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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I AM YOU.
I AM (the human that will find) YOU.
I am carving the words you spoke
On the carcass of my mind.
They’re the seeds from which
Will spring forth a new one
A new divine. In between
Those words and moments past
Have crept in the soliloquies
Of my disengagement, my sorrow,
My self-made sadness
Stitched around me like
A cacophonous sarcophagus
Carved by my own fears.
In this I see the pain is the way.
The path through which I will encompass
All Understanding. No longer resisting
Or pretending otherwise. Not through masks
Or basks in my own lakes of misery.
I grow this new one because the old
Is discarded. It was never me anyway,
Just a tool by which I perceive
From time to time — to calculate and groove.
I am its author, not I it.
The junctions are branded at the joints
Of my body: my spirit — my eyes, my mouth, my throat.
Sometimes I crack misshapen
I regrow. Golden ore adhering the pieces
Stronger, brighter, sparkling.
And in all of this, the lesson is to TRUST.
To trust love, the knowing, the all-knower:
The conscious all-watching mind that is not a mind
But encompasses all minds.
Not “God," but I and You and Her and THEY.
Frequent flowerings such as these
Will be my new garden upon which I’ll nourish
And feed not just my own life and form, but those
Ones around me. How sorrowful it is to forget
The truth, to live in opposition
To slake your thirst in misunderstanding
And inner hatred.
But how sweet the nectar that pours
Forth and is there always.
When the resistance is mended, and the path
Which has always seemed uncertain
Is clear and cleaned
And full of unspeakable joy on either side
Of those crystalline daggers,
Aimed straight for the heart.
Tarot, tarot on the table
I think I’m weak but I am able.
The signs conform and confirm the wonder
I knew is beneath these bones, and groans.
They’re not on loan, but always
Right around the road.
I comfort myself with a trek down the tightrope,
Having grown too old for blanket and bottle,
Not in cancerous morsels that taste of deaths
And bleating screams.
I am Tathagata, the ruler of my own
World, inceptor of inceptors.
Guardian without guard.
My chariot awaits my hands to the reins.
It is poised and ready.
The horses fed and watered.
Bristling with jittering excitement,
Muscles twitching, not tense.
I once feared their billowing nostrils,
The hot breath on the back of my neck
As anxiety, but that was a misunderstanding.
In sum,
I am you.
You can Help Connect the World (with art)
From the desk (and heart) of @marceloasherQ
Although I’d love to go through the joyful process of focusing on an individually-crafted message for each of the people in my life, both the feasibility of such an effort and the time sensitive nature of what I have to say require that I reach out with the quickness.
Given the breadth of life I have lived so far, you might know me as a student, musician, parent of three daughters, high school literature teacher (in Argentina and in Virginia), writer, yoga practitioner, newspaper designer, web developer, content marketer, editor, journalist, outdoors enthusiast, traveler, photographer, filmmaker, insurance sales person, poet, pizza slinger … or one of many other roles I have stepped into over the years.
But I’m coming to you now fulfilling a task that’s at once something I’ve never quite tried before and a culmination of everything I’ve ever been: a director, cinematographer, and producer of an ongoing cultural exchange documentary series that seeks to uncover global connections through music and film.
As an introvert, reaching out in such a public way is not my norm (I’m growing). Being super vocal about my own projects can sometimes feel too narcissistic for me to do, but I feel that this project is so far beyond “me” that I’m unusually inspired to share it with you, hoping that perhaps you’ll seize the opportunity to be a part of it as well.
Someone I deeply respect recently told me that “art” projects (like this) are much more difficult to crowdfund than goods or causes. I insist, however, that Street Muse is all three — a film you can purchase, a humanitarian effort you can support, and an artistic project you can experience and enjoy.
This series began in 2012, when my dear friend and incredible musician (and excellent human) Nate “Gull” Rappole traveled with a small film crew to Kenya to perform his unique music and to interact with the local culture. After more than a month in Africa and many hours of editing, the hour-long Street Muse Kenya documentary came to be.
Film still: Meryl O’Connor
Over the past year, Nate, myself, and a few others have put in countless hours trying to ensure that the message of Street Muse does neither goes unnoticed nor ends with Kenya. We want to bring this project to as many nations as we can — not to impose any western (or personal) ideals on other people, but rather to connect with and showcase human culture as it is. You can help make this happen.
Ultimately, the underlying message of this series is for everyone — not just music music and travel enthusiasts. Street Muse is here to show that as humans, we are one people, and that cultural exchange is one way that we can choose to wage peace.
Yes, differences between us do exist, but my experience and belief is that through investigating and unpacking those differences, we inevitably find significant points of connection that far overshadow perceived details that make us believe we are “separate” from one another.
And in a socio-polticidal climate that is plagued by countless lines of division, this is my way of helping to foster peaceful, collaborative unity among all peoples.
While you can learn additional details from the Kickstarter campaign, I’ll leave some key points here:
We plan to explore Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam to learn how ecology influences the types of instruments and sounds humans make
The Street Muse Kenya team raised $10K in Kickstarter in 2012, but wound up spending more than twice that on overall production costs
We need to raise $25,000 by February 19 in order to reach our mark and receive any funding — it’s all or nothing
As of this writing, we’ve only recently broken the $6,640 mark
There’s less than one week left of the campaign
We have a long way to go, but you can help shorten that distance by getting involved. Whether it’s with $1, $1,000 (our largest pledge to date), or sharing to your social networks — every bit counts and is greatly appreciated.
Street Muse allows us (all of us) to bridge cultural gaps through music, and is a unique way to gain insight from personal connections and exchange.
We are currently screening Street Muse Kenya in Virginia, but would love to bring it to other cities over the next few days and weeks. Reach out to me if you like what you see and can help facilitate (in whatever way) a screening/Q&A/music performance night near you.
~Let’s continue this conversation together ~
Peace and love,
Marcelo Asher Quarantotto
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.
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Poem: Unforgivable Deceit
Unforgivable Deceit
The sin of ultimate
destructive power
[oh how it seems and seams]
is disbelieving
one's own
ability to be
#loved.
(2016)
Poem: Woefully Human (Without Woe)
Woefully Human (Without Woe)
Woe is he who is not woe,
For all others shall bring
Their burden of disbelief and suspicion
To the sepulcher of his sorrow.
Woe is she who is not woe,
For her smile will alight
The angers of the sleeping
Sardonic armies of unknowing
Malcontents, encumbered
Like pincushions of daggers.
(2016)
Photojournalism: The Listening — On Authenticity
I'm going to let you in on a little secret:
I really don't care about photography for the sake of photography, disembodied from anything other than the desire to take a cool picture.
My background is in journalism and my heart is burried in novels, which means I'm all about slow-form #longreads with the goal of dipping the reader into a narrative to explore and reflect on what it means to be a person. Sure, that sounds kind of lofty, but I'm not really one to do anything halfway. All or nothing.
I use a similar approach for my photo taking. It's not enough to simply take a shot of something that happened, I want you to feel like you're there with me, experiencing the exchange of energy.
As I mentioned in my previous post, I was hired by Riverviews Artspace to cover The Listening's most recent performance session, where poets and musicians shared art based on the concept of authenticity.
I've taken pictures at a few of The Listening's events, but this is the first time I put down my camera and picked up my guitar for one turn, and a sheet of typewritten poetry for another. Both pieces were meant to tie in with what I wrote in my guest blog post.
The first is a song I wrote to myself to help me calm my anxiety and to remind myself of what is most important. It's called "Focus on Breathing." I usually intro the tune with an a capella rendition of the Astanga Primary Series' Sanskrit opening invocation. It's designed to help practitioners quiet mental chatter before practice.
According to yoga teacher Kino MacGregor, the sonorous nature of the Sanskrit language is such that chanting or even simply listening to the mantra brings about this calming affect. So, in this instance, I sing the invocation both to quiet my nerves and to open listeners to what I say next:
Focus on Breathing (You Ought to Be)
Rise and fall again (we're spinning)
In infinite space.
But you'd rather
Choose to kill
Your own self if it suits
Your self-imagery pursuits.
But if silence
Is what you came for —
Well, you're never gonna get it
If you never shut the fuck up.
Rise and fall again (we're spinning)
In infinite space.
But if you focus
On what matters —
What goes in what goes out
Is what makes us who we are.
You'll be conscious,
You'll be free,
You'll be all the things you always suspected
You ought to be.
And I ought to be showing the pictures that I took at the event. I hope you enjoy — I hope you pick up on the love and intent with which the performers put themselves out there. It wasn't for money. It wasn't for fame. It's just humans being humans.
On Being Your Authentic Self (guest post and film for The Listening)
Read my words on The Listening's blog
Short promo film I created to showcase the general experience of The Listening.
As my life has been in a fairly consistent state of flux since ... forever, the concept of "being authentic" (and no, in case you are worried, I never use the #liveauthentic hashtag).
For me, being authentic has less to do with searching and finding but more so with simply being still and realizing what and where you actually are.
Nick George, founder of The Listening, asked me to create a guest blog post in honor of tomorrow's session. If you attend, you'll likely see me doing a bit of photojournalism for Riverviews Artspace.
You may also see me perform a song and poem. No promises. But it's likely.
In the meantime, you can read my guest post on The Listening's website.
Family Film: (in honor of Sibling Day 2016)
My Girls
By far my favorite set of siblings (no offense to my much-loved brothers and sister!).
Recent fun with a Nikon L35AF and a Pentax MX (40mm f/2.8 pancake).
FIN.
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.
Video: Jeremiah Lloyd Harmon — "Cali Cab"
A quick note on the creating process.
Sometimes, art can be messy. The way you intend things to go doesn't always happen — mistakes, happenstance and a bit of deus ex machina can get in the way.
And when plans go awry, you have three options:
Delete everything and never try again.
Release it as is.
Smile. Give it another shot.
My first inclination was to take route No. 2 for this project. I wanted to get the video out fast, and despite its flaws, I still enjoyed it. Still do. It was meant to be a continuation of the musicians series I began with my first-ever time picking up a camera in 2013, and was filmed in conjunction with a photo pack for my friends at Death to the Stock Photo.
My buddy and creative partner Matthew Addington now lives in Atlanta. We still toss around creative ideas and share projects, so I sent him the first draft to see what he thought.
In not so uncertain terms, he recommended a re-shoot.
"You know what's wrong with it, so why not fix it?"
Touche.
I knew next to nothing about recording audio (shameful, given the number of years I've been playing guitar), and now I know slightly more. The Zoom H4N I was using has an awful preamp hiss when you boost the recording level all the way. Lesson learned.
As for the over exposure ... I'll be honest: it didn't bother me all that much. The most important component of my work is the "human element," and that part felt locked in for me. But I took his advice and scheduled a time with Jeremiah to re-do.
Ok, so here's the original:
First Draft
We liked how it turned out, but in addition to my previously mentioned technical errors, Jeremiah was not thrilled about his mispronouncing the same latin phrase I used above. (In the heat of filming, I thought it was tongue-in-cheek intentional.)
For the second go-round. I hung a blanket from my backdrop stand to dampen the natural reverb and changed my audio capture set up, going in direct from the guitar and putting the mic up close, while also using the built-in H4N mics to capture the room tone.
All was going well, except I had a CF card issue — my camera display looked like a broken Atari game after a couple minutes of recording — about five takes in a row. Tried a few things, and finally got a solid take at the very last moment before Lloyd had to leave for a choir performance.
The final version is different, still imperfect, but I'm much happier with the end results. If you like what you see and hear or know a friend who would, feel free to share.
Enjoy.
—@MARCELOASHERQ
If you dig my content aesthetic/intention and would like to invest in your own personal project or business, click here to hire me.
For more on Jeremiah Lloyd Harmon and his music, read the story about our first collaboration.
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.
A Sunday Afternoon with James River Yoga
Yoga is a big part of what keeps me healthy.
Emotionally, physically and spiritually ... well, as spiritual as I get as a non-dogmatic, non-religious person.
(You can read more about my personal journey into yoga here.)
When I first started practicing, I was contacted by Lynchburg Living to write about a few yoga studios in Lynchburg, Virginia, which led me to meeting Nancy Allen at James River Yoga.
If she were a character in the Dune series, she would most definitely but one of the Bene Gesserit. A total badass poet, lawyer, and yogi.
We've kept in touch ever since. My schedule doesn't permit me much in-studio time; I mostly practice at home. But I have taken part of a yoga/poetry workshop she co-led and will sometimes pop into JRY for an intermediate vinyasa session.
She reached out to me asking for new photos for her website, and so I came by during a class to snap photos of some of her students, who come in all variety of size, age and ability. And I love the "come-just-as-you-areness" feel of any yoga outfit worth your time, money and breath. As someone who began practicing when I was deeply unhealthy, I truly believe that it is for anyone and everyone.
Yes, I'll go even so far as to say that everyone — without exception — would benefit from taking some time during the week to connect with your breathing and your body as a means of building an ever-growing foundation by which the rest of your life can flourish.
So, let these pictures (and video) serve as a visual representation that you don't have to be extra limber or a new-agey or female or any other divisive qualifier to practice. Just be you, and become infinitely more you throughout the process.
Thanks for looking. Don't you feel calmer and more centered? Just imagine what it's like when you're the one on the mat. Feel free to leave a comment if you want to chat about anything yoga!
Wedding Film: Bekah + David
Note: A version of this post originally appeared on my wedding site.
If the version of who I was 10+ years ago approached me now to photograph or film his wedding, I would have turned him down.
No offense, past me, but you were a hot mess. I got married just two weeks after turning 21 to my beautiful wife, in the summer of 2006. Drunken, self-focused and spiraling in so many directions — non of which represented a functional adult who knew what it meant to truly and actively love the person I was going to meet at the altar.
Don't get me wrong. My wife and I had been best friends all through college, and I don't regret my decision to marry her; she's the best person that I know and we now have three amazing daughters who exist in shocking contrast to who I used to be in my former life as an addiction-prone, immature college student with only a shade of introspective understanding.
Life is much different now, and my new vantage point (more than 2 years into sobriety and active wellness practice) allows me to acknowledge a good thing when I see it.
And Bekah and David are clearly a good thing.
Full disclosure: I cried a good deal when editing this film. I originally intended this to be a 4 to 6 minute highlight reel, but with all the different movements of the day and the raw energy of two people deeply excited about joining their lives together — I couldn't (in good conscience) do it any other way than it now exists.
Hope you were moved as I was moved.
NAMASTE
Poem: The Anatomy of Daughters
The Anatomy of Daughters
Breath too human to the smell.
Complaints too momentary to consider.
Alternating cereal scoops: hand and spoon.
Inconsistent dress; ill-suited for all weather;
Bright, happy, and free.
Roundness in the face brings pause ...
The mystery and masque of living.
Golden starshine through a hundred thousand strands
Growing longer from the source,
Prone to the tangle, the break, the fall.
Strength in each vulnerability.
Being in every new death.
Hope in all disaster.
###
The Prophetic Leanings of Matthew Paul Butler
Matthew Paul Butler (MPB) wants you to feel what he feels.
What he feels when he’s listening to Jeff Buckley, Bob Dylan and Songs: Ohia’s Jason Molina. What he feels when he’s writing or performing — perhaps putting down the microphone, unplugging the guitar and inviting you to hear the sound of your own voice and all the voices of those around you, together in the ever-present moment.
He wants you to feel connected, finding the way between you and yourself or you and something greater — even if that “something greater” is just the combination of yourself and anyone sharing in the experience.
MPB’s music is equal parts delicacy and anarchy — indie neo-folk soul rock — emotional and musical nuance and egress. His post-church, visceral spirituals are often raucous and attention grabbing, but with enough subtlety to incline you to turn up the volume (or stand closer) and let your eyelids fall in sweet meditation. You’ll experience a range of emotions set to lingering, distorted chords to sparse yet deft acoustic fingerings that provide reason to reflect or to throw down and dance.
Growing up between the Democratic Republic of Congo and the U.S. as the son of a charismatic preacher in a time when western Christianity drew a line through the music industry and proclaimed anything not overtly evangelistic to be unfit to be heard meant listening to the music he wanted to listen to was a conscious act of rebellion, carried out until early hours in the morning with a tape deck radio and foamy headphones.
MPB has in some ways strayed from his youth of leading music in churches, but there’s an obvious similarity between his father’s work as a minister and his as a minstrel. Both get to travel to meet new communities and reconnect with old friends, swapping stories about what it means to be alive, what it means to feel, to get bent, to disown old ways of doing things and to seek a new path.
Far from faithless, MPB’s beliefs are found in the expression of his day-to-day living, in composing melodic poems directed to strike you at your center and move you to do more than fold your arms and bob your head because you’re, as one lyric intones, “too cool to dance.”
Maybe, just maybe, you’ll heed his invitation to join in on the experience with him — to feel what he feels. You’ll listen to the words written for the exact moment you’re hearing them, for the exact ears that are hearing them, written for you to sing as your own words with your own voice, at once feel your feet grounded to the floor and your heart beating as if to remind you that you’re here, that you’re alive in the happiness and groaning of life’s chaotic orderliness.
