ON ROTATION

Lots of great music. Not enough time to write about it all...but here's what's on rotation for me right now. 

Rina Sawayama, Sawayama

   

The Bombpops, Death in Venice Beach

   

Cozycow, Feverdreams

I've been super excited for Cozycow to drop his first album. First, because he's a super talented, writer, musician, and producer. Second, because he's my son. Feverdreams is everything that I thought it would be and much, much more. Taking off my father hat and putting on my music appreciation one, I will say that this is an amazing album and one of the best of the year so far. Putting back on my father hat, I want to add that I'm so proud of him. 

   

Fiona Apple, Fetch The Bolt Cutters

I've listened to Fiona Apple's fifth album, Fetch The Bold Cutters, multiple times over the past three days since it was first released. I cannot get it out of my head, needing to hear it again and again. As Contributing Editor Jenn Pelly wrote, this album is 'unbound'. Pelly writes,"No music has ever sounded quite like it. 

Apple recorded Fetch the Bolt Cutters both in and with her Venice Beach home, banging on its walls, stomping on its ground. Self-reliance is its rule, curiosity is its key. Fetch the Bolt Cutters seems to almost completely turn the volume down on music history, while it cranks up raw, real life—handclaps, chants, and other makeshift percussion, in harmony with space, echoes, whispers, screams, breathing, jokes, so-called mistakes, and dog barks. (At least five dogs are credited: Mercy, Maddie, Leo, Little, and Alfie.) All of this debris orbits around the core of Apple’s music: her voice, her piano, and most of all her words, which have always been her primary instrument. It creates a wild symphony of the everyday." 

So what's it all about? Again Pelly, "It happens to most of us at an early age: the realization that life will not follow a straight line on the path towards fulfillment. Instead, life spirals. The game is rigged, power corrupts, and society is, in a word, bullshit. Art can expose the lies.....On Fetch the Bolt Cutters, she unapologetically indicts the world around her. And she rejects its oppressive logic in every note. The very sound of Fetch the Bolt Cutters dismantles patriarchal ideas: professionalism, smoothness, competition, perfection — aesthetic standards that are tools of capitalism, used to warp our senses of self.”

   

ON ROTATION

Lots of great music. Not enough time to write about it all...but here's what's on rotation for me right now. 

Pacific Ranger, High Upon The Mountain

   

Phish, Sigma Oasis

   

ON ROTATION

Lots of great music. Not enough time to write about it all...but here's what's on rotation for me right now. 

The Goners, Good Mourning

   

Yves Tumor, Heaven To A Tortured Mind

   

FOXHOLES

This is the first post that I have written that has nothing to do with music.
So much is swirling around in my head these days. 
What a time we are living in. 
In my lifetime, I have been down in a number of foxholes (metaphorically speaking).
In some cases, I was there due to situations of my own making. 
Others times it was circumstantial. 
I hated being there each and every time. 
It’s hard to problem solve and be solution oriented in the foxhole. 

Your vision is limited and there is such a lack of understanding of what is truly happening outside the foxhole. 
There is danger. 
There is uncertainty. 
Each and every time, I found it to be unsettling and surreal and draining. 
And all felt otherworldly.  


But I also knew that these were moments in time. 
Ultimately, I would get out of the foxholes (The benefit of being in metaphorical foxholes and not real ones). 
And with these moments, I would come to realize a more fulfilled life and pathway forward. 
Why?  
Because none of us are defined by what happens when times are good. 
We are defined by and do our greatest amounts of growth and development during times of challenge, disruption, and change….and in extreme situations….chaos and crisis. 
Adversity, and how we show up and how we respond to it, changes not only our lives but those around us. 
But this cannot and will not happen unless we show up fully and are truly present. 
And we must allow everything to be what it would not otherwise be. 
As David Brooks eloquently frames it in his book The Road To Character; 

You have to give to receive 
You have to surrender to something outside yourself to gain strength within yourself. 
You have to conquer your desire to get what you crave.
Success leads to the greatest failure, which is pride. 
Failure leads to the greatest success which is humility and learning. 
In order to fulfill yourself, you have to forget yourself. 
In order to find yourself, you have to lose yourself. 

For me, it is here where I have learned the greatest gift of being in the foxhole.
Humility and empathy. 
It is also here where I have witnessed and experienced the best in others and received the greatest gifts.
Bravery, gratitude, and kindness. 

As we deal with the realities of our current crisis, doing our very best to manage it from our current foxholes, let’s make the most of this significant moment in time.

Let’s step outside ourselves and lend a helping hand to others and ask for the help we need as well.

Let’s work to fight and create something that is greater than what we knew or experienced yesterday or today.

In doing so, we will ensure a better tomorrow for ourselves, our families, our friends, our community, our society, and future generations.