photo by afphotography

Not too long ago, I realized that most of the first 30 years of my life were spent trying to get a handle on who I was. I don’t think that’s too uncommon. Sometime in my late twenties, I finally felt like I had really figured it out. The details are only important and relevant to myself, so there’s no point in elaborating here. But once I felt good about that, I realized what my next task was: finding my place. Now that I knew who I was, I needed to figure out where I fit into the big picture, to find my place in the universe (or just society if I didn’t feel quite so ambitious). That, I figured, would be the ever-changing and always evolving purpose of the rest of my life, especially considering I’ve almost never felt like I belonged in any particular place yet always desperately wanted to be a part of something. I thought that sounded like a pretty good set up, too: spend the rest of my life secure in who I was and exploring the world until I felt like I belonged; adjust and repeat as necessary.

I never guessed that I would figure that out, too, by the time I had just barely turned 30.

I wish I could say this happened in a single, epiphanic moment. But it didn’t. It happened through a series of events that could only be described as simply living my life. It turns out when you don’t force these things, they start becoming clearer than ever. It happened when I was at a bar having a great conversation with friends. It happened when I was listening to music at home and reading an email someone sent about how they enjoyed one of my comics. It happened when I was laughing out loud in a movie theater and when I was feeling bored and lonely by myself on a Friday night and when I was writing a song while sitting on my bed. It happened when I was reading about amazing things people were doing around the world on the Internet and watching inspiring TED talks and when I was at a Ben Folds Five concert where I felt such a connected sense of community that I actually felt like I was a part of the band… That’s because, in that moment with the thousands of other people in the room, I was.

The key phrase there is “in that moment,” because I realized that my place is right here, right now. At the risk of sounding a little contrived, my place is in life, on Earth, as part of the human experiment. My place is in the endless give-and-take connection of humanity itself. And if what I’m writing here comes off as a bit overdramatic, I don’t care; the feeling I got when I realized this was incredibly dramatic, so it’s only appropriate. And if it sounds a bit broad, that’s because the realization itself was pretty broad but brutally simple, as most of the best revelations are: it’s a huge privilege to even be alive. It’s actually a goddamn miracle that any of us exist at all, no matter where we came from. And to have evolved as a species that took basic instincts to survive and reproduce and over thousands of years shaped them into art, society, culture, conflict, ethics, values and everything in between… How ridiculously and legitimately mind-blowing is that? Read the rest of this entry »

photo by Herry Lawford

Some of you may have noticed that I haven’t really done a whole lot musically in the past year or so since Shaimus broke up. This isn’t an accident.

I’ve been in bands since seventh grade, shortly after I started playing guitar. It became something of a mild addiction–there was barely a stretch of time from then until 2011 when I was not in at least one band. I loved it; it was a sense of belonging, a sense of purpose. It was a sense of identity. You know those people who can’t seem to handle being single, almost as if they’re afraid of what they’d learn about themselves if they weren’t in a relationship? That was me, except the relationships were with a handful of likeminded musicians.

But you run into trouble when you start tying your identity to something external. Luckily, I began sensing this before the demise of Shaimus and started addressing it to some extent in the final year of the band’s existence. Good thing, too–if I hadn’t, I’d have been in pretty bad shape when it all came crashing to a halt, which was hard enough to deal with as it was.

So I decided to step away from being a single-minded musician for a little while. I decided to stop associating my identity with being in a band. And while I continued to write and record music, I even decided to temporarily move away from identifying myself as a musician (to an extent). I began making an effort not to hang out with other musicians or in musician circles all the time. Now that I had the freedom to live a normal “civilian” life and didn’t have to be the proactive (and extremely busy) band member, I could rediscover who I really was. I needed to live life as just a person, no more, no less.

No longer was I tying my self-worth to what I could offer as a songwriter or guitarist, or to the success I could achieve in a band, or anything like that. I was making new friends who had never known me as “the guy in the band,” even if they did know that was a part of my past. I could just be a human being, with human-like things to offer such as friendship, support, a sense of humor and good company. No longer was I the relentless self-promoter. Read the rest of this entry »

photo by Exotic Car Life

That’s right, I said it. Success, as most of us define it, is total BS. Think about it: it’s a completely relative, absolutely arbitrary measure we create in our own minds to judge ourselves against. And when you set that bar high, you end up spending a good part of your life, or even your entire life, knocking your self-worth down a peg when you’re not reaching your own subjective and lofty standards. It actually doesn’t make any sense and is directly related to the innate problems of perfectionism that seem productive but are actually self-destructive. And that’s why it’s bullshit.

Look, it’s great to be ambitious. I am. But it’s so easy in our culture of things and money and “being cool” to have your ambitions misplaced. You set a goal to be the best at something, when realistically you’ll never be the best. You want to revolutionize without realizing that many of the greatest innovations weren’t made by people who specifically sat down intending to innovate. You want to record a classic album only to realize that doesn’t actually solve any of the problems of the world. You want to make a lot of money, then find that financial success doesn’t fill the voids in your life.

Or maybe you already consider yourself successful. But have you really thought about your accomplishments? Do you think the money you’ve made makes you in any way more successful as a person than someone who is poor? Do you think that app you invented actually matters? It’s a great thing to help some people out by making their lives a little more convenient, but nobody, in thousands of years of human existence, ever actually needed that app before, and no one needs it now. Is your status as a human being at all changed by your status in the social structure? Of course not. Read the rest of this entry »

“As things arise, you adapt, and let go of your plans and goals. You move with the flow of water, with the changing landscape. You are free to do this because you don’t care where you end up — you just want to be present in your journey, be compassionate with each step, have fun each moment along the way. The destination becomes irrelevant. No destination or goal matters if they are all good. Each step along the way, then, becomes the destination, and is exactly where you should be.” — Zen Habits

photo by gelinh

When my band broke up last year, I found myself in an uncomfortable but interesting place. I’d been in bands for almost my entire life starting shortly after I first picked up the guitar (six months after, to be exact). From that time in 1996 through 2011, the longest stretch of time when I wasn’t playing in at least one band was no longer than a few months. It’s always been something that felt right to me, being an important part of a small, tight-knit group of like-minded musicians creating new and exciting things. But here I was after a six and a half year run with Shaimus: bandless, lost and exhausted.

In so many ways it was like getting out of a six year relationship; just the thought of starting a new band was enough to make me feel worn out and frustrated. Along with this (and many other feelings) came a sense of melancholy freedom. I had been obligated to go to rehearsals or meetings on Monday nights, Wednesday nights and Saturday mornings for years. I couldn’t take a trip out of town without consulting five other people. It was a sacrifice I was more than willing to make and had no regrets about, but now I suddenly had a huge chunk of my personal life restored. Yet I was back to the beginning: we had not quite made it to the level in our career that would have opened doors that could ease the transition into my next musical project. It was either join a band that was already at that level or start from scratch.

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photo by CoffeeGeek

I have always been an admirer of great photographs, as I suspect most people are. Photography is one of those things that you don’t really think about until you try it and notice your shots aren’t nearly as interesting as the ones you see in magazines. For most of my life, I wasn’t particularly good at photography. To me, a great picture was a mystery, something with an intangible element that couldn’t be learned. One of the reasons I believed that was because I knew a few people who seemed like effortlessly great photographers. I could take a picture of the exact same subject matter, yet somehow their photo was vibrant and captivating while mine seemed flat and lifeless.

There is some truth to the mystery, I think. Like any artist, some people do have an innate talent that seems to make them naturally fluent in their medium. But I was wrong to think they were “good” and I was “bad.” I simply never bothered to try learning some of the basic techniques that can make an average picture significantly better. Pretty much all of the arts have two fundamental levels: the first is learning the general skills and tips that anyone can memorize and practice. In photography it would be things like how to frame shots effectively, learning about aperture and shutter speed, etc. In music it would be basic theory on chords, scales, intervals, etc. And then there’s the second level, which is where the intangibles kick in: taking competency to artistry, transcending the rules by discovering your own.

But this post isn’t meant to be a photography lesson. It’s about how, when I started learning a few simple photography tips, it actually helped change the way I looked at the world. It’s not quite as dramatic as it sounds, but as I got better at taking pictures, I started looking at everything, everywhere I went, as a potential photograph. I’ve always been an aesthetically driven person, and to some extent I’ve always viewed things that way. But having a little more confidence in my photography skills and having a camera (phone) on me at all times allowed me to start looking at things with a fresh perspective.

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photo by Nikita Gavrilovs

I’ll admit it: I’ve spent a good chunk of my life staring at the ground. Part of it may be the East Coast mentality that’s instilled in me–just walk with your head down, don’t make eye contact with anyone, keep to yourself and get where you need to go. Part of it is definitely my overactive thought process. I’m a person who enjoys spending a lot of time thinking about things, and while I take some pride in my inquisitive and wandering mind, it often directly contributes to some of my foibles: over-thinking, over-intellectualizing, and pulling myself out of the present. I suppose that’s a common dichotomy, our strengths and weaknesses inextricably linked. But once we become aware of the other side of the double-edged sword, we can be so much more well-equipped to overcome our own character flaws.

And so I know now that I have stared at the ground far too many times in my life. It wasn’t until recently that I realized it–that my tendency to become lost in my thoughts (though I don’t want that to sound like I’m always lost in deep thought, as many of my thoughts are decidedly shallow) causes me to affix my eyeballs to the sidewalk, most likely to make sure I don’t trip on some otherwise unforeseen obstacle as I pondered. The thing is, as I pace my small sliver of the world, watching scrolling concrete slabs below me, a lift of my head would have revealed so much that I was missing: trees, sky, landmarks, people. Beauty, ugliness, stillness and motion. Colors, sounds, smells… Experiences. Life going on all around me.

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photo by tim geers

On several occasions, people have asked me why I haven’t pursued a career in music criticism/journalism. It makes sense, obviously; I have professional training in music, experience in the industry, plus a decent grasp on and strong interest in music history. And as of several years ago, I’ve been discovering and slowly developing my abilities as a writer. So it’s been pretty tempting at times to turn the focus of this blog to the discussion of new artists, albums, performances, etc.

In fact, I have tried my hand a bit at music reviewing here in the past. Most of those posts have since been taken down along with many other early entries written at a time when I was still finding my voice as a blogger. But besides feeling a thematic incongruity with my other posts, I also decided that music journalism and criticism actually just isn’t for me, for two main reasons:

First, writing in abstract musical language always winds up sounding dumb to me, at least when I write it. Some reviewers are particularly gifted at describing music in words, but even the best ones sometimes unavoidably sound a bit forced or silly to my ear. In many ways it seems pointless to try and describe the conceptual and to intellectualize art, particularly when I’m almost never satisfied with my own narrative.

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As some of you know and many of you don’t, the band I was in for six and a half years is no more. The final Shaimus album, recorded in Seattle in 2011, is finally finished and available for purchase. The physical version is available in a limited edition, individually numbered run. These will be the ONLY physical copies of the album available, ever. Otherwise, you will be able to purchase from the usual places like iTunes (and possibly listen on Spotify at some point, I’m not actually sure about that).

You can hear a sample and buy the album here.

I want to express my sincerest thanks to everyone who supported us over the years. It was a hell of a ride, but now it’s time for me to do new and better things of my own. Much more to come right here on this site. I am looking forward to whatever is to come.

A few years ago, I wrote a post comparing the Internet to the gyrating hips of Elvis Presley. Go ahead and read it — it has to do with how the web has impacted music in the sense of its community rather than the typical discussion about record sales. The ‘net promotes individuality and anarchy among artists, and I love it. With the age of the bedroom record producer who never even has to play a live show if he doesn’t want to, it’s become an indispensable tool in the camaraderie between musicians and fans.

photo by Andreas Blixt

Not long ago I felt incredibly frustrated as a music fan. The web was giving me the chance to hear tons of new music that I never would have been exposed to before, but there were some real obstacles to overcome. First, while it was great that anyone could get original music to instant international distribution, it was (and still is, and always will be) hard to sift through the crap. Reading a hundred blogs and checking the charts to try and find good new stuff to listen to was cumbersome at best. Most music sites would only allow me to sample a tiny clip of one or two songs, and I’d be forced to seek out a band’s dreaded Myspace page (which I still have to do sometimes, incidentally, and it makes me want to throw a brick through a window) to listen to at most four full tracks. Too many sources, too few ways to listen, not enough actual material to hear and judge if it was right for me, no easy way to keep track of it all. I was pulling my hair out.

As technology progressed, things started moving in the right direction. I’d read sites like Hypebot to learn about new music technology and Billboard to hear about new artists, but too much of the content seemed to preach the doom and gloom of a dying industry. I liked a site called Lala.com — and then it got shut down. Then I used Grooveshark — pretty cool, but it was hard to find and organize the music you wanted, there was some mislabeling, and the legality seemed super sketchy. (Side note: I found Shaimus music on Grooveshark. When I emailed them about how we might see income from this, since their site clearly stated that they compensated indie artists, my query was met with the decidedly loud chirping of crickets.)

A quick footnote on legality: I admit that over a certain time I did my fair share of downloading mp3s from peer-to-peer sites. In the interest of exonerating myself from hypocrisy, I have always said that while I’d prefer people bought my music, it was better for them to download it illegally and enjoy listening to it than not have it at all. But I could never assume all artists would share my mindset, so I never felt good about my downloading no matter how rich or famous the musician might have been.

So now I come down to what I genuinely consider the best thing that’s happened to music fans since at least the invention of the mp3, if not the CD: Spotify. Here’s my take on it as both an artist and a listener.

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For many years, I have had a minor obsession with all things outer space: astrophysics, the night sky, stars, planets, nebulas, constellations, solar systems, galaxies, you name it. I am captivated by the science of astronomy and pictures of celestial bodies. They are, without a doubt, the most epic images ever captured by man. But while many of my friends probably already know of my extraterrestrial interests, they might not know exactly why I am so drawn to it… Why I savor every chance to gaze upon its grandeur and find no term too dramatic to describe it.

Well, here is why: besides being strikingly beautiful, they give me comfort by reminding me that we are but an insignificant speck in a vast, unfathomable universe. To say that feeling inconsequential is comforting might seem a bit counterintuitive, but that sort of contradiction is exactly how life feels to me.

For one thing, it means that our trivial little problems here don’t actually mean much in the grand scheme. That’s comforting. It also implies that with billions of galaxies out there, we very likely are not completely alone. We’ll probably never talk to any other intelligent life forms (at least not in our lifetimes), but that’s still comforting.

The little teeny specks of light in the night sky are like each of us. It’s true that one little bitty star or distant speck of a galaxy doesn’t make much of a difference to you or me on a daily basis. If one of them disappeared, we probably wouldn’t notice. We’d go about our business as usual, and it wouldn’t seem like the sky had changed much at all. And yet, if a speck disappeared, the sky simply wouldn’t be the same. It may not change the life of a chef in Idaho or a doctor in Malaysia, but it would be different (and it would make a massive difference to the little specks close to it). And the more specks that disappeared from our sky, the more noticeable it would be. The only way for the night sky to be a true window into the universe is if every little speck of light is there, doing its part to illuminate it. In that way, it’s very much like all of us little teeny specks running around on the Earth, and that’s comforting.

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