Here is an interview with Michael Franti. What an inspiring human being he is!

Life is good.

I guess the best things come when you’re not trying too hard. I hope that that will be the case this Saturday when I have to play for a wedding with practically no preparation. Wing it. Wing it with a smile. Well, I’ve got good folks to smile with me as I do less than my perfect ideal.

I saw Trevor Exter perform at the Wildflower Cafe’s fourth anniversary party. He is in the midst of a NY subway musician’s contest called NYC Soundtracks. Check him out.

Upon browsing the site I came upon another musician who I enjoy very much, Balla Tounkara:

It is great to feel real people playing real music.

**
Yeah, right.

I am a reflection of our collective insanity. Or maybe our collective insanity is a reflection of what is inside of me and a lot of other people. My whole life I have wanted to purify myself. Get rid of the “bad” parts. Be perfect. I have been striving for perfection. I have been rejecting myself as I am.

I have been using all of my practices to poke at myself. I have been punishing myself with “spirituality”. I have used my breath to beam into those darkened places in myself not with love, but with an intent to rid myself of that which I don’t accept. No wonder a lot of what I have been expressing in my music has been anguished. I have been doing it to myself.

OK. Again, I begin at the beginning. But maybe I can learn that that is a wonderful place to be. Maybe I can learn that that is all I will ever have. Maybe I will learn that that is actually everything.

I still have something to say that I haven’t said yet. I think I have been avoiding the issue. I think I really do need to find words. There is a lot that comes out in raw emotion through tone and all of the dynamics of sound, but the fact is, my throat chakra continues to be blocked on the left side. I have been working at this now for years. The blockage comes down from the back of my left ear down into my jaw and my neck and shoulder. I think it is something I have to say as a female.

I feel the need to apologize for being so plain in expressing that which may seem strange. This has been the case for me since I can remember. But I am who I am. I think I need to begin to accept that and be who I am without apology. Maybe that is part of what has kept me from speaking. Or writing lyrics. I don’t want to make anyone uncomfortable. I want people to accept me. But I need to be honest about who I am.

I finally sat down and began to use a method that my dear friend suggested to help me find words in a non-linear, non-reductionist??? way. An expansive way. A way that plops me right down into the ocean and lets the waves throw the words to me. We’ll see. I’ll let you all know.

I am still thinking about giving and taking and how that relates to economy. I am still thinking about how what I do relates to money. Here is Wayne Muller on “Enough is Enough”:

OK. So I am free. Now what? I want someone to tell me what to do. I am afraid of making a mistake. But that doesn’t help. I have my own senses to rely upon. What is beauty? What is my inclination? How can I do all of this without ideation? This is where I guess I need to go quiet. My mind is limited by my thought processes. But maybe my mind is bigger than my thought processes. Or my thoughts.

Some things feel good. Some things don’t. Are these feelings based on ideation? Not always. If I really get clear, patterns emerge which seem to be more than just my conception. Or maybe not. I do my best. We all do our best. Like following the notes of music that come. But why do they come the way they do? I don’t know. Is it me or is it something beyond me? I don’t have any way of knowing.

Many months ago when I first performed “Bursting” for my friend, I came to the line that says, “Lines and measurements, gridlock to life”, and I saw him flinch. He is an artist. Line and measurement are intrinsic to art, and for that matter I suppose, any moment in this life we are in.

Whether I choose to admit it or accept it or not, I am in this life. I am in this body which is in this skin sitting on this very chair. I do spend my time in certain ways which certainly can be looked at from a myriad of perspectives, but I can’t get away from the fact that perspectives exist and whether you look from this angle or that, you are limited within a point of view.

At least until I get beyond the fear of it all and let the waves carry me. But how do I explain that to myself or anyone else? I don’t know what that means.

Forget that. Love. Focus on the love and it doesn’t matter. The love carries you through the lines and definitions carrying you from limitation to expansion on more and more beautiful waves of experience.

Again, I don’t know what that means. But I won’t try too hard to figure it out.

I have had a real disdain for business. For vocations. But I only have had disdain for vocations because I think of them as business. The exchange of money. I think of it as being a grasping, greedy, cut-throat activity where people are looking at each other as adversaries in the pursuit of survival. An activity which turns people toward hatred and fear. This has been my extremely limiting belief.

I think that this is a point of view that many people share, though. But I have hope that it is changing. I think that it is changing in me. I have always wanted to focus on love. But somehow, putting love into that which makes money has seemed like throwing light into a limitless well to me. Like the light disappears and is wasted. Most of the time, I guess I still believe that. I am just beginning to question that.

It has seemed to me like so many things which are of inestimable value are not valued at all economically. Like home and hearth. Like friendship. Like love. But to start to put a dollar sign on these things turns them into commodities. You shouldn’t have to pay for any of these things. But sometimes I think that these are the things that I truly do have to offer, and because I want to focus my energies on them, I am going to starve. I have been told repeatedly that this is not the case. But I just don’t get it yet.

I wrote earlier about a job that I took on for the past month. It has been one of the hardest and most fulfilling things I have done in my life. I love it. But it doesn’t pay enough to live on. So how do I create or find that which will actually pay my bills and yet be something that can carry all of that love and life that I have to offer?

Maybe as I widen my view and begin to not just accept, but love the lines, variations and spectrums within my own life, life may support me more. To love and accept the light, I need to love and accept each color in the spectrum. To become a part of the flow I need to fall and rise and fall again.

“I’m so tired, I haven’t slept a wink
I’m so tired, my mind is on the blink
I wonder should I get up and fix myself a drink
No,no,no.”

I love the Beatles.

And I am so tired. But gratified. But I wonder whether I can keep this up. I asked for this, friends. I asked for work to keep myself afloat that would mean something. And I tell you, I have found it.

I’m filling in for a teacher at a school for kids with “emotional issues”. I am finding myself more the student than the teacher. But trust is developing, I believe. I’m also still running the business that I have run for the past eight years. But then how to do the music? How to keep up with my practices? I guess I’ll just have to figure it out. People do.

Earlier, I mentioned what I believe is the cause of my distress. I since changed the post. It is easy to blame someone else for your own pain. It seems really natural to do so. But when it comes right down to it, what I experience in my world has everything to do with what I do in my life, what I choose to believe, and whether I own up to the choices that I make.

I am so lucky to be where I am now. I have some ideas about what I want to do which excite me. I love the friends that I am surrounded by. Connections with people are very important to me. I want to help other people find connections too. Music is so basic to me, that may be an avenue which I use, but making a living is really tough through art. My impression is that it may be harder still when you stay true to your heart in the art, but I may be wrong about that. I really don’t know much about it. I just see the glitz and surface sheen of so much of what seems to be financially successful. That may be just a perception I have.

I have been thinking for a while that I may use my music through special education: music therapy, I guess. But wouldn’t it be nice if music and other art could be used as an educational avenue in some local cooperative effort.