Thu - October 22, 2009
another fortune cookie
average effort = average
results
for extraordinary results apply.......
for extraordinary results apply.......
Posted at 01:36 PM
Mon - August 24, 2009
papa john...
Sorry this blog has been dark as of late, I've been
rather tied up in a project very dear to my heart. Just as soon as I get it all
shined up, you'll be able to see what's kept me in the
cave.
In the meantime, let's talk about papa john.
The papa john legend says that to start the company he sold his beloved 72 Z28 Camaro to fund his first purchase of pizza making equipment. He was 22 at the time and fortunately it turned out to be a sacrifice well worth making. He's actually on the lookout for that original camaro, so if you happen to come across it, he'd like it back. In fact he'd be happy to give you $250,000 for it if you have it. Sadly that makes my quest to find a nice 72 Camaro that much harder. It's like cash for clunkers on steroids.
I was surprised to read on my pizza box about sacrifice. Lately, it seems as a culture we dream big dreams, but we want them american idol style. We want wall street money in a dot com work place with plenty of time off to travel the world. We expect to start life after college in trendy downtown lofts and drive nice cars. We want to be our own bosses and do only creative work and leave the boring stuff to the interns. Unfortunately, this is the interns I'm talking about.
So at the risk of sounding like I walked to school uphill in the snow both ways, i have to say it.
If you want to be at the top of the mountain, you are going to have to hike up there. Reality TV has shown us a lot of what it's like to live at the top of the mountain, but precious little about getting to the top. If you want to model your life on reality TV, start with Biggest Loser. Pretend Jillian is your life coach. She has one basic plan for achieving your goal and it is in a nutshell: "work your ass off."
It wasn't just a car that Papa John gave up, I have no doubt that while his 22 year old friends were out partying on the weekends, he was slaving over a hot oven. He probably did it for years. I have no doubt he is a focused man and a hard worker. Learn to work hard, learn to focus. They are skills that will serve you well and get you where you need to be.
No one makes an olympic athlete practice day after day after day. They don't start practicing after they know they are going to the olympics. They practice because they are olympians in character and spirit. The practice is not an unfair imposition on them. They don't whine about having to practice. They practice because they are olympic athletes and that is what it means to be an athlete.
So this is what it means to reach the top of the mountain. It is to climb uphill. And when life seems uphill, do not stop, for surely this is a sign that you are climbing your mountain.
climb on.
In the meantime, let's talk about papa john.
The papa john legend says that to start the company he sold his beloved 72 Z28 Camaro to fund his first purchase of pizza making equipment. He was 22 at the time and fortunately it turned out to be a sacrifice well worth making. He's actually on the lookout for that original camaro, so if you happen to come across it, he'd like it back. In fact he'd be happy to give you $250,000 for it if you have it. Sadly that makes my quest to find a nice 72 Camaro that much harder. It's like cash for clunkers on steroids.
I was surprised to read on my pizza box about sacrifice. Lately, it seems as a culture we dream big dreams, but we want them american idol style. We want wall street money in a dot com work place with plenty of time off to travel the world. We expect to start life after college in trendy downtown lofts and drive nice cars. We want to be our own bosses and do only creative work and leave the boring stuff to the interns. Unfortunately, this is the interns I'm talking about.
So at the risk of sounding like I walked to school uphill in the snow both ways, i have to say it.
If you want to be at the top of the mountain, you are going to have to hike up there. Reality TV has shown us a lot of what it's like to live at the top of the mountain, but precious little about getting to the top. If you want to model your life on reality TV, start with Biggest Loser. Pretend Jillian is your life coach. She has one basic plan for achieving your goal and it is in a nutshell: "work your ass off."
It wasn't just a car that Papa John gave up, I have no doubt that while his 22 year old friends were out partying on the weekends, he was slaving over a hot oven. He probably did it for years. I have no doubt he is a focused man and a hard worker. Learn to work hard, learn to focus. They are skills that will serve you well and get you where you need to be.
No one makes an olympic athlete practice day after day after day. They don't start practicing after they know they are going to the olympics. They practice because they are olympians in character and spirit. The practice is not an unfair imposition on them. They don't whine about having to practice. They practice because they are olympic athletes and that is what it means to be an athlete.
So this is what it means to reach the top of the mountain. It is to climb uphill. And when life seems uphill, do not stop, for surely this is a sign that you are climbing your mountain.
climb on.
Posted at 03:41 AM
Wed - June 24, 2009
a modern fairy tale
Once upon a time, in a kingdom not unlike ours
there was a common serving boy with dreams of knighthood. In those days, you
had to be a knights son to be trained as a knight. Sometimes if a dragon was
slain or a particularly clever irrigation system was invented they would make an
exception. But you had to be extraordinarily lucky since dragons were few and
far between and this was before American Idol had been
invented.
One day, on the advice of his wizard, the king made a new decree. All through the land it was proclaimed;
"Any person who can complete a marathon will be granted a wish from the king. This offer is good as long as the kingdom stands and the offer is open to all."
This was exciting news. The whole country was abuzz. Everyone wanted a wish from the king. Everyone made plans to run the marathon.
The marathons were to be held once a year. The boy signed up for the first one. Surprisingly there were few names on the list.
"I'll do the next one" said a friend, "I'm pretty busy right now".
"I'm not sure if I want the king to make me a knight or a minstrel, so I'm going to wait till I figure out which I should be" said another.
"My boyfriend wants me to wait till he can run it too said a pretty lass."
And so on the first marathon only half the town showed up. When the bell was rung, they started running the 26 miles they had to complete. (this was before the metric system). After about 2 miles, the first person gave up. At about 5 miles the boy was too exhausted to go on. He crawled for awhile till he passed out. No one from their town finished the marathon.
The next day, people were talking again, about how the king had set an impossible task. It was obvious that as many people could run marathons as could slay dragons. The general populace went back to living the way they did before.
A year later though, a skinny tailor won it. And the year after that a couple other people did. They all had their wishes granted. Still the people did not hope because many had tried and most had failed. They were not genetically predisposed to running marathons. They were a short and stocky people.
One day a knight came to town to talk about how he won the marathon.
The town hall was full because people always have dreams. The knight shared his secret:
"Almost no one can run a marathon at first try." he said and everyone nodded their heads at this truth. "No matter how hard you try." And the boy knew this was true because he had tried with all his heart but that had only taken him to mile 5. "but I know a secret that will help you pass the marathon" said the knight and everyone leaned forward.
"when I ran my first marathon, after 2 miles it became impossible and I quit. I went home defeated. But the next day I woke up mad because I am not a quitter and so I went back to where the marathon was held and though no one was there, I ran it again. And this time it was even harder because I had blisters, but I ran it anyways and at 2 miles it became impossible again and I went home defeated. Because I am stubborn, I came back the next day and ran it again. I did this all week purely because my nickname is stubborn joey. After a week though, I found that I could run 3 miles. So I was a little encouraged. I resolved to complete the marathon for my own pride and every day I ran and every week I found I ran a little farther. When the next year's marathon came around, I failed yet again, but this time I got to 18 miles before I had to quit. I ran every day until the next marathon and suddenly and easily I won the next marathon. As you can see, the king granted me my wish, I am a knight".
The people were angry.
"We want a proper secret!" they yelled. No one wanted to run everyday for 2 years.
"but don't you see?" the knight told everyone still listening "you can have your dream, you can have anything you want if you just dedicate some time to it every day. Even a little daily effort will get you closer to your dream. You just have to learn to push yourself a little farther every day. It's not that hard once you get used to it"... but by that time the only person who was listening was the boy.
So the boy resolved to train for the marathon. He ran a mile every day for a couple days... then things got busy and he told himself he would run 4 miles on the weekend when he had more time, but he ended up going to the beach with his friends. He always intended to start running again, maybe tomorrow or for sure by next week. He never gave up on his dream, he bought some very nice running shoes and did a lot of research about running. He did a lot of planning and made a lot of resolutions. But he rarely actually went running. He thought of himself as a runner and was bitterly critical of other people who trained and he was especially bitter about the people who won marathons. He drank a lot of ale and grew heavier but he kept telling himself that one day he would start training again, he would run the marathon.
Finally years later, he found the knight who gave the speech and he asked him how the king granted his wish.. did he rub a lamp and a genie came out? Did he wave a magic wand? The knight explained that the king sent him to see the wizard who told him this:
"You have already learned the secret to getting what you wish in life. Almost any change you desire can be brought about by daily practice. While your goals may seem impossible at first, with enough faithful training you can achieve them. Now go and spread this knowledge."
And the boy who was now a man became angry and hit the knight with a rock because he really didn't want to hear that the power to change his own life was in his own hands.
A great sadness fell over the knight because no one wanted to hear the fantastic truth and also he had just been hit with a rock.
and while the knight went on to live happily ever after, very few other people did.
One day, on the advice of his wizard, the king made a new decree. All through the land it was proclaimed;
"Any person who can complete a marathon will be granted a wish from the king. This offer is good as long as the kingdom stands and the offer is open to all."
This was exciting news. The whole country was abuzz. Everyone wanted a wish from the king. Everyone made plans to run the marathon.
The marathons were to be held once a year. The boy signed up for the first one. Surprisingly there were few names on the list.
"I'll do the next one" said a friend, "I'm pretty busy right now".
"I'm not sure if I want the king to make me a knight or a minstrel, so I'm going to wait till I figure out which I should be" said another.
"My boyfriend wants me to wait till he can run it too said a pretty lass."
And so on the first marathon only half the town showed up. When the bell was rung, they started running the 26 miles they had to complete. (this was before the metric system). After about 2 miles, the first person gave up. At about 5 miles the boy was too exhausted to go on. He crawled for awhile till he passed out. No one from their town finished the marathon.
The next day, people were talking again, about how the king had set an impossible task. It was obvious that as many people could run marathons as could slay dragons. The general populace went back to living the way they did before.
A year later though, a skinny tailor won it. And the year after that a couple other people did. They all had their wishes granted. Still the people did not hope because many had tried and most had failed. They were not genetically predisposed to running marathons. They were a short and stocky people.
One day a knight came to town to talk about how he won the marathon.
The town hall was full because people always have dreams. The knight shared his secret:
"Almost no one can run a marathon at first try." he said and everyone nodded their heads at this truth. "No matter how hard you try." And the boy knew this was true because he had tried with all his heart but that had only taken him to mile 5. "but I know a secret that will help you pass the marathon" said the knight and everyone leaned forward.
"when I ran my first marathon, after 2 miles it became impossible and I quit. I went home defeated. But the next day I woke up mad because I am not a quitter and so I went back to where the marathon was held and though no one was there, I ran it again. And this time it was even harder because I had blisters, but I ran it anyways and at 2 miles it became impossible again and I went home defeated. Because I am stubborn, I came back the next day and ran it again. I did this all week purely because my nickname is stubborn joey. After a week though, I found that I could run 3 miles. So I was a little encouraged. I resolved to complete the marathon for my own pride and every day I ran and every week I found I ran a little farther. When the next year's marathon came around, I failed yet again, but this time I got to 18 miles before I had to quit. I ran every day until the next marathon and suddenly and easily I won the next marathon. As you can see, the king granted me my wish, I am a knight".
The people were angry.
"We want a proper secret!" they yelled. No one wanted to run everyday for 2 years.
"but don't you see?" the knight told everyone still listening "you can have your dream, you can have anything you want if you just dedicate some time to it every day. Even a little daily effort will get you closer to your dream. You just have to learn to push yourself a little farther every day. It's not that hard once you get used to it"... but by that time the only person who was listening was the boy.
So the boy resolved to train for the marathon. He ran a mile every day for a couple days... then things got busy and he told himself he would run 4 miles on the weekend when he had more time, but he ended up going to the beach with his friends. He always intended to start running again, maybe tomorrow or for sure by next week. He never gave up on his dream, he bought some very nice running shoes and did a lot of research about running. He did a lot of planning and made a lot of resolutions. But he rarely actually went running. He thought of himself as a runner and was bitterly critical of other people who trained and he was especially bitter about the people who won marathons. He drank a lot of ale and grew heavier but he kept telling himself that one day he would start training again, he would run the marathon.
Finally years later, he found the knight who gave the speech and he asked him how the king granted his wish.. did he rub a lamp and a genie came out? Did he wave a magic wand? The knight explained that the king sent him to see the wizard who told him this:
"You have already learned the secret to getting what you wish in life. Almost any change you desire can be brought about by daily practice. While your goals may seem impossible at first, with enough faithful training you can achieve them. Now go and spread this knowledge."
And the boy who was now a man became angry and hit the knight with a rock because he really didn't want to hear that the power to change his own life was in his own hands.
A great sadness fell over the knight because no one wanted to hear the fantastic truth and also he had just been hit with a rock.
and while the knight went on to live happily ever after, very few other people did.
Posted at 11:06 AM
Wed - June 3, 2009
Make a Wish
When I was in my twenties I would say things like
this:
"If we spend the next 10 years of our lives doing this and we only touch one person's life, it will be worth it."
And I meant it. But as I got older, cynicism and practicality and a good dose of reality set in and I started to wonder if I'd had a positive effect on anyone's life.
In retrospect perhaps I should have been developing a proper career or in the words of jackie chan realizing his days as a stuntman was limited and right before he became a superstar actor he went home broke to his parents with these heavy words on his heart:
"I have spent my whole life training for a useless profession"
But this last weekend, we spent the day at the zoo with a little girl from Make a Wish foundation. If you don't know, they help grant wishes for children that are terminal or struggling with a life threatening disease. She's 8 years old and her greatest wish in the whole world was to go to Hawaii and swim with dolphins. Her second wish was to hang out with us. We spent the day at the zoo with her and we got to break the news that she was going to Hawaii to swim with dolphins. I personally felt like she should have asked for Bono or at least Miley Cyrus, but it turns out, our music has been helping her get through her treatments and is meaningful to her.
I have a gold record, ascap awards, songs in over 100 TV shows/movies and a grammy nomination.
But I think the greatest honor of all is being the wish of an 8 year old girl.
I guess it was worth it after all.
I'm honored to play second fiddle to a dolphin. :)
tech note: We may be transitioning servers and/or moving to a proper blogging program, so if the blog vanishes, look for the new one at www.maxwax11.com
"If we spend the next 10 years of our lives doing this and we only touch one person's life, it will be worth it."
And I meant it. But as I got older, cynicism and practicality and a good dose of reality set in and I started to wonder if I'd had a positive effect on anyone's life.
In retrospect perhaps I should have been developing a proper career or in the words of jackie chan realizing his days as a stuntman was limited and right before he became a superstar actor he went home broke to his parents with these heavy words on his heart:
"I have spent my whole life training for a useless profession"
But this last weekend, we spent the day at the zoo with a little girl from Make a Wish foundation. If you don't know, they help grant wishes for children that are terminal or struggling with a life threatening disease. She's 8 years old and her greatest wish in the whole world was to go to Hawaii and swim with dolphins. Her second wish was to hang out with us. We spent the day at the zoo with her and we got to break the news that she was going to Hawaii to swim with dolphins. I personally felt like she should have asked for Bono or at least Miley Cyrus, but it turns out, our music has been helping her get through her treatments and is meaningful to her.
I have a gold record, ascap awards, songs in over 100 TV shows/movies and a grammy nomination.
But I think the greatest honor of all is being the wish of an 8 year old girl.
I guess it was worth it after all.
I'm honored to play second fiddle to a dolphin. :)
tech note: We may be transitioning servers and/or moving to a proper blogging program, so if the blog vanishes, look for the new one at www.maxwax11.com
Posted at 10:55 AM
Mon - March 9, 2009
I'm not dead yet
A concerned email made me realize that it had passed
from neglecting my faithful readers to having them think perhaps I had slipped
away from this earth without blogging about it. It reminds me of the scene from
the holy grail:
MAYNARD:
It reads, 'Here may be found the last words of Joseph of Arimathea. He who is valiant and pure of spirit may find the Holy Grail in the Castle of aaaaaagggh'.
ARTHUR:
What?
MAYNARD:
'...The Castle of aaaaaagggh'.
BEDEVERE:
What is that?
MAYNARD:
He must have died while carving it.
LAUNCELOT:
Oh, come on!
MAYNARD:
Well, that's what it says.
ARTHUR:
Look, if he was dying, he wouldn't bother to carve 'aaaaaggh'. He'd just say it!
MAYNARD:
Well, that's what's carved in the rock!
GALAHAD:
Perhaps he was dictating.
In this era of twitter and facebook, I guess when someone dies, the blog just goes dark. Unless indeed they are dictating... nonetheless, I'm not dead, I'm just in that all consuming phase right before mixdown where all the Ts need to be crossed and all the I's dotted so I haven't had any spare mental energy to blog. In a week though, this 9 month project will be done and I can move on. If you've seen that case in missouri that's on ebay you'd know that I want it. A friend of mine said "I just don't know how you can live in a cave all year round." The answer to that is, 10 years in the studio making records and you feel perfectly at home.
Regular blogging will resume shortly.
Thanks for the concern folks!
MAYNARD:
It reads, 'Here may be found the last words of Joseph of Arimathea. He who is valiant and pure of spirit may find the Holy Grail in the Castle of aaaaaagggh'.
ARTHUR:
What?
MAYNARD:
'...The Castle of aaaaaagggh'.
BEDEVERE:
What is that?
MAYNARD:
He must have died while carving it.
LAUNCELOT:
Oh, come on!
MAYNARD:
Well, that's what it says.
ARTHUR:
Look, if he was dying, he wouldn't bother to carve 'aaaaaggh'. He'd just say it!
MAYNARD:
Well, that's what's carved in the rock!
GALAHAD:
Perhaps he was dictating.
In this era of twitter and facebook, I guess when someone dies, the blog just goes dark. Unless indeed they are dictating... nonetheless, I'm not dead, I'm just in that all consuming phase right before mixdown where all the Ts need to be crossed and all the I's dotted so I haven't had any spare mental energy to blog. In a week though, this 9 month project will be done and I can move on. If you've seen that case in missouri that's on ebay you'd know that I want it. A friend of mine said "I just don't know how you can live in a cave all year round." The answer to that is, 10 years in the studio making records and you feel perfectly at home.
Regular blogging will resume shortly.
Thanks for the concern folks!
Posted at 01:11 PM
Thu - October 9, 2008
7 years of skinny cows
The economy is going to get worse before it gets
better. If you're in a creative field, prepare to get by on half of what you
got paid last year. If you can offer a half price solution, prepare for a
golden opportunity.
- from my fortune cookie.
also:
consider the joys of being a pessimist, if you're wrong, it's usually a good thing.
- from my fortune cookie.
also:
consider the joys of being a pessimist, if you're wrong, it's usually a good thing.
Posted at 03:07 PM
Tue - August 12, 2008
Stand.
They closed the mountain on me. It was my first
day snowboarding and it takes me forever to learn, so much so that I was still
slipping and sliding down when the mountain closed. They sent someone on a
snowmobile out to get me and he found me sitting down, all the strength gone
from my legs. He got off his snowmobile and got me on my feet and as I started
to slide forward I was so tired that I just sort of sagged against him and he
trotted awkwardly alongside me keeping me upright while I slid forward. After
20 feet of that he stopped and said: "I can't help you all the way down, you
have to stand up on your own."
So much of life, we lack the courage or the will or the strength to stand on our own. If only we had help. If only he had someone to follow. If only we things had been a little easier. Unfortunately, life isn't a reality TV show, no one shows up to force us to be who we're supposed to be. Help is all around us, but in the end, the will, the thing that gets us off our butts and into the studio/gym/stage/slopes comes from us or it does not come at all. No one can walk us down the slope. Dreams are made and forged not in a day, but day after day. It is our own daily battle to choose between the things that take us farther from our dreams and the things that take us closer.
Fight well.
from the song one more:
It feels like I have lost this fight
they think that I am staying down
but I'm not giving up tonight
tonight the wall is coming down
I am stronger than my fears
this is the mountain that I climb
got 100 steps to go
tonight I'll make it 99.
one more, we can go one more.
UPDATE: since you asked, here's how the story ended: I eventually made it down, completely exhausted. The place was closed and somehow I had lost my locker key. When we found someone who could open the locker it turned out to be a cute girl who was sweet about it and I would have tried to impress her except that my tired legs gave out when I tried to hand her something and I fell against some chairs knocking them over. That actually summarizes much of my dating life.
So much of life, we lack the courage or the will or the strength to stand on our own. If only we had help. If only he had someone to follow. If only we things had been a little easier. Unfortunately, life isn't a reality TV show, no one shows up to force us to be who we're supposed to be. Help is all around us, but in the end, the will, the thing that gets us off our butts and into the studio/gym/stage/slopes comes from us or it does not come at all. No one can walk us down the slope. Dreams are made and forged not in a day, but day after day. It is our own daily battle to choose between the things that take us farther from our dreams and the things that take us closer.
Fight well.
from the song one more:
It feels like I have lost this fight
they think that I am staying down
but I'm not giving up tonight
tonight the wall is coming down
I am stronger than my fears
this is the mountain that I climb
got 100 steps to go
tonight I'll make it 99.
one more, we can go one more.
UPDATE: since you asked, here's how the story ended: I eventually made it down, completely exhausted. The place was closed and somehow I had lost my locker key. When we found someone who could open the locker it turned out to be a cute girl who was sweet about it and I would have tried to impress her except that my tired legs gave out when I tried to hand her something and I fell against some chairs knocking them over. That actually summarizes much of my dating life.
Posted at 11:01 AM
Fri - July 18, 2008
thought...
here's my favorite quote of the
month:
"We buy things we don't need to impress people we don't like"
- Mary Ellen Edmunds
"We buy things we don't need to impress people we don't like"
- Mary Ellen Edmunds
Posted at 11:23 PM
Wed - July 9, 2008
gone for a week
I'm going to be in mexico this week if anyone is
trying to find me. I hopefully will be able to check my email.
Posted at 12:47 AM
Mon - June 9, 2008
Heart Murmurs
"Your dog has a heart murmur" pronounced the vet. We were at the emergency clinic for a cut on Brynn's paw and after a tech had spent an inordinately long time listening to her heart, he called in a senior vet. The senior vet looked so young that I promptly christened him Doggie Howser. He told us she had a grade 2 heart murmur. We were instructed to take her to our regular vet as soon as possible for a full workup. Heart murmurs are a very common cause of death in boxers and incurable.
Before we'd been to the vet I'd been getting annoyed with my high energy dog. She's incredibly stubborn and requires ridiculous amounts of exercise or she just pesters me all day long. I'm pretty much the dog whisperer with all dogs except this one. Seriously, I calm wild animals. I'm Dr. Doolittle. Except with my dog. And I'd been starting to threaten her with Craigslist. Since she doesn't know what that is, it was largely ineffective.
After we found out she might die anytime, the annoyance pretty much faded right away. When you know your time is limited, it changes everything.
She went back to our regular vet and he spent awhile listening to her heart. After a good long exam he said "I don't know what they were listening to, but as far as I can tell, she's perfectly healthy."
So she's fine. But I find that I'm rarely annoyed with her anymore. What the vet made clear to me, was that my time with her was limited. In fact, our time with everyone is limited. We shouldn't have to wait till tragedy strikes to value our time with people. The tragedy is not when we become separated from people. The true tragedy is if we do not use the time we do have with them. I know i've sung this song a million times, but I guess I have to sing it to myself every day since I keep forgetting it.
live. love. forgive. never give up.
peace yo
max
Posted at 01:50 AM
Wed - May 21, 2008
lost and found.
Shara and I were exercising our dog in the big empty field behind our property. It's been slated for 52 homes but right now it just sits while they go through city planning. There's a big old horse pen at the very back and we were in there throwing the frisbee around. We need Brynn fenced otherwise she just runs away and across the busy street. It's normally just me and I normally use a cloth frisbee but on monday I was trying out the older plastic frisbee. I gave it a hard throw and the wind took it and carried it far far away deep into the tall grass where we try not to go because it's tick and snake party back there. We trekked back to get it and Shara heard something crying on the other side of the fence. It turned out to be the little dog you see above. He was shaking and crying and trapped back there. I had to clear a whole lot of thorn bushes and thickets to get to him, crawling on my hands and knees while holding out a hot dog. It wasn't fun. He had a collar and a name and a number and a family that had been missing him for 3 days. He was 13 years old and just a wee little dog. The family was overjoyed that someone had found him and the amazing thing was, they live over 1.5 miles from us with only major roads in between us. Most of those roads have no shoulder. It's a miracle he wasn't hit. We are the only people who go back in that field. I pulled 3 ticks off him and he very much enjoyed a hot dog, some water and a cup of dry dog food. He was so happy to be found that if I wasn't holding him he would cry and crawl back into my lap. After the tearful reunion in which both dog and family were crying and shaking I looked at my arms. They were covered in scratches and welts and it was a powerful reminder to me of the cuts and welts on the arms of the saviour who saved me.
Posted at 01:24 PM
Wed - February 13, 2008
working through the storm
One thing that amuses me about reality TV is the
ridiculous challenges they set people:
Design a couture outfit for female astronauts that looks good on the runway and can withstand hard vacuum. You have 6 hours, some kevlar, a butter knife and ziploc baggies provided courtesy of ziploc corporation. The winning design will be featured on the first suborbital flight from Virgin Galactic and the bonus for this mission is a Toyota Prius. Go!
Then we get to watch the people get incredibly stressed out because their lives are quite literally at stake. It's the modern equivalent of the Roman coliseum. They're not in danger of being eaten by lions, but some of them look like they would very well take on a lion to get to that prize. Sometimes the challenges are really ludicrous, but they're actually good preparation for life. It very rarely lines up that you have a perfect shot at the target. We want to cry out, "but if I had more time, if I had more money, if I had more something... I could make this work". But in the end, it's only the people who make it work in the storm that make it work at all, because it's always uphill.
I'm thinking about this because I'm in that place right now with this record. I don't have enough time and people keep throwing new twists at me and demanding more things. I'm running on about 5 hours of sleep a night and it's all I can do not to snap at people when they ask for just one more thing. I have only so many precious days left till the band leaves for tour and when I forget that no one wants to work on valentines day it is a crushing blow to lose another day. The sleeplessness exaggerates the stress and I get pissy over things like the fact that the word; exaggerate has 2 gs.
But many records ago, I realized that there's only 2 choices. Pack up and go home or get it done under less than perfect conditions. I whine and complain about the storm but we do the work as best as we can. When we turn it in, it's never what I wanted, but it's the best we could do with the circumstances we were given.
So when you find yourself working in the storm or slogging through the desert, wail, cry out, beat your fists against the wall. But never quit moving forward. Because life is always less than perfect and the ones who learn to fly in the storm are the ones who learn to fly in life.
now. back to the studio for me.
I need to either clone me or invent a time machine. ack!
Design a couture outfit for female astronauts that looks good on the runway and can withstand hard vacuum. You have 6 hours, some kevlar, a butter knife and ziploc baggies provided courtesy of ziploc corporation. The winning design will be featured on the first suborbital flight from Virgin Galactic and the bonus for this mission is a Toyota Prius. Go!
Then we get to watch the people get incredibly stressed out because their lives are quite literally at stake. It's the modern equivalent of the Roman coliseum. They're not in danger of being eaten by lions, but some of them look like they would very well take on a lion to get to that prize. Sometimes the challenges are really ludicrous, but they're actually good preparation for life. It very rarely lines up that you have a perfect shot at the target. We want to cry out, "but if I had more time, if I had more money, if I had more something... I could make this work". But in the end, it's only the people who make it work in the storm that make it work at all, because it's always uphill.
I'm thinking about this because I'm in that place right now with this record. I don't have enough time and people keep throwing new twists at me and demanding more things. I'm running on about 5 hours of sleep a night and it's all I can do not to snap at people when they ask for just one more thing. I have only so many precious days left till the band leaves for tour and when I forget that no one wants to work on valentines day it is a crushing blow to lose another day. The sleeplessness exaggerates the stress and I get pissy over things like the fact that the word; exaggerate has 2 gs.
But many records ago, I realized that there's only 2 choices. Pack up and go home or get it done under less than perfect conditions. I whine and complain about the storm but we do the work as best as we can. When we turn it in, it's never what I wanted, but it's the best we could do with the circumstances we were given.
So when you find yourself working in the storm or slogging through the desert, wail, cry out, beat your fists against the wall. But never quit moving forward. Because life is always less than perfect and the ones who learn to fly in the storm are the ones who learn to fly in life.
now. back to the studio for me.
I need to either clone me or invent a time machine. ack!
Posted at 11:05 AM
Tue - December 25, 2007
twas the night before Christmas
twas the night before Christmas
and all through the -
not a creature was stirring, not even a -
uh oh....
so we've had a bit of a mouse problem and I can't bring myself to kill them, but mice are fast! They are very hard to catch if you're trying not to squish them. We had one holed up in the closet and it ate the cookies that were supposed to go in my stocking. We named it Tom after the episode of south park where Tom Cruise won't come out of the closet. We got him trapped and released and I think I sealed the hole where they're coming in, but shortly thereafter we saw this little guy scampering about and after we cornered him I had to fashion a trap out of things I could reach without taking my eyes off of his hiding place. Mice move so fast if you stop looking for even a second they dart away and you've lost them. I made this trap out of a salad spinner bowl, some headphones and a roll of packing tape. Unbelievably it worked. After we released our third house mouse Klaus we haven't seen anymore. Let's hope we stay mouse free in 08.
For those of you who remember last year's puppy pictures of Brynn, you can see, that despite having gotten bigger she hasn't really changed much since her puppy days.
Happy Holidays everyone!
Posted at 04:32 AM
Tue - December 11, 2007
The walk of shame.
If you've ever run out of toilet paper when you
really needed it then you know what the walk of shame is. Whether you buy
toilet paper before or after you run out, you're still going to the store and
buying toilet paper. BUT if you buy it BEFORE you run out, then you avoid the
walk of shame. You also avoid the awkward thing that happens when you have a
friend over and you realize while they're in there that you're out of toilet
paper. What is the correct thing to do here? Slide a paper towel under the
door silently?
It took me a lot of life lessons before I learned that one... ignore that squeal in your brakes and it becomes new brake pads AND new rotors. Pay your credit card late and get overdraft charges. Ignore the cavity till it becomes a root canal. Don't feed your snake.... well.. you get the idea. When you stop living with your parents, those things they always say, those parental cliches become cold hard truths that bite you in the face when you think you're above the rules.
Avoid the walk of shame.
note: the walk of shame is not what touring musicians refer to as the 'bag of shame'. Tour bus companies don't allow number 2 on the bus unless it is equipped with a 'grinder'. (which is rare). So if you're on a bus and it ain't stopping and those nachos you had after the show ain't sitting so good....
It took me a lot of life lessons before I learned that one... ignore that squeal in your brakes and it becomes new brake pads AND new rotors. Pay your credit card late and get overdraft charges. Ignore the cavity till it becomes a root canal. Don't feed your snake.... well.. you get the idea. When you stop living with your parents, those things they always say, those parental cliches become cold hard truths that bite you in the face when you think you're above the rules.
Avoid the walk of shame.
note: the walk of shame is not what touring musicians refer to as the 'bag of shame'. Tour bus companies don't allow number 2 on the bus unless it is equipped with a 'grinder'. (which is rare). So if you're on a bus and it ain't stopping and those nachos you had after the show ain't sitting so good....
Posted at 03:48 AM
Tue - November 27, 2007
One person makes a difference
YouTube - Nationl Anthem
Fenway Park
It was disability awareness day at a Red Sox home game in Boston's Fenway Park. A young man with autism sang the national anthem. Partway through he develops a case of nervous giggles. At first there's a lot of good natured laughter and it's not clear if he's going to be able to finish the song but when he falters, the entire crowd at Fenway joins in and finishes the song with him. It's incredibly moving and one comment I saw said something like this:
"I think people in general are bastard coated bastards with bastard filling, but this almost restored my faith in human nature".
I wasn't there, but I'm going to guess what happened. When the singer began to giggle, while everyone was laughing, one person realized the young man wasn't going to get through the song and to help him, he began to sing along, loud enough that people could hear him. As people realized someone else was singing, they caught on; "oh yah, we can help this guy!" and suddenly an entire stadium of people does the right thing because someone showed them the way.
One person can make a difference.
It was disability awareness day at a Red Sox home game in Boston's Fenway Park. A young man with autism sang the national anthem. Partway through he develops a case of nervous giggles. At first there's a lot of good natured laughter and it's not clear if he's going to be able to finish the song but when he falters, the entire crowd at Fenway joins in and finishes the song with him. It's incredibly moving and one comment I saw said something like this:
"I think people in general are bastard coated bastards with bastard filling, but this almost restored my faith in human nature".
I wasn't there, but I'm going to guess what happened. When the singer began to giggle, while everyone was laughing, one person realized the young man wasn't going to get through the song and to help him, he began to sing along, loud enough that people could hear him. As people realized someone else was singing, they caught on; "oh yah, we can help this guy!" and suddenly an entire stadium of people does the right thing because someone showed them the way.
One person can make a difference.
Posted at 11:07 PM
Sat - October 13, 2007
It's called reality my friend...
I'll admit it, being married changes you. One of
those changes is that I've been getting a lot of secondhand reality TV, which
happens when you share the TiVo. The only show remotely close to actual reality
is America's funniest home videos. But nonetheless we can learn from America's
next top chef/model/cheerleader/ventriloquist/bounty hunter.
1. The sky is the limit.
Do you want to be on the covers of magazines? Be a white rapper? Look like a high school cheerleader again? Life actually has even greater possibilities. Do you want to make records then switch careers midway to shoot magazine covers and then music videos? It's all possible. The prizes exist outside of reality television. They exist in reality. You can't have every prize and you will lose some, but you don't have to get accepted to a reality show to compete. You compete already, the game is called life and you are the star.
2. It's going to be a lot of work.
I heard someone say: "I wanted to be a doctor, but it seemed like too much work." It's true, being a doctor requires a lot of work. Unfortunately, unless your highest aspiration is french fries, everything is a lot of work. Some people get lucky but you can't base your life on getting lucky. Fortune favors the prepared. The one thing TV show contestants get that we don't, is they get told when they're screwing up. You whine; you get yelled at, you slack; you get yelled at, you screw up twice you go home and it's very clear what you did wrong. In real life we don't get that luxury. We just have that nagging feeling that we missed a turn somewhere. In real life you don't have 8 contestants, you have thousands. We think if we were on those shows, when crunch time came we would do better. Well unless you are where you want to be, it is crunch time. Right now there are people competing for your dream and working harder and whining less and making progress not excuses. You are losing time and money reading this blog :)
Life is hard. Everyone is struggling through something. Whether it's a career, growing up or working out, you only move forward if you push. It's not a giant push when the moment arrives, but it's getting into the habit of pushing. You're on the treadmill and you go a little farther everyday. You practice a little longer. You do the thing that scares you. You do it on faith that someday you're going to get somewhere even if you can't see that progress today. No one starts training the day after they're accepted to the olympics. You only get accepted to the olympics if you've been training all your life. Make pushing and growing part of your mindset and you will rise to where you're supposed to be. If you don't want to do all that work, just understand that not living your dream takes almost as much work. It takes a lot of energy to be defensive and bitter and come up with reasons why you didn't succeed.
A lyric from the next album:
If your dream is 100 steps away, how many steps did you take today?
1. The sky is the limit.
Do you want to be on the covers of magazines? Be a white rapper? Look like a high school cheerleader again? Life actually has even greater possibilities. Do you want to make records then switch careers midway to shoot magazine covers and then music videos? It's all possible. The prizes exist outside of reality television. They exist in reality. You can't have every prize and you will lose some, but you don't have to get accepted to a reality show to compete. You compete already, the game is called life and you are the star.
2. It's going to be a lot of work.
I heard someone say: "I wanted to be a doctor, but it seemed like too much work." It's true, being a doctor requires a lot of work. Unfortunately, unless your highest aspiration is french fries, everything is a lot of work. Some people get lucky but you can't base your life on getting lucky. Fortune favors the prepared. The one thing TV show contestants get that we don't, is they get told when they're screwing up. You whine; you get yelled at, you slack; you get yelled at, you screw up twice you go home and it's very clear what you did wrong. In real life we don't get that luxury. We just have that nagging feeling that we missed a turn somewhere. In real life you don't have 8 contestants, you have thousands. We think if we were on those shows, when crunch time came we would do better. Well unless you are where you want to be, it is crunch time. Right now there are people competing for your dream and working harder and whining less and making progress not excuses. You are losing time and money reading this blog :)
Life is hard. Everyone is struggling through something. Whether it's a career, growing up or working out, you only move forward if you push. It's not a giant push when the moment arrives, but it's getting into the habit of pushing. You're on the treadmill and you go a little farther everyday. You practice a little longer. You do the thing that scares you. You do it on faith that someday you're going to get somewhere even if you can't see that progress today. No one starts training the day after they're accepted to the olympics. You only get accepted to the olympics if you've been training all your life. Make pushing and growing part of your mindset and you will rise to where you're supposed to be. If you don't want to do all that work, just understand that not living your dream takes almost as much work. It takes a lot of energy to be defensive and bitter and come up with reasons why you didn't succeed.
A lyric from the next album:
If your dream is 100 steps away, how many steps did you take today?
Posted at 10:13 AM
Fri - October 5, 2007
When worlds collide.
Some shots from David Jay:
OpenSourcePhoto: Sweet Pics!
Some shots from Jen:
AmorOmnia's Xanga Site - Max + Shara 9.22.07
I am so blessed to have such talented and wonderful friends!
Posted at 01:40 PM
Sun - September 16, 2007
Why I am not a rock star...
I was given a pair of blue pajama pants with little
yellow chicks printed all over them. They're quite comfy. I was wearing them
when my dog decided she wanted to go out and do her business early yesterday
morning. Having terrorized me into submission with bouts of doggie diarrhea,
when she wants to go out, out she goes. Now I'm stuck in my backyard, watching
my dog prance around in a sideways hop my sister has dubbed: hippitus hoppitus.
This means she wants to play, a process that can take hours. I can't leave her
out unattended as she will dig a nice big hole in my lawn. After I resigned
myself to being out for awhile, I fetched my acoustic guitar to get some writing
done. Not two minutes outside and my dog is frantically digging a hole right in
front of me. I yell at her to no effect so I have to chase her around the lawn,
holding the acoustic guitar because there's no where to put it down. This is
when I realized that I was not a rock star. Would Sting be caught prancing
around his castle in pajamas, djembe in hand chasing an errant duck? Could Bono
be found in a onesie hurtling after his german shepard in dublin? I think
not.
Sorry the posts have been infrequent, writing has been fast and furious and most of you know what else is keeping me busy. See you all on saturday.
Sorry the posts have been infrequent, writing has been fast and furious and most of you know what else is keeping me busy. See you all on saturday.
Posted at 11:26 AM
Mon - July 23, 2007
a stick figure is worth 1000 words.
xkcd - A
webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language - By Randall
Munroe
I could try to explain the point this beautiful little comic makes but I would just mess it up. Click the link. Live the idea.
I could try to explain the point this beautiful little comic makes but I would just mess it up. Click the link. Live the idea.
Posted at 01:50 AM
Sun - July 1, 2007
Taking chances is the cure for being stuck.
She would be played by Drew Barrymore if they made
a movie about her. She's not happy with her life and she's been in love with
someone who won't love her back for 2 years and nothing has changed. Now all we
need is for her to get fired or humiliated at work and/or for her unrequited
love interest to get engaged. Maybe even a terminal illness and 3 months to
live. Or maybe she gets fed up enough to make the change on her own. So she
packs her bags and moves across the ocean or takes a vacation or starts her own
business or something. Whatever it is, it's a change, because we can see that
what she's been doing for 2 years is a dead end into boredom. And so the movie
begins, the adventure of her new
life.
What if this is your movie? How long do you want to stay in the opening scenes? How soon before you get to the part where you're a fish out of water, making mistakes, figuring things out, awkwardly fitting into your new life, meeting new people. After that comes the part where you make a big mistake and you wonder if you made the right change. Then comes the working hard montage, the training, the determination and ultimately the success. It's a classic story. What if it's your story? When do you want it to start? What if you'll never have a story to tell?
Take that risk. Make that change.
UPDATE: this from a University of Exeter study:
"it's a bit of a cliché to say that we learn more from our mistakes than our successes,' said psychologist Professor Andy Wills of the University of Exeter, 'but for the first time we’ve established just how quickly the brain works to help us avoid repeating errors. By monitoring activity in the brain as it occurs, we were able to identify the moment at which this mechanism kicks in.’"
so there you have it - you learn from your failures better than you learn from success. Get up there, take risks. fall down. Get up anyways... hmmmm. sounds like a lyric....
What if this is your movie? How long do you want to stay in the opening scenes? How soon before you get to the part where you're a fish out of water, making mistakes, figuring things out, awkwardly fitting into your new life, meeting new people. After that comes the part where you make a big mistake and you wonder if you made the right change. Then comes the working hard montage, the training, the determination and ultimately the success. It's a classic story. What if it's your story? When do you want it to start? What if you'll never have a story to tell?
Take that risk. Make that change.
UPDATE: this from a University of Exeter study:
"it's a bit of a cliché to say that we learn more from our mistakes than our successes,' said psychologist Professor Andy Wills of the University of Exeter, 'but for the first time we’ve established just how quickly the brain works to help us avoid repeating errors. By monitoring activity in the brain as it occurs, we were able to identify the moment at which this mechanism kicks in.’"
so there you have it - you learn from your failures better than you learn from success. Get up there, take risks. fall down. Get up anyways... hmmmm. sounds like a lyric....
Posted at 03:05 PM
Mon - June 25, 2007
Doing my part.
OK, so I'll admit, I'm tired of hearing about the enviroment... I'm not a scientist and I've heard so many people argue about the effects of global warming that I just don't know who's right anymore. I dutifully recycled until I found out that a lot of it ends up in landfill. It all seems so futile. What difference can I make?
And then I read an article by Orson Scott Card, who's one of my favorite authors and he pointed out that regardless of all the debate, one thing that everyone agrees on, is that we are running out of oil. Imagine if we were cutting down the giant redwood sequoia trees for firewood. They've been growing for 2000 years. Oil takes hundreds of thousands of years to form. (so the scientists tell me).
So why do we care? We'll probably all have hybrid or electric cars by then?
Well... unfortunately, there's no such thing as an electric plane. That doesn't just mean we'll all be taking trains and boats to our destinations, the strawberries you ate this morning for breakfast weren't grown locally, they were flown in. Our entire economy is built around the air transport infrastructure. In addition, plastics which we use for almost everything, come from oil. The less oil we use, the longer we give ourselves time to figure out alternatives, thus preventing something catastrophic happening like a collapse of our economy.
Of course I've heard it all before and you have too, it's hard to care but for some reason, after reading that article I started to care again. I don't want to be an activist, but I do believe that the world I come in contact with is my world to keep nice. I believe that we are all one tribe and the world is our lawn. I'm going to start making some changes. Little things, but I'm going to start trying to take better care of the world we will leave our children. My next car will likely be either hybrid or a mini cooper. Something that gets better milage. Or maybe it won't even be a car.
Oh yah. I bought the ducati motorcycle pictured above. I'm going to drive it a lot instead of my car. See... saving the enviroment can be sexxxxxyyyyyyy.....
let's ride!
(for you photogs out there, this is the same old technique I always do, 1: enlist sister to hold shoot-through umbrella, 2. expose for the background manually, 3. creep the flash up for the foreground manually, 4. photoshop to taste. Shooting vehicles is tough, typically you need a light source bigger than your vehicle to avoid obvious reflections.)
Posted at 10:12 PM
Sun - May 13, 2007
End of an era
Well, it had to happen. It was time to close camp superchick down. 11 years of experiments, prototypes, gear and plain ol living had to go.... somewhere. Unfortunately, I'm a sentimental packrat and I can't throw things away. Sometimes I don't even know what it is and I can't throw it away. It all had to go. It either went into the van, the trailer, the goodwill box or the dumpster. The dumpster as you can see above, was 20 feet by 8 feet by 6 feet tall. We filled it. Completely. I still took home a van and trailer full of stuff. I was really struck by how much I waste, no matter how careful I am. I'm frugal. Really. But as I threw away brand new shirts, I realized that i had paid for it, ($20) paid to store it ($80 a month) and now was paying to throw it away. ($400 for the dumpster service). And I'd never even worn it. That lead to the formation of a new mantra for me: "love it or leave it". From now on, I'm only going to buy something if it really moves me. It was the greatest incentive to not spend money when I went shopping later. I have a friend who describes knickknacks that people buy as "landfill" and after this week I sure know what she's talking about.
It took literally a week to fish it all out of the crawlspace and closets and off the floor. My patient sister got subjected to endless stories as box after box triggered story after story. I saved it all; cards, letters, manuals, invitations, contracts, tour itineraries, backstage passes, diagrams scribbled on notepads, lyrics on the backs of envelopes, phone numbers on napkins, puzzle pieces of my life. Maybe when I get old and can't remember everything I can reconstruct my life through these endless boxes.
When I was doing my last walkthrough, I checked behind the studio door. Years ago, I had stuck a "storage" sign up on the door leading out of the studio because that's how I viewed the rest of the house. In the empty room where we had created for 11 years, I pulled down the sign and tucked it in my back pocket and it reminded me of the very last episode of friends when they leave the apartment for good. I closed the door on a time when we were young, we knew nothing, we had nothing to lose and our whole lives ahead of us. Ah Gurnee, how I'll miss you.
UPDATE: to clear up the confusion, we've moved the studio to a shiny new place in franklin, TN and are plotting the next superchick record even as you read this.
Posted at 09:26 PM
Fri - April 20, 2007
Watch over one another, let no one slip under unnoticed.
When I was a kid at camp, you had to go with a
buddy if you wanted to swim in the lake - and you had to stay with him the
entire time you were in the water. If you lost your buddy, you had to tell
the lifeguard and he would blow the whistle and everyone would have to stop
swimming until your buddy was found. Lakes aren't pools; you can't see
under the surface. With a hundred kids in the lake, this was a good way to make
sure that no one slipped under, unnoticed. The lesson was clear: swimming
in the lake could be dangerous, but together, we could watch out for one
another. No one would go in alone.
I wish we had a buddy system for life.
We can't change what happened at Virginia Tech. We can't change what happened at Columbine. But maybe we can change the lives of the people around us. We shouldn't need tragedies to remind us that people are sad, broken and aching. The world is our family. If you notice someone alone or hurting or lost, reach out to them. Give of yourself. Heal the wounds inflicted by others. Replace hurt with kindness before hate grows in the empty space where love should be.
Pray that your eyes are opened to those who need your love in their life. We have the power to make huge changes in society with our tiny lives. Make your life about something more than you. All around you, people need you.
Let no one slip under the water, unnoticed.
Peace and brotherlove,
Max
Our song Hero, which relates to this, is downloadable at www.inpop.com . We've made it a free download because we hope it sparks discussions and thought. Please pass it along if it moves you.
I wish we had a buddy system for life.
We can't change what happened at Virginia Tech. We can't change what happened at Columbine. But maybe we can change the lives of the people around us. We shouldn't need tragedies to remind us that people are sad, broken and aching. The world is our family. If you notice someone alone or hurting or lost, reach out to them. Give of yourself. Heal the wounds inflicted by others. Replace hurt with kindness before hate grows in the empty space where love should be.
Pray that your eyes are opened to those who need your love in their life. We have the power to make huge changes in society with our tiny lives. Make your life about something more than you. All around you, people need you.
Let no one slip under the water, unnoticed.
Peace and brotherlove,
Max
Our song Hero, which relates to this, is downloadable at www.inpop.com . We've made it a free download because we hope it sparks discussions and thought. Please pass it along if it moves you.
Posted at 02:45 AM
Mon - April 9, 2007
time is ticking away.... tick tick ticking away.
While I was procrastinating writing some difficult
lyrics today, I found a neat little motivator. Go to www.deathclock.com, type
in your info and it gives you a timer that counts down towards your projected
death. It seems we are all immortally challenged. Of course it's only an
approximation of your last call, but it really helps make clear the fact that we
only have so much time. There's nothing like surfing the internet while
watching your life tick by. Did I really need to watch that video of a cow
eating a baby chick?
do we really have time to hold grudges? to spend on anger and bitterness and needing to be right?
do we have time to burn while our book goes unwritten?
do we have time to waste not knowing what it is we really wanted to do with our lives?
do I have time to blog instead of working on lyrics?
argh! procrastination is my enemy.
tick tick tick...
creativity is frustrating sometimes, but I am more frustrated when I know deep inside that I have not been doing the work. When I have spent a day banging my head against the wall and gotten nothing, it is better than when I spent the day running errands secretly avoiding my work.
UPDATE:
some of you have been wondering why it's so hard to write lyrics.
I'm always trying to squeeze ideas and truths that are personally important into songs. I'm not a poet, I'm really more of a guidance counselor who raps... it can be awkward. Picture Will Ferrell at the piano. Having loved hip hop growing up, I try to make my cadences and rhymes interesting, the problem really hits though when I have a complex idea and try to squeeze it into an unusual rhyming scheme. Some of the rhymes I come up with are so twisted only I know how they work and to make them work I have to rhyme words with themselves. It's not art, it's a trainwreck. There's a number of songs that died a painful multi-syllabic death on the highway of lost songs. Ask Tricia sometime about the sociological tongue twister I wrote called 10 bucks. The band gamely tried to follow me, but the concept - that we give strangers opinions way more value than that of our family and people who love us, just wouldn't translate into song. Also, left by the wayside, the sad little song: you're my obi wan kenobi.
Here's today's dilemma.
I used to flirt with suicide. I was really too much of a wuss to do anything about it, but there was a point in my life where the idea of bowing out seemed really appealing. It's really a lie, kind of like wanting to lie down when you're hypothermic. The lie is that your life will never get better and it will always be this bad, so I got excited lately when I read about someone else who had been suicidal cause I thought he had learned something important.
When you're deeply depressed or suicidal, sometimes you literally can't shake yourself out of it. You actually can't force yourself to buck up or you can't conceive of a life outside of your personal misery. It's really all you can do just to breathe and hold on to maybe one idea, like a drowning person holding onto a slippery rock jutting out of the water. When you're miserable you run on hope and when you run out of hope you run on faith and when faith runs out, sometimes all that's left is that slippery rock. So this guy found himself in that place wanting to let go and slip under quietly. But then he started making up reasons to go on, like say... a new xbox game was coming out, or a new movie he wanted to see.. he'd just hold on until then. And he did that, silly reason from silly reason till one day it wasn't that bad anymore and he could breathe without hurting.
And the idea, the idea he found is so beautiful and important that I had to encapsulate it into a song.
I found some music that was worthy of it, which is so hard and found a melody even that fits it and Tricia sounds so beautiful on it and it's become in some ways about anyone who's just holding on and it became partially about Tricia's mom having cancer recently and it's going to be one of our best songs ever. It's just that it's really really hard to finish something when it's good, because the standards are now so high. And the rhyme scheme I wrote is very odd and this idea, this beautiful idea that I'm trying to marry to this beautiful music is just not fitting easily.
but hopefully I'll get it to fit and it won't be ugly and awkward.
I just spoke to Melissa in Australia and she said the shows are going great and the kids are singing along and they know all the words. It's so strange and humbling to think that as I sit here, locked in the studio, wrestling with these words, someday, later, kids across the ocean will sing them back to us.
UPDATED UPDATE: A useful tool for lyricists is www.rhymezone.com where you can type in a word you're stuck on and get rhymes, synonyms, quotes e.t.c. Also you can go ahead and do a google search for your topic or idea and see what ideas pop up to inspire you. Best of all, it's free!
do we really have time to hold grudges? to spend on anger and bitterness and needing to be right?
do we have time to burn while our book goes unwritten?
do we have time to waste not knowing what it is we really wanted to do with our lives?
do I have time to blog instead of working on lyrics?
argh! procrastination is my enemy.
tick tick tick...
creativity is frustrating sometimes, but I am more frustrated when I know deep inside that I have not been doing the work. When I have spent a day banging my head against the wall and gotten nothing, it is better than when I spent the day running errands secretly avoiding my work.
UPDATE:
some of you have been wondering why it's so hard to write lyrics.
I'm always trying to squeeze ideas and truths that are personally important into songs. I'm not a poet, I'm really more of a guidance counselor who raps... it can be awkward. Picture Will Ferrell at the piano. Having loved hip hop growing up, I try to make my cadences and rhymes interesting, the problem really hits though when I have a complex idea and try to squeeze it into an unusual rhyming scheme. Some of the rhymes I come up with are so twisted only I know how they work and to make them work I have to rhyme words with themselves. It's not art, it's a trainwreck. There's a number of songs that died a painful multi-syllabic death on the highway of lost songs. Ask Tricia sometime about the sociological tongue twister I wrote called 10 bucks. The band gamely tried to follow me, but the concept - that we give strangers opinions way more value than that of our family and people who love us, just wouldn't translate into song. Also, left by the wayside, the sad little song: you're my obi wan kenobi.
Here's today's dilemma.
I used to flirt with suicide. I was really too much of a wuss to do anything about it, but there was a point in my life where the idea of bowing out seemed really appealing. It's really a lie, kind of like wanting to lie down when you're hypothermic. The lie is that your life will never get better and it will always be this bad, so I got excited lately when I read about someone else who had been suicidal cause I thought he had learned something important.
When you're deeply depressed or suicidal, sometimes you literally can't shake yourself out of it. You actually can't force yourself to buck up or you can't conceive of a life outside of your personal misery. It's really all you can do just to breathe and hold on to maybe one idea, like a drowning person holding onto a slippery rock jutting out of the water. When you're miserable you run on hope and when you run out of hope you run on faith and when faith runs out, sometimes all that's left is that slippery rock. So this guy found himself in that place wanting to let go and slip under quietly. But then he started making up reasons to go on, like say... a new xbox game was coming out, or a new movie he wanted to see.. he'd just hold on until then. And he did that, silly reason from silly reason till one day it wasn't that bad anymore and he could breathe without hurting.
And the idea, the idea he found is so beautiful and important that I had to encapsulate it into a song.
I found some music that was worthy of it, which is so hard and found a melody even that fits it and Tricia sounds so beautiful on it and it's become in some ways about anyone who's just holding on and it became partially about Tricia's mom having cancer recently and it's going to be one of our best songs ever. It's just that it's really really hard to finish something when it's good, because the standards are now so high. And the rhyme scheme I wrote is very odd and this idea, this beautiful idea that I'm trying to marry to this beautiful music is just not fitting easily.
but hopefully I'll get it to fit and it won't be ugly and awkward.
I just spoke to Melissa in Australia and she said the shows are going great and the kids are singing along and they know all the words. It's so strange and humbling to think that as I sit here, locked in the studio, wrestling with these words, someday, later, kids across the ocean will sing them back to us.
UPDATED UPDATE: A useful tool for lyricists is www.rhymezone.com where you can type in a word you're stuck on and get rhymes, synonyms, quotes e.t.c. Also you can go ahead and do a google search for your topic or idea and see what ideas pop up to inspire you. Best of all, it's free!
Posted at 05:27 PM
Thu - March 22, 2007
Life after happily ever after. The true story of a fairy tale ending.
Once upon a time in the fairy tale kingdom, there
lived a young orphan. He enjoyed a normal life, full of hard work, but was not
mistreated as orphans can be. He did have a friend whose 3 older sisters kept
making her do all the housework, but secretly he suspected maybe she was a bit
of a drama queen.
One day a passing minstrel told a grand story about someone who slew a mighty dragon, won lands, a princess and lived happily ever after as a prince.
On the way back from the market, the orphan couldn't stop thinking: Happily ever after... living as a prince...a grand story to impress people with. Soon he sought out the minstrel asking, "Are there still dragons to slay? The kind that makes you a prince?"
"Indeed there are," replied the minstrel.
And so our orphan set off on his quest. The journey was long and there was much training to be done. Years went by while the lad worked hard to get into dragon-killing school, and then years of school went by, but it was all worth it for 'happily ever after.' Just thinking about it got him through the drudgery - sanding the floor, waxing the cars...
After graduation he set out to slay his dragon. Fortunately, dragons are not hard to find and there was a minor kingdom with a pesky smaller dragon or possibly larger alligator that needed to be dispatched. Having learned well in dragon-killing school he negotiated with the king's wizard: the customary one-third of the kingdom, princess and the all-important 'happily ever after' clause. He also signed away his publishing because the wizard told him, "It's industry standard; everyone does it."
So he was off with a dragon to kill and a contract in hand.
He killed it.
The dragon was sleeping - it took about 30 seconds. The worst part of it was all the permits and paperwork and tax forms, which took 6 months to get filed properly. No one was there to witness it, so there was no one to cheer for him. Strangely, he didn't feel any different. He went back to the kingdom, got everything he wanted, married the princess and settled down for happily ever after.
His life was perfect. He and his pretty princess never fought. She never talked back to him and made him anything he wanted to eat, although sometimes she seemed a bit robotic in her happiness.
After a year he was bored and fat. He had a strange feeling that he should be happier, but it felt like the day after Christmas when the magical toys turn back into plastic and paint. Now he didn't even have Christmas to look forward to. All those years aimed at getting to 'happily ever after'. Now that he was "happy," he wondered how he was going to handle the ever after part.
One day he bumped into his old friend, the drama queen. She'd managed happily ever after as well: she told him some long story about a glass slipper and a prince but he wasn't really listening. When he found out that she got 'happily ever after' too, he perked up.
"Did you ever think that 'happily ever after' could be so boring?" he asked her.
"Oh no! I'm perfectly happy. Later today I'm going to pick out some nice end tables and maybe some new bath mats since it's summer," she said with a glassy smile.
The boredom gnawed at him like a dog with an old bone. He thought life should be about more than bath mats and end tables.
Eventually he found an old wise man in a cave on a mountain. The old man sent him back for his contract.
"Ah yes.. the 'happily ever after' clause. They get you on that every time. Everyone thinks they want that. You have to read the fine print here. Let me guess, you don't have kids right?"
The startled look on the prince's face confirmed his guess so he continued, "See, kids are strictly prohibited in the contract... having kids or even pets introduces the possibility that they might get hurt or hurt you, which nullifies the 'happily ever after' part. You're not allowed to have anything that might die. In fact, you're not even allowed to have a wife."
"But if i have a wife," protested the prince.
"Well, let me guess... Really nice, never talks back, cooks anything you want?"
At the prince's mute nod he continued, "That's not a woman, that's a robot...everyone knows real women aren't like that."
The prince was horrified.
Presently, the old man sighed.
"See... there's no such thing as 'happily ever after.' If you're going to live fully, it's going to hurt. When you love, you open the door to hurt and loss. If you're living it properly, life is messy, imperfect and a beautiful chaos, full of change. There is no 'happily ever after,' but there is true joy to be found in every day. You hold onto that joy when grief finds you and it gets you through. The 'happily ever after' you've been chasing actually means being closed in a little box and never risking life or love. It only exists in fairy tales. You spent your life trying to get to this place, but now that you're here you're not living anymore."
The young man sat in confusion. Finally, he ventured, "But my whole life has been waiting to be happy ever after - I don't know how to live at all."
The old man replied, "And that's part of life too; you can't know. I don't know how it works and I live in a cave on a mountain. No one knows because it's different for every person. That's part of the great mystery of it. You figure it out one day at a time. There's no place to get to where you have it all figured out. There is no 'happily ever after.' The great quest of life is learning to find the joy in today. Happily ever now."
After a time the young man went down from the mountain. When he came home, he discovered that indeed, his wife was a robot. He put her in a closet and set about learning to live. Eventually he went on to slay other dragons just for the sheer joy of it, and found himself with a sassy wife who talked back to him, belched loudly and burned the toast. They had 3 beautiful children, a dog and a cat, and they all lived happily ever after.
Well, they didn't really - the young man was allergic to the cat and the dog farted horribly, but you get the idea.
The wizard later went on to become very rich in the record business by introducing the concept of signing away your publishing wherein you sell a publisher your publishing rights (potential income) for an advance (loan), which you pay back in full, but after which the publisher continues to own your publishing. He then sold the idea to Satan which Satan used for the whole "sell your soul" concept.
One day a passing minstrel told a grand story about someone who slew a mighty dragon, won lands, a princess and lived happily ever after as a prince.
On the way back from the market, the orphan couldn't stop thinking: Happily ever after... living as a prince...a grand story to impress people with. Soon he sought out the minstrel asking, "Are there still dragons to slay? The kind that makes you a prince?"
"Indeed there are," replied the minstrel.
And so our orphan set off on his quest. The journey was long and there was much training to be done. Years went by while the lad worked hard to get into dragon-killing school, and then years of school went by, but it was all worth it for 'happily ever after.' Just thinking about it got him through the drudgery - sanding the floor, waxing the cars...
After graduation he set out to slay his dragon. Fortunately, dragons are not hard to find and there was a minor kingdom with a pesky smaller dragon or possibly larger alligator that needed to be dispatched. Having learned well in dragon-killing school he negotiated with the king's wizard: the customary one-third of the kingdom, princess and the all-important 'happily ever after' clause. He also signed away his publishing because the wizard told him, "It's industry standard; everyone does it."
So he was off with a dragon to kill and a contract in hand.
He killed it.
The dragon was sleeping - it took about 30 seconds. The worst part of it was all the permits and paperwork and tax forms, which took 6 months to get filed properly. No one was there to witness it, so there was no one to cheer for him. Strangely, he didn't feel any different. He went back to the kingdom, got everything he wanted, married the princess and settled down for happily ever after.
His life was perfect. He and his pretty princess never fought. She never talked back to him and made him anything he wanted to eat, although sometimes she seemed a bit robotic in her happiness.
After a year he was bored and fat. He had a strange feeling that he should be happier, but it felt like the day after Christmas when the magical toys turn back into plastic and paint. Now he didn't even have Christmas to look forward to. All those years aimed at getting to 'happily ever after'. Now that he was "happy," he wondered how he was going to handle the ever after part.
One day he bumped into his old friend, the drama queen. She'd managed happily ever after as well: she told him some long story about a glass slipper and a prince but he wasn't really listening. When he found out that she got 'happily ever after' too, he perked up.
"Did you ever think that 'happily ever after' could be so boring?" he asked her.
"Oh no! I'm perfectly happy. Later today I'm going to pick out some nice end tables and maybe some new bath mats since it's summer," she said with a glassy smile.
The boredom gnawed at him like a dog with an old bone. He thought life should be about more than bath mats and end tables.
Eventually he found an old wise man in a cave on a mountain. The old man sent him back for his contract.
"Ah yes.. the 'happily ever after' clause. They get you on that every time. Everyone thinks they want that. You have to read the fine print here. Let me guess, you don't have kids right?"
The startled look on the prince's face confirmed his guess so he continued, "See, kids are strictly prohibited in the contract... having kids or even pets introduces the possibility that they might get hurt or hurt you, which nullifies the 'happily ever after' part. You're not allowed to have anything that might die. In fact, you're not even allowed to have a wife."
"But if i have a wife," protested the prince.
"Well, let me guess... Really nice, never talks back, cooks anything you want?"
At the prince's mute nod he continued, "That's not a woman, that's a robot...everyone knows real women aren't like that."
The prince was horrified.
Presently, the old man sighed.
"See... there's no such thing as 'happily ever after.' If you're going to live fully, it's going to hurt. When you love, you open the door to hurt and loss. If you're living it properly, life is messy, imperfect and a beautiful chaos, full of change. There is no 'happily ever after,' but there is true joy to be found in every day. You hold onto that joy when grief finds you and it gets you through. The 'happily ever after' you've been chasing actually means being closed in a little box and never risking life or love. It only exists in fairy tales. You spent your life trying to get to this place, but now that you're here you're not living anymore."
The young man sat in confusion. Finally, he ventured, "But my whole life has been waiting to be happy ever after - I don't know how to live at all."
The old man replied, "And that's part of life too; you can't know. I don't know how it works and I live in a cave on a mountain. No one knows because it's different for every person. That's part of the great mystery of it. You figure it out one day at a time. There's no place to get to where you have it all figured out. There is no 'happily ever after.' The great quest of life is learning to find the joy in today. Happily ever now."
After a time the young man went down from the mountain. When he came home, he discovered that indeed, his wife was a robot. He put her in a closet and set about learning to live. Eventually he went on to slay other dragons just for the sheer joy of it, and found himself with a sassy wife who talked back to him, belched loudly and burned the toast. They had 3 beautiful children, a dog and a cat, and they all lived happily ever after.
Well, they didn't really - the young man was allergic to the cat and the dog farted horribly, but you get the idea.
The wizard later went on to become very rich in the record business by introducing the concept of signing away your publishing wherein you sell a publisher your publishing rights (potential income) for an advance (loan), which you pay back in full, but after which the publisher continues to own your publishing. He then sold the idea to Satan which Satan used for the whole "sell your soul" concept.
Posted at 02:55 PM
Quick Links
Calendar
| Sun | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat |
Categories
Archives
XML/RSS Feed
Statistics
Total entries in this blog:
Total entries in this category:
Published On: Oct 22, 2009 01:36 PM
Total entries in this category:
Published On: Oct 22, 2009 01:36 PM