“Art is not a thing; it is a way.” –Elbert Hubbard

Usually when I talk to people about my pursuit of a career in music, I stress that I’ve never really felt as though I was pursuing a dream so much as fulfilling a basic need. Music is something that’s always been there and, much like eating and sleeping, will always be around just begging for my attention every day. I hesitate to use terms as dramatic as “life force” when describing it, but despite the lameness, it is pretty accurate when describing creative and artistic pursuits in my life. I thrive on creating and otherwise being involved in artistic endeavors, whether it be music, drawing (I spent the better part of my youth obsessively drawing cartoons), or writing. Even humor is a creative aspect of my personality that is stubbornly embedded into my being. Art isn’t something that I do, it’s something that I am–it happens naturally and necessarily.

Most artistic types will stress that they simply have a need to express themselves. Actually, just about everybody seems to need a venue for self-expression, artistic or otherwise. Although I essentially agreed with the self-expression goal behind art, for quite a long time I wondered why something like that would be so important. I don’t feel like I have a whole lot of important stuff to say, so why feel the need to express myself?

But I’ve learned that self-expression isn’t so much about yourself as it is about others. It’s a means of connecting and sharing with people. So many of the most important moments of our lives are those that we share with someone–could be a feeling, a memory, a learning experience, etc. It’s true, particularly for more introverted people such as myself, that much personal development occurs from self-discovery, shaping our values, viewpoints and perspectives on our own. But self expression is a means for us to share what’s been internalized. When we have ideas, learn and experience, the energy we feel from that helps us grow as people but is near impossible to keep to ourselves. We end up needing to pass on what we’ve learned, what we’ve felt, what we’ve internalized and made a part of ourselves through some medium.

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As it turns out, actual baby seal clubbing involves far less techno music than I initially imagined.

I decided to start sharing some of my cartoons on this site, as I’ve been a bit out of the drawing game lately and needed a little inspiration to start up again. Most of them will just be semi-regular sketches from my Moleskine notebook, so I’ll be calling this my Moleskine Cartoon Series. [Note: I now do most of my cartoons on my computer and post them to my webcomic, so this series doesn't really exist anymore.] I hope this is the beginning of a long and mildly humorous journey.

I kick off the series with a cartoon inspired by a recent Shaimus road trip in which our van tire blew out in the left lane of the freeway just south of Seattle, nearly killing us.

“I’m obsessed with winning, with discipline, with achieving. That’s what this country’s all about, that’s what New York’s all about — fighting for everything.”

That’s a quote from George Steinbrenner that I saw in an obituary on Sports Illustrated’s website today.  It seemed to sum up his general attitude toward life, but it also related to the overall tone of the article: over the course of three pages, there were only three fleeting moments where anything remotely warm and fuzzy was said about Steinbrenner.  Two of those moments only had to do with his money and were sandwiched between less flattering descriptions:

“Steinbrenner would harass an employee to no end, humiliating and abusing them at his whim. Then he’d send their kids through college or hire them back with a bonus.”

“Steinbrenner was often the most-hated man in sports, a fitting title that he wore well. He was combative, belligerent, charitable and ruthless.”

Wait, did you catch the word “charitable” in that last quote?  How nice.

I am going to die someday.  So are you.  Some people might find that statement morbid, but it’s just a simple truth.  As many before me have already noted, it’s one of the few things we know for sure in our lives.  It’s actually surprising to me how many people get scared away from the topic of death when it’s so closely intertwined and inseparable from life.  If all goes well, I won’t die any time soon.  But if I kicked the bucket tomorrow, what would my obituary say?

Steinbrenner was an incredibly successful man.  He had more money than I will probably ever dream of.  He owned one of the most storied franchises in all of sports and played a big hand in restoring them to legendary status.  He was driven, ambitious, and (in his own words) “obsessed with winning.”  But the very attitude he cherished in himself meant he was remembered (by some) as a tyrant.

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The Buddhist concept of emptiness is one that is often misinterpreted by Westerners (much like karma, which has little to do with most people’s idea of a cosmic force of justice). Emptiness doesn’t mean that objects in the material world don’t exist, but rather that objects don’t contain inherent existence in and of themselves, independent of other phenomena. For example, a wooden table certainly exists, but it isn’t a table by its own virtue; it is made of four posts and a board, and even as these pieces are combined to create a table, it still is only a table because we have designated it so in our minds. Therefore, the table itself has emptiness, and lacks inherent existence.

This simplified version from a non-expert notwithstanding, the example serves to prove a very simple point about our lives. Things aren’t the way they are because they inherently exist as so, but because we assign our own thoughts, prejudices, biases and experiences to them. Materially, for example, the same object could be a table to me, but a bed to someone else. The same goes for things in our day to day lives that we assign as “good” or “bad.” One man’s trash, as they say, is another man’s treasure.

The upshot of all this is an empowering conclusion: by assigning our own mental biases to our surroundings on an everyday basis, we are literally creating our own world around us. Which means, with a little mental muscle flexing, we can also change anything in our lives simply by adjusting our mindset.

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Not too long ago, I was reading a book called The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. Written by Oliver Sacks (a professor of neurology and psychiatry who also wrote about the effect of music on the human brain in a book called Musicophilia), the book is a collection of accounts of patients suffering from various right-hemisphere brain disorders that the author came across during his many years of psychiatric work.

I found most of the short stories fascinating, and a few of them terrifying. One chapter told the tale of an older woman who had songs “playing” uncontrollably in her head all the time. The titular story described a man who, although he could see just fine, had a condition where his brain couldn’t take multiple visual cues and combine them into concepts; he could see a nose, eyes and a mouth, but he couldn’t comprehend what a face was, and could only recognize people’s identities after he heard them speak.

One of the more frightening stories was about a woman who spontaneously lost her sense of proprioception, which basically meant she no longer felt as though her own body was an extension of herself. Formerly a very athletic person, the patient could now only walk if she was looking at her own feet, could only use her hands if she had them in her visual field. A frightening prospect, even if it’s unlikely to happen to any of the rest of us.

But the scariest of all was the story of a man who suffered from amnesia to the extent that he hadn’t formed new memories in decades. Much like the movie Memento, you could have a conversation with him, leave the room for ten minutes, and then return only to find that he had no recollection of meeting you before.

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No, I did not record a cover of the Rolling Stones song “Under My Thumb.”  Swap in a “the” for the “my” and you have the title of my newest song, “Under the Thumb.”  You’ll notice the two compositions have no resemblance beyond a couple words in the title.

Please take a gander at the Music page to listen to the new tune.  And while you’re listening, you can catch up on some of my monthly blog posts that you haven’t read in a while.  Or re-read all the ones that you loved, which has probably been most of them.

If for some stupid reason the audio on the Music page isn’t working, kindly let me know and then head over to my Facebook or MySpace page, both of which also have the song.

Enjoy.

To follow your dreams, you’ll probably have to make sacrifices. It’s generally inevitable. Ideally, you’ll recognize when you’re making sacrifices, and you’ll choose to make smart ones. I’d imagine, for example, that sacrificing some free time to work overtime hours to pay off a student loan is probably a reasonable decision one might make, whereas sacrificing spending time with your family so that you can become a Wall Street millionaire may prove unfulfilling in the long run.  (Although maybe not.  I’m not a millionaire, so I can only speculate.)

I’ve certainly made some sacrifices in my life. I chose to forego the typical college experience, for example (you’ll have to trust me when I say that attending a small school consisting mostly of male students and entirely of musicians wasn’t the normal college situation). I’ve also been forfeiting financial stability, large chunks of time and freedom that are devoted to being in a band, and potentially the ability to maintain certain relationships due to touring, music commitments, etc.

But if you’re making sacrifices in the name of pursuing the life you love, they shouldn’t really feel like sacrifices. You can recognize the trade-offs being made, but it should also be easily recognized that you’ve made these choices because they result in the least amount of sacrifice in your life in the long run. While a sacrifice can cause a temporary strain on your life, it should be noted that they represent something that, if you had chosen to keep it, would mean the loss of some essential part of your current path.

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When I used to read stories of the glory years of rock ‘n’ roll, I couldn’t help but lament the lack of a “scene” there seems to be these days. When Eric Clapton would come tour America, he’d hang out with Hendrix in New York City, where they’d roam around with their guitars strapped to their backs and pop into smokey clubs just to jam with whoever happened to be around. Back in England, the bars he frequented were populated by the likes of Pete Townshend and Mick Jagger well before any of them were household names. When Motley Crue played at the Whiskey A Go Go in the early ’80s, the Sunset Strip was a community party. The whole LA music scene seemed like a big leather pants-wearing, blow-snorting family.

This isn’t to say I wish that Shaimus shows were knee-deep in cocaine. I don’t. (I don’t want leather pants, either.) But the fact is, I have long felt that there has been a lack of fellowship among bands lately. The days of bands that stuck it out together in their town, offering support and companionship as they all worked toward that common goal of musical euphoria have seemingly begun dying out as technology has slowly moved the majority of band members’ time from the streets and into cyberspace. It’s not that there is no fellowship at all, but there is a lot less of it–we’ve noticed this as we try to build relationships with like-minded, talented bands that will stick this brutal industry out with us.

As I mentioned, part of this lack of conviviality is due to the Internet. Whoring yourself out on the web is a prerequisite for any band’s success these days (ourselves included), and while it can be great to reach so many more fans that you never could before, it can be so easy to get lost in the mix. It’s not hard to drown in a sea of faceless bands with MySpace pages.

But as I sat around complaining about something I couldn’t change, I soon realized something: this vast, uncontrollable deluge of musicians doing whatever they feel like–this complete and utter worldwide anarchy that has been unfolding before our very eyes–is the very essence of rock ‘n’ roll in modern times.

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Life is generally pretty imperfect. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t strive for perfection, of course. It just means that we should probably carefully adjust our expectations. That might come off as a bit cynical, but it’s not meant to be. Let me explain.

I heard Shaun White being interviewed on the radio one morning. He was talking about how he won an Olympic gold medal after an incredible performance on the snowboard half-pipe, got interviewed by Oprah, learned that he would be on the cover of Rolling Stone for the second time, found himself flying to Italy and sitting front row in a major fashion show, and heard President Obama mention him in a speech to the nation.

And this was all within one recent week of his life.

Pretty amazing. Stories about people living life beyond our wildest dreams no doubt makes many of us picture what our “perfect life” would entail. Of course, Shaun White’s life isn’t really perfect, and he deals with his share of bullshit just like rest of us. But that’s not my point.

The point is, there’s a 99% chance that your life isn’t going to turn out even remotely similar to Shaun White’s. There’s also a pretty good chance it’s probably not going to turn out quite like the plan in your head. You’ll probably (and hopefully) achieve many of your personal goals, and many other dreams will remain just that: a fantasy. That’s not to say that we shouldn’t be setting the bar high for ourselves, of course. If you’re a snowboarding or skateboarding enthusiast, striving to be the next Shaun White is a great goal to have. Shoot for the stars and get the moon, as they say. But being bitterly disappointed if your life doesn’t mirror his astronomical success is not the path to happiness.

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