Sometimes the world seems like it has gone crazy. And it is reflected in my own life directly around me and within me. I reached a point a couple of years ago where I felt like I was being sucked down into a well and I didn’t know how to pull myself up to see my own horizon any more.

But then someone gave me a sense of hope which I followed. And gradually I began to remember that I exist. You see, at that point I couldn’t even feel my own existence any more. I was awake and I had a body and I had thoughts, but somehow I was gone. It took someone looking into my eyes and seeing my despair for me to realize some time later my own despair.

Life can be really tough. And I guess it is particularly tough right now. It is scary to watch the world as we know it fall apart. Outside and inside. But since I grabbed the thread of light from my friend, I have been climbing out of my well and I have remembered that I am really still here and now I even have a sense that the world around me exists. Hey people! Hello! How are you!

I began a yoga class a couple of years ago. It taught a very relaxed deep form of yoga called Svaroopa. It allowed me to ease into parts of my body that were holding tension and not allowing energy in. I began a process of release. Thank you, my wonderful teacher and friend Midi.

I have been exploring the disallowed parts of my own inner space through yoga and qigong since then, and have found that breath and energy work can be blended with singing. I have found that singing can in itself be energy work. After all, certain notes are associated with certain chakras. And I do find that if I draw attention to different parts of my body as I sing and allow the singing to flow through those parts of my body, the quality of the singing changes, a feeling emerges and blockages can be cleared.

I am finding through my qigong that energy work can heal others as well as the self. I am hoping that I can use my singing in the same way. And my talking and communicating generally, although I am reluctant often to commit myself to strict rules of thought which sometimes makes understanding me difficult. I think I still have a bit of anger to work though. I will gradually come back down to earth through my healing process though. I really want to get to know you all! And I want to begin to learn from you too!

So much of my life in the past couple of years has been in change. The process of change has made it necessary for things to be fluid. My music has been no exception. It has only been in the past couple of years that I have been playing the guitar and singing again. There was a twenty year gap when I did not create. I think the music I created a long time ago would be called folk music. Please forgive me, folks as I go along. I am an expert at nothing but my own present experience. I don’t know much about genres, I just have a general impression about things. In any case, my music has always been folky and acoustic. And I have pretty much stuck only to my own music and to my brother Billy’s music.

I self-pollinated for a long time. Actually in every sense. Not just music. But now I am reaching out. I want to learn about myself and the world. I’m done with being scared and not taking chances. So my music is following suit. It is changing. Much of it has been very fluid for a while. I am sort of afraid of committing to much structure. I feel that way generally about my life. I have been cast into a heavy mold for so long, I am afraid of being pinned down again. But my fear is lessening and form is surrounding the creative core. Yet in the process of traveling through parts of myself that I hadn’t allowed myself before, I am letting new kinds of expression out: still very fluid: grunts, shrieks, a language that seems to have a life of its own. But it is forming itself into something very new to me. And I am finding beauty in this new form.

I have found a wonderful place to perform my music, no matter how weird my music gets. The Wildflower Cafe in Bethlehem Pennsylvania is owned by a wonderful lady who has created this space where people can feel free to be themselves. It has attracted some amazing talents, and a lot of wonderful accepting people, where respect for each other is central. Come out on a Monday or Tuesday night to join in with the open mike. Sign up starts at 7:00 PM.

And that is what it is all about for me. . . Hello World, but revised. . . This is how I am feeling these days. And much of this can be expressed and experienced through music. I think that a lot of people are feeling a sense of renewal these days. And I have great hope for all of us. What appears on the surface is not always to be relied upon. I think that we are emergent. The surface is sometimes just a hardened shell that will soon be cast aside. Like the shell of an egg. And what better way to bring along a birth but through the joy of music.