My Top 20 Favorite Bands and/or Musicians as of Summer 2011

I think the types of music a person gravitates to can say a lot. Please feel free to tell me what this list says about me. This list is in no particular order.

1. The Sundays
2. The Smiths, Morrissey
3. Tori Amos
4. The Drums
5. MGMT
6. Innocence Mission
7. Ghostland Observatory
8. Psychedelic Furs
9. The Shins
10. Mark Mothersbaugh
11. Badly Drawn Boy
12. Radiohead
13. Debussy
14. Cut Copy
15. Iron and Wine
16. Beethoven
17. Danny Elfman
18. Ella Fitzgerald
19. The Decemberists
20. David Bowie

If you listened to nothing save these artists for the rest of your life your ears, heart, mind, and soul would be in very good hands, voices, beats...whatever. I encourage you to give a listen to someone you may not be as familiar with on this list. This is ALL really yummy stuff, all of it. Try creating a PANDORA station or two to hear some of these geniuses. Let them serve you! Top to bottom, anything these folks do is pretty much luscious. Trust me.

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How to Keep a Dynamic Brain for Longer

(Response to friend Stephanie's Interesting Blog Post on Personal Power and How One May Find It)

"This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man." ~W. Shakespeare

I like voicing my fears, concerns, questions, and revelations. It makes me feel connected and aware. It's also worthwhile enough to cause me to hope for some sort of insight after the telling, which is one MAJOR reason I write. Not knowing the source for personal power leads one to begging questions, which, in turn, gets us on the path hunting for answers, seeking qualified advice, critically analyzing the findings, and eventually fashioning a plan of action. Change is never easy. But it can be exhilarating. And the research says it's good for your brain, to boot! Stagnation, old routines, and overly systematic living actually contributes to memory loss, fewer synaptic connections, and lower levels of serotonin. People who know how to change things up, move things around, revel in change, and thrive in unfamiliarity are those who will enjoy more useful brains for longer. The human brain needs challenges, just like the body. Our brains plateau when we feed it the same stuff all the time. Again, this parallels the case with the body. Mind, body, and spirit thrive on new material, diverse material, and challenging material. This can be dangerous for smart people, or people in general actually, who get in the proverbial rut because they feel comfortable playing to their strengths. For example, mathematicians may gravitate to algorithms and permutations while literates gravitate to poetry and other forms of literature. This is fine but once the brain establishes certain synaptic pathways these channels get deeper and deeper and sort of begin to make a person a bore, not just behaviorally but chemically/biologically/physically. The brain gets used to certain activities and becomes less challenged. Certain departments shut down because they think they're not needed. Here is where the research says things begin to degenerate. Moral of the story: writers should try Sudoku and math people need to try a hand at a crossword and both should run a few miles a few times a week. Oversimplified, perhaps. Still, you get the picture.
To address the questions and concerns around finding the sources to certain powers: How does someone become a better runner? By running. How does someone become literate? By reading. There are no secret shortcuts. I love this notion. My brother Dave and I talk about this often: If you want to be a good artist you have to be willing to be a crappy one for quite a while first. Let us try and remember this: EFFORT CREATES ABILITY.

Life Isn't Always Kind

This was a line in a movie I saw recently called Another Year. This was an absolute masterpiece in my opinion. I was so moved. I'm not going to highlight any specific scenes for you. Just see it. I want to write about other things just now.

Life isn't always kind. This is very true. My life has been so kind so often. I was born to two amazingly good and gorgeous people who stayed in love. I shared my childhood with especially effervescent personalities, gorgeous faces, exceptional talents of all shapes and kinds. I got a great education in both academic and not-so-academic ways, graduated from a wonderful university, studied exactly what I wanted to, got the job I wanted immediately, worked with the very people I would've hand picked to work with. Life has been very kind indeed.

Then, at other times, life hasn't been so kind. It kicked and punched me on the playground. It called me mean names and threw sand in my eyes. Then later it broke my heart a few times, twisted some tendons, slapped my face a little. Got poisoned a fair amount; mostly voluntarily...unfortunately. I became addicted to some of the wrong things: the approval of others, feeling numb, cigarettes, and Woody Allen, to name a few. I got engaged a lot, too. That was interesting, if not heart-wrenching. Then I really did it! Tied the knot! To someone who hated me twice as much as he loved his action figures. You do the math.

Life is not always kind. Then there was not only the math but the aftermath. Year one: numb, floating feeling, fuzzy, pretty pleasant. Year two: lots of pain, acute, searing, crying in the car because I heard that song, having to sit down at the grocery store because the label on the tuna can triggered that memory. Year three: pretty dang normal, almost, sort of, I mean, all considered. Year four: Ouchie....I need intervention post haste. Year five: Great! Paxil, will you marry me? (no response...just a wink. for some reason it's enough.)

As we approach year six, I see a lot to be grateful for. Maybe I'll stop calculating time the way I have, years post divorce. Maybe it's a new age? It's not the golden age. Not enough earned yet. Maybe it's the age of fleece, not golden fleece, mind you. No. Pink. Pink fleecy blankets. The age of pink, blue, mint green, lily yellow. Here we go, baby. Buckle up.

Tunnel Vision

Sometimes I feel like a tunnel; long, narrow, hollow, going somewhere. Where? I can see light, green leaves, I can smell something fresh and growing out of the distant pitch soil. But I never get there. I never seem to arrive. Maybe that's what this life is, longing for something, something more worthy of us, wanting something, hungry for the things of a better world, a world the spirit remembers and the senses forgot. I can feel something expansive above my view. I can envision myself, that tunnel, moss covered, somewhat hidden, none too apparent or impressive in structure. I can see me, from above, with all the air and sky between that view and that grounded self. Cloud, mist, bird, tree, flower, blade, droplet, ant, worm...all above me. The things that get between us and freedom, true freedom, the things that assume to subordinate us, they are simple in the end. They aren't always worthy foes, opponents, or even suitable playmates. When worms thrive above you it may be time to take the high road. Deep down we know it is our own doing. We exalted the worms and put ourselves beneath rot, looking for something. Treasure? But in dank, dripping concrete cylinders...empty, echoing, longing to arrive, waiting to breathe deeply and long, to see and touch the things we can now only faintly make out, we realize the perplexing sting and strange pleasure of wanting.