I was going to actually care for the instrument. Sadly, the dry wood didn't ship very well and I ended up with a box of 82 year old fire wood. I was determined not to let the old chap die, so we've been slowly wood-gluing the wreckage back together. So next time you see us, if there's a little brown pump organ on stage his name is Blue DeVoy... and he's a fighter.

The Cogs, the Visionaries, and the Leech

2011-12-09T08:18:00.000-08:00

Ford invented a system whereby a visionary could employ thousands of unskilled cogs and give them a simple repeatable task and with all of their work combined something great could be accomplished. This was such a powerful revelation that our government set out to try to pave our young minds to be ready for a lifetime of coghood. [Kindergarden "kidgarden" was invented by the Germans to prepare young minds for socialism and was brought to America by Melvil Dewey (yes, inventor of the Dewey decimal system) who was a socialist sympathizer. It's why sharing and getting along are the only guidelines.]

The results of this educational shift have finally filtered to our industries' top levels and we have cogs leading cogs into mediocrity.

I recently bought a 1987 Mercedes 300TD wagon that runs on vegetable oil (the Silver Fox). This car is the greatest car I have ever owned. Everything is logical, in great shape, and it drives like a dream. Why would we prop up an American automotive sector who, to this day have failed to make a car that comes even close to what Mercedes was doing nearly 25 years ago? It's preposterous.

To make matters worse, we've invented a legal area of our economy that invents number games that siphon money out of our economy. Goldman Sachs had a machine stolen from its offices and it alerted the government to the fact that the machine could destabilize the entire economy, and its recovery needed to be a top priority... So you're telling me that very the inventors of the financial crisis that's still wracking our country admitted to having a machine that was powerful enough to destabilize our economic system? Just sitting around? We should have locked that entire company away for life. Some people are not born with a conscience, those people are either in prison or on Wall St.

But instead of ridding ourselves of this menace, our greed allows us to hire them to be our financial thugs. It's the snake swallowing its own tail. Like your grandma hiring the mob to rob someone else's grandma for 20% of the take. When every grandma hires the Mafia, the only winner is the Mafia.

Isn't that what's going on now? I don't know any winners now except the I.B. (irritable bowel? No, sadly, investment banker) boys in New York spending $1000 a meal, and people who are miserably suckling at the corporate teat.

What's the answer? The guillotine? Salem Rich trials? No.

It's you being exactly what you want to be and accepting the consequences. If we all made exactly what we should make and found our joy in the labor of our hands and coursing through our entire lives- not just in our xboxes, vacations and automobiles... that's the salve. We've made the big money and there is no Joy in it. None at all.

It is the only answer, and it is the future.

The End

2011-12-05T08:44:00.001-08:00

It's the end of the "do just enough" era.

Power corrupts

2011-11-28T08:48:00.000-08:00

I'm glad this college football manboy love scandal is going down, not because innocent boys were hurt, that happens all the time, but it shows that it's nothing to do with just the church, that anyone we turn into deities with absolute power will eventually turn into the most heinous monsters we can image. Men were not built to be worshiped.

On a side note I'm really loving Albuquerque. There was a dog-shaped hole in my heart and I kept trying to fill it with other things.

My love affair with Spotify

2011-11-22T09:35:00.000-08:00

Many friends have asked me why I love Spotify so much. You see, it doesn't pay much, and in this money game world we live in, that is everything.

I was placed on this earth with one passion, to combine the elements I had access to to make the world a more beautiful place, and to advance the way of the Truth and the Light. I love to listen to music and I love to make it, it also happens that music can be the best way to subtly plea for others to see the world as you do. It was this reason that I began to pursue it, it was the ecstatic elation I feel on stage from time to time that dedicated my heart to it. I have yet to find anything on this earth like it. It is my glimpse into heaven and payment enough for me.

I think musicians are here to be a conduit of hope and joy. Did we come out of an era where musicians were grossly overpaid? In my opinion yes. Does that change my heart? No.

If I felt this much passion to mop public bathrooms I would do it happily, no question.

So this brings us to Spotify, does it pay well compared to record sales of the 90's? Of course not. Does it encourage people to listen to new music, to take a chance on new artists? Absolutely. In a world that no longer massively monetizes music, the driving force for improvement will be people's hunger for quality. I want to make music for a system where greatness is the only acceptable outcome.

How will I live? How did Bards live? If you move people they share a meal and tell their friends, the more you move them the more they will do both. No matter where the world goes I am confident there will be a place for people who are genuinely moved by life who, through art, can move people in the same way.

So I will always be in favor of something that brings more music to more people where all parties willfully participate. I do think there is a wrong in Napster, GrooveShark, and in some ways the music violations on YouTube, because those systems gain access to intellectual property illegally and rely on the convoluted justice system failing to prosecute clever lawyers with a unlimited retainers paid in blood money. It's intense, but I think that concept is what's behind all of the great evil going on everywhere. The people are starting to get their minds around it, so I am always hopeful for change. Tyrannies crumble in the blink of an eye, it's closer than we think.

Some serious CCMing going down...

2011-11-19T11:42:00.000-08:00

CCM is a genre, one I am not familiar with. So when my friend told me we were singing on a record for a guy whose name I didn't recognize I didn't think much of it. I showed up to the studio on top of a hill in the nicest part of town and I knew something was up. The guy's name was Chris Tomlin and I dropped some serious truth on his BGVs. Turns out he's like the Bob Dylan of CCM, so if you like you some casual christian music, (I honestly don't know what the first c is, commercial? Confidential? Califragilistic, perchance...) see if you can pick me out in the backgrounds.

If you don't like CCM, well... I'm sure you'll leave a comment about it.

Here's a Spotify link to the first track:
http://open.spotify.com/track/3Lca29U4AaObrsNauGFhgK

My musical life: a retrospective

2011-11-16T13:23:00.000-08:00

Looking back on what Ive been a part of I can't help but feeling a little nostalgic. When you look into your future it's usually going to look a lot like your past and if mine is an indication there will be more music and more growth. If anything I'd like to record more and care a little less while I'm recording. More fun, more music. It's hard when in the back of your mind each record, if performed well, could be the one. Now I don't think there will ever be the one. I think that I have people that want to hear the music I make, so in that I am satisfied. From here I will try to deepen the joy I get from my music and hope that that joy translates for even more people, if not - who cares? I'm thankful for every day that I get to grow the family that I make music with and for, that is the community I seek, and that is my life's passion.

What also struck me is just how awesome this Wilhelm Reich excerpt is from which I drew the name of the second Profits record:

Only you yourself can be your liberator!

The John Paul Roney bandcamp

2011-11-16T13:18:00.000-08:00

I've spent many hours importing and converting my entire life's catalog for your enjoyment. I realize some on you know me from each little project, so I wanted one place that you could see the ENTIRE unedited version of where I came from. I have a few more albums that I need to hunt down, and then I will work on a live shows and B sides site, because there are a TON of those. Feel free to send me an email with anything you have that's worth archiving:

jproney@gmail.com

Without further adieu:

johnpaulroney.bandcamp.com

No Lion

2011-11-11T13:34:00.000-08:00

I'm finishing up tracks for the full release of Glory, but in the meantime there is a version of No Lion at boomforest.com that I'd like you to listen to.

The universe is balanced but good

2011-11-08T10:14:00.000-08:00

Energy can be neither created nor destroyed. That means there is as much death as there is life, but sometimes I can see death as being a beautiful thing. The most beautiful thing, sometimes. So to me, this place is more good than bad, and more beautiful than ugly.

Dog is my copilot...

2011-11-02T10:32:00.000-07:00

Albuquerque Roney

a.k.a. Albie, Mr. Kirkie, Captain Kirk

Indie Girl

2011-10-25T13:46:00.000-07:00

Here's a little song that time forgot. I wrote it for a girl with headphones walking on an overpass I was driving under in Los Angeles

Indie Girl

A little Joy

2011-10-25T10:04:00.001-07:00

I drink good coffee every morning. My creative streak is directly connected to how much coffee I drink, as the sun starts to turn golden I usually take the last swig of my second giant cup and get the last wind to finish whatever project I'm working on that day.

The Prophet by Gilbran... known in many of my book clubs (also see: nobody joins my book clubs, too busy with twitter updates) as the finest life handbook of all-time, basically sums up what's wrong with our country here:

"Always you have been told that work is a curse and labour a misfortune.
But I say to you that when you work you fulfil a part of earth's furthest dream, assigned to you when that dream was born,
And in keeping yourself with labour you are in truth loving life,
And to love life through labour is to be intimate with life's inmost secret."

Wow. Okay. Sorry, after I read that I went out and planted some trees. Actually I did just plant a million trees in my yard, I'll show you soon. But what he really says in this poem that struck me, and I've spoken of it before, is:

"And what is it to work with love?
It is to weave the cloth with threads drawn from your heart,
even as if your beloved were to wear that cloth.
It is to build a house with affection,
even as if your beloved were to dwell in that house.
It is to sow seeds with tenderness and reap the harvest with joy,
even as if your beloved were to eat the fruit.
It is to charge all things you fashion with a breath of your own spirit,
And to know that all the blessed dead
are standing about you and watching."

What does this have to do with coffee, you ask? There is a man who is an inspiration, a musical confidant and one of my best friends, Brian Holl. He started a small company called YoungAmerica and he hand roasts coffee beans. Besides the incredible array of flavors, from caramel to berries to sage, I can actually taste the love poured into the creation of my coffee. I'm infinitely proud of and in awe of my friend Brian, and without even knowing it, he fills my day with happiness.

If you email him, I'm sure he would drop some in the mail for you: bdholl@gmail.com

Everything good goes

2011-10-12T10:56:00.001-07:00

My worst fear is losing my loved ones. Them leaving me and me having no power to stop it. My grandparents came to visit me in WI when I was little, they bought me rainbow trout for dinner. When they left I threw up all night. I've grown out of the uncontrollable vomiting, but my insides are still twisting like they did back then. My roommate Ryan Silver is going back to Los Angeles.

I hate this world where you can't be with the people you love. I hate that we have to have jobs and that gas is always rising and keeping us apart. Togetherness is paradise and this world is less about togetherness every day. So what are we striving for?

Oh What a Morning!

2011-10-07T09:32:00.000-07:00

Every morning I have a green smoothie which consists of a couple fistfuls of Spinach and orange juice. When combined in the blender they magically come out tasting like an Orange Julius. I don't know how it works and I'm afraid to ask questions for fear of reprisal from the smoothie gods.

I have an odd confession

2011-10-05T15:21:00.000-07:00

Whenever I see stones in shallow running water I have always had a nearly uncontrollable compulsion. I want to move the stones to redirect the water and eventually create a still pool beside a miniature rapids. Yesterday, I decided while I spent 3 hours in a river in rural Tennessee building a pointless dam that I would tell you about my love and why I have it (I think).

The act of diverting water is a perfect analog of life. The water flowed before you were there and it will flow long after you've gone, and your efforts can only hope to temporarily redirect its path. After you've left, some surge of nature will ruin everything you put into it. Yet, within the pointless effort is the essence of life itself. The secret language in humble effort is Joy, and the completion of the project is actually a small Sorrow, for death is a little bit closer and the exchange of what is for what could have been is a painful one. Still, the balance of Joy is greater than the Sorrow, and that is what's worth living for.

WI Weekend

2011-09-28T09:57:00.000-07:00

Thank you

2011-09-26T09:23:00.000-07:00

I'm very touched by everyone who reached out. I'm sorry I can't be more specific about what's happening, but I have other people's feelings to consider.

I will say that everyone who has ever loved me has noticed a lot of good, but a little darkness that's inexplicable. I have discovered the cause in the least expected place and sometimes to be saved from a life of sadness a few years of heartbreak are required.

You are all my family, even the weirdos who consistently read and make anonymous negative comments, just like an uncle who always wanted to wrestle. I don't get you, but you're an essential ingredient in this life I'm learning to love so much.

Do you know what's worse

2011-09-22T08:52:00.000-07:00

Do you know what's worse than having your parents die in a terrible car accident and being the first on the scene and having to lovingly drag their charred bodies out of the wreckage? I do, it's what happened to my family.

Fuck you Satan.

The terrorists have won...

2011-09-12T12:32:00.000-07:00

Theo-

Yesterday I cut the tip of my finger off. My potato slicer also doubles as a human slicer... good to know. Before you get too worried you should know that I should still be able to play music unhindered.

It's on my right ring finger - imagine looking at my finger straight on like a clock's face, I cut from noon to 8 clean off. I have the fingertip in an Altoids box and I'm considering sending it to this prostitute I'm in love with.

- John Vincent

Crowd of Sorrows

2011-08-28T11:10:00.000-07:00

"This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond."

-Rumi

2011-08-21T08:27:00.000-07:00

"If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together." - Lilla Watson

I'm going to show this quote to everyone I begin to play with from now until forever.

Dem Chickums

2011-08-16T16:02:00.001-07:00

There are seven chickens in my backyard.

Clockwise from 12 o'clock:
Martha Loofah King
David
Rhoda Dendron
Tablecloth
Archimedes
Synonym

And in the middle: Jay

Archimedes and Jay are Americana chikens which means they lay green eggs, so Jay is named after a prisoner who sent a green egg to a judge as evidence that the prison diet was unconstitutional. The judge denied entry of the egg into evidence with a modified poem in the style of "Green Eggs and Ham" by the Seusster himself.

Nerds

2011-08-08T08:44:00.001-07:00

I attended GenCon, the largest gaming convention the world this weekend as a "celebrity" Magic the Gathering player. I used to play a lot as a kid and I designed a deck that the top Japanese pro went on to win the world championship with. I got to go with my friends Jimmie and Daniel from Daniel and the Lion and we were sent with decks and tons of money in prizes to give to people who could beat us, with more prizes if you could beat two or all of us. We went probably 78-1 as a group all weekend. Sorry about it.

I am a nerd, but I was given the skill set to mask my nerdiness on command... not to change who I was, per-se, but to have the good sense to know what group of people it's appropriate to talk about Dungeons and Dragons with. There were nerds there that were not given this important tool... lots of them. At first I was overwhelmed and then a little bit annoyed, and before I lost my mind I decided I should take a minute to reflect on the entire situation.

Then I realized they were stupifyingly beautiful. Every single one of them.

If you're born with a brain that works differently you are immediately picked out by everyone and an attempt is made to eradicate you. Through threats, exclusion, humiliation and occasionally fists, it is made clear that you do not belong to society. When you realize there is an easier way some people give in, and some people decide they are going to do whatever it takes to survive.

You have to keep your head down, you have to conceal your pride, you have to fight for every single inch of growth that the world will allow. In survival you find friends, you find love, you have your heartbroken... all without most of the world ever knowing you were there at all. In basements on lonely nights with a group of your most trusted you feel the joy of spreading yourself out wide and reveling in life's beauty, only to fold yourself up again when the fluorescent lights turn back on.

But this weekend everyone was safe. There was so much freedom it made my heart well up. Everyone of us had survived. Every one of us had found each other.

Together we realized that while we were busy surviving, we had borne fruit.

One Month

2011-07-29T09:27:00.000-07:00

What if our government gave money to young entrepreneurs, instead of only people with needs? You tax what you want less of and subsidize what you want more of. I know tons of kids going on food stamps who don't really need it because, why not? They buy steak with them.

I know a handful of young entrepreneurs who could use a cash influx to start a business that might employ somebody. You might say "Well, what if we give money to a young entrepreneur and they blow it on nothing?" Would we be any worse off than if we had given that same money to someone who is willfully using a safety net as a hammock?

I had strict "no cats" policy for pictures. Had.

Our "look the other way, hands-off" altruism is taxing activity and subsidizing inactivity.

My sister is making an album!

2011-07-25T14:54:00.000-07:00

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gna/send-gardening-not-architecture-to-record-her-seco

My sister, Sarah Saturday's project Gardening, Not Architecture is really great. I'm very proud of her (I was her very first fan, because I loved her first song she wrote when she was 12, Windowsnow) and I'm going to help her make her next record, I hope you guys will check her out and bring this new record to life.

Measure of a Man

2011-07-25T07:28:00.000-07:00

I have a roommate who treats me poorly. He thinks that I am much better off than I really am, because I get to play music all day. He wants to play music, but he works a full time job and then spends every spare second and penny on food and recreation. I am a musician, and I would be unhappy without the feeling that music gives me every day. Even when it's ugly and hard, it's who I am.

If you had a passion for botany, but in order to pursue it you needed a lot of costly equipment, the only clear option two hundred years ago would be to get the cheapest, most essential tool and slowly start your climb toward your desired goal. In today's world the "plan" laid out for us is to get an unrelated job, save money (or even worse get a credit card) to get all the necessary tools and then to find a botany company to hire you so you can start your journey.

What if you're an awful botanist? What if the vital information was the body of minute details you gain from being intimately familiar with your craft? What happens when the man who originally founded the botany company dies?

What if you lived in a country who laid out this plan for everything?

One day the nation's fire would die, wouldn't it...

Weighty Ghost!

2011-07-22T15:39:00.001-07:00

Mission Statement

2011-07-18T09:06:00.000-07:00

I believe Joy, humility and community are the antidotes to an increasingly inhuman and lonesome world. I will move towards moments of Joy and beauty and constantly move away from moments of isolation, narcissism and self-destruction. It is my goal to become an alternative to the current shape of the world and to live a life of Joy so that others can decide to do the same on their own terms and in their own time. Creation without destruction can grow to be destructive, but destruction is impossible without creation. Therefore, creation is the master over destruction, and light the master over darkness. It is for this reason that I decide to move toward creation, beauty, truth, light and Joy.

Holocene

2011-07-15T09:57:00.001-07:00

One well made video > three half baked videos

Recital 1

2011-07-05T10:02:00.000-07:00

Why this picture? Have you looked at it?

The first weeks songs are up, and we are not without incident. We lost a song due to camera failure, we lost few lyrics due to brain failure. But a recital's a recital, the show must go on...

youtube.com/johnpaulroney

I've learned some valuable lessons and a massive improvement is in store for this week, but here are my choices:

Bon Iver - Holocene
Coldplay - Amsterdam
Counting Crows - Colorblind

Back to the piano! Please vote for next week's songs in the comments.

College, but for free...

2011-06-26T21:32:00.000-07:00

My friend went to Berklee School of Music. They taught him to be an excellent player, so I asked him how it happened and he said that every week they would have to pick three songs to perfect and perform at the end of the week. So I'm going to to that.... but for you guys.... and for free.

Here's a list of songs that I've been kicking the tires on, feel free to vote for your three:

Nightswimming by R.E.M.
Holocene by Bon Iver
Case of You by Joni Mitchell
To Be Alone With You by Sufjan Stevens
Tunnels by Arcade Fire
Tiger Mountain Peasant by Fleet Foxen
Across the Universe by The Beatles
2+2=5 by Radiohead
Amsterdam by Coldplay
Colorblind by Counting Crows
The Way We Get By by Spoon
Vapour Trail by Aqualung

P.S. Hold Me Closer Tiny Dancer by Elton John

P.S.S. Since it will take a bit to get everyone's votes I decided to pick for the first week. The theme is early stuff:

Case of You - Joni
Across the Universe - John "Nothing's going to change my world" Lennon
Hold Me Closer, Tiny Hamster - Sir Elton

Your votes will be next week's songs, so keep on.

Get back to me....

Triply Awesome

2011-06-24T10:03:00.000-07:00

Three of my greatest inspirations (and friends) come together, two in the physical, one in the musical for this video.

Daniel and the Lion and Donovan Woods. Go get Sweet Teeth and The Widowmaker, and your life will improve significantly. Until then, here is Daniel and the Lion playing a song of Donovan's

I'm off for a little while

2011-06-19T12:12:00.000-07:00

Like a snow goose. I'll be back.

Rise of the managers

2011-06-19T09:25:00.000-07:00

My sister made a tour finding young bands to play the "rising stars" stage at Warped Tour. Obviously music isn't what it used to be, but she said what we saw was a better than average slice of the future of that genre's music all across the country.

The future was so bleak I had to wear shades.

The show was full of bands that needed practice and needed to keep writing songs, but all of them had incredibly revved up marketing aspects. Big banners, business cards, online followings... every one of them... but not one of them had a memorable song.

We're at the advent of an age where your idea can reach everyone.... but instead of taking time to have a thought that would be valuable to everyone, we've turned ourselves into carnival-style peddlers, loudly hawking half-assed goods. It bodes very poorly for our nation's competitive future, but it also indicates a willingness to disrespect each others time in the name of marketing.

Every time one of the big networking sites becomes obsolete everyone says they just got pestered too much. It happened to MySpace, it's happening to Facebook and it will happen to Twitter. The world doesn't want to have its time wasted... it refuses to, in fact.

I've made a conscious effort not to market my music. I will keep on developing it and working on it because I know when you make something undeniable it will get ripped out of your hands. It will market itself.

The Invincible Summer

2011-06-16T08:27:00.000-07:00

Thunder snow.

Deuteronomy Party

2011-06-12T09:10:00.000-07:00

My friend was telling me that he was cruising the old testament on a Saturday night... (The classic let your hair down, dive into Numbers... no big deal) and he found a particularly awesome passage in the book of Deuteronomy 14. There's the line that every religious institution is built on "Take your first ten percent and give it to the place in which the lord dwells" something like that. But after that there is a very interesting line, a line that all of my churches failed to mention:

²⁴ But if that place is too distant and you have been blessed by the LORD your God and cannot carry your tithe (because the place where the LORD will choose to put his Name is so far away), ²⁵ then exchange your tithe for silver, and take the silver with you and go to the place the LORD your God will choose. ²⁶ Use the silver to buy whatever you like: cattle, sheep, wine or other fermented drink, or anything you wish. Then you and your household shall eat there in the presence of the LORD your God and rejoice.

Rejoice

So last night I had my first official Deuteronomy party at Castle Redskull. I provided the essentials of a solid meal, told people about the idea, and everyone brought a little something that, when consumed in combination, was a delightful little repast. A veritable cornucopia (TommyJ) of treats and camaraderie. It was a great way to celebrate Redskull and the new album's completion

The question was raised several times of how far is too far if you're carrying a checkbook and not oxen? Does the USPS make all distance issues null an void? How do we know which house the Lord is dwelling in these days? It made me realize that the world has a desperate need that is not being fulfilled. Everybody knows we don't have lawyers jumping into enough stuff right now... why don't we get them into religion?

Forget buying indulgences... get a sharpshooter defense attorney at your table: "It clearly says here thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife and my dictionary defines neighbor as ""one who lives near or next to another"" so how could my client, away on a dental convention in Phoenix, after one night of hazy judgment with an orthodontist from Akron be condemned to an eternity of hellfire, your honor? That just doesn't seem right."

Raw denim photos, and confessions of a brand whore

2011-06-09T19:45:00.000-07:00

Today at the Seatac airport, I realized I was a brand whore. Doing my best to be honest about my shortcomings, I photographed the incident for history's sake.

The only thing that's acceptable is the spoon my dad pounded into a bracelet in the 70's...

Secondly, I never intended to become a fashion blog, but by some fluke chance I've garnered a bunch of adamant raw denim connoisseurs who are demanding in no uncertain terms that i photograph my post-wash imogene&willies. Well fine! I will give in to intimidation.

I was shopping at goodwill and I found a pair of UnBrand jeans in the EXACT post-custom tailoring fit of my imogenes with the urban tag still on them marked down to $20. I'm down for shopping local and supporting your artisans and blah blah blah.... but $20 dollar pants speak louder than lofty ideals to this woodland dweller. So I photographed both pants side by side so you can see where the first pair started out this time last year.

Raw.

If the Cutie Can Be Killed

2011-06-07T13:43:00.000-07:00

I have been in Seattle helping my sister @sarahsaturday move into her new place. This is her dog Ragnar the Pirate. I'm dictating this blog to him and he's typing it up to save me time. You should send Ragnar chicken. Send it to his mom, she will give it to him.

I'm working on a double vinyl that will be released early next year, right around Raggy's birthday (and his favorite things are rawhide chewies, if you were curious). In the meantime I will release all of the sides on bandcamp as they are completed.

I'm going to be playing shows with an orchestra in major cities over the course of this year. We will spend a long weekend in each city and actually have fun, do things, and see/meet all of the great people and puppies in the world. I will kiss the puppies on their little bellies.

My focus will now be on two things; first, completing tracking and mixing of Sides B and C who will be one whole known as The Invincible Summer. The name is based on the quote by Albert Camus:

"In the depth of winter I finally learned that in me there was an invincible summer."

Second I'm developing a smartphone app called Bard that is a simple business platform. Its only goal is to remove every middleman from art, so that every dollar that is supposed to go toward the humble creation of art can do exactly that (except sometimes please turn some of the dollars into toys for puppies). I want Bard to be the digital Molotov cocktail that burns down this bloated, useless music industry Armada that serves neither artist nor fan and is blocking the way to the future.

We're through the design step and are programming a beta version of the app that I will use in the Boom Forest. When I get the foundation solid I will open the app up for free to other artists and eventually to everyone who wants to use it. More on this down the road.

For now, the big news for me is that side A is done:

If the Glory Can Be Killed We Are Lost was the first group of songs that had a different spirit than anything I had done. I finally took the time to realize the parts I've always heard for every song I've ever written.

It's not in the exact right direction yet, but it was the first step and a major undertaking. Also my little puppy nephew Raggy is very proud of me and thinks you should all go listen.

Get a copy even if you don't have a penny to your name, but if you can spare anything, I will use it directly to create more music.

My Being Is Green

2011-06-03T16:12:00.000-07:00

There is a trend in denim called raw denim. You buy a pair of jeans with untreated denim that is roughly the consistency and rigidness of corrugated cardboard (no joke, they stood up on their own for days) and you wear them, in theory, every day for a year before washing them. At this point your natural processes have turned the pair into something all your own. Film developing for pants.

For me this has two benefits:

One- I don't even need to consider what I will don on half of my body. Dressing: twice as easy.

Two- Hosting a strong aversion to fastidious cleansing, raw denim allows me to have the illusion that my sub-par hygiene is actually artistic suffering. Weak point turned into strong point? Bonus. Points. Awarded.

My particular flavor of raw denim comes is homespun by hometown heroes (and adorable couple) Matt and Carrie at Imogene and Willie. My pants were kind enough to be photographed with me a few months ago.

Photo courtesy Imogene & Willie

Today, I washed my pair for the first time since I bought them last February and the results were markedly....

Green?

*Nerd alert! Non-nerds skip to next asterisk [asterisk, risk in space... why haven't they made that yet! (warned you, sorry bout it)] I have always assumed I was Blue White. At my worst I feared I was turning Blue Black control, like Tezzeret. I suppose Selesnya isn't so bad... we have the best guildmage, that's for sure. He can win a game by himself! Green White. I'll take it.*

So the jeans are drying in the sun and I feel my next phase of life has begun. It's time to see if it was worthwhile to stew in my own sauces for a year or not. I hope these jeans are analagous to my musical life and that they are the most stunning, mind-crushing jeans anyone has ever listened to. I hope everyone joins hands and sings of the jeans in unison and the world is healed for one perfect moment. Am I still talking about jeans? I don't think so.

Ode to Joy.

Please

2011-06-02T21:41:00.001-07:00

Teach me all the words to your favorite song.

We're the first

2011-05-29T15:33:00.000-07:00

I felt like I had drawn a pretty good card being born into the most prosperity the world had ever known. On top of that, we gained access to all of the worlds compiled knowledge with a few keystrokes? How much better could it get? Still, I wanted to know which way to go. The world seemed open to me, and I wanted to go the right way.

It was right then that I heard the greatest advice I'd ever received:

"Call ahead and ask directions."

Meaning, simply, if you want to end up somewhere ask a person who got there how they did it. So I went down the list of usual suspects, doctors, lawyers, bankers (too much math, ruled out immediately) but it seemed that everyone I would ask was guarded, even cryptically steering me in a different direction. Though all of their lives looked passable on paper, many of the most successful people seemed to be deeply unhappy. Over time, with the economic blunders that followed, the hollowness of the American dream started being obvious. Some of the strongest lives were secretly riddled with debt, addiction, infidelity and general sadness.

I kicked as hard as I could and got off the conveyor belt of the American path, much to the astonishment of my friends and family. I wanted to be creative, innovative, hard working, loving and excited about each new day. I was willing to give up certainty (made easier by my probes into certainty's increasing uncertainty) and I was willing to eat humble pie to find some other way.

Music was the obvious choice, but not matter how amazing it was, there was always the looming question of "How do we keep doing this and not have it be a childhood fantasy beaten to death?". Because eventually 4 men will have 4 families, and so between 15-25 people would have to be able to not just survive, but thrive off of music. As much belief as I had in pure music to prevail (I figured music, being creation, is analogous to love and therefore incalculably powerful) my rational mind started setting up safety precautions, plan B's, treasure maps to gold rings and other monstrosities of the sort. I eventually found that the plan B's had robbed the beauty of my plan A, to live in love at all costs.

So I started over.

I always had a strong connection to the two words boom forest and everything they said to me when they lived next to one another. The Boom Forest means the unknown, and the only way I could make sense of it was to go into the wilderness alone to see if I could build a new way. I painstakingly built Castle Redskull in the Boom Forest of Nashville, TN and started filling it with friends and family and Joy.

I called it John Paul Roney in the Boom Forest, because the music is what my struggles sound like. When "If the Glory Can Be Killed We Are Lost" is released it won't be a record release, it will be a window into the life that I found out beyond the shining city. It is my little cry in the face of that invisible voice that tells us all that The Way is the only way. This music is my declaration that I have found my way, and I will rundown it headlong until my lungs can no longer draw breath.

I hope that if you decide to go brave life in your Boom Forest that my journey can be a comfort to you that the way is obscured, difficult, and fraught with peril, but that it can never be lost.

Reverence

2011-05-26T09:04:00.000-07:00

I have always believed in my songs. I have never put a song out that I felt was half baked or didn't move me in some significant way. I like to think that's the part of what I've done that keeps people connected. I did start non-choral music fairly late in life, and I think at times I let my confidence in singing choral music spill over to a realm I have not perfected. I am putting in the hours so that when I am performing my music live, there is nothing mechanical in the way between my soul and the music so that the connection is absolutely sure. I want to get my body out of the way so my soul can be reverent of the music (and hopefully the room can join me?). That is sublimation to me.

Television Chefs

2011-05-23T11:32:00.000-07:00

There are hundreds of thousands of chefs who are great. There are millions of great amateur cooks in the world as well. The chefs that enter our consciousness and capture our attention is a tiny fragment of the cooking population who is so comfortable with cooking that they can effortlessly throw together a dish without error, every time, on the spot. You can only achieve this by cooking thousands of dishes. Way more than the average cook would consider prudent.

Why would music be any different? I want to be that tiny portion of the world's population of musicians.

I got subliminal

2011-05-18T16:24:00.000-07:00

My friend's company developed an excellent new app that harnesses the powerful tool of subliminal messaging, but uses it for good instead of evil. You choose a positive message and play it at subliminal levels underneath your music, audiobook etc... the best part is that I am the male voice on the app. I can encourage you all day.

Seriously though, check the app out.
Seriously though, check the app out.
Seriously though, check the app out.

Subliminator

The USPS Cares...

2011-05-16T08:32:00.000-07:00

They seemed to damage only my heart-shaped sucker...

Also; a song

Moving Mountains

2011-05-16T07:55:00.000-07:00

When I'm not moving mountains I feel empty and when I am moving mountains I have the same dream over and over every night so that I can't sleep.

Fleet Foxes

2011-05-14T08:51:00.000-07:00

I saw Fleet Foxes at the Ryman last night. It was incredible to see what the very best looked like in person. I have a lot of work to do.

Moral Dilemma

2011-05-11T12:17:00.000-07:00

I'm a home owner. I have renters. What that means is that i have made an implicit promise to provide adequate living conditions for these people. A family of birds has made a nest inside the roof over the room of one of my renters, and now baby birds are keeping him awake and generally driving him insane. Assuming he is unwilling to go without sleep/productivity until these birds mature, he is expecting me to do something about these babies. That means I will probably have to do some face to face, close quarters combat with these little guys (which makes me want to die):

"Can we lives in your haus please Mr. John Paul?"

YES! Yes of course you can. Grow old and wise with me. Populate the world with your babies, and when they ask how they came to be tell them it was under the gentle wing of Castle Redskull where all life is welco... oh. Hold on, I just remembered... I have renters.

Having a house and renters in nice, but is it worth killing anything? I don't really think so.

The Tiniest Orders

2011-05-11T09:28:00.001-07:00

I recently returned from my headlong dive through the Midwest to find life in Nashville to be in shambles. Wreckage, fires started, fires extinguished. For the first time I truly stepped back and looked at everything in my world as something I had a part in creating. As silly as it sounds, I would too often chalk it up to luck, chance, the way things are, etc...

Malcom Gladwell penned a book on the now very popular theory of the Tipping Point, which is the concept that tiny little waves can make giant Tsunamis and this phenomenon is observable all over the world. One of the stories that stood out to me was when New York City decided to start pulling itself out of the wasteland it had become during the 70's. They tested a simple theory called Broken Windows. The idea was that if humans observe disorder, even minutely, it is in our nature to create more disorder.

They picked one block at a time and cleaned up the trash, planted flowers, painted houses and fixed every single broken window, even if it was a tiny crack. That block then experienced a dramatic drop in crime, property values rose, and they continued this campaign block by block until we have the now shimmering (albeit sterile) New York City of today.

While I never make dramatic leaps at order, I do constantly move everything in my life to a state of unity and order. Maybe that's all it takes.

Glory

2011-05-02T09:02:00.000-07:00

The first album of John Paul Roney in the Boom Forest is done, and is being romanced in the deeper woods by the sound sorcerers.

It is affectionately referred to as "Glory", fully titled "If the Glory Can Be Killed We Are Lost"

The album title is based on this Steinbeck Quote which stopped me in my tracks:

"At such a time it seems natural and good to me to ask myself these questions. What do I believe in? What must I fight for and what must I fight against?

Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of a man. Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations, whether in music, in art, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man.

And now the forces marshaled around the concept of the group have declared a war of extermination on that preciousness, the mind of man. By disparagement, by starvation, by repressions, forced direction, and the stunning hammer blows of conditioning, the free, roving mind is being pursued, roped, blunted, drugged. It is a sad suicidal course our species seems to have taken.

And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world, And this I would fight for: The freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about. I can understand why a system built on a pattern must try to destroy the free mind, for this is one thing which can by inspection destroy such a system. Surely I can understand this, and I hate it and I will fight against it to preserve the one thing that separates us from the uncreative beasts.

If the glory can be killed, we are lost."

The first track is available for download at boomforest.com/glory

Brotherhood

2011-04-30T09:39:00.000-07:00

I don't need Paris in spring. I came to Wisconsin instead. If travel agents still existed, they would have dissuaded me... but they wouldn't have known the whole picture. I came to Wisconsin to spend a little time with Daniel and the Lion and to play a few shows. I desperately needed to get back into the Movement of live music. It really is a beast outside of yourself. The good ones can hold on, and the great ones can steer it. Like in Dune... totally like the sandwurms in Dune.

Casting a silent observer's eye on the city in general, the first impression is that University life is starting to take a grotesque turn. It seems like a parody of itself, maybe it has always been like this. Kids literally wearing northface, pretending to care about gen ed classes, getting blackout drunk and bumping into each other naked. This is it, what our grandparents wanted. I think when my grandfather furiously shook trying to convince me to stay in school, that he must have been imagining a time when fraternity brothers thought a Reuphie was a guy who put shingles on, sorority girls put powder ON their noses, and the dean walked around shaking hands "I value YOU, I want to make sure YOU get a great education".

A farmer told me with a gleam of jealousy in his eye, about a dairy farmer who had perfected a great automaton. It was a giant disc that held all the cows, who faced outward. The disc rotated between feed troughs and a milking station. The farmer had it worked out so that the cows would be perfectly full of milk by the time they reached the milking station. That is the highest goal of a corporate dairy man, and it seems to be the highest goal of a corporate educator.

I am posted up in North Forge (the Northern garrison of Castle Redskull) with Jimmie and Daniel. It's a great fortress in a great location that allows for a lot of music to be made. Sadly there is a lot of restriction in noise made by the varying schedules of roommates. It makes me thankful for the relative freedom of Redskull (Drums from 11 A.M. to 11 P.M. and any noise is legal thereafter barring an angry text from a roommate). But more than that, Daniel and the Lion have some great songs, and furthermore they are both great and natural musicians. When we do play, it is a free form exercise in beautiful music creation. Nobody is self conscious, there is no need for anyone to arrange parts for the other players... so you run into a situation where you're literally missing out on new experiences every time you aren't playing together. There is a brotherhood of trust.

Along those lines and lastly, I got to meet up with Scott Lamps... my good friend from the day$ of yore. It was simply wondrous to talk to him, and I do believe, barring some unforeseen circumstances, that Scott will be playing in the Boom Forest Orchestra when I open for Daniel and the Lion's CD Release show at the High Noon Saloon in Madison on May 4th.

I feel something very good brewing. A new royal family. A wild nobility. We are family.

Recovering Perfectionist: Impossible. Relapsing Imperfectionist: Probable.

2011-04-17T22:03:00.001-07:00

God Farts Fabreeze

2011-04-17T16:45:00.001-07:00

Fallow Fields

2011-04-11T21:40:00.001-07:00

In every human interaction you plant a seed for the future. Facebook came along and allowed you to harvest the fields you had forgotten about long ago, and fields that were right outside your door. Yet, as powerful of a harvesting tool as Facebook was, it lacks the power to plant seeds. It is almost unheard of to generate a real human connection through Facebook, so the more time we spend harvesting with the inability to reseed the closer we come as a species to a season of fallow fields and deep, deep discontent.

The Metrics of Joy

2011-04-11T21:29:00.000-07:00

I used to think it was all me. I was young. I played music with my friends, it brought us Joy, we invited our friends, it brought them Joy, they invited theirs. The Joy compounded. I guess that I put way too much stock in my ability to move mountains, and I did my best to completely discount the role of Joy. Joy is scalable. Everybody can experience it, and when it's present it is undeniable. That's why I'm focusing on the joy from here on out. "How will you survive, how will people find out, how can you generate income, what's your growth pattern, what does your 5 year plan look like?"

Don't care.

Joy, only Joy and nothing but the Joy.

So help me, God?

St. Patrick's day

2011-03-17T16:42:00.001-07:00

St. Patrick, as we all know, used fruit scones to lure the Dublin Troll out into the country where he told him the riddle of the infinite sound ("If soundwaves degrade by half magnitude with each wave's peak, does sound ever go away?") the troll answered "You have to know more advanced math in order to understand it, but yes, the sound eventually goes away." and then St. Patrick said "No, you're wrong, sound stays forever.", and when he said those words the Troll was magically sucked into the roots of an oak tree, never to steal the left shoes from the children of Dublin again.

I don't need to tell you this, everyone's heard it a million times.

Castle Redskull was full of life, friends and liberty this weekend, and has only scarcely recovered from the raucous revelry that was the Ryan Silver CD release last Friday (Which was also the debut of my new project, John Paul Roney in the Boom Forest). Almost a full week to recover... that's how good it was. We are now gearing up to make Shepherd's pie and fruit scones with riddles baked into them to celebrate the holiday. Are we going to drink Irish car bombs? No, that's racist. They are now referred to as Irish Pride and Honor Boosting Drinks, which has been agreed to by all as the most PC thing we could change the name to. Hooray for group compromise. Also, remember when the I.R.A. was scaring the hell out of everybody? Fun times.

I recorded for you a Scottish folk song for St. Patrick's day. You want an Irish one? Then go listen to Mumford and Sons. No seriously... You should listen to them.

This is an incredibly sad song about the defeat of the Scottish King-to-be by the British Army and his subsequent retreat tot he Isle of Skye. As if that isn't epically sad enough, Robert Louis Stevenson took this age old story of a country's lost claim for independence and wrote new words about a young man's slow march away from the innocence of youth... Thanks R.L.S. you planted an emotional Irish Pride and Honor Boosting Drink in my heart.

Handsome Roy Sees Life In The Boom Forest

2011-03-10T07:29:00.000-08:00

Nashville's premier lifestyle blog, Handsome Roy captured a few moments from life in the Boom Forest. Thank you to Chad Davis for the miraculous work making me look halfway presentable.

http://cargocollective.com/handsomeroy

The Food Pyramid

2011-03-04T16:10:00.000-08:00

Remember Ronald Regan?

Anyway, here was We The Living's Food Pyramid:

You know how sometimes you get super sad and say to yourself "Screw the food pyramid." and you just eat ice cream by the gallon for meals as a breaks to your Band of Brothers/beer drinking marathon weekend? You know how terrible that feels afterward? Maybe not, but Ben and I do.

Well, imagine if, instead of feeling lethargic and terrible when yo were done, you felt vitalized and refreshed and full of energy, and the more you kept doing it, the better you felt and looked. How pissed would you be at Ronald Regan? So very pissed.

That's why, when i said "Screw it, I'm gonna gorge on music" and it started feeling like the best days of my life, I was ready to slay Donald Passman and his Everything You Need To Know About Music book. (Side note: if I do see him, I WILL punch his mouth)

So I'm barely able to finish typing this because my guitar is beckoning me to play a song on it. What will it be? I don't know. Something by George Harrison? Sure! Why not?

See ya.

The Hundred Page Book That Shook Me

2011-02-24T11:18:00.000-08:00

In one afternoon my world was inside out. I suppose it wasn't as much a crazed revelation as a powerful endorsement and reasoning behind a lot of my suspicious of the source of all this Sadness:

"And what is it to work with love?
It is to weave the cloth with threads drawn
from your own heart,
even as if your beloved
were to wear that cloth.
It is to build a house with affection, even as if your beloved
were to dwell in that house.
It is to sow seeds with tenderness and
reap the harvest with joy, even as if your beloved
were to eat the fruit.
It is to charge all things you fashion
with a breath of your own spirit,
And to know that all the blessed dead
are standing about you and watching."

Time and time again you have a single man who loves his company, puts his name on it, strives to make it excel and to be the best. When it has the trust of an audience, it is sold to a corporate entity owned by a group of men. Since that group of men is diverse the corporate entity is forced to appeal to their lowest common denominator which is always a desire for more.

The entity will take the product and expand its depth and its scope but eventually, the laws of nature determine that every system has a limit and the product will reach the end of its growth potential. This is where the real evil comes in.

Slowly, the desire for ever more, which cannot naturally be fulfilled, turns a corporation's voracity on itself, and eventually it will secretly rob its product and its customers of value in search of more profit at all costs.

But you may think "Isn't it just a business practice? Shouldn't all things that are legal be allowed in fair business?"

To which I say, the original owner of the product that the corporation obtained created his product as a labor of love. It was close to him and took many years to cultivate and nurture. Eventually a corporation offered him enough money to part with his beloved idea.

The defense of legality is relegated to a few anonymous gatekeepers. If those gatekeepers became protectors of the good because of a heartfelt connection to what is right and just, shouldn't there too be a large enough figure that a corporation could offer the gatekeeper to let go of his notions of goodness? Couldn't a corporation start to view that which is right and just as just an obstacle to their growth, just another commodity to be bought? We are foolish to think that one man's ideals could be more dear to him than another man's own creation, which is akin to a child.

What we have is a menace to humanity. A force with enough power to strip men of what is dear to them and to eventually pervert whatever it can obtain.

There is a Sadness in man. We are all aware of it, but most choose to ignore it - to hope that it will get better with no effort on their part. We strive ever harder to earn more to buy more which is always worth less. As if our entire economy has turned into the economy of a West Virginia coal mining town. We cling to entire administrations because they promise us the Change we are so secretly longing for, yet no administration can bring change, because the menace has grown larger than men and larger than our government. Perhaps larger than our governments. It thrives on our complacency.

Corporate entities, unlike man, have no expiration date. Corporations cannot be imprisoned or killed. They are the collective secret desire of men, and they have blown through our society's defenses which can only consist of individual men.

Will I be a part in the fight to reclaim society? Perhaps. But for now I just want you to have your eyes open to a great destroyer.

Experiment

2011-02-24T08:36:00.000-08:00

Maxwell House in a french press: No.

James Tayor's Fire and Rain

2011-02-22T12:32:00.000-08:00

youtube.com/johnpaulroney

Melodic Martial Law

2011-02-21T17:21:00.000-08:00

I'm declaring martial law on all melodies. I'm not going to stop writing a song because I think it sounds too familiar. Sorry Bob, Paul, Neil and John... I'm gonna step on your toes.

Rickety Heart

2011-02-17T16:20:00.001-08:00

I recently discovered a tragedy that had befallen me for my entire life without my knowledge. It sounds extreme, but for all parties involved I will keep my cards close to my chest for now. Basically, all of my sorrow and isolation and loneliness are explained and have been miraculously cured. I feel like a newborn baby, and it's a little scary.

With great trepidation I'm entering into the perilous waters of romance.

You cannot be connected to if you are unwilling to put down your guard, and without my knowledge I'm lowering my guard. It feels electric. It feels like the toothbrush slipping and jabbing a sensitive, forgotten corner. It's exhilarating.

As my father always said, "You have to go THROUGH somethin' to get TO somethin'."

Amen.

How John Paul Got His Groove Back

2011-02-08T09:19:00.001-08:00

I don't know where it happened, but somewhere I lost it.

It was like, one minute I was just learning how to play John Mayer (when he was America's underground secret) in dorm rooms for kids who enjoyed it thinking "This is fun!" and the next minute I'm in a high school in Tulsa looking down at a blank page trying to think of one song that I wanted to play.

In the beginning I just played songs I liked, then I learned new songs I liked, then I accidentally burped up a song or two of my own, and the cycle continued. I met Mike Droho and Scott Lamps, we made The Profits, toiled in obscurity for two years, broke out and had a bunch of success, then instead of doing more of what it was that got us there, (playing together, writing songs and recording) I dragged us all over God's creation to build a regional fanbase. That was the best knowledge at the time about what to do; thanks a lot, Passman.

We sat for weeks in hotel rooms, promoting shows that got looser and looser. We were playing songs that were less and less exciting, and as we were on the verge of the big tour we imploded. We had lost our fundamentals.

But business was business and I had a tour to play, dammit, so I put together a band with even stricter guidelines. "We will never break up, we will play until we can no longer stand, we will make an album and promote it until it breaks or we break trying." and off we went in a still downward spiral away from what I had loved about music, with my skill set falling into terrible disrepair. Two years in, my dad died and I tried to manage and front a touring band, and take care of his estate from the road on top of dealing with the incredible grief of losing a father too soon. Something in me snapped, and I basically got dragged around for two years behind the touring machine I had concocted until it wound down its haphazard path of listless and ineffective album promotion.

When the ride was over I found myself in Nashville alone, with no real musical skills to speak of, uninspired, penniless, friendless, and six years older than I needed to be by conventional wisdom. I was feeling... lost.

The first thing I needed to do was figure out who I was, so for two months I did nothing but observe myself. I didn't force myself to do anything, I just existed and survived. At the end of that period I had written 35 songs, and I realized that I was still a songwriter.

I took stock of what I had:
1. A lot of songs that I still thought were cool (I've never stopped loving Life's Worth Living or Shame or any of them)

2. The ability to write new songs that I thought were cool

3. A few people in my town that thought I was all right

4. A house with enough rentable rooms that I could avoid a 9-5 and still make ends meet

5. Three or four people from my past musical endeavors who cared about what I did next

Then I basically started aiming my life back toward the place of musical happiness that I had lost years ago. I got a basic recording rig and a camera, and I started practicing singing, guitar and piano by way of other people's music that I thought was inspiring.

I'm now making the slow climb out of bad habitry and crap musicianship, trying to get myself back into fighting shape. To document my progress I've made a YouTube account, and I thought the three or four of you might enjoy watching my progress back to the musical Promised Land.

Mr. Cedes

2011-01-24T22:24:00.000-08:00

The House of We The Living

2010-12-26T09:00:00.000-08:00

In 2007 I set out to build a house. I knew it was going to take a lot of hard work, and I thought there would be nothing better than to undertake a hard project with a few of my best friends. We talked about how the house would look, how it would feel, smell, sound. We could suddenly all see the same house in our minds. From then on we were building the house together, three inseparable partners, for the idea of the house no longer belonged to me. It belonged to all of us.

So much focus was placed on the construction that we left every essential one by one until our lives were stripped down to the minimum. We were pulling ourselves along without comfort or rest until we found ourselves to be shells of our former selves. We had given up so much to build this building, that we forgot about what lived on the inside. We wanted to make a place for our friendship and music to live, but it seemed the harder we strove, the firelight inside grew colder, and the laughter inside became more distant.

When the inside of the house finally grew cold, none of us wanted to accept that fact. We just threw ourselves into the construction even harder, until one day I stepped back to realize that to continue work was to strive to make a beautiful mausoleum, because the home that was inside had gone away.

Instead of mourning the loss, we decided that it was time to call the house finished. It was time to start living our lives anew and looking for more homes to build on our own paths. In the completion of the house lies an unseen blessing, because all of the warmth, love and music that we made together can now live inside the house that Matthew, Benjamin and I built together. In my heart, the beauty of our love for one another burns brighter than it ever has. In my memory, our laughter is more robust than it has ever been, because it is joined by the laughter of all those who supported us and joined us along our journey. Best of all, the house we built is full of music. That music will live on forever.

We love you all very much, and thank you for the beautiful memories.

John Paul, Matthew, and Benjamin

Dog Names

2010-12-23T13:56:00.000-08:00

Pittsburgh, Albuquerque, Philadelphia, Pony Boy, Ignatius Loyola

In Defense of Nonymity

2010-11-29T19:05:00.000-08:00

The Greeks had excellent beards. They also named a lot of things. Indeed, out of their white robes they pulled a bevy of different surprises to the delight of the young boys that followed them around the olive groves. I was a Catholic choir boy, so I didn't know any ancient Greeks, but even still, they still managed to slip a few treats into my sweet, young vocabulary.

Without even knowing it, half of my vocabulary was of Greek origin. One night, after a rousing session of discourse, Pythagoras got into some bad tzatziki sauce and before he knew it he was wandering around the parthenon spewing bursts of never-before-heard words like logic, rhythmn, and achondroplasia with chunks of half-chewed stuffed grape leaves. From nightfall to sunrise he showered the world with an unending stream of new words until finally, his sense failing, he gurgled out the abominable Pythagorean theorem with a bubble of hummus into his excellent beard.

I am awful at all theoretical math. By theoretical I mean math that I should have mastered "in theory" to be a "high school graduate". To me this means all math problems more complex than multiplying things by three. Pythagoras invented the word "theory", he also seems to have done a great deal for triangles and other shapes in general. He is truly the life of every parallelogram party. It would seem that through the use of the Pythagorean theorem (A2+B2=C2) you can figure out all sorts of things. Things like when to plant a crop, who killed superman, and why the Mayan calendar will predict the end of the world (though it couldn't quite pinpoint the end of the Mayan civilization).

In tribute to this theorem I invented a fantasy of finding a time machine so that I can go back and duct tape Pythagoras' mouth shut after I've filled it with bees. Many bees. Bees squared.

I digress.

Monks wrote out the Bible by hand. This left very little room for commentary, footnotes, and hotlinks. Monks would write line after line, day after day, just dreaming of changing one phrase.

"Yet no husband shall protest Brother Finneus' light pinch to his wife's backside. So be it and so it shall be."

But getting away with it was hard, because Finneus' handwriting was very distinct. And the copy of the bible had his name and face on it. And he only had time to write out one bible in his lifetime.

What's in a name? A name is what distinguishes you from others, good or bad. Most of the time spent deliberating in a court case is on the value of the names of those involved.

You cannot know the value of someone's opinion if you don't know the value of their name.

Anonymity. A Greek word consisting of "a" (without) "nonymity" (name). No name.

In the 70's they were growing tired of whipping kids with switches, so they changed up tactics and started hugging them. "You are the best. You are special. There is nobody else like you." They just wanted to see what would happen to a generation of youths reared on a good old fashioned pulled-outta-thin-air-based-on-nothing-but-rainbows-and-butterflies bold face lie.

We're unique? No. Sorry.

We were three but we still knew something was off. We saw through the bullshit. We had just started chewing. We might have had an inkling that we liked one of the Muppets better than the others, but we decided it would be wisest to defer judgment. We were basically pooping primordial ooze in pampers, yet we were being told we were magically imbued with special uniqueness. Science! Many of us would spend the best years of our lives worried that someone would find out we were merely humans.

Stick our generation through the easy bake oven known as public education and boom... 30 years later our breakthrough invention is.... Moonbases? Jetpacks? Ice Cream Flavored Broccoli? Wrong.

Twitter.

It's like a lottery ticket. You sign up for an anonymous account and pull the 140 word lever hoping for a retweet, or the ultimate... the trending topic. Excellence in facelessness as voted on by the faceless masses still unwilling to commit to liking Fozzy over Kermit. ("It's too close to say for sure, really.")

For the people out there who immediately realized they loved Beaker and continued to move along making increasingly substantial decisions, a name is really important. It takes a long time to grow into your own person, and for most people it's not worth the hard work. Nobody puts a name on a vacant lot filled with weeds. There is always a name in gold lettering over the entrance to the gardens that have taken years to cultivate and shape.

Which brings me to my final declaration, for everyone who is anonymously squeezing the pus of their opinion onto the world, I decide to imagine you as a morbidly obese, central-kentucky-double-wide-dwelling, myspace lurking, pedophilic, delusional NASCAR-wreck of a human, and your opinion will be noted with me accordingly.

I generally and generously tip my cap to Nonymity. To living a life with a name. I pour out the first sip of all my 40s (and, being in the hood, I drink a lot of 40s) to those who are living under a banner of their name. If I agree with you or disagree with you, I still think you of you as a gentleman and a scholar.

Do you disagree?

2010-11-27T09:50:00.000-08:00

Onion soup mix and sour cream is the opposite of granola and yogurt.

Question

2010-11-26T06:56:00.000-08:00

Two men are standing side by side in the Louvre looking at the Mona Lisa. One leans over and says to the other "I don't believe that anyone is manning the security cameras. I could take that painting and walk out with no repercussion." And the other says "I do think there are people manning the cameras, and I believe if I tried to take the painting I would be stopped and imprisoned." If both men walk out without taking the painting, which man is the fool?

Structure and foundation

2010-11-16T22:24:00.001-08:00

The main underlying theme of public education is to make the most successful student it can. Since public education originates with the US Government, and the government chooses to act as a corporation, the only thing any government (seen this far) can desire is ultimately more power, which is ultimately more money.

In teaching students how to make more money, more and more emphasis has been placed on the social/economic structure of a student. It is intent on building a taller building out of each new generation of students.

We've been told we can forget building a foundation, just build the tallest building possible and hope for the best. A foundation is the solidification of internal decisions a person makes about what is right and wrong, what truth is, and what beauty is.

These are concepts that a corporation can have no dominion over, and never will. They cannot be quantified, standardized or politically correctly disinfected. If beauty is the relative level of absence of ugliness, one must decide what is ugly before they can appreciate their own secret beauties.

To move through life not knowing your own beauties is a tragedy, to be taught what life is by the preceding generation and its increasingly dulled ability to perceive where beauty lives and its true nature is an abomination.

We're mega skyscrapers built on sand.

Seafarer's Delight

2010-11-11T15:07:00.000-08:00

I came into possession of a massive rice cooker. At first I was making regular rice and water. Next batch I threw in a little olive oil... then some crushed garlic.

Now the dish has grown in complexity and can only be described as a poor man's La Paella. Delicious, easy and cheap. I'll post a picture of the next batch if it's pretty enough.

2010-11-08T18:14:00.000-08:00

Rock climbing is the opposite of weight lifting.

Crazy Dream

2010-11-02T16:37:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I have crazy linear movie dreams. I was going to start a different blog to write them down so I wouldn't forget, but then I realized I already have a blog. If you don't like to read about crazy dreams, this entry won't be for you.

I was vaguely aware that the setting was in the post apocalyptic times and that humans were being hunted down and eradicated. Most humans were gone and there was one family chosen to keep alive the memory of humanity for as long as possible. The family was called the Keeper family. Since all communication was cut and humans became more and more scarce the Keeper family's job was to make sure they didn't die out without passing the responsibility and history on to another family. In the beginning of the dream we were with the last of the Keeper family. They were all mortally wounded and passed on the responsibility to my family.

Humanity was being destroyed by machina that looked like animals, had no nervous systems and were powered by simple machines like pulleys, levers and springs. They somehow knew how to hunt and kill and were very hard to destroy because of the simple redundant way they were built and lack of any obvious nervous system. All you could hope to do was to hope to partially immobilize them and run away.

I had led my family to our house in the mountains of North Carolina and we had established a perimeter that was holding. In the house we were safe from the machina.

After a few weeks we ran out of food and were starving. I knew we couldn't keep running and I started praying for a miracle. It was then that we discovered a previously unknown species of animal that was a mammalian chicken that was covered in delicious meat. They were invisible unless you looked directly at them, and they would hid in corners and dark spots. So for the next few weeks we went around our compound hunting for these animals and eventually we couldn't find any more. So at night I would sneak out into the woods around the house hunting for and laying rope traps for these animals.

We were to the point of desperate starvation again when the last scene happened.

The night was very dark blue and the trees were the green from a Van Gogh painting. A light ashy crunchy snow was falling on the woods. I went out onto our balcony and started pulling on my longest trap which was a rope that went hundreds of yards down the mountain into a valley. It was then that I saw the biggest of the invisible animals appear in my trap. It was the size of a cow and I knew we would be able to eat from it for months. I was so desperate, and I knew I had to go get it right that moment.

I went into the house and asked for my gun. My family knew I wanted to leave the perimeter, but begged me not to go because it was always nearly certain death. I ignored them because I knew that starvation was a certain death otherwise.

I remember pulling my gun off the wall and assembling it. I was looking at it amazed at how shiny and clean it was. It looked like a futuristic version of guns I had known, but in the dream I knew it was very powerful and it made me less afraid.

I could hear the snow crunching as I ran through the gate of our stronghold. The next few moments were a headlong rush down the side of this mountain. I was firing on all of the machina that were flanking me. I would jump off of a cliff, roll out of it, get up, punch a machina in the face, fire at another one and keep on sprinting down the mountain. From helicopter shots through the trees I was watching myself sprint toward the valley where the invisible animal was still trapped. I kept on firing spare shots at the invisible animal to try to make sure it wouldn't escape as I approached it.

When I finally closed in on the animal a hooded woodsman came out from behind a tree and chopped the head of the animal off. I didn't have much time because I knew I was being pursed by the machina and I told the woodsman that he had to allow me to take the animal. He hesitated for a moment and it occurred to me that I might need to kill him, and as I was wrestling with that idea he took his hood off and it was our tour manager Joe. He said he was here to help us, and as he said that a pack of wolves that belonged to him came out from behind a tree, and we started out ascent back up the mountain to the stronghold.

Joe was dragging the invisible animal's carcass, I was firing on machina approaching us from the rear and his wolves were bravely protecting our flanks, even though they lacked the power to do anything but get in the way of our pursuers to give us more time.

Then I Woke Up.

Is this news to you?

2010-10-29T17:34:00.000-07:00

News Flash?

I thought everybody knew this...

Personality Types

2010-10-26T08:40:00.000-07:00

Carl Jung was the pioneer of the science and a mother daughter team of Myers and Briggs perfected it into a concise test. If you want to have a fun week, have your various friends take the test and see on paper why you get a long so well, create so well together, or always have that bit of weirdness. It's worth at least 2 weeks of entertainment, and you'll find yourself walking around convincing people to take the test just so you can talk to them about it. Like I'm doing now.

Most of my close friends have an N

I have the most memorable times with S

I want to learn how to be more F than anything else

INTP Portrait

2010-10-25T09:30:00.000-07:00

"INTPs generally have the following traits:

* Love theory and abstract ideas
* Truth Seekers - they want to understand things by analyzing underlying principles and structures
* Value knowledge and competence above all else
* Have very high standards for performance, which they apply to themselves
* Independent and original, possibly eccentric
* Work best alone, and value autonomy
* Have no desire to lead or follow
* Dislike mundane detail
* Not particularly interested in the practical application of their work
* Creative and insightful
* Future-oriented
* Usually brilliant and ingenius
* Trust their own insights and opinions above others
* Live primarily inside their own minds, and may appear to be detached and uninvolved with other people

INTPs have a special gift with generating and analyzing theories and possibilities to prove or disprove them. They have a great deal of insight and are creative thinkers, which allows them to quickly grasp complex abstract thoughts. They also have exceptional logical and rational reasoning skills, which allows them to thoroughly analyze theories to discover the Truth about them. Since the INTP is driven to seek clarity in the world, we have a happy match of desire and ability in this personality type. INTPs will be happiest in careers which allow them a great deal of autonomy in which they can work primarily alone on developing and analyzing complex theories and abstractions, with the goal of their work being the discovery of a truth, rather than the discovery of a practical application."

I can usually guilt trip myself into testing as an ENTP (Do I like to make people laugh? I guess I must...) but really I'm still the little kid sitting in his room playing with legos, only my legos are songs... which are a lot more difficult.

INTP

2010-10-23T21:43:00.000-07:00

The Myers-Briggs test. Go take it and post your results. We'll talk.

New Verb: Getting Nashville'd

2010-10-19T23:47:00.000-07:00

Me: "So I met a girl I like at the Museum." Friend: "Oh, is that the redhead, Shirley? She recently broke up with, and broke the heart of Stan from Big Ghost who is now the silent 5th member of the Kings of Leon whose bassist is in a bowling league with Tom Renson who is producing the album of our mutual friend Trevor's girlfriend's band Squeezin' the Screamin' Demons. So basically, if you date Shirley it will unravel every existing group of friends, break up every indie rock band, and shatter the dreams of every singer-songwriter currently existing in greater Nashville. Then we'll all die alone... and so will you."

Womp. You've been Nashville'd.

Onion

2010-10-18T09:44:00.000-07:00

When I started on my quest to make music, there was an overarching structure that could upstream you. It could be the right label, manager or agent, but your music could "go big" at any time. It was so competitive that you had to develop a strategy to be upstreamed, and I began developing so many parts of myself in order to be able to have a lifetime full of making music. I read books, studied interviews, stalked industry players, developed philosophies, developed touring models, promotional stunts, aesthetics, websites, street teams... I loved music so much that I spent more time strategizing ways to keep making it than I spent actually making it.

Eventually I found myself to be like an onion with so many layers over my core that I couldn't even feel my core anymore. That was when we got upstreamed. Walking around the dusty halls and empty offices that used to have an iron grip over the tastes of the nation, I heard the same thing over and over again from people with fear in thier voices, "We can't help you until you have something that is truly connecting to people."

That's when I started peeling. I shed layer after layer, secret after secret. I kept getting thinner but I started feeling more alive with each layer that I let go of.

Now I'm down to may last and first layer. I'm more vulnerable than I have ever been. I'm ready to fail miserably as myself. I am ready to make the worst music that I ever have, in pursuit of making music that resonates inside of me. I am also ready to write music that can shake the foundation.

So I'll lay all of this down before you, I'm paper thin.

This too is destiny...

2010-10-16T23:01:00.000-07:00

I hath not spared from my heart the joys of any Fish of the Sweeds that hath been brought before it. This too is destiny.

This too is vanity...

2010-10-11T11:48:00.000-07:00

You may not be a believer or a Christian, but Ecclesiastes is one of the wisest books you can lay your hands on. If you're not comfortable with the word God, substitutue it with Karma of The Universe. If you don't think anything happens for a reason, prove it and go rob a bank (Attica! Attica!).

I do believe this will be the way I will be marking twain from now on:

Ecclesiastes 2

1I said in mine heart, Go to now, I will prove thee with mirth, therefore enjoy pleasure: and, behold, this also is vanity.

2I said of laughter, It is mad: and of mirth, What doeth it?

3I sought in mine heart to give myself unto wine, yet acquainting mine heart with wisdom; and to lay hold on folly, till I might see what was that good for the sons of men, which they should do under the heaven all the days of their life.

4I made me great works; I builded me houses; I planted me vineyards:

5I made me gardens and orchards, and I planted trees in them of all kind of fruits:

6I made me pools of water, to water therewith the wood that bringeth forth trees:

7I got me servants and maidens, and had servants born in my house; also I had great possessions of great and small cattle above all that were in Jerusalem before me:

8I gathered me also silver and gold, and the peculiar treasure of kings and of the provinces: I gat me men singers and women singers, and the delights of the sons of men, as musical instruments, and that of all sorts.

9So I was great, and increased more than all that were before me in Jerusalem: also my wisdom remained with me.

10And whatsoever mine eyes desired I kept not from them, I withheld not my heart from any joy; for my heart rejoiced in all my labour: and this was my portion of all my labour.

11Then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, and on the labour that I had laboured to do: and, behold, all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun.

12And I turned myself to behold wisdom, and madness, and folly: for what can the man do that cometh after the king? even that which hath been already done.

13Then I saw that wisdom excelleth folly, as far as light excelleth darkness.

14The wise man's eyes are in his head; but the fool walketh in darkness: and I myself perceived also that one event happeneth to them all.

15Then said I in my heart, As it happeneth to the fool, so it happeneth even to me; and why was I then more wise? Then I said in my heart, that this also is vanity.

16For there is no remembrance of the wise more than of the fool for ever; seeing that which now is in the days to come shall all be forgotten. And how dieth the wise man? as the fool.

17Therefore I hated life; because the work that is wrought under the sun is grievous unto me: for all is vanity and vexation of spirit.

18Yea, I hated all my labour which I had taken under the sun: because I should leave it unto the man that shall be after me.

19And who knoweth whether he shall be a wise man or a fool? yet shall he have rule over all my labour wherein I have laboured, and wherein I have shewed myself wise under the sun. This is also vanity.

20Therefore I went about to cause my heart to despair of all the labour which I took under the sun.

21For there is a man whose labour is in wisdom, and in knowledge, and in equity; yet to a man that hath not laboured therein shall he leave it for his portion. This also is vanity and a great evil.

22For what hath man of all his labour, and of the vexation of his heart, wherein he hath laboured under the sun?

23For all his days are sorrows, and his travail grief; yea, his heart taketh not rest in the night. This is also vanity.

24There is nothing better for a man, than that he should eat and drink, and that he should make his soul enjoy good in his labour. This also I saw, that it was from the hand of God.

25For who can eat, or who else can hasten hereunto, more than I?

26For God giveth to a man that is good in his sight wisdom, and knowledge, and joy: but to the sinner he giveth travail, to gather and to heap up, that he may give to him that is good before God. This also is vanity and vexation of spirit.

Quote of the Day

2010-10-11T11:44:00.000-07:00

"A musical profit outweighs a financial loss." - Duke Ellington

Cousin Tom

2010-10-07T09:23:00.000-07:00

Tom Robbins happened to me. He stalked me. I found out about him and all of a sudden he was everywhere. He was in every person's hand, in every book store's window, in my friend's tattoo, and already on my bookshelf?! I knew something serendipitous was going to happen, and it surely, surely did. I'm lucky to have some readers who have it all figured out, but being kind-of slow, I find a lot of things about this world that don't make sense. Things that puzzle and haunt me. With a handful of friends I have been looking for answers to my questions but we have found a few threads that have started tying the whole picture together for us, and apparently so had Tom Robbins.

Still Life With Woodpecker, if you can handle some explicit observations about the human condition, will change your life for the better/potentially crazier. It has made me fall in love with red heads, pyramids, camel cigarettes, dynamite, did I mention pyramids... In short: Tom Robbins: Yum.

Post Script. After I had started reading, and before the book had gotten graphic, I sent a copy of the book to my ever-graphic grandmother for Christmas. She loved the book, subsequently reminding me that Tom Robbins is our first cousin and was born/raised in my maternal family's stomping ground high up in the North Carolina clouds. Further, she had been trying to get me to read his books for a decade.

Heists

2010-10-05T11:22:00.000-07:00

To an artist, a piece of paper is a prison to a sculpture. A conversation is a prison to a song. Once you can see that there is a magnificent beast trapped somewhere, that is the moment of genesis for the art. At that moment, the art already exists in the eye of the beholder. The next step, actually freeing the beast, feels a lot like a bank heist. It takes skill, patience, and the ability to fend off the constant assaults of self-doubt.

I sometimes get lambasted for the fact that I do wonder what people think about the art I offer. I also like to know how food tasted when I've spent hours preparing a meal for my friends. That's real. That's how I am.

If you rob a bank, and you take the jewels to a jeweler only to be told that the loot has little to no value, you have to say to yourself "Either I'm robbing the wrong bank, or going to the wrong jeweler."

Or a little bit of both.

RococorococorococrococROCOCO!

2010-10-02T12:17:00.000-07:00

I cannot stop listening to Rococo off of Arcade Fire's new album The Suburbs. I love that Win has assembled his band like a constantly changing orchestra to achieve whatever sound the music calls for.

ROCOCO!

10 out of 10 Mead Kids agree...

2010-10-01T16:26:00.000-07:00

We The Living is second best.

RATATAT!

2010-09-29T18:58:00.000-07:00

By now it's a well-known fact that Lorwyn is the greatest concept album that will never see the light of day. We were going to flip Heights of the Heavens backward and track new instruments over the resulting songs making new super Sigur Ros sounding music and the band was going to be called Lorwyn. I think Ratatat may have beaten us to the punch...

Additionally, it's a well-known fact that Ratatat took a 2 week retreat after writing the music for West Side Story, and accidentally pioneered disco. This paragraph was an inside joke specifically for Matthew Gerald Holmen, I hope you enjoyed your stay.

Minus the Steinbeck and current pervasive thought

2010-09-27T21:48:00.000-07:00

Current Book: The Moon is Down by John Steinbeck

I'm running out of books to read by Steinbeck, and every book I read deeper into his backlog I am haunted by the growing suspicion that he is the greatest thing ever. The Moon is Down was written as pro-Ally propaganda during World War II, but its theme is the simple triumph of spirit over oppression, which is a theme I can read about all day.

Current Album: Menos el Oso by Minus the Bear (with a heavy side dose of Jessica Lea Mayfield's future release, which i will write about later)

Experimentation. Rhythm. "Will you ever miss your desk's caress?" Bomba.

Pervasive Thought: It is well documented that native cultures are often heavily affected by foreign drugs. The Chinese with opium, Native Americans with alcohol et al... It is also speculated that we discovered transistors in 1947 (the device that makes all long-distance information transmission possible and the father of modern technology) by reverse engineering devices we found on the spacecraft that crash landed at Roswel, NM earlier that year.

My thought is; what if information transmission is a foreign drug and we are slowly succumbing to it as a species? Go into a coffee shop and tell me it doesn't look like an opium den with all the zombie faces softly illuminated by LED displays... Everyone sure acts like Infoholics.

Land of the lotus eaters! How did Homer know....