At the Crossroads of Fundamentalism and Humanism:
Recalling Bernie Sanders's Visit to Liberty University
Recalling Bernie Sanders's Visit to Liberty University
Liberty University students, among others, enter The Vines Center in Lynchburg, Virginia, on September 14, 2015 to hear US Senator Bernie Sanders speak.
“It may be that the human race is not ready for freedom.
The air of Liberty may be too rarefied for us to breathe.”Steven Pressfield, The War of Art
A news reporter gets ready to speak into the camera with the swelling in the background.
The scene at Liberty University on September 14, 2015, was a familiar one, as was the creeping feeling of overwhelming inauthenticity, likely stemming from the fact that 10 years ago I sat in those same seats three times per week attending what the university ardently claims is not a worship service, listening to people preach and sing about God. Every so often a political speaker would come through, but one could (so to speak) lower the volume on what was being said and not miss a thing. It was always the same.
That same feeling persisted while I worked as a copywriter and editor for the school’s propaganda department in 2010. It only alleviated itself once I finally left the position (and my seat in my graduate English classes 18 months later), and stepped away from 25 years of living within the Evangelical Christian community.
On this particular morning, I let the feeling pass over me while Liberty University Senior Vice President for Spiritual Development David Nasser prayed into the microphone, to be heard by millions:
“I pray that today, Father, that you would teach us, God, that you would use our guest today to help us know not just what to think but how to think.”
Before the guest, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, could rise to the podium, Nasser delivered an enthusiastic update on how a student in financial need was given $7,000 in excess of what was required for her to stay in school. She in turn decided to give the surplus to other students in need.
Another report: Students, thousands more than were expected, showed interest in a new outreach campaign to the point that the website kept crashing.
“It is by far the largest single response we’ve had like that as a student body,” Nasser said, “and I think it just goes to show that nobody is a greater servant than a Liberty University student.” It was the first of two wildly hyperbolic sentiments Nasser would utter — well aligned with my overall LU experience.
As if to serve as a reminder to those in attendance and viewing around the world of the particular socio-intellectual climate they were entering into, the praise band performed “This I Believe (The Creed).” Rather than an artful expression of worship of an all-powerful, all-encompassing deity, the song is a listing of the basic tenets of Christianity set to the emotionally saccharine soundscapes usually found during the tender moments of a summer romance flick — built by major and minor chords carefully tied to the heartstrings they're intend to pull.
Liberty University praise band performs “This I Believe (The Creed).”
Following the incantation, Nasser returned to the microphone to introduce Liberty University President Jerry Falwell, son of Liberty’s founder, the late Jerry Falwell Sr. — a man infamous for blending political consciousness with evangelical conservatism (among other controversies).
“Nobody loves you more, Liberty students, than our president,” Nasser said of the extant Falwell. “No one cares about you, wants the best for you and wants to see you be world-class leaders more than our president.”
Nasser said that students reciprocate that love, and as an illustration explained that the guttural bellow of “JE-RRYYYY” the students would initiate upon his approach to the podium, was a sign of a support, rather than a cacophonous jeer.
This cheerleading rigamarole, the endless qualifying and over-stressing of statements is identical to the form and feel that I experienced as a student and employee. It always seemed intended to ensure that the perception of Liberty, its students, and its administrators is not left up to chance.
Even Falwell’s gifting of a personalized football jersey to Sanders felt nearly ritualistic; I have witnessed many guest speakers receive memorabilia or honorary degrees over the years and it carried the feeling for me of Liberty trying to “mark” someone for the university’s own edification.
After Liberty had sufficient opportunity to position their cultural niceties and carefully construct their whitewashed house of cards, Sanders began his speech by cutting straight to the quick
“Nobody loves you more, Liberty students, than our president. No one cares about you, wants the best for you and wants to see you be world-class leaders more than our president.”
“[L]et me start off by acknowledging what I think all of you already know. And that is the views that many here at Liberty University have and I [have], on a number of important issues, are very, very different.”
A fair amount cheered in support of those beliefs: gender equality, the right for a woman to control her own body, LGBTQIA+ rights, and gay marriage. Some of the voices belonged to students. As it was during my time as a student, many on campus are not as conservative as the administration’s statements to the press imply.
Liberty University Senior Vice President for Spiritual Development David Nasser addresses the audience. Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr. and US Senator Bernie Sanders sit in the background.
“But I came here today,” Sanders said, “because I believe from the bottom of my heart that it is vitally important for those of us who hold different views to be able to engage in a civil discourse.”
In case you missed it, you can watch and read that discourse in entirety here. I won’t analyze or recount much of what he said in this piece, as that has been done in dozens of other places in the days since he came to speak.
What’s most interesting to me about this event is the interaction between these two forces: Evangelical conservatism and self-spun socialism. A clean Protestant comb-over and the wily white wisps of an irreligious Jew. My past haunts and my present leanings. The fundamentalist and the humanist.
In the evening after the engagement, my co-parent was at a local bookstore preparing for the next day of her teaching job, and I asked her pick me up a copy of Steven Pressfield’s creative manifesto, The War of Art. One section of the book, called “Resistance and Fundamentalism” does an excellent job comparing these forces.
“The artist and the fundamentalist both confront the same issue,” Pressfield writes, “the mystery of their existence as individuals. Each asks the same questions: Who am I? Why am I here? What is the meaning of life?”
So, there is common ground here. Sanders positions that commonality with a different, yet related, question: “What does it mean to live a moral life?” How does one govern morally?
“The difference is that while one looks forward, hoping to create a better world, the other looks backward, seeking to return to a purer world from which he and all have fallen.”
Steven Pressfield
The War of Art
That common ground falls away, however, at the precise moment each party seeks their reply. The fundamentalist, says Pressfield (an authority on ancient Greek civilization, the author of The Legend of Bagger Vance, and a self-described Christian), attempts to find an answer in sacred texts written thousands of years ago, in the context of a society far removed from our own, and attempts to apply those old responses to today’s complex cultural landscape.
“The difference is that while one looks forward, hoping to create a better world, the other looks backward, seeking to return to a purer world from which he and all have fallen,” Pressfield says.
The artist (or humanist — the author uses the two terms interchangeably in this section) seeks to find that answer in the here and now:
“The humanist believes that humankind, as individuals, is called upon to co-create the world with God. This is why he values human life so highly. In his view, things do progress, life does evolve; each individual has value, at least potentially, in advancing the cause.”
The latter approach, is a far greater challenge, but is more in line with the demands of a global society that faces ever-the-more complicated trials and questions.
Reducing the presidential election to two issues (gay marriage and abortion), then, as Christian fundamentalists have stereotypically done, is far more understandable given Pressfield’s distinctions. It’s just so much easier. It requires less thinking and deliberating. There's effort and uncertainty involved.
The fundamentalist doesn’t have to weigh the pros and cons of carrying a fetus to full term when it’s diagnosed with skeletal dysplasia. The fundamentalist doesn’t have to dive into the alleged moral ambiguity of a person who has felt like a stranger in their own body, only to feel whole through modern science’s ability to allow her to affirm the gender she (or he or they) has identified with all along. To the fundamentalist, the answer is clear. The baby will be born (and, in some cases, summarily die). A man is a man and a woman is a woman. Thinking anything outside of that makes you wrong: a murderer, a freak, a pervert, a sinner — lost.
The fundamentalists can sit quietly in their seats, letting their thoughts drift to a homework assignment or their eyes to smartphone screens during the speech and Q&A, while Sanders postures that the United States is not a just nation. But those same individuals can jump into raucous applause when the campus spiritual leader offers a cute rebuttal about inequality: “It’s not a skin issue, but a sin issue.” (Note: A clever turn-of-phrase does not an absolute truth make.)
But there is hope. I spoke with a Liberty University resident assistant who said she cheered for the right for a woman to have control over her own body (although a guy from behind offered her a consequential “fuck you”).
I spoke with a few others who said that you no longer get reprimanded, fined and expelled for being gay at LU, as you would have in the past. And for further sense being made, I encourage you to hear the words of an evangelical pastor (and fellow alumnus) who equated Sander’s plea at Liberty to John the Baptist decrying the Pharisees.
What I’m getting at is that hope is out there, however rarefied. And I think it’s the duty of those who see it to keep that candle burning, if not tip it to the person sitting next to you to light another, and another, letting the wax spill over your hands and Levi’s.
Even though I may seem somewhat positioned against Liberty and its administrative body (arguably with good reason), my frustration really comes from a place where I know people can be better or, rather, must be better if we are going to keep this beautiful thing called human life spinning for another few thousand years or so.
My preference is to not be ashamed of the fact that my undergraduate degree is from Liberty University, a place not exactly synonymous with intellectual integrity and compassion for those who are different.
My preference, as it was on that day, is for positive change to take me by surprise.
At Liberty, the cultural climate seems to have improved from the time my supervisors tasked me with editing less-than-favorable information from the school’s Wikipedia page (I declined), but there’s a long way yet to go. I hope to be able, as I was on that day, to take an electric blue and pink polka dot bicycle ride across town (like a one-person queer pride parade) to witness it happening.
Once the service was over, I ran into a couple of friends who are currently enrolled. Their energy at hearing Sanders speak was electric, encouraged and invigorated. They told me to follow them around back of the building so we could possibly meet him.
And so I did.
He graciously exited the SUV when he saw us, and said he had enough time to take a few photos. When it came my turn to say hi, I handed my DSLR to a friend and told him how to shoot (but neglected to give instructions on the focus, as you can see below).
I had never met a U.S. senator before, much less a presidential hopeful, and so I was grateful for the opportunity and wanted to say something meaningful. What I wanted to tell him was that in my 12 years of voter eligibility, I’d always cast my ballot in favor for who seemed like the lesser of the two evils. This election could be different. There’s a candidate who I believe actually represents me and the America I was raised to believe could be possible.
OOPS: Forgot to tell my friend how to focus my DSLR for this shot of US Senator Bernie Sanders and myself.
But I couldn’t get any of that out. Instead, I shook his hand, smiled for the camera and said, “Thanks for not being full of shit.”
He laughed, and looked into the camera. I’m pretty sure he knew what I meant.
Thoughts? Questions? Frustrations? Let’s talk about it (below).
Spontaneous Prose (7 minutes)
Spontaneous Prose (7 minutes)
I’m favoring the sounds
of “F” this morning,
because FUCK this.
Feverous in my fecund mind,
my heart following the form.
Were it different — I wish —
I suppose what I grieve would not
be lost. But it is, for now.
Maybe it must.
I scour the insides of my skull
with a hot spoon, culling the meat
from the bone, searching for favor
but finding none — internally regarding
my externalities as pretentious
and sanctimonious.
But maybe it’s me?
Does god know? Does the some-
or everything we call “god”
even have some faculty of knowing
that in any way resembles what we endure?
Or does god simply exist and experience and change?
Octavia Butler says that “God is Change.”
Is my raucous resistance to this relational revolution
an indication of separation from my own
true divinity, that which i displace
with my thoughts and run-amok emotions?
We’ll see.
—————
February 7, 2020
Florida Earthskills Gathering
The Power of Poetry workshop
w/ Eric Lewis & Olivia Verhoye
Feel'd Notes: A Fitting Diagnosis
I’ve had a strained relationship with mental health for as far back as I can remember. It wasn’t until after my 30th birthday, however, that I encountered a fitting diagnosis — ADHD. Before my clinician laid it out for me at the time, my belief was that I had bipolar II. I’d previously met with a psychiatrist in 2010 at the encouragement of a friend who went to the same guy and received Adderall. I tried one of her pills and it made me feel productive and “normal,” so I went in seeing if I would get my own.
I later learned that mental health diagnosis is more effective when ones symptoms are being taken into account from a period not as heavily influenced by alcohol as mine had been. My propensity for late nights, barely sleeping, impulsivity, intermittent hyperfocus, distractibility, and mood swings were all attributed to the wiring of my brain, rather than the substance used to douse its natural faculties. The psychiatrist gave me a medication initially developed for epilepsy, one said to be effective for bipolar but required the user to wean on off the recommended dosage. Pretty sure death was one of the potential symptoms of taking (or discarding) a “effective” amount right away.
As you could imagine, I didn’t feel comfortable consuming that drug for a variety of reasons, and stopped dosing before I even hit the second tier up the potency scale. It was during this time that I began writing songs again after a near 4-year hiatus wherein I dealt with a guitar-related growth in my wrist. My drinking (and mood swings) continued for three more years, until I traded in my addiction to alcohol for filmmaking and yoga.
It wasn’t until another 2 and a half years that I found my way into another clinician’s office — the one who identified me as having the “classic,” indrawn sort of ADHD that is not as easy to spot as the outwardly hyperactive variety. While I had accepted the bipolar labeling with a grim badge of cool, learning about ADHD from my counselor (and an amazing book he recommended called Driven to Distraction) led to a flood of self-identification and … relief.
Reading strangers’ accounts that sounded like they were grafted from my own experience and into the book provided both pain and hope. Ahhhh, so THIS is that thing that I’ve always known but could not speak to, draw lines about, and know how to address. That invisible force, identical to my frame and mirroring my movements, finally had a shape, a name, and a host of effective remedies. I’d stumbled my way into typical self-medication techniques, but the confirmation of the more lasting treatments I’d already discovered on my own combined with a litany of other methods provided a greater plan toward self-mastery … or even just for surviving.
The funny thing about ADHD treatments, though, is they are often synonymous with activities one would do when living with greater diligence. Daily exercise. Keeping a schedule. Early nights and mornings. Meditation. Develop a skill. Sometimes my mind is so untethered that implementing the activities that harness it is a daunting prospect. I often fail. I beat myself up for it. I get worked up and stressed out until I reach a point where I have no other avenue but to write or sit in nature or stretch as many muscles in my body as I can find.
In the wake of such experiences, I feel rejuvenated and rested — even if I just broke a sweat. I reflect on those trails and wish I could have remembered that the stress never helps, and its never as bleak as my panic and depression lead me to believe by clouding my experience. I’m so grateful for those moments (or seasons), and am learning to be patient with myself when my mind grows dissonant. Because I know that I’ve not always felt this way and won’t always feel this way — that no matter how hard it gets, it always gets better.
Shoutout to my partner @veganastronaut, our counselor, and anyone else who rides these waves with me.
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Feel'd Notes: Self-Doubt
Thank you so much for taking your time to send so many kind responses. The feedback shouldn’t be what galvanizes me entirely, but it certainly helps fuel my diligence in this endeavor of frequent expression. To add clarity to my recent barrage of transparency, I want to address some of the comments the previous posts have garnered.
A few people have asked me if I have a book coming out, or why I’ve not been published. Those same questions have plagued me for some 12 years now. Not trying to pull a Muhammad Ali here by declaring myself as “the greatest,” but if I’m being honest, I do have a sneaking suspicion that I do have within me (or at least through me) access to a certain level of creative ability that COULD amount to more than just admiration for my literary (and musical) heroes, but more so a strange kinship.
In other words, I’m scared shitless at the prospect that I MIGHT BE ONE OF THEM.
What if I fuck it up? What if I’m deluding myself? To borrow a phrase from Frank Herbert’s Dune chronicles, I do feel a sense of “terrible purpose” regarding my nature as an expressive human. Not so much that I feel like I have any sort heightened ability, but rather that I’ve grown to recognize that we ALL are uniquely gifted in tremendous ways that are acutely needed during the time of our individual lifespans. We need only to permit ourselves to submit to that purpose, effectively making ourselves a conduit for what transcends the individual self and benefits the ALL.
And so to circle back to the question: Why am I not published? Well, I am. A poem here. A personal essay there. A short story in a college literary magazine (ages ago). I’ve been paid as a freelance journalists for some local publications in the past. Sometimes I’m contracted to write web content for a variety of purposes. I’ve written and co-written screenplays. Not nearly as much as I’d like, mind you, but it’s happened.
I think the spirit of the inquiry, more specifically, is: Why am I not self-sustaining as a creative writer? Why have I not published any BOOKS? Well, honestly, it’s because I’m terrified that I’m not good enough. I’m terrified that what I have to say is banal or (worse yet) self-indulgent. I wonder if anyone will care or connect with what I have to say and share. Ultimately, I’m worried that everyone will reject ME.
Oh, the wily ways of self-doubt.
As much as I can project those fears on to you, dear reader, the truth is that I am rejecting myself. I’ve been running away from my true self for 12 years. I sometimes meter who I am because I think it won’t be accepted, perhaps because I tend to view myself as unacceptable. I could blame my conservative Baptist upbringing, but at some point this is all an effort in self-repression, a reticence to open my heart and lungs and mouth and just BREATHE.
I no longer wish to run and hide. I want to unfurl. Because if I go through much more of this existence without speaking the thoughts and experiences I’ve accumulated, then it feels like I will have lived a “near life experience” (as my friend @gull_face would call it), which would be a tragedy. Not just for me, but a tragedy should anyone not live and live fully, to not step into the space to be the unique embodiment of consciousness that we each are.
In February I published a confessional called “Sleeping at the Wheel of My Life’s Purpose.” In many ways, it has continued to be a daily battle to plant my hands at 10 and 2, instead of allowing myself to take a cruise-controlled careen into the abyss of unconscious patterns.
Some things inside me have shaken loose of late, and I really hope these habits persist. So, again, thank you for the encouragement and feedback. It means a lot. Like @devendrabanhart said in a live session called “live @ quiet please!” — some people are strong enough to make a go of this life’s journey on their own, but me, I need help.
Thanks for being there. Thanks for listening. And if there’s something you feel like you need to share or say or be that you’ve been avoiding, I encourage you to let it out. No amount of inner turmoil is worth constipating your soul.
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Feel'd Notes: Opening Up
When I met this being, it was only a mere few weeks after I realized that continuing to hold space for my marriage to come back together (despite how many times my co-parent implored me to move on and realize that it’s over) was actually an effort of not listening. Ultimately, it was unkind to continue to hold that hope, if that makes sense.
When I finally began to rest into a place of acceptance, I was driving back from witnessing two of my friends get married in Richmond (I was living in Lynchburg at the time). @420chocolatejuice was part of the wedding band, and rode back with me in my 1993 Volvo wagon. He and I became close during some of the most trying points of the separation, and it was easy to open up to such a willing and compassionate ear. He asked how I was doing, and I said I was doing well, and simply acquiescing to the reality that as a non-Christian, non-drinker that lives in Lynchburg, the chances of me finding a partner on a similar wavelength were essentially nil.
Judah wasn’t so certain. He encouraged me to be open to possibilities in unconventional places. Then he gasped. “Oh my gosh. You HAVE to meet my friend @veganastronaut. I think she’s dating someone who lives states away, but if nothing else I think you’d make great friends.”
Friends I was good with. After being with someone for 12 years, someone I was (and in many ways am) still in love with, dating was by no means of any interest to me. Just a week before that conversation, on what would have been our 10-year wedding anniversary, I was at a @sufjan5000 concert. A friend of ours we met in Argentina gave me two free tickets for the show. Sufjan is one of the few artists my co-parent and I ever mutually enjoyed. After not finding someone to join me for the show, I went alone, and wound up finding someone at the gate who could use my extra ticket. I wore an outfit that was much more representational of how I was feeling as a person. I stood out, I know, but I felt like me.
Out of curiosity (and for the first time in my life), I downloaded Tinder and Bumble. I swiped through, made a couple matches, and immediately deleted my accounts.
Even though I didn’t so much as talk to anyone on those apps, it still felt good to accept the fact that July 22 is now just any other day and that I am an autonomous being with the ability to connect with others in whatever capacity I desired. At that point I really just wanted to connect with myself.
I went home after dropping Judah off and looked up the person he mentioned I’d get along with. The strange thing is that I knew this person, but didn’t know her. I’d seen her at a music festival my friends put on two years prior. She was climbing up a tree that I was sitting beneath with my co-parent and our three kids. I remember noticing this free-spirited person and admiring how much fun they were having.
While it was somewhat synchronistic that the person Judah recommended I meet was this same creature I saw that day two years ago, it was surreal to discover that she was the same person I had seen at the same festival the next year. And the same person I saw the year after that at the same concerts and gallery showings I attended. It was weird because in each of those instances, she looked like an entirely different person. I didn’t know her, but I knew her, somehow. Like she was this beacon of energy that called to me, yet I felt too timid to meet. To discover that these seemingly three different individuals that I had noticed over the course of two years were actually all one person, however undergoing progressive transformations, struck me in a bewildering way.
That next weekend, I went to see Judah play bass in one of my favorite musical projects to date, alongside bandmates @jlloydharmon and @silentbetti. I had just moved into a new place with my kids, and wanted to celebrate the milestone by experiencing some local culture. I went to the venue — a vape shop — fully intending to leave if people were blowing plumes of the grotesque nicotine substance into the air my children were breathing. Not only was that not the case, but instead the lady in question was there smudging sage and dancing around. Her bright, gregarious nature intimidated me. I knew I could not keep up that speed. I kept my distance but I noticed her smiling at my kids at one point, which made me happy. Again, I wasn’t in a dating mindset at the time (and really I never am … I make close friends and sometimes those close friends become lovers or partners), but figured if there were to be some interest, any person I might see romantically would have to accept the entirety of me — minions and all.
I left that night without speaking to her, but not being able to help but be aware of her every movement. My kids said they were having fun (my oldest was being far more outgoing than me and made friends with people who later became MY friends), but it was time to get them to sleep. I drove off blasting the music from a somewhat obscure music project that included Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood called Junun, wondering if she would hear it and turn her head.
Later that week, my friend Jeremiah (who fronted the aforementioned band) posted about discovering that very project. I commented on his post, saying I’d been listening to it since that February. Oddly enough, she posted on it to, and had been enjoying it for a year. I mentioned that there was a documentary out on it, and that I was dying to know what the songs meant in English. She said she had the CD insert and would loan it to me. We all made plans to get together a few days later to watch the documentary.
In the meantime, Judah invited both she and I to his place for a vegan lunch that took place hours before the documentary screening. I arrived a few minutes past the agreed time, knowing that there’s no way I’d be able to match her energy. I was just coming out of a place of crisis. Just then allowing myself to enjoy social settings again.
When she arrived, it was clear she had just been crying. Or WAS crying. I felt a sudden sense of relief and concern. She and her partner of several years were breaking up right then and there. She recited poetry to help calm her nerves, and read a Frida Kahlo letter about being single. I was enraptured by her eloquence and literary recall. She mentioned that she’d spent 15 percent of her life with this person, and was reeling. I replied, “Try nearly 50 percent.” She must have understood what I meant, and gave me a big hug. She was leaving for work. She pulled back from the hug, held me by my shoulders. Looked straight into my eyes and said, “I don’t know you, but I know you, and then left.
We reconnected later that night at the documentary viewing, where we didn’t speak much but I was still so aware of her motions and posture. I drank (and shared) yerba mate to ground myself. After the viewing, I invited her outside to loan her a collection of Ralph Waldo Emerson essays, encouraging her to read “Self Reliance,” as it helped me so much during my own period of grief. I also gave her a typewriter, and said the kinesthetic, noisy, imperfect nature of it was cathartic to say the least. We spoke outside under a street lamp for an hour. I felt seen in ways I had never felt seen before. She said she felt the same way. We left that night with no expectations, just relief at knowing that after so many years on this planet, that truly there was another soul like me out there.
We shared our first kiss the following night, after accidentally meeting as guests of guests to a bonfire at @foraged.obscurities’s house. We spoke until nearly 4 a.m. At 8 a.m., I was to begin my first day on the job as an English teacher at a new high school. The kiss came without notice, but felt like something from long ago. Like we’d known one another for eons but only just then reconnected. We were (I thought) simply hugging to say goodbye and part ways, but she held on tighter and longer, then whispered, “You are so charming” in my ear. We pulled back and looked at one another.
Our bodies separate, but I could feel her entirely as if we were one entity. She asked, “Who are you, perfect human?”
I replied, “I’m pretty sure I am you.”
Before kissing, I wanted to let her know some things about me. About how my last relationship ended similarly to hers. I had an affair in 2010. It only lasted a few weeks, but the effects of it continually reverberate in my life and the lives of those around me. (More on that later.) I had held in the secret for 5.5 years. The day I cam clean was the day my marriage was over. I tried to keep things together by holding in something so significant, but it only built a greater and more impenetrable wall between my co-parent and I. The guilt was part of why I used to drink so much. I figured I could bear it forever. That it would be too cruel to let her know this thing had happened that I would never do again. On top of how wrong and cruel it was, it also fucked ME up. And I needed to be honest with this new friend and not go too far down into the affectionate wormhole of a new connection without letting her know who I had been, and would understand if that would be a dealbreaker.
She said it was remarkable how far I had come from the person I described myself to once be, and that she was glad to meet me “now” instead of then. Even a day earlier, and who knows if we would have allowed ourselves to connect so profoundly. Before that first kiss, we discussed how we wanted a partnership to look like: true companionship, total transparency, and mutual augmentation or BUST. We made out for what felt like an eternity, and stated tentative plans to meet up when we could, in a day or two.
We’ve now been together for three years. I’ve never experienced a closer friend, a more synchronous lover, and a more viable intellectual contemporary. We discussed being in an open (ethically non-monogamous/ polyamorous/whatever-you-want-to-call-it) relationship within the first couple weeks. At the time I thought the right answer to that was “oh HELL no,” but later, after much reading, was surprised by how much I resonated with that relationship structure: one built on avid, clear communication and trust, a understanding that we will likely feel connections/attractions to others at times (especially given that we are both queer), and a deeply affectionate bond that felt like any intimacy shared in addition to what we experienced together was more of an overflow of what we had rather than a detraction from the partnership.
We’ve had various trials and errors along the way, and often one or neither of us feels all that mentally well. Not because of our relationship or whatever shape it takes in a given period, but because we BOTH experience depression and anxiety in our own ways. We BOTH experience existential dread. We BOTH feel that this mess of a society is so backwards and doesn’t really have a place for compassionate people who would rather live in harmony with the environment than exploit it for momentary personal gain and pleasure. It’s a tough fight at times, but we are here for it, and eager to accept and overcome whatever new challenge with compassion (and grace for those moments of intense fear).
Ultimately, however, I know that this smiling face in the picture here is my partner, my lover, my friend, my companion, my contemporary. Regardless of how hard shit gets or how dissonant we can sometimes feel, we know that just beneath the membrane of illusory separation, that one thing is irrefutable: “I am you.”
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Strange Visions: Speaking from the Center
I woke up this morning with this anxious feeling trickling through me, its source not exactly known. One of my kids and one of my cats rolled on top of me on the bed, both requesting food of one sort or another. My partner got up first. I took another moment to close my eyes and process the dreams I had been having.
So strange. I don’t recall much from the visions, other than the two people many decades my senior who stopped in the middle of a dancing crowd to jump and land both feet on top of one of my typewriters, a burgundy Remington Noiseless from 1938. When the first person did it, a woman, I was perplexed and asked why. She walked off confused, and resumed her rhythmic undulations. Later, when it happened again, it was an older man, and this time he totally busted the carriage and also the iPad screen that was underneath my typewriter, which I had not noticed until after the damage was done.
Now, I have no idea what the hell this dream means, or even if it’s worth looking into. I have, though, and I wondered if this is something I should take to heart. Either way, I imagine no small part of the jittery sensations in my body have carried over from that dreamscape. I think it might also have to do with the inherent nervousness about my modes of expression, particularly the frequency and heft I tend to infuse into every phrase. Even with packing as much as I can into every word, I still tend to go lengthy and florid.
I’ve been communicating with a new friend I and told them that I’ve been a little bit hesitant in speaking as much as I would like, given that I do not wish to overwhelm. They encouraged me not to reign it in. I said that they had no idea what they were asking. (Haha.) They encouraged me to find an outlet for my expression.
Which is exactly what I’ve been doing this week.
I often feel like I am “too much.” And this is something that goes beyond verbal communication. I tend to have a high tolerance for substances. I have a lot of books at my house. A LOT. If you’ve ever seen me perform under my musical project @naturalastronaut, you know that I push my voice to its edge, both as an effort to feel it and to cut through the cacophonous sounds sod made by a variety of guitar effects and loops. My hair is a lot. Some might consider my manner of dress fairly ostentatious as well. There’s a lyric in one of my songs where I refer to myself as “flowering at the seams.”
OK — { *DEEP* breath } — I admit that I also have a fairly high desire for human affection as well. Not exclusively sensual affection, but just moments apart from this accompanying snap, we made love in a small bamboo forest not 50 meters away. There’s something about sex outdoors, in nature, that feels particularly connective. We’ve experienced long stretches in our relationship where we have been ravenous for one another. Other times, we have lengths of time where financial stress or other factors take up more of a share of our energies. I don’t always fare well during those times, prone lose my mind in self-spun narratives that depict me as undesirable or somehow loathsome. With enough internal convincing (I can make a strong case), I become loathsome. I stress us both out with worry, perpetuating marathon conversations that either find some place of sensible resolve or we are just so drained that there is nothing left to do but to sleep for what few hours remain before the next day’s duties come calling.
I don’t really have any distinct plan in place when I begin writing these micro essays other than to speak directly from my center whatever it is that is lurking beneath the surface. But I guess what I’m getting at here is that human intimacy gets weird, whether it’s a getting-to-know-you conversation with a new friend, an enduring erotic connection, passing a sea of strange faces down the street, or even intimacy unto oneself. Friends can act like strangers. Lovers can act like enemies. An individual can feel so estranged by their own personal self.
What matters most is that we extend grace in moments of perceived disconnection, to see ourselves and others as humans who experience fear, frustration, sadness, joy, and all combinations in between. We are all almost always going through our own shit. It never ends, we just learn more and grow in the process. And if the stakes keep raising, its because we’ve leveled up to the next challenge. Just make sure you find rest and sunlight along the way.
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Creating from a place of rest
As you might have noticed, the frequency and nature of my postings has changed quite a bit over the last few days. On Instagram, I’ll sometimes go months without sharing anything. On Facebook, I’ll share an article that confirms a perspective that I’m surprised to find out is violently opposed by so many. While taking so long to post anything and/or posting other people’s content are not my ideal, sometimes the rhythms and tides of my daily life sweep me away from the projects and practices that are most important to me. I can tend to get lost scrolling for hours and not realize it. Or I’ll spend an extended amount of time opening internet tabs of various job postings that I might be able to do, and only end up submitting my name and resume to the applications that require the least amount of up-front work. Later, I’ll compensate by stretches of manic “diligence” where I forget to eat, barely sleep, and don’t interact with those around me. By then, at least one of the gigs I was most excited about has been filled. So it goes.
Rest and I aren’t often well acquainted, which is problematic as a creative being. I’ve read that one universal trait among the greatest minds throughout human history is intentional periods of respite. Albert Einstein, for one, came up with the theory of relativity while soaking in the bathtub. In his book, The Power of Now, Eckhart Tolle attributes this reality to the mind not being the true creative force of our beings, but rather it’s the space in between, beneath, and around our mental chatter where our unshakable identity exists and from which true innovation springs forth. When our mind is at rest and we are not creating a false identity of our thoughts and emotions, we relax into the infinite expanse of our consciousness, breathe deeply, and access our fuller potential.
I’ve inadvertently tested this theory countless of times in my life. When I push hard and headfirst, I struggle and writhe. When I create from a place of rest, take my brain out of the equation and let my soul do the work, my vision clears, my muscles release, and my voice rings true.
This picture was taken at Smith Mountain Lake on the dock outside a house where my dear friend @420chocolatejuice was laying down tracks for his album (another gnarly story for another day) with an ensemble of other mega-talented artist friends: @silentbetti, @jlloydharmon, @lostframez, and @carsontcody. Witnessing their level of dedication, aesthetic agility, honed skill, raw talent, and genuine LEVITY put me in a place of shock and admiration that I still refer to in my own mind when aiming to stoke the flames of my own growth and diligence. But gently. With compassion for my place on the path.
I know there is greatness in me because I know there is greatness in all of us. We are capable of so much more than we give ourselves the credit and rest in order to attain. Let’s do this shit. Who’s down to chill the fuck out and make some serious moves in between naps and cuddles, all the while with smiles on our faces and tears in our eyes?
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Without transparency, I become opaque
These pictures (and yes, there are more of her to come) are of my partner @veganastronaut. We met a little over three years ago, approximately 9 months after my former partner/co-parent and I ended our 9.5-year marriage, overall a 12-year romantic relationship that began the first semester of our freshman year of college.
I can’t and won’t pretend that those 9 months were easy for me. I intend to write about that period someday soon (the what, the why, the how) but for now I’ll only graze upon the subject. I still love her dearly and will always consider her to be family and among my most cherished friends, but one of the roots responsible with our growing into a different sort of relationship is my own penchant for not fully accepting myself as I am, thereby denying my ability to be loved.
I hid from her, from our friends, from our family, from myself. I allowed my fear to prevent our growing closer as lovers and best friends through fuller vulnerability and transparency. For years I kept the fact that I am not a Christian (at least not in the sense that I was raised to understand the term) a secret even from my own inner dialogue. I was ashamed of my sexuality. I was ashamed of my gender. I was ashamed of harboring simultaneous attractions. I was ashamed of how differently my brain seemed to work compared to everyone else I knew.
Instead of being open, I allowed certain realities to build inside of me. I rarely wrote or played music. I used late nights of excessive drinking to ease the pressure some, but it would still build to the point that I would explode at a single pinprick, taking offense even when none was intended. I lashed out. I became verbally and emotionally abusive — a mere reflection of the caustic nature of my own internal dialogue.
It was a troublesome journey to come to the understanding that it was impossible for me to love others the way I knew I could without first loving myself. For me, loving myself looks like not putting things in my body that I know are harmful to me or the environment. It means practicing stillness, being outside, writing, reading, playing music, laughing, sleeping 7.5 hours per night.
Even just the thought that I wasn’t living up to my own standard is enough to unleash the raging dogs of self doubt that prevent me from showing up for me and my family in the ways I know I can.
On the day that my co-parent decided our relationship was over, I revealed some things about my past that I had been hiding. There was no premeditation in this revelation, it simply happened. I spent most every moment of my marital separation focusing on how I can heal myself and unearth in me both the rotted portions and gems alike, not as an effort of saving my marriage but as a means of saving my own life. It’s not nearly impossible for me to hold things in about myself, no matter how dark the detail. Without transparency, I become opaque. Everything within me rejects non-disclosure. Being so open it’s exactly easy. It’s often painful, honestly, but the breeze of clarity it provides is unlike anything else I know. It is truth. It is light. And through those acute vulnerabilities I find myself less alone, less afraid, and more capable of taking deep breaths at the water’s edge with those I love.
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Anxiety is a Masterful Teacher
Anxiety is masterful teacher. I experience many forms of it, but one that beckons me so sweetly into its grip is social anxiety. I was picked on a lot from a young age — by my family members, the kids on my block, my classmates — and all the way through college. Eventually I found alcohol to be the perfect lubricant for connecting with other people. It helped me to dance like a wild thing, even when I entirely hated the music.
Now, even if I hit a spliff, I feel incredibly awkward while dancing, even (to an extent) when I love the music. So often I find myself in public settings where my discomfort acts a reflex that goes from filing alienated to instead assuming that nothing I survey is of any interest for me. (Yes, this IS pretension.) This experience really upsets me, however. I really wish I could enjoy the things that so many others seem derive pleasure from, but instead I maintain my position as a wallflower, perhaps outwardly seeming aloof but inwardly wishing I could be in the fray and experiencing whatever everyone else is getting out of a particular event.
I went to @floydyogajam thanks to the generosity of my dear college friend @everfreespirit and her wonderful partner @ragoodial07 (who I’ve been getting to know over the last year or so). I spent half of the festival by myself, floating around to whatever workshop, yoga session, or musical performance caught my attention. Sometimes I’d run into one group or another that I knew. Strangers introduced themselves to me. I maintained a wall of shyness at first, but something in me kept urging me to push beyond my comfort zones and to try things that were distinctly uncomfortable. Eventually, I broke through this barrier, and found myself having an incredible time of laughter and healing with old and new friends alike. I won’t forget what occurred this past weekend soon, and still find myself crying at random moments. It’s the best sort of weird.
I refuse to allow myself to snick back into old habits, now that I’m back in Richmond and home with my family. I have a lot of work and healing still to do, and I’m excited for it all.
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And if I can and do change, you can (and are) too.
If your friends aren’t obsessed with plants, are they really even your friends? If we don’t care for the planet, are we even human? Are we conscious? We often consider ourselves the most intelligent species on the planet, but would truly intelligent beings actively destroy their own bodies, their own homes?
Perhaps, but not ones that are aware of their actions and the implications they have on our ecosystem. I don’t say this to denigrate you, me, and everyone we know. I realize there’s nothing new in this sentiment. This is a reminder to my Self, that which resides in me and beyond me, that we ARE better than this and need to live accordingly.
I left religion years ago, and if I do have a faith, it’s an exoteric practice that demands that I not live in contrast to the truths that I have experienced first-hand. For this reason, I do not drink alcohol. For this reason, I do not eat animal products. For this reason, I do what I can to minimize any purchases and actions that could be complicit with what I see to be directly responsible. I’m not sharing these words out of pretension (as if I’ve found some “elevated” way of being that allows me to condescend) but rather because through transforming my behaviors in accordance to this creed, I too have been transformed — within and without. And if I can and do change, you can (and are) too.
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Feel'd Notes: Gaining Perspective
How often is it that we lie on our backs, look up at the infinite expanse of everything, and feel what it feels like to be an inextricable yet impossibly small part of something so grand and limitless? As a child growing up in the woods of New York State, such a state of wonder was ever preset. Having grown and moved around up and down the east coast of both American continents, I find such connection less and less frequent in my life.
I make myself busy. Not just because I want to sustain myself and my family, but because it’s the nature of the way my ADD mind operates. I have so many interests, all of them infinite. It’s difficult for me to decide how to spend what little time I have in this life: how to practice, what to practice, where to be, who to be. I’m run to anxiety. I’m prone to really really low thoughts, and it all affects everything in my life. But no matter how worthless and scattered I may feel from time to time, sometimes just lying down and gaining that perspective that’s bigger than my worries and tasks, I see how far I’ve come, how much I’ve changed, how much I’ve grown, how much life I have lived and have yet to live, how rich it has been — how wide and deep and peculiar.
I have been so many things to so many people, and yet throughout it I retain a single glimmer of awareness that has remained constant throughout it all. Losing touch with this perspective, I grow tired and terrified. I’m so grateful for the moments when I feel cracks in the narrative that I tell myself, and I am brought once again to an understanding of where I am and what I am to do. I sometimes forget how to have fun, and grow despondent. I sometimes forget how gentle I am, and lash out at those around me. Regardless of what you might think of me, how soft and how kind or how compassionate, there is a ferocity in me known only to those who I’ve lived with. It is as much part of me as it is not my truest nature — one of curiosity and wonder.
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Capable of Confidence
I asked the people of Facebook yesterday what they did to build their confidence. Sometimes my posts there are polarizing. People misunderstand what I’m saying or take it as a personal attack and the vitriol of the public stage comes to my desktop. My friends call my other friends names. People wrote dozens of messages trying to persuade me or others why their interpretation of my words can only mean the one specific interpretation they gleaned. Sometimes the comments amass to several hundred heated or otherwise pretentious sentiments. This time was different.
This time, people I’ve known for days or decades chimed in with genuine feedback. I learned a lot about each person who responded, and gained many insights and tools for what I can do when I lack the confidence to move and breathe fully as I am and what I’m growing to be. I’m surprised that others are surprised when they learn that this is much of the time for me.
Many people said to be still. Others said to take action of your own volition. Both are entirely true and essential, as were almost all of the other responses (go to my FB wall to read, if you’re curious).
When I’m not wading through the anxiety and depression I’ve had since before I was old enough to go to school, my ADD works as a superpower. I can connect with most anyone, as I am tapped into the oversoul that comprises us all. I know I am capable of anything. I know WE are capable of anything — the potential for manifestations of infinite love or infinite fear. Which should we choose? Are we even awake enough TO choose? Too often, I am not. But I have been and I can be. You can too.
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Feel'd Notes: Art & Exposure
To make art — and I mean art, not advertisements or pop jingles ... something from the soul — is to expose one’s self. Yes, to others, but perhaps the scariest part is turning over the stones of memories, ideas, and emotions and revealing them to yourself.
Not for vanity. Not for glory. Not for riches. But for healing and for truth. Rend your clothes, the layers of little lies you whisper to yourself, see yourself as you are, and re-spin the threads. Weave them into the fabric of your life, your creative force. You don’t need a pattern to follow other than the rhythmic thud of your own blood. Let it ring in your ears as you submerge yourself into the murky depths of your process, no matter how ramshackle, and take rest while basking on the surface of your infinite, growing awareness.
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Creative Confessional: Sleeping at the Wheel of My Life's Purpose
7/18/18
I want to start this off by telling you that I am sorry.
Sorry might not even cut it, though, but I don’t know what else to say about it other than to plainly say: I am sorry. Like really fucking sorry.
I am sorry because I have not been holding up my part of the bargain, not really been sharing the load as diligently as I can. I’ve been sleeping on the job of my life’s purpose, but no one can fire me, so I’m left with two choices:
Wallow in the missed opportunities and squandered moments wherein I could have been practicing. There are tangible consequences to my truancy. Those fallouts are ever-present in my waking reality.
Recognize the path I’m on isn’t going to lead me where I must go, and change courses entirely.
There are certain patterns of living that I have found my way out of (let’s not just yet get into other patterns I’ve slipped into, though) that through expressing my experience even on a small scale has had a broad impact on a few people in my general community in ways that have surprised me.
For some, this had led to distinct changes, others just an ongoing awareness that they bring up to me whenever we happen to be in physical proximity. Then there are those in between. People have reached out to me digitally or in person to let me know that a piece of writing or a show I played had some sort of impact on them. Some people have even thanked me. Some people have been low-key pissed that I’ve not been sharing all along. It’s not a common occurrence (mainly because of how infrequently I’ve shared my writing or music of late), but it hits me deeply and truly when it does.
Far more common in my life has been praise for photographs I have taken. That feels good too, but it’s not the same, and (sorry to those I collaborate with on camera projects) I have a lingering suspicion that while I have learned a great deal about myself and have had some irreplaceable experiences through its practice, that it’s really serving me as a placeholder creative outlet, one with more immediate gratification, and ultimately a deviation from the practices that matter more to me.
From another vantage point, though, I believe that my photography and video work will be much more lighthearted and creative again once I am not neglecting my more pressing creative practice of writing — fiction, essays, poetry, journalism, scripts, and music.
It’s a perverted form of selfishness, really. Much like the selfishness of smoking the better part of a quarter of weed by myself in less than a couple days (edit: I’m mainly abstaining these days). I have an abundance of strange magic in me that has been kept under a seal of repression for as long as I can recall. I cannot truly blame that repression on anyone else but me, in the end, but the years of religious and socially conservative indoctrination, peer ridicule, and being a queer who’s not-exactly-white/not-exactly-POC did not help.
But fuck blame, the nature of it and its affects are far more relevant to this diatribe. Repression, in my experience, is not living the life you are here to live, your life’s purpose.
I’ve repressed myself in so many ways over the years — my spirituality, my sexuality, my gender identity, my cultural heritage, more fully engaging with my romantic partner. I have also repressed myself by not engaging with the things that matter to me most, the things that are true about me regardless of other people or my stage in life. Reading. Writing. Being in my body and not just my mind. Plying guitar. Singing. Being in the water (Cancer sun/Pisces moon, here). Spending time alone. Engaging with people. Letting people know how amazing I think they are (and the freedom NOT to engage with them sexually). Sitting in stillness. Being out in nature. Camping. Exploring the infinite, basically.
Much of the last few years has been hijinks and navel gazing. Not that there is anything wrong with doing those things, just as long as they are illuminating in some way. But even then, illumination when kept to yourself is somehow darker than blindness.
A good friend of mine once told me that a writer who does not write flirts with insanity. That may be true — although I am no flirt. I usually prefer others to make the first move. But in this scenario I’ve been throwing some major shapes, and so me and my own personal brand of insanity have been seeing one another for a good while now. I presume that we always will (even if from a faraway vantage point), but goddamnit if I could just get some balance going I suspect I could do things. New things. Meaningful things. And perhaps (PERHAPS!) it will run concurrently with me not feeling so financially jeopardized that the vegan ice cream goes on the credit card.
At the yoga studio where I practice, a group of regular attendees and some of the teachers went down to Tulum, Mexico, for a retreat. I heard them talking about it after class for weeks and weeks before it happened. The usual response of those hearing about the trip for the first time (and it’s >$3,000 + travel price tag) was more casual than me deciding if I can afford to grab a meal at a restaurant after class.
The unfazed nature with which they regarded such an expenditure of time and funds alarmed me, not in any negative way, more so just realizing how wide a gap there is between my economic reality and theirs (I can’t really afford the monthly membership to the studio, but can far less afford further mental unravelling), putting me in a state of nonplussed bewilderment about how I could be so far behind those who are essentially my peers.
Instantly, I remembered what one of the teachers there said during a late night open studio session, that his view of finances changed when he recognized money as simply a tangible placeholder for an authentic energy exchange. You put your energy out there and those that receive it will reciprocate appropriately.
It struck me that the reason why my finances are so screwy and my clientele has been so inconsistent isn’t really something I can entirely blame on an advertising industry that seems to mainly have budgets for projects that promote businesses or products that harm people and/or the planet. Really, it comes down to my own miserly output. I’m not doing my fucking thing, and I suspect that I will never be in a place of pecuniary stasis until I am (#everydamnday). And I’ll not be able to do that until I make the decision to not repress myself, to not deny who I am by not loving and practicing who I am without compromise.
Aside from self-doubt, then, what’s my excuse? I only recently realized that my means of motivation has been out of focus. What I’m told is that I should seek to write for money and personal glory. Neither of those things are all that appealing unto themselves. Much more recently, I’ve found that what motivates me most about writing is healing, love, discovery, truth, and beauty. To me, those are far more galvanizing (and reciprocating) than invented coin and the pursuit of public praise.
So, again, I am really sorry for not doing my part. We are all crucial, inextricable elements of this Greater Thing together, and like Ralph Waldo Emerson opined in “Self Reliance,” if I’m not actively doing the “work” of what it is to be me, then no one else is either. And to repress who and what I am is to depress who and what I am.
In order for this grand puzzle to work, we must all do our unique part, like the salmon that sims upstream, like the bear that eats part of the salmon and tosses it into the brush. Like the fungi that bore through the salmon and absorb its nutrients. Like the tree whose roots exchange sugar with the fungi for the nutrients from the salmon, grow tall as a result, and breathe oxygen into our lungs so that we may live out our life’s purpose.
We are the one’s driving out own flesh vehicles, and if we are stuck daydreaming and distracted to no avail, we are sleeping at the wheel. There is no autopilot. There is no cruise control — only active exploration or careening into a co-created void.
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Millennial Christians and the Post-Evangelical Love for Sufjan Stevens
As early as 2005, the Los Angeles Times was announcing the arrival of a new generation of musicians whose preference for introversion over boisterous ego and overwrought sexuality signaled a “Soft Revolution” of sorts. At the forefront of this timid overturning within the music world was Sufjan Stevens, a singer-songwriter whose sincere style seemed to offer some form of respite from the nonstop churning of commercial hits with easy hooks. Attributing Stevens’s success to an audience hungry for evidence of authentic artistic expression that could provide a break from the pulsing beat of nonstop commercialism, the Times opined, “It’s about the fact that everything is Coke and Pepsi these days, and it’s all mass-marketed to kids, and they just want some relief.”
In that sense, it’s obvious why we millennials are drawn to Sufjan Stevens music, and perhaps even more so for those of us raised on evangelical American rhetoric. The “relief” referred to in the Times piece was even greater for us. For in addition to being subject to the mass-marketing efforts of companies like Coke, Pepsi and Warner Bros., we also had an entirely separate marketing machine vying for our attention, one whose output seemed to say that music’s “goodness” is measured from its overt message rather than its aesthetic quality or formal nuances.
I first heard Stevens’s music in the twilight of the early 2000s while attending an evangelical Christian university in Virginia, and after a lifetime of Sunday School, Vacation Bible School, and W.W.J.D. bracelets — a lifetime of being in the world and not of the world.
From an early age, I was informed of an all-out culture war between Christians and non-Christians, those who knew the Truth and those who believed lies. Christian music was about Jesus’s love and believing the things that keep you free from eternal damnation. Non-Christian music, the music of the secular world, was about sex, drugs, and materialism and it was best to stay away from it.
As an alternative, we were offered music that sounded similar to its “secular” counterpart but was missing the same raw energy and effortless enthusiasm. By comparison, the music felt rather fake and lifeless. When I asked why this was the case, why secular music was so much more enjoyable than Christian music, the most common response was that sin is designed to be appealing and pleasurable. It didn’t feel like sin, though, in middle school when I’d stay up late in my bed, curled around a tape deck radio, listening to hours of programming and quickly (but quietly) hitting “Record” for the songs I liked but had to keep secret. It felt like excitement. It felt like discovery. A sonic portal to a brave new world.
What the Christian music industry struggles to realize is that when aesthetic value takes the back seat in the church van to over-present, often alienating dogma, the work fails at its central purpose: “to shatter the frozen lake of the soul,” as Franz Kafka once put it. In other words, the music fails to proselytize in the truest sense of the word: to create an experience wherein the individual recognizes and accepts something new that will change their life for the positive.
Stevens, at least in practice, understands that when you shout, people are inclined to cover their ears. When you whisper and invite them to hear, however, they just might incline themselves closer to get a better listen. It all sounds way more believable when you don’t feel the need to increase your volume to attract attention. By allowing his work to be the byproduct of faith rather than letting faith itself become the product, Stevens proves that authentic belief and expression can co-exist on the global stage. That such an expression of faith can even come through in a world where most everything else seeks attention by being big, loud, fast and bright, makes Stevens’ project all the more valuable to the ears of his listeners.
Such a post-evangelical approach to songwriting often means he never addresses his faith as static dogma, but rather within the context of where it truly exists: in the act of living, in breathing, in caring for others, in reconciliation and in loss.
Whether it be the beautiful or grotesque — a mournful ode to the devastations of bone cancer or reflections on John Wayne Gacy Jr. — Stevens manages to find a place of reconciliation through soft vocals, biblical references, and symphonic structures to create not so much songs to consume as narratives to visit and experience. One result of such narratives, for us millennials at least, seems to be relief. Relief from trying to reconcile the words of Christ with one’s interaction with a Church that so often tends to favor those same forms of expression and coercion which undermine the type of experiential richness available within the arts once attended to less dogmatically. Clearer still, Stevens shows us that carefully crafted expression can provide a space for theological concerns to exist in a public forum without alienating (or boring) anyone from any perspective.
Here we seem we seem to be invited to come together and enjoy something for what it is, and perhaps to reflect upon what makes it so meaningful – what makes life so meaningful – amongst a variety of people who are likely to have a range of answers to these questions. The possibility for such an exchange, be it in music or otherwise, seems to depend only upon our capacity to listen and to speak with a certain sincerity at our disposal. As if to sing, once again, without worrying what one’s tune might sell.
My faraway view of Sufjan Stevens at Wolftrap on July 22, 2016.
This article first appeared in Transpositions. I was asked by then editor (and longtime friend) Dennis Franklin Kinlaw III to write about this topic given my perspective as someone who grew up in evangelical Christianity but later realized said theological form to be an ill-fitting cloak for me and my experience. After many drafts over an estimated 80+ hours (Denny providing much guidance), the piece took the above shape.
Congruence Yoga Productions
So, here is a project that’s been in development over the last 4 years and is now picking up true, pranayama steam.
As I’ve said before, I only aim to do work that brings benefit and beauty to this world, simultaneously supporting my nuclear family and my broader family which includes all that is (¡Les amo a todos!).
We cannot change the world without first changing our individual hearts and minds, and few things have been so effective to that end in my own life than being introduced to yoga by my soul sister Congruence Yoga. We want to share this with all who are ready (or at least yoga-curious) because we know first-hand how transformative yoga can be.
Together, she and I have embarked upon another practice (under the tutelage of director/dp/human Foster Addington): producing intentional, artful, and cinematic photos and videos that represent high quality yoga instruction.
We want to share this with the world by working with studios we respect to help them share their teaching through high-quality imagery, web development, and subscription channels.
If you are a teacher or studio that wants to know more about what we do and how we can work together, send me a message. Or, if you know a teacher or studio that might be interested (worldwide), send them a message.
Much love to my brother KillGXXD for the glorious tunes.
Namaste.
Trump is Not the Problem (You Are)
The reality is that nothing is ever going to change until our perspective changes on a grand scale.
No amount of recycling will do it. No amount of praying to your deity of choice will do it. No amount of voting for one compromiser over another will do it. The same sort of thinking that brought about an issue cannot be used to fix it.
Everything must shift, and not from one extreme of a continuum to another, but within — to another vantage point entirely. Your wishes for sustainability and accountability won't amount to a single lasting thing without a change at the source. Our system will only continue to manufacture garbage because it is built on false premises regarding what really matters.
I see so many excited about the Flynn developments, as if this certainly points to Trump's downfall. But what is Trump but a fruit of the true roots of our issues? Even if we pull him off his paper-or-plastic throne, someone similar is waiting to slither into the seat. Tell me how HRC doesn't believe the same fundamental myths about what it means to be a human person? Tell me what politician out there doesn't turn a blind eye to EVERY organization that profits at the expense of others and the environment? Show me to the poet-king/queen who understands that radical shift in consciousness away from the wallet and to the heart is necessary — no matter how bad it is for business.
Show me the religious person who is more committed to the action of loving their neighbor than they are interested in recruiting people to the same club. Show me parents who are willing to leave well-paying jobs with health insurance because the ethical compromises are not worth the Netflix subscriptions.
(... I'll wait ...)
I often feel simultaneously trapped and alienated in this society that I don't ever remember signing up for, one where cognitive dissonance is the rule and holism the exception. I hear people talk about how they want to be healthy but say "judge not" about their self-proclaimed bacon addiction. How they want peace but talk shit when things don't go their way. We cry for sustainability but still want discount, mass-produced retail items.
I aim to use all the intellectual, financial, and physical resources at my disposal to encourage this existential revolution, but I'm aware of how I still take part in the charade. I'm typing these pontifications from an Apple computer. I have an old station wagon sitting out front of my house that uses petroleum. I shop at the grocery store (and don't always bring my own bag). I’m wearing a clearance sweater from H&M. I left the water running.
I wonder about finding my way by living off the land for the rest of my years, until I am old and can give myself back to the Earth as its nourishment. But what good is the life of a hermit, enjoying timelessness in the wilderness when most every other human on the planet is either playing into the system that destroys our world or is being crushed beneath its machinations?
How then, do we move forward? Do we simply eat and drink and be merry, accepting tomorrow's inevitable death? Or can we change course entirely, seeking true sustenance, and allow life to go on without putting the breaks on divine evolution?
The mind of man is not holy. The mind of man is metal, a construct, useful as a supporting tool but disastrous when allowed to govern. It’s time we understand that our purpose on this earth as conscious beings isn’t to control life but to assist in nurturing it, to allow it to thrive. To understand and embrace nature's need for diversity (of all kinds), and to help it come along … sometimes by making space for that to happen by getting the hell out of the way.
The earth doesn’t belong to humans, we humans belong to it. Imagine the potential for how much greater this reality would be if we took our rightful place in that role — one far more rewarding than this incessant squeezing of water from the stone.
If you see something, say something. If you know something, do something. Otherwise, your "woke" is simply a sleepwalking awareness.
Practice is Perfect
I write (or must, rather) because of the way it quiets the sylvan nature of my mental landscape.
Thoughts crop up in lattice-like structures, crossing over my awareness to construct a mending wall between I and my experience. I was trying to read Daniel Quinn’s Ishmael in the moments before writing this but couldn’t (because of that aforementioned clutter), and so I decided to submit and transmute that noise into a voice.
* * *
The utility of my writing practice is precisely why the practice is so difficult for me to enact. As humans, our collective disease is one that seeks to undermine our root experience — or perhaps disguise the roots by weaving in layers upon layers of false ones to explore, but they lead nowhere and grow nothing. We deny the still, small voice in our heads and instead abdicate to the louder self-judgements and desire for social acceptance.
Writing (or any spiritual self-awareness practice such as yoga, meditation, gratitude, wonder, conscious breathing, intentional eating) brings me to a point of centering. But writing of just any kind is no longer enough to keep me in a lasting state of presence. This is why I don't write clickbait or sales letters. I have learned that I require engagement in all parts of my being to keep the entirety of my self awake and joyful — constantly pressing against the edges of my abilities to continually align myself with a key certainty of reality: the fact that it is infinite.
I have sometimes said that “practice is perfect,” and in case the meaning of the phrase is not self-evident, I’ll elucidate. It often alludes even me, the one speaking it, as is evidenced by my lack of practice over the past 8 years.
We grew up hearing the unintentionally false mantra that "practice makes perfect," but in an infinite reality, true perfect doesn’t exist outside of the constrained definitions of geometry. We are not geometric shapes. We are humans with rich inner and outer lives. We can celebrate a work of art as being “perfect” in the sense that we perceive no flaws or nothing lacking that would otherwise make it complete. We can make a perfect score on an exam. But the honest artist or student only acknowledges the compliment with grim acceptance, knowing that within the completed form lies many, many hidden errors along the way, or deeper questions, expressions, and abilities that remain beyond such an individual — even if only for the time being.
There is no point in thought or yoga or knowledge where one reaches an ultimate, perfect form in which practice becomes redundant and unnecessary. That sense of absolute perfection does not exist for conscious forms. It is counter to the fundamental truths of the greater universe. Faith in such a ridiculous definition of what it means to be perfect keeps us from trying at all — either because we believe we are inherently flawed and constitutionally incapable of such a feat or because we think it is so impossibly hard. In both cases, the resulting thought is the same: Why bother trying?
So we roll cigarettes between our fingers and inhale the acrid fumes, though we know the precise manner in which doing so will poison our bodies. We fail to move our muscles and joints, opting for (and tweeting about) our sedentary lifestyles as if they are an inevitable part of Western life. We neglect our nutrition in favor of the immediate gratification of processed flavors. We lash out in anger or stew in the miasma of self-judgments. We harbor resentments, though they serve no purpose. We flood our precious cellular structures with all manners of toxic materials, believing that the state of inebriation is preferable to the states of boredom or feeling our true feelings … scared of what will happen when we allow ourselves to acknowledge exactly where (and who) we are.
When we understand, however, that practice only makes perfect in the sense that the practice itself is perfect, we awaken a timeless freedom: accepting who and what and when and where and why and how we are here and now. We learn that perfection does exist: Not in the sense of a neurotic chase after the impossible or a particular shape or embodied totality, but in embracing the precise awareness of what we are currently capable of, that we are unlimited in our capacity to grow, and that to seek that growth puts us at the very cusp of our experience — ever looking outward in joyful awe because we have inched forward into the infinitely wondrous abyss we call reality.
With this in mind, my challenge to my personal self as this ever-changing, watery form known as Marcelo Asher Quarantotto — a shape that is inseparable from the air molecules between my skin and yours and thereby an inextricable part of all that was and is and will be in this world and beyond — is to permit myself the kindness of accepting this truth. To not impress the burden of the impossible onto my conscious thinking, thereby crushing my spirit under its weight and preventing me from trying at all, not accepting and practicing at the point in which I am so I can sharpen myself into something greater.
Let's embrace what we do know to be true and not get lost in the insanity of dark thoughts about what is not.
To be more specific, these words are a selfsame expression of what they point to: practice is perfect. I will never become anything outside of that which I practice. No need to worry and judge that my writing or my yoga or my music or my image-making or my interactions with the ones I love (which includes you, dear reader) are not unto themselves the fullest expression of what is humanly possible, but instead to be joyful in a sense of being here and now and doing.
###
From negligent alcoholic to dedicated parent and doing yoga
You can change too.
Header image from a recent shoot with James River Yoga.
—————
I just realized that as I type these words, I am somewhere past the two year mark of practicing yoga, two years of engaging in a lifestyle and pattern far different than I would have ever conceived for myself — even up until the exact point where my switch finally flipped from progressively unhealthy to getting well.
I have been many things in my so-far short life. Thirty years is not a long life, but it sure feels like it sometimes, like my experience is a living cassette tape played (and worn) at 2x speed to fit in an extra 30.
I have been a college newspaper editor and columnist. An intern at a mom-and-pop newspaper. A high school literature teacher. An intern at a culture and arts magazine that highlighted the avant-garde leanings of Buenos Aires, Argentina. And let's not forget the years of my life spent in restaurants, serving soft drinks to kids, decaf to seniors and microbrews to coeds.
I have been a copywriter and a “reporter” for the propaganda wing of a well-known (for good or ill) institute of higher education. A newspaper designer and copy desk jockey. I left to try making more money as a car insurance salesman. It did not go so well.
I worked at a retail store for 18 months for less than the local poverty rate, while expected to operate as $50K/year marketing professional. Then I worked as a content manager for a counseling brand which, ironically, led me to depression, anxiety and extreme distractibility.
Throughout most of these experiences, I was married (we split at the end of 2015, but remain friends). I tied the knot two weeks and one day past my 21st birthday, with a year of undergraduate Christian college yet to go. Having grown up in the restrictive environment of WWJD bracelets, “go-against-the-flow” T-shirts, dogma-driven re-creations of pop culture references, and Vacation Bible School — where everything “outside" was considered unquestionably bad and everyone inside unquestionable — one is led to dip a toe into the pool of non-restricted life.
You quickly find the water is welcoming, warm ... and suddenly overhead.
I became an alcoholic, arguably in the few weeks preceding my marriage, which leads my therapist to suggest that I have a genetic makeup prone to addiction. It took me eight years and three children to emerge from no less than a slight buzz (if not a full-on blackout) on a nightly basis. That emergence came in August 2013, not long before I started yoga and right in the midst of when I stopped writing almost entirely, and instead spent my time taking pictures and shooting films at most every opportunity. I even squeezed small music video shoots in during my unpaid lunch breaks from my marketing gig at the retail store.
It took me going deep into the alcoholic pool, so to speak, to finally find my way out by means of the drain. I had lost all semblance of my childhood faith in 2010, a tumultuous summer that was less of a turning point in life and more of a completely destructive period of painful upheaval (the effects of which have yet to fully play out). The de-conversion pulled me even farther into alcoholism (age 25), into a three-year chain of late nights that I wasted on getting wasted. Those nights turned into mornings that sat heavy on my chest, like the 1,000 elephants in the bedroom that kept me from engaging with what was most important to me, what meant the most and for that which I labored so much to secure: a love for (and of) a beautiful spouse, otherworldly amazing daughters, a home I own(ed), a passion for lyricism and a desire to take up my post in the infinite tunnel of lamps and mirrors that stretches throughout time and place.
Simply stated: I was too depressed and full of toxins to roll off the couch to play in the sandbox or to crack an egg.
I was sick. Overweight physically and emotionally. Distant. Neglectful of myself, of those around me and allowed my so-called talents to dull. I subjected myself to the horror of clearly seeing the life I wanted to live while wondering why, over and over again, WHY I continued to act against it. An invisible figure, perfectly matched to my form, stood in my way down every pathway that could have proved infinitely more beneficial, lovely, profitable and enjoyable. I continued to wonder why I did and spoke such a way at such times.
I resisted the truth of it — too awful to comprehend in full and so instead of changing things, I persisted in foolishness.
That is, as I said, until August 2013 ... when a fully-grown doe jumped out onto a dark Virginian roadway to commit suicide beneath the front wheel of my vintage motorcycle.
Yet another venture that my then-wife suggested against with her sage-like clairvoyance. I slid 30 feet down the street, shredding my backpack. Remarkably, I hobbled away with minor scrapes and bruises. Two days later, I found myself on a plane to Los Angeles after accepting two invitations: to assist on a commercial shoot and to maybe give up drinking while I was out there in an effort to gain some physical and mental stamina.
(For the record, I was not intoxicated while riding the bike, but had been within the previous 24 hours and also immediately afterward).
Within 48 hours of no alcohol consumption and cleaner eating, I felt different. Sharper. More energetic. Present. I wound up in the apartment of famed rock-and-roll guitarist Warren Cuccurullo, whose many successes (world-renowned skill, multiple projects still ongoing, restaurants and a level of physique one cannot help but gawk at) he attributed to something he learned from his idol and former bandmate, Frank Zappa: He didn’t drink.
Aside from a sip at my friend's wedding a month later (wine made on location) I have not consumed a single drop of alcohol since, and doubt I will ever again. Everyone’s cognitive disposition and biology is different, but for me, I look back at that time (and the Instagram post) and give thanks to that doe who sacrificed her life — however unintentionally — so that I might regain my own.
It was in the following months that I began practicing yoga, and soon found myself at peace with myself and my surroundings while also growing more and more aware of how much of my life and love had been misspent. How much I had thrown away potential for just another night of IPAs and indie bands while my co-parent sat home wondering less and less:
When will he grow up? Where is he? When will he come home?
By the time I came out of this eight year hangover, many mistakes had already been made. No amount of yoga, meditation and gluten-free eating would unmake them. No deviation from my irrationally angry past would erase the trails that were left, would silence the vile, untruthful words I used to spill upon a person I love and respect above most others and, for reasons of puerile selfishness and addiction, I had forgotten how to cherish. The me that knew how had been drowned out and silenced (it’s all so painfully clear now) — but they're back.
All of this and more has pushed me from job to job, craft to craft, always seeking the peace and purpose that has been right in front of me all along. The peace I would never find in cigarette ashes, broken bottles and pot resin. The peace that is only found in loving well, loving often and loving incessantly.
Although, as said earlier, I feel decades older than 30, I also feel like a new human each and every day. On some mornings, I sense limitless possibilities for learning and capability, and on others I feel terror and vulnerability — like I am and adult who still doesn’t know quite how to stand better than a newborn giraffe sent out into the world with a disproportionate stature-to-experience stability ratio.
It’s hella frightening at times, but I’m beginning to wonder if that's the point.
I wonder if all of this living and learning, all of these life inversions that seem as inevitable as they are scary are pushing us onward into something real and beautiful and new. Perhaps instead of shying away from these heuristic flips, what I really need to do is dedicate myself to practicing them fully — like my crow poses, headstands, and shoulderstands.
The word yoga, in Sanskrit, means union. It is a union wrought from uncomfortable moments, often difficult to engage with and sometimes the last thing I want to do on any given afternoon. It’ll hurt. I’ll sweat. It will take and hour or so away from seeking another freelance client or from writing clickbait at a reckless speed to make the few dollars worth the time — all for the sake of creating noise, distraction and self-serving SEO rankings (which seems to be the one of the only marketable self-employed uses of a journalism degree, these days). But it always silences the internal voice, the voice that once called me away from my typewriter, down the street and into the bar. The voice that tells me nothing in this life makes sense.
It feels like our entire system is inverted right now. Few things feel substantive outside of spending time with the people I care about and practicing that which generates not money but inner and outer peace. We are faced with the reality of one bozo presidential option over another, while the only candidates who do seem to be authentically humanitarian are considered to not have an Icarus-the-pig in a hell-bound blizzard’s chance of getting elected (or much less, making a difference). We are faced with the quandary of doing what enriches our plotlines vs. what lines our pockets. We opt for the latter, and then wonder why the world is in bass-ackwards turmoil.
We seem to be choosing the same foolishness again and again, if for no other reason than we are used to it. History repeating itself. Dog to its vomit. Fool to folly. The Ego making sure we continue to confuse our limited thought patterns for our identity.
I predict either doom or transcendence. What other options are there? Because if there’s anything I’ve learned in the largely silly and ill-managed years I’ve spent on this planet, it’s that the status quo leads to nowhere but a cruse controlled careen on a windy mountain roadway. Things get better or they get worse. Stagnancy is a myth. As much of a myth that we need only bide our time and wait for some other person or entity to step in and save us from our own inactivity.
That's never going to happen. Change can be sparked by events outside of ourselves, but it can only be sustained through internal dedication. Through coming to terms with our very own foolish hearts and minds and deciding to walk another path.
For me to come so far in alcohol abuse as to now be counting the years of sobriety, for me to go so far away from angry as to now be idyllic in my pursues of unity and peace, for me to have once ignored the very things that are now the only pursuits I give any real lasting shits about, I know that you, dear reader — soul of my soul, consciousness buried in negative self-talk, fear, and disillusionment — are capable of doing the exact same: inverting your life.
There are two ways you can go about it:
Practice, so the labor and pain becomes your joy.
— or —Play roulette: Dive even further into the chaos of needless suffering — and, through the sheer agony of it, come out either reborn or dead.
The choice is yours.
(If you want to see the physical proof of what I am talking about, here's the before-and-after:)
That's me on the far left, Fallen Leaf Lake, California (September 2013).
Me in April 2018: 70 lbs., several addictions, and many emotions lighter.
How would you like your life to be different? What's standing in your way? What can you do about it today? Let's chat in the comments section.
Mystic Numbers, Mythic Voice: A photosession with Lloyd Harmon
“THEREFORE, WITHOUT BEING ATTACHED TO THE FRUITS OF ACTIVITIES, ONE SHOULD ACT AS A MATTER OF DUTY, FOR BY WORKING WITHOUT ATTACHMENT ONE ATTAINS THE SUPREME.”
— THE BHAGAVAD GITA
Jeremiah Lloyd Harmon contacted me in the fall of 2015 to obtain headshots for an upcoming voice recital.
The request came at a time when anxieties about some personal issues were mounting. Taking photos started to become a challenge. The excitement I once felt when preparing for a shoot was nowhere to be found. I would get worried about the end result being "cool" enough.
I used to get a similar sinking feeling when I worked various day jobs, but instead of being worried about the hip-factor, the sensation had more to do with work that required me to compromise my ethics in some way. Having since shed all such employment, the reappearance of those feelings was troubling.
It was a time when I learned to lean into a quote from The Bhagavad Gita, which Steven Pressfield paraphrases in The War of Art:
"We have the right to our labor, but not to the fruits of our labor."
The shoot took place on a foggy afternoon in downtown Lynchburg, Virginia. With rainwater dripping all around us in a leaky parking garage, we started off with some traditional headshots. After about an hour of snapping photos on my 5D Mark II and a Pentax MX 35mm, I started to feel a bit more comfortable (submitting to the process).
I clipped my UE Boom Mini bluetooth speaker to a belt loop on my jeans and let tUnE-YaRdS set the new rhythm.
Jeremiah transitioned from formalwear into street clothes, and then into something more representative of his true self: a Lebanese thwab, chalked-up Nikes he wore during high school basketball days, a baseball cap and a hooded green bubble parka. He could have just as easily looked like a cross-dressing hobo, but instead the ensemble felt cohesive and natural. He pulled some recent artwork out of his car, a Sharpie from his pocket and inscribed the number “3” on each palm.
The singer held the backs of his hands up to his eyes, recreating the scenes with El Hombre Pálido in Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth.
I meant to ask him then the significance of the 3s, but I often get into a moment-to-moment flow while my shutter fires. The thoughts slide away. I’m simply breathing: present and responsive to the human on the other side of the lens.
NUMEROLOGY
When I sent him some digital samples later on that evening, I shot him a message on Facebook.
“Oh yeah. What’s behind the 3s?”
“33 is one of my favorite numbers,” he corrected. “It’s related to numerology.”
My only experience with something even related to numerology, the belief that numbers have a mystical connection to real life events, is the esoteric Jewish practice of assigning numeric value to Hebrew words from the Torah I read about in Chaim Potok novels.
I’ve never given it a second thought, but I’m a lot more spiritually open/curious these days. I looked into it, and immediately connected with a couple lines:
“A 33 used to its full potential means that there is no personal agenda, only focus on humanitarian issues. Someone with 33 strongly featured in their chart has the ability to throw themselves into a project that goes far beyond mere practicality.”
While I have yet to begin any investigation into my “chart,” this sentiment struck me because of the way I approach my life and work as a single practice.
After years of being employed at various functions — copywriting for evangelical higher education, editing advertising-heavy newspapers filled with syndicated content, receiving payment from companies that mistreat their staff and getting glimpses in the national advertising world that hocks harmful products for the sake of profit for a select few — I came to the conclusion that I cannot ethically accept a check in exchange for my complicity with what I believe is damaging to our lives and environment.
No, I don’t wish to help you sell your tobacco product. I will respectfully decline to create video content for a low-prices retailer with an inhumane work culture and bottom-dollar wages. Making any amount of money is not worth the weight of my soul, knowing that I am perpetuating “the problem.”
Instead, I’d like to take the route numerology ascribes to the Master number 33: Focus on humanitarian issues, no matter how “far beyond mere practicality” doing so might seem.
I would much rather film a low-budget sizzler for a local yoga studio than create another wine commercial. Or, like in this instance with Jeremiah, help a fellow artist bring more beauty into the world.
TURNING PRO
Up until the day of this shoot, I had only known him as the fiery-haired singer-songwriter who kept popping into my periphery through the landscape of the local music scene.
About a year before, my brother sent me mobile footage from a coffee shop performance where Jeremiah played an original tune, “January Eyes,” on a harmonium, and also a cover of Gnarles Barkley’s “Crazy” — both of which challenged the capacity of my iPhone speakers despite the simple live setup of one voice and one instrument per song. I was shocked by his level of vocal ability, a cross between Jónsi, Jeff Buckley and a soulfulness uncommon to his complexion.
I texted back to my brother: “Holy shit.”
He’s an anomaly: a ginger who sings in a gospel choir, performing solos simultaneously transcendent and reserved that break through already-powerful backing harmonies. And his personal work draws heavily from electronic experimentation, otherworldly folk music, jazz, eastern philosophy and esoteric knowledge.
For a transient town such as ours where bigger talents pass through from time to time — but only to get a degree and shove on to bigger cities to find room for self-actualization —discovering an artist’s artist such as Jeremiah is a rarity. He isn’t waiting for greener pastures to flex the fullness of his creative muscle. Instead, he’s actively engaged with the process of fertilizing his work in the “here and now” of a strange (yet lovely) Bible belt city.
Pressfield, in Turning Pro (his follow-up to The War of Art), lists this attribute in his twenty Qualities of the Professional:
“10. The professional plays it as it lays.”
Even pro golfers foul up a stroke from time to time and send the ball into the cut. There’s no option but to submit to the reality of a bad shot (“play it as it lays”) and get back into the game. The lesson is that any amateur wanting to turn pro must learn to not approach these moments with discouragement, but to perceive shortcomings as opportunities to embrace her or his current skill level and to attempt a course-correct.
Accept and work with reality. There’s no other way to progress.
No, Lynchburg isn’t the most opportunity-laden town for artists of any medium (at the moment), but a true artist like Jeremiah practices regardless of externalities. I pass by his room now late at night (I now rent a makeshift “studio” — a spare room in the midtown duplex where he lives with two other singer-songwriters) and hear him live broadcasting his painting and songwriting process on Periscope. Or I come by in the middle of the day and hear him experimenting with outlandishly beautiful sound samplings and beat makings on an Akai keyboard. I hear him pumping away on his harmonium while he allows his voice to effortlessly float with the powerful, always-on-pitch control that a show tune singer would envy.
And while the experience of his art (like I said earlier) is one of transcendence, a near mythical vocal quality infused with the musings of a mystic, there’s also an undeniable practicality to its practice — an application of ass-to-chair (to paraphrase Norman Mailer), an application of Self to simply do the work we feel compelled to do while letting the unknown results of that labor come about of their own accord.
Perhaps this “mere practicality,” attributed to the number 33, the number Jeremiah wrote on his outstretched palms doesn’t mean impracticality, but rather a far greater practicality. Perhaps if instead of doing things merely for an anticipated and assured outcome or gain we did them simply for the sake of doing — for self and for humanity — we would find a far greater reward than we could have ever conceived.