Image: The amazing artwork of Jack Dullahan, a suprise rendition of Skylark and Ezra from the book I'm working on. A true representation of progress born from Noble Intentions. Check out his work @dracarysdrekkar7
Good morning, it’s fast approaching the autumn months here in Bok.
A lot can happen in a week, and so a little update.
Some deeper thoughts to start the conversation.
This morning I was thinking about the process. The long processes of things… the bigger pictures and this illusionary fast paced world we are in. I say illusionary because ultimately you are in control of your life. Life doesn’t really control you. It might try to fool you into thinking you have to be a certain way with little apps and digital trinkets and patterns that beckon for your daily and hourly attention, but you must remember… you have the power. It is all just brilliant marketing after all, perfectly disguised to make you think it’s all about your life. In truth, your pretty special without all this stuff. The really meaningful memories and accomplishments I think… well, they can take some time. It’s like gold in a river… things sometimes need to pan out to be seen for what they are. Sometimes there are a lot of flakes and sometimes it’s time to change rivers. But it takes time to see some things. It took about a week of singing after a 2 week virus to start to assemble my voice again, oddly enough it feels better and stronger than it ever did. Disguised inside that 2 week window of not being able to sing was the fact that my voice was healing in a strange way, it hadn’t gone unused in some time with such a break. A stark reminder that not everything is as it seems. I sat on the hill this morning watching the past full moon sink into the horizon while I was training with some vocal scales while my mind was off on drawing conclusions and connecting dots. I thought about an ocean…. And the patterns of waves and how they resemble the trials and tribulations of art and process. I thought about the large violent swells and the absolute still calms, the occasional storms and the stary night skies over our liquid dreams.
1. Passion
2. Action.
3. Noble Intention.
Combined, these things create a form of honest progress. Notice how time has nothing to do with the equation. I suppose you could sit on the shoreline and complain about the moment, about the waves or about the view 10 miles down the beach… or… just maybe, instead, you could just dig a nice hole and put a beautiful umbrella up and stay awhile. Like the ocean, our dreams happen and change over time but as long as we live by the equation…, I think we have a chance to accomplish great things. This weekend, A July gloom will be hovering over my ocean, although I see nothing gloomy about that. It’s just part of my landscape and process… as I dance with time and think about the dead rabbit. Yes, these are the things the moon told me today while I was singing to her… just a few hours ago. Ok, sorry for that, maybe it will resonate beyond this little website someday.
On to some record progress:
Music: Well, I spent most of the week learning to sing again, well, not really but yes… had some levers and switches to re-activate again. Good news, the old voice is back. Joyous to me as I feel a little strange without singing in my life. The week really was about listening to the first big music session I did with the dead rabbit track, rewriting the entire front half of the song. After all the writing, it was necessary to step away and pray I didn’t screw it up ever more. I may start the vocals on it this weekend in between hillside travels and ancient photo things I’ve been working on behind the scenes. Life has been good to me these last few months, a calm seemed to role in with the fog banks and some new patterns have helped me stay the course. Earlier in the week I started mixing “Long is the road”, that was fun. It took about 5 hours or so to really break the mix down and isolate all the drum tracks and group everything into little sections of my mixer.. it was a lot of fun actually and the new mix kinda blew some circuits in the tower after a few hours of loud listenings. It was my first real focused attempt at seeing what I could do with a track in this tower on the mixing side of things. Results were promising and before the actual record comes out I think that the tracks will all slowly and secretly get updated with better mixes behind the scenes. I’m a firm believer in a song being a song without some mind blowing sonic and scientifically engineered mix of supreme greatness. Something I always admired about most of the heavy metal records in my collection, they are what they are. Passion, action, noble intention…. Remember? These are the things that matter most to me and the things I care about more than you know. I’m in Rabbit mode. Hop hopping along down the rabbit hole these fateful days in July.
Artwork: Still contemplating the record cover.. it crosses my brain at least 10 times a day as I sift through some of the latest artwork I’ve commissioned. I spread them all out on the floor like some odd puzzle pieces to a larger painting… wondering what are the most important pieces of this first story. Soon as the writing is done for the record, I can see this artwork task will become a much higher priority and I really want it to be special. It should be an extension of the musical art, not just a package for it. And so that’s what I hope to accomplish when designing it under my beach umbrella. As for today, enjoy the Ezra and Skylark art from Jack Dullahan, it might show up in the future on something really cool. Thanks lord Drekkar
Well that’s all for now. I think I see a nice set out there… at least the rumbles of something groovy. I hope your finding happiness on your own beach. You have time for great things. Enjoy the afternoon. I’m 10 miles down under that black dome thing with red diamonds painted on it.
-j
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