The Hardest Nothing.

I have a naturally busy mind. That is to say, whether or not it’s something that I aspire to or not, I’ve had a lot of noise rumbling around up there for as long as I can remember. I’ve tried all kinds of different methods to quiet down a bit—meditation, relaxation, organization, exercise, nutrition, whatever.

The only thing I’ve ever learned is that I like to DO things, and that there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. The whole purpose of Zen meditation (as I understood it) was to create a waking state that you carried with you at all times to keep you focused and present. And that’s not really a problem for me. Usually.

Lately, though, I’ve been feeling overwhelmed. So much to do. So many LISTS. And I do have a very good grasp on what needs to get done and when, and in what order. The real problem right now is that I have absolutely no downtime whatsoever. This is a problem that I’ve always grappled with in the past, but don’t we all? When we have free time, it is always too too easy to watch it fly away than to use it to deal with boring things that have to get done.

Now that I’m a parent, the illusion of free time has been ripped asunder once and for all. There simply is no such thing anymore. In a huge way, this has been a relief. Despite this lack of time, I still seem to get everything done that really needs to get done. Every day becomes a battle against time and the forces of evil, and I like a good challenge. Strange, I don’t consider myself masochistic at all, but when I say that out loud….

So my currently overwhelming state had me kind of spinning the wheels of my mind in Mississippi mud this morning. I don’t know why I did it, but I decided to skip coffee with breakfast. I felt really awake and fine, so I just let it go. As the morning went on, I started feeling draggy, and I felt my mind tail-spinning. My family went out in the car, and while my wife stopped in at a shop full of breakable things, I took our munchkin to the coffee shop. I drank a marvelous americano (my takeout coffee of choice – obviously because I’m such a devoted patriot) while she munched on cheddar bunnies. I had this delightful moment of just doing nothing in particular, conversing with my 2-1/4-year-old daughter about nothing in particular, and realized something both wonderful and terrible.

The one thing that I need to do more of is NOTHING.

I’ve been working so hard lately, I hadn’t been able to take the time to stop and let my mind unwind a bit. I’m actually quite capable of detaching and just appreciating a moment for what it is, but when you’re too busy for that to just happen, you have to really go out of your way to make time for it to happen. It sounds so unspontaneous and uninspiring, but my experience is that it only doesn’t work if you lack spontaneity and inspiration in the first place.

The most important thing that I have carried out of this small moment that I had is just a simple but very strong reinforcement of a truth I already knew. There is no such thing as multi-tasking. Spending time with my daughter requires my full attention in order to make it truly worthwhile for either of us, and when I give it my full attention, it becomes a huge and deep experience. The same thing happens with everything else….

Being a parent is like being a camel in the desert, and time is water. A little bit can go a LONG way. So in between the items on my giant interminable list of things to do, I’ll pencil in a few minutes of NOTHING. Maybe I’ll use pen.

P.S. I started P90X yesterday. Pray for me.

Bats In The Belfry.

Now fly away, creatures of the night - BE FREEEEE!!!!

It’s been a crazy couple of months here. I have swiftly oscillated between a complete whirlwind of activity and crashing into a complete coma of unconsciousness. And while I have finally finished recording on my new production project (news coming soon!) and I’m almost finished writing my next album (can’t come soon enough!), I have some bats fluttering around in my belfry that I desperately need to let out. They’re blocking the exits. So please, dear reader, forgive the random collection of thoughts and commiserations, and hopefully you’ll enjoy these particular creatures without them taking roost in your attic.

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Whoever thought of remote car starters has clearly never read a Stephen King novel.

I was deeply disappointed by The Ides Of March—with the exception of Philip Seymour Hoffman, who has yet to really disappoint me in anything.

That divet on your upper lip just below your nose is called the filtrum. And now that my 2-year-old daughter knows what it’s called, the rest of us have no excuse not to know as well.

I am very upset that House is ending. I need at least one good source of intelligent misanthropy in my life in addition to my actual life.

Breaking Bad is awesome. It’s so awesome that I might survive the end of House.

Someday soon, an entire generation of humans will turn into zombies simply because they don’t have an app on their phone telling them that they’re dead. Also someday soon, they’ll have to do a remake of The Sixth Sense so that at least one of the dead people needs the new Haley Joel Osment to help them get bars on their ghost iPhones. He reminds them to just move their hand off of the antenna, after which they enter the light and find eternal mobile access.

I’m a little afraid to say it out loud yet, but . . . I’m just about done with PCs.

Something has happened to my mind recently, and I am suddenly quite incapable of baking. I can cook, but I can’t bake. I think it’s the waiting. I’m terrible at waiting. I just don’t have time for it.

“Ship and boat diverged; the cold, damp night breeze blew between; a screaming gull flew overhead; the two hulls wildly rolled; we gave three heavy-hearted cheers, and blindly plunged like fate into the lone Atlantic.” —Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

There is a CRAZY amount of similarity between the construction of pop songs and children’s books.

We need another sport that pits one human against another. All we have are boxing (and related sports), wrestling, tennis, and ping pong (which arguably isn’t a sport, though there are genuine athletes who play it at that level). I can’t think of any others. I just like to see individuals triumph. It fits my whole solo artist thing.

Facebook is the new Colosseum. Without the blood. Well, sometimes without the blood. But always with the same lust for blood.

By the time I get everything I need up and organized in the “cloud,” it will be completely replaced by the next thing—the “nebula.” At the exact same time, my entire wardrobe will also become obsolete, replaced by tight black pants matched with a variety of brightly colored long-sleeve shirts that don’t match my skin tone at all. But at least I’ll have my own spaceship!

I finally have 500 unread messages in my e-mail account! A big and well-deserved thank you to all of the e-mail newsletters that I don’t have time to read, to the targeted sales emails that I don’t have time to take advantage of, and especially to Groupon . . . I couldn’t have done it without each and every one of you.

I need a haircut.

Love is the answer. And soup. Love and soup are the answers.

So In Closing. . . .

'Allo 'allo, I'm Ebeneza' Scrooge.

It takes me awhile to get into the holiday spirit. It’s not that I don’t want to be—I love giving gifts to my nearest and dearest. I think that the rest of the year is so busy that it’s hard to emotionally or physically break from my routine (if you can call it that—more like a steady stream of barely controlled chaos).

Once I’m in, though, I’m IN. This year, I went carolling with some friends and neighbors, and my inner Grinch/Scrooge was sent to the dark side of the moon by two kids in an upstairs window singing “Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer” at the top of their lungs while my frozen hands strummed along on my guitar down on the sidewalk below. I wasn’t at all prepared for that to happen, and so it happened all at once in a glorious instant.

I love xmas songs as well, and even though I’m not religious at all, “Silent Night” is quite possibly one of the simplest and most beautiful songs ever written, especially if you do the vi / II 7 add 9 first inversion over the end of the fifth line (I know, music geek!). And I don’t know about you, but “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas” is my personal favorite holiday song of all time. It’s best sung in the key of F—the most sentimental of all keys—but I really have to sing it in either B-flat or C because of my vocal range, though I still try to fill it with all of the F-mushiness I can muster.

I also enjoy the chance to at least try to take a moment and reflect on the last twelve months and look ahead to the next twelve. I’m always in the process of evaluating and planning, but at this time of the year it’s with a different perspective. Maybe just a little extra hope and optimism, and just a little less cynicism and self-absorption. I’ve had a really exciting and full year, and I’m even more excited about all the work I’ve been doing in preparation for 2012. I’ve got another new song in the can, and with each chord and lyric I’m getting closer to another album . . . I’m like a kid on Christmas morning just thinking about it.

As a closing note to 2011, I would like to thank everyone for their love, support, and help in 2011, and to honor that sentiment by promoting a wonderful charity that I’ve come across. Project Night Night donates over 25,000 Night Night Packages each year, free of charge, to homeless children. Each Night Night Package contains a new security blanket, an age-appropriate children’s book, and a stuffed animal in a new canvas tote bag. 1 in 50 American children will face homelessness in their lifetime, and while we all work tirelessly everyday to make sure that this doesn’t happen to us and our closest loved ones, we should all take a moment to realize that it does happen to someone somewhere.

I've become a pure beam of holiday energy!!!

So my best to you and all of yours. Have a happy holiday season, open your presents with the naïveté and wonderment of a three-year-old, and I’ll see you next year!

cheers,
dc
AKA
dj xmas

Not Enough Davids.

It's a small dream, but a dream nonetheless.

Seuss was right, there are too many Daves. Dave Coulier, for example. But I must stress that his insightful observation does NOT extend to Davids. I’m not saying it just because my name is David, and while I certainly don’t mean any disrespect to Davids out there who have opted for the diminutive version of our given name, I must say that Daves tend to host Superbowl parties. Davids do not.

I think a lot of Daves end up being called Dave not because they want to be, but because outsiders (anyone not named David) use it for its more familiar and chummy nature. David just seems so formal and overly austere next to Dave. I also blame David Letterman, who is the only David that I can think of who can swing both ways and get away with it.

There are plenty of Daves that I like as well. (You know who you are, Dave.) And Dave Grohl is definitely not a David, but he wears his Dave in a way that seems to circumvent the norm. Dave Chappelle is a comedian, so he kind of has to go by Dave. And Dave Davies has to go by Dave just so you can get through his ridiculous repetitive name more quickly—responsibility for that falls directly on his parents’ shoulders. (My dad has a running joke that if I had been born as triplet boys, we would have been named Lloyd, Boyd, and Floyd. If a fourth one had shown up, his name would have been Magillicutty.)

But enough talk! Let’s get down to brass tacks here. Why am I bringing this up? I need more Davids, and specifically, more of the specific version of David that is me. I simply have too many things to do for one person. I need the Clone Wars to kick in already. I will volunteer my genes! . . . as long as I can keep a segment of the army for myself in order to finish all of the projects I start. (Of course, I would also require extensive signed contracts covering me in the event that my clones, much like me, are pacifists and only fight when cornered.)

Somehow, I think that such an experiment would end up more like “The Prestige” than “Star Wars.” I’m a bit of a control freak, so I can only assume that I would be a control freak, too.

Not Enough Davids

Did I ever tell you that dear Mrs. Cloyd
Had only one son, the name David deployed?

Well, she did. And that wasn’t a smart thing to do.
You see, when she wants him, and calls out “Yoo-Hoo!
Come down to dinner, David!” he just doesn’t hear.
She must call him some twenty-three times to appear!

This makes things quite difficult here at the Cloyds’
As you can imagine, with so many voids.
And often she wishes that, when he was born,
A clone had been made just to play the French horn.
And one for the guitar. And one for the drums.
And one for piano. And one of them hums!
Another plays cello. Another one clavichord.
Another plays tablas and tambourine washboard.
And one of them plays notes so fast you’ll get dizzy. . .

But that didn’t happen. And now David’s busy.

New Is The New New.

Roy Lichtenstein, THE MELODY HAUNTS MY REVERIE, 1965

Yeah, I’m haunted by familiarity, too. Sometimes my head gets so full of familiar things—most of which I have to remember—it seems like there isn’t any room for new things.

I’m already a creature of habit. I thrive on routines and schedules. I can honestly tell you that I wasn’t always like that, and did it work for me before like it does now. But in an interesting twist of development somewhere along the line, I found that routines and normalcy breed more creativity, and more effectively.

All that said, I’ve been stuck. As of late, new has come to visit and found the curtains drawn. Again, if I were less familiar with myself, I would think that I’ve hit some kind of creative block. But I know there really isn’t such a thing. I know the machines are just churning out algorithms, trying to find elegant solutions to the problems I’ve given them. So I’m very patient. But yeah, I hate waiting.

It’s fair to say that while I am, by occupation, obsessed with “new” songs, I also have a very high fence built around my house for “new” visitors. If you want in, you have to really get my attention. I have a houseful of guests up here already, and while I like them all very very much, they’ve eaten up most of the snacks in the kitchen. So it’s been absolutely fascinating to watch a new person come to grips with this powerful concept of “new.”

My daughter is so obsessed with this word, I would dare say that maybe only two other words get said more right now:

• “You”—meaning herself. Try teaching pronouns to a 2-year-old, it is impossible. After all, we call her “you” all the time, why wouldn’t she think that refers to her always? You just have to wait it out.
• “Self”—also meaning herself, but specific to situations where she wants to do something herself without any help. For example, when I try to get into her car seat and buckle her in, she yells, “SELF!” Then about 10 minutes later I have to pick her up and do it myself. She has the right spirit, it’s just that her head is way ahead of her body. Isn’t THAT true for all of us?

But “NEW!” tops the list for me. She is so obsessed with new things, that she’ll take one bite of a cracker, put it down, and say, “NEW!” She’ll be eating dinner, and two bites into a bowl of mac & cheese, she sees the leftovers in tupperware across the table, and all of a sudden, what’s in front of her is no longer appealing. Most of the time, this is hilarious. As with most parental-related hilarious things, though, it also makes you want to run in circles screaming and pulling your hair out. But only on the inside.

This last week, I’ve had a great injection of “new”—I have a bunch of new songs from my new artist to produce, I got a new acoustic guitar (thanks, Blake!), I have some new tuning keys coming for a new electric guitar (thanks again, Blake!), and I finally cracked one of my new songs this morning and I know which direction I’m going in again.

NEW! NNNNNNEEEEEEWWWWWWWW! Self.

Time Is My God, Action Is My Offering.

Bill Cosby is HILARIOUS.

I’ll bet you didn’t see that coming with this particular blog title. But as the Cos himself says, those of you with children will understand. Yes, and without, you’ll get it, too. But not really. I’ve listened to Bill Cosby since I was a kid. If I wasn’t listening to music, I was listening to him. I have most of his routines memorized: drop the needle and I can still go along with them word for word. He was the Beatles of spoken-word records for me.

Anyone who has been reading regularly will note that I have become rather obsessed with time. Clearly obsessed. I’ve been trying to solve some really serious problems lately, all having to do with the math of time, and each time I just meet a giant brick wall of impossibility, stretching as far as the eye can see, the top covered with broken glass in the mortar.

Something about the Bill Cosby stand-up experience has helped me break through and realize the singular reason behind my obsession. Obviously, being a dad makes it hard to find time to do, um, just about anything. But when I listen to his stories about parenthood, after almost two years of living through it myself, I now know that the ridiculous frustrations and scenarios are very true, and they all point to one thing.

My time isn’t mine anymore. And it never was.

It was a truly devastating realization. I feel rejuvenated by this epiphany, and it’s already turning me around, the same way that marriage and parenthood have changed my life, and the same way that my love of music has vastly diminished my enjoyment of nearly every other form of art, leisure, or entertainment.

Before I had a child, I could make decisions about what to do with my time. On a Friday night, I could go to the movies, have dinner with friends, go catch a show, or even nothing at all. When my daughter was born, at first I thought that the luxury had been temporarily misplaced, but that I would see it again one day. Now I know through and through that this shift will never go back to the way it was before. Sure, it gets easier as she gets older, and my wife and I get a little more freedom, but that carefree ship has sailed for good and will never return to port.

I could then decide that life is a prison whose walls and cells are made of many things—my body and mind, my abilities and limitations, my decisions and hesitations, my commitments and my refusals. In this prison, Time is my warden, and I do what he tells me to do, when he tells me to do it. I’ve been feeling like this a lot lately, and it’s really exhausting and unproductive.

But Time is not a warden, and life is not a prison. Time is a god, perhaps the only one that truly oversees and has control over your life. The only thing you can offer to this god is your action, what you choose to do with the time given to you.

My offerings to the god of Time come in three primary forms—have to, need to, and want to. “Have to” actions are the simplest to define; if you don’t do them, you die. For example, I have to sleep at night, so I offer my act of sleeping to the hours of midnight to 5:30 or 6. I have to eat and digest, and let’s be honest, both ends of that take up time every single day, at least if you’re lucky.

“Need to” and “want to” are a little more nebulous, but I can loosely define them as follows. If “have to” actions help you survive, then “need to” actions help you thrive. So exercise fits here for all of us, whether we like it or not, along with a whole lot of health-related hygiene activities like flossing. “Want to” actions are brought about by desire, the kind that only exists as a result of both survival AND thriving. If you are homeless and haven’t eaten in a week, I can’t imagine that your preoccupied mind has the ability to “want to” go to a baseball game, unless it’s part of a hunger-induced hallucination.

Now depending on whether you are a working stiff or a transient hobo, making money in order to buy food, clothing, and shelter could be any of these three, or not even make the cut. Which brings to light an interesting notion—almost all of our actions are at least a little nebulous in these regards. It’s an ongoing organic analysis of what time you seem to have before you, and what you have to, need to, and want to get done. Sometimes laundry is at the top of the list, and sometimes you have to let the dishes sit dirty in the sink. For someone who LOVES to categorize things—that’s me, by the way—this fact takes me completely out of the equation, and forces me to evaluate each action one at a time.

I am no longer a noun, I am only a verb. I am a perpetual list of actions, and Time is my god.

I think that I have officially over-appeased the god of Time with too much blog action. I think I “need to” go drink some wine and relax. I feel like a reformed monotheistic pagan. Is there such a thing?

Clarity. Ah, Clarity.

Wanderer Above The Sea Of Fog by Caspar David Friedrich

So as I was saying in my last blog, I have been purposely diminishing the use of my iPhone in an attempt to get some focus back inside my brain. Well, I’m not sure that I actually have a lot of focus back, but I found something else—clarity.

You might argue that these are very similar things. Merriam-Webster might even argue with me on the same point. Focus: a state or condition permitting clear perception or understanding. Clarity: the quality or state of being clear. These sound very similar. What you don’t see are the 11 other definitions for the noun “focus,” plus the 7 definitions for the verb.

Focus is a verb to me, even as a noun. It implies action, work, doing something. Clarity is more observational than participatory, and it’s usually not as attractive to me because of that. I frequently find myself in a cloud of dust caused by the flurry of my own activity. From time to time, I also find myself teetering precariously on the edge of a cliff that I couldn’t see for the aforementioned cloud of dust. I very rarely find myself running off of the cliff like Wile E. Coyote, but I’ve been there, and I don’t suspend in mid-air, I just drop.

My point is, when I’m in the cloud, I always feel like I’m getting somewhere. The problem is, I can’t see where I’m going.

I like this painting. I want to be this guy. Not all the time, maybe just once a week. I can’t abandon my cloud—it’s where I live, at least right now. But I can stick my head out every so often and get my bearings back. I’ve had a chance to look around lately, and what I see is something that I’ve badly needed to see. I’ve gotten a lot done in the last year or so, I’m really pleased with all that I’ve accomplished, and I desperately needed to pause and appreciate it for a moment—just take a look around and enjoy the view. Turns out it’s the most productive thing I’ve done in awhile.