Burning Bridges

I'm in a phase of my recovery that involves deep cleaning. Cleaning of my heart, mind, car, bedroom and apparently, my bank account as well. Naturally, I'm scared about the last part. My lifestyle has improved tremendously in the last few months, but I haven't earned enough yet to keep up with it. What I do know is I can't go back to the old lifestyle. I've burned the bridge behind me and this last bit of clutter is me not accepting that 100%. I perhaps haven't gotten to the other side of that bridge and I'm holding on to a branch to climb up and continue down the road to the promised land. If a branch is all I have to hold on to, that will just have to do!

Last week I sold a microphone to a guy in Sweden on Ebay. Got $300 for it and it turns out that something is wrong with it. I could get all egoed out about it and fight the case he opened but this guy? I think he's telling the truth. Some things are just out of my control. I could really use that money but decided to issue a refund. Leap of faith. I may not get that mic back. I don't care. I bought it from a pawnshop 20 years ago for $20 back before people went insane with paying high prices for old goods. They sell for up to $600 today. But why don't I care? Well, I do care. Like I said I can use the money but today I have faith that I will get that money another way. I needn't worry about it. I started a new job teaching kids how to play music better, just that spiritual victory alone says I am going in a healthy direction. A busted mic is just that, the past. Gone. Finito Mussolini. Teaching kids? That feels like heaven to me. A job that doesn't feel like a job. That's my present, not my past. I'm in love with my present.

So this month has been a month of financial setbacks. A test of faith is what it feels like. I'm watching my savings decrease. I don't like that. But then again, money is a tool, nothing more, nothing less. It has nothing to do with my actual self worth. I am glad I have savings in this challenging moment. A few years ago I didn't even have the concept of savings. I just borrowed to keep myself fed. That sucked. Truly. Don't do it kids, there is always a way.

So why did I title this Burning Bridges? I've learned that many successful people burned a lot of bridges behind them which enabled them to not entertain the idea of going back. I haven't burned too many bridges, some but not a lot, the difference is those that have succeeded had an idea of where they were going. A powerful vision. Faith. Without that what do you have? Today I know exactly what I want to do. It has never changed really, I was just too scared to admit that I want to be successful in music and am willing to do whatever it takes to live that dream. The last of my clutter lies in my other blog, the one about fixing tube amps. I have some tubes to sell, and my tube tester, and my bias meter. This stuff has to go. It merely represents my fear of totally letting go of my past. It represents my "back up plan" in case things go totally wrong or simply just don't work out. I've been there before when I moved to Los Angeles. I had no job for the first 4 months there and was the happiest I had ever been. Oh, I was scared, but rather than look for work I wrote music all day. By the end of that summer that music was pulling me in a direction like a magnet. Trouble was, I had burned through my savings and I was scared to death. So I got a job doing the same thing I did for 20 years, fixing tube amps. I lied to get that job saying I was excited to build this division in the company to my new employer when truth was I was burned out and wanted nothing to do with it. After 5 months that lie got me a nervous break. Lying takes a tremendous amount of energy you see. Yeah, it was a smart choice in one way, perhaps the best I had at that time. Fix amps or lose my apartment and wind up on the street in the City of Lost Angels. At least that's what it looked like. I hated letting my employer down. Hated it. Felt awful. It's a burnt bridge I'm not proud of. But on the other hand, I can't go back to that job. That in itself is a blessing in an odd way.

So today I earned doing something I truly love. I'm hooked. I'm hungry for sharing and being of service. I'm hungry to become a better teacher, musician, writer, producer, composer. I'm hungry for a better life. I'm no longer starving, it's just the right amount of hunger. And I love it.

JB

Cluttered room, cluttered mind

Clutter. Oof. A sore subject for me. I lived in a house in Portland Oregon for 9 years and had my own shop for 5 years. I am a recovering Luddite. Luddites always seem to be a magnet for old broken stuff.

It took me 2 years to move out of that house and shop. Just the task of ridding myself of the stuff on Ebay, the Goodwill or throwing stuff away took that long. And most of it was little things but also for some reason I always had at least 5 tenor saxophones at a time as well.

When I moved from Portland it took me 2 days to pack my van.

When I moved from Los Angeles 9 months later it took me 2 1/2 hours to pack my van.

Clutter was my way of being right. I could sit in jealousy of my friends who had a few possessions and travelled while I was weighed down by my stuff. How messed up is that?

This week I may have let go of my last piece of clutter though I may sell my tube tester as well. Why the hell not? I won't be getting back into the amp fixing business ever again, why is this still around?

I'm pretty strict about it these days. What I have is what I actually use. If it sits around for a 6 months it needs to find a new home. I can't make a real living with a house full of blocks. Clutter for me is a wall. It's defense pure and simple. I wanted my room to be a disaster zone so I wouldn't need to invite anyone into it. A friend said, put love into your space and love will want to hang out there. Very true. I look at my room right now, my desk is cluttered but my room is organized and tidy for the first time in my life. I cannot believe I lived any other way before!

What I'm finding now that I'm changing these old bad habits is my mind is full of clutter and it's screaming. It will not shut up. Blah blah blah. So i pray to be relieved of this. To be addicted is to be enslaved. I was a slave to my possessions. No longer. I am a slave to my mind and yet have a solution though whatever noise my mind puts out doesn't actually dictate my actions. So it's okay. I've learned to say no to clutter. I'm learning to say no to cluttered opportunities as well. I don't take gigs any longer that don't serve the greater good, don't pay, don't help. No more Wednesday nights at crap bars with 17 bands no one wants to hear. Self respect runs the show. I've learned to let threadbare clothes go, threadbare relationships and threadbare thoughts go. This takes daily practice.

Corners are where clutter still shows up. It feels like those dark areas of my mind or like that dark area of the park where all the distressed people gather in that weird communal fuck the world way. I spent 2 hours shining a light on those corners in my room yesterday. Shine a light and the darkness can't hang out there. That's just science. For my mind? I just need to sit and watch it. See how those threadbare survival patterns behave and say "hey, thanks for helping me out but I will not act on your 36 year old distress!"

I'm starting to see the truth. How I do anything is how I do everything. I hate that sentence. But if I can make my bed everyday, I can make my mind as well. If I can clean the sink thoroughly, I can do anything thoroughly. It's true. If I can learn to like that sentence, I can be superman. I like being able to fly.

JB

Addiction to...

Some days I wish my addictions were to concrete things so I could simply quit them, do my 12 steps and move on with my life. For me they aren't so obvious. Being addicted to negative feelings, it took me 40 years to become aware that I could even be addicted to the actual feelings themselves. If I were doing heroin I would have to avoid the pusher man. Me, I have to avoid negative leaning people, hard to do because the pusher man who sells negative vibes is on every corner. The Internet is the negative vibe super highway. Easy to fall ff the wagon if I join a forum, or even look at my Facebook feed or scroll down to see Youtube comments. The Internet has given so much voice to those who aren't willing to actually make any changes, and would rather wallow in self hatred and self pity while trying to tear people down who are in the world making a difference. Why is this the way?

I've experienced that with compulsive disease you can go from one addiction to the next. You don't even see the next one coming. Some time after 9/11 I became a news junkie. No joke. I couldn't walk past a news box without looking at a headline. I used to park myself at the Burgerville restaurant on MLK in Portland just so I could read the ribbon of lies on CNN. When I got honest about it I quit cold turkey with little support. The strangest thing happened. I went through physical withdrawals much like my friends going cold turkey from heroin. Wake up screaming, night sweats, fevers, the runs. So much emotion uncorked I didn't know what to do. They subsided then whenever I would see a headline I would get nauseous. I would have to remove myself right away. The news. That's messed up.

I slid into debting. This was around the time I started my own business. I would look at the gross and never the net so it seemed like I could handle spending beyond my means and paying up later. There were days when I'd be sitting in my little shop on Mississippi Avenue in Portland and the handsome Fedex or UPS guy would bring me a large box with a saxophone in it I didn't remember buying. Needless to say this system crashed. I had a nervous break in Los Angeles and had to come home and re-boot my engine. I could no longer debt and threw myself into a support program. I had to admit I was a money drunk. Then.....

In Los Angeles I was paying $800 a month to maintain my debt. I learned to manage $30. I ate well, learned to cook and live on very little. And, I slipped into deprivation. The total opposite of debting. Deprivation is the worst I've experienced I think. But I'm finding my balance. With deprivation the low is the high. I suppose all along with my negative attitude the low has always been the high though. It's great to not have to do anything cause I was always right, inferior, superior, pious, worthless. Blame was king!  It's awesome now to know that none of this is the truth at all. We are all equal. We are all capable. We are all lovable. That includes me.

Deprivation, the core of my addiction is right there, that feeling of worthlessness, that feeling of not deserving. I don't know that it will ever go away, that madness, I do know I can counter it by enjoying my life, dressing better, combing my hair, going out to eat at nice places, buying furniture and ridding myself of clutter be it stuff, relationships that no longer serve me or ideas that no longer serve me. A cluttered room is a cluttered mind. A tidy room with a nice desk, bed and comfy chair is heaven on earth. Being able to appreciate what I do have is heaven on earth. Being present, alive and in the moment is heaven on earth. That's the groove I'm working hard to stay with.

There is no point to any of this if I don't decide to enjoy this wonderful life. I decided to have fun for the rest of my temporary Earthly experience. Some days I struggle with that, but more days than not I'm getting better at enjoying life. One day at a time.

JB

In Between

Hello my name is Jef and I am a gratefully recovering racist. I need help. A lot of it.

Yes, the opening lines are meant to be provocative. Those who know me would never think I have these horrible feelings. But I was born in raised in the United States of America. How can one grow up here and not have that awful sense of 'otherness'. This week a sick man was acquitted of murdering a young unarmed black man. I'm having feelings on this subject. I feel terribly sad for that young life and terribly angry that this very sick man gets a pass and terribly frightened by all of what I have seen on Facebook. Trayvon, I get it. I've been followed and harassed myself. Maybe you came to this Earth this time around to die so we can have the opportunity to discuss and heal. But, why look for reasons in a world where there is no reason.

I grew up in Columbia, Maryland, the first integrated town in the USA. My parents were married in 1966. It was illegal to be 'black' and 'white' and married at the same time. That wasn't even half a century ago. I consider myself lucky to have grown up there for Baltimore along with many other US cities was burning after Martin Luther King was shot.

My skin was fair but my hair was kinky, I had a bright red Afro growing up. This confused the other kids and there wasn't a day that went by where I wasn't informed that I was different. Most of the black kids didn't approve of me and some of the white kids let me know my mother was left in an oven too long. It's not possible to kick 5 other kids asses so I withdrew. The only household I really felt safe in besides my own was a family called the Livingston family. They were truly open and it was a mixed household, or, they had one adapted child who was black. "Undoubtedly there were other mixed kids around right? What about them?" The boys, I didn't get along with. They wanted me to choose between my mother and my father, or specifically, they wanted me to hate my father who was white. Truth is I love and more importantly, like both of my parents. So I chose to lead a quiet existence in between and not mess with those kids.

Kids do what their parents teach them. They think it's normal to say such things if that is what they are taught. This stuff doesn't just come from nowhere.

I read recently a book called "The Zone" by Colson Whitehead. It's a zombie saga that takes place in lower Manhattan. I was expecting a fun book with lots of gore and bones crunching but instead found myself crying a few times. The protagonist, Mark Spitz survived the new terrifying world the same way he survived the old dull world, by just being invisible. Mediocre. And now that the world became more mediocre than himself, he is now excellent. This is what racism does. It keeps us in a perpetual state of mediocrity. Maybe better yet, this is what violence does, keeps us invisible. I learned to survive by being invisible. I had friends who were white and didn't know my background. Every once in a while I'd hear some horrible stuff about black people. I seldom reacted cause I was already so isolated and sometimes these situations spelled possible harm to me. So I learned to be quiet and not say anything. My next door neighbor Tommy Tucker who was black called me Nigger one day and we wound up on the ground in a senseless fight. See, that was a word that would get me in serious trouble in my house. I could not understand a black kid using it. It hurt more than when a white kid called me that. It hurts to hear it today in popular culture. Why focus on that word? The low is the high I suppose.

Confusion and safety. See, the house I grew up in was a row house. Stage left was the Tucker family, black, single mom. Stage right were the Conovers, white, parents still together. At night you could hear the horrible beatings through the walls from both sides. Both families were abusing the children. In between was my home, relatively stable. I thought the world was insane. I could hide out in between but couldn't drown out the suffering these families dished out. I was disturbed by all of this.

In 1977 my family moved to Germany. I was fascinating to the German kids but I recall no racist jive from any of them. When I was transferred to a US school on the grounds of a military base, that old racist bs showed up. My mother hid the terrible stuff she and dad faced from me, like going to one party with the other parents and when they walked in the room went silent. Then a few of them start talking about how they used to string up coons from trees back in the states. What is it about this country that has this peculiar brand of racism? Why do we still need to check the race box on forms here? Is that necessary? In Germany if you are born there you are German. Here you are "White box, Black box, Asian box, other box". This needs to end if we are really to move forward.

I could go on through the history of my childhood but will save that for my support groups. Let me talk now about the absurd stuff I've heard as an adult.

"Oh, so you're half black, at least you have some soul" said a musician friend of mine who is 'white'. "Is that how you feel about yourself?" is what I thought. I don't think I said anything cause I was waiting for the punchline. A joke right? No punchline. Man, everyone has soul. We just believe this silly idea so we don't learn to access it. And this guy can play his ass off. He played in a soul band for years and killed it! I have half a soul? Piss off. Sad to say this put a barrier between my friend and I. I don't appreciate being an image, i just want to be a human.

"So you are the son of a slave owner and a slave?! What's that like?" said one young African American kid on the bus to me one morning in Portland Oregon. "I don't know what that is like, my dad doesn't own my mom". Was my reply. Piss off kid, you don't know me. You formed an image so you will never know me. Your loss.

"So what side do you identify with more?" Neither. Culture and society are inherently fucked up to me. I like some things about culture, but society is monstrous and feels largely away from the truth. Music? I have more music by black artist than white, but I listen mostly to music from all over the world. Middle Eastern music is the bomb for me. And okay, I'm not down with the Beachboys. Does that make me racist?

So what is it like living in between? There is a brilliant book called 'One Drop' by Bliss Broyard. Her father was Anatole Broyard. He was a writer who could never finish his biography and died without telling her that he was a black man who passed for white. She tells one story about getting a job at some office. Her dad had connections there. She was required to do a personality test to get the job, she got it and over the years had to take more personality test every time she moved up in the company. One day a woman in human resources told her, "you know, if it weren't for your father, you would never have gotten this far in the company". She was hurt by this and the lady said to her "here, let me show you something." She showed her the results of her personality test and year after year the results were exactly the same. "Impostor". I cried when I read that. That's exactly what it can be like. You don't ever feel like you belong. It creates a nasty compulsion to prove when you crave company and acceptance.


So for me, I never could allow myself to be angry. I understand Obama. If he showed anger he'll become "the angry black man" in this stupid media culture and lose ground. Hell, if he smoked Newport Lights instead of Marlboros he would never have been elected. Even to this day though, I hear people say "well, he's not completely black anyway." What does that even mean? So tired of hearing stupid comments like this. It's hearing noise like this for 45 years that has at times created an equal opportunity hater in this body. It's my soul sickness that needs healing.

 A week after 9-11 I was subbing on bass at a poetry reading in Portland. A black dude got up and talked about the top 10 terrorist acts the United States committed, which I agreed with, we have serious atoning to do for our sins as a nation. But then this guy starts on this Holocaust denial trip. The room got so agitated. One Jewish rapper said "if that shit didn't happen, what is that tattoo on my grandfathers arm?" The stupid reader said "I have the books to prove it!" So this kid has some books and that proves it? I wanted to beat this guy in the head with my bass and in that moment I also realized in my experience I could hate EVERYONE but, I don't actually hate anyone and that is the truth. I decided I just wanted to listen to this fellows pain and try to understand where it comes from. Maybe even pray for his pain to be lifted. At this point the guy starts comparing the Holocaust to the Middle Passage with numbers and stats. The Jewish rapper said "man, why are you comparing pain to pain? Pain is just pain, mine is mine and yours is yours. It's personal, there is no comparison. Why can't we talk about healing our pain instead?"

mmm hmm. Why can't we talk about healing our pain instead of comparing?

Maybe that is the root of the problem. We are always insisting on division when we can be insisting on intergration. Humans.......

xoj

Putting yourself out there

So, I've written about my fear of visibility. It's a subject I'll keep sharing about until it's no longer a problem. I noticed the other day that I resist all that is good coming my way be it a hug or a musical opportunity. I'm glad I've noticed this cause once I notice a pattern it's only because it's losing its grip and is fighting for survival.

I may have been an overwhelmed child and this explains alot now. The fear of confrontation, the hiding and biting. To finish a project and put it out there is confrontational. I have a lot of projects that are 90% done and in the last few laps I tend to lose interest in the race. But again, now that I can see it, it's only because the pattern is losing its steam. My Higher Power is taking care of me. I'm getting stuff done now, following through. I like it, my patterns hate it.

Screw those patterns! (I'm practicing not swearing! Need to give a lecture to kids soon!)

The other day I had a confrontation with a friend. I withdrew and got angry, felt small. Then I contradicted this bt getting help, took good care of myself. I went to Central Park and played guitar for the lovers and children walking by. At one point I just felt like nature itself. I knew this moment was the right moment to call a place I want to work. My patterns don't like me to try and change my life, but with this kind of peace, they didn't have a voice.

I may have a new job. I need to get a lecture idea together and present it tomorrow morning. That will get me in the door. By the fall I may be earning a lot more than I am now for doing service, using my talent as a musician. I haven't been this excited in a long time.

I'm practicing my hugs. If I can give a good hug, or better yet, if I can recieve a good hug, I can recieve anything! I'm practicing recieving. I love practicing!

Thoughts on Under Earning

What is under earning? It's defined by me as refusing to earn enough money to fulfill my wishes and desires, to refuse to earn enough money to even take care of myself and my possessions. My life is a blessing and part of the under earning is the refusal to share that blessing.

I've been told the larger part of the problem is a fear of visibility. When I was living in Los Angeles hitting my bottom (apartment loss, nervous break) I was moving my stuff into a nice clean storage facility for the 3rd time. The gentleman behind the desk said something to me about keeping his head at water level cause if he should rise too high above that someone will beat him down, so he merely treads water. I thanked him and moved on. I couldn't have put it in better words myself. God speaks through folks like him, I identified wholeheartedly. Tied to that is a deep sense of shame. Question for me is, who am I afraid of? Who is going to 'beat me down'? I'm an adult, that doesn't happen. And for the record it didn't happen in my home, my folks were very supportive of me choosing to become a musician. I distinctly remember many times in school where I truly shined only to be put down by teachers, students and in one nasty instance a teacher incited the students to remind me of my stupidity.

But that is the past. These people are no longer in my life. I learned to beat myself down. I learned that is useful. It's not. Being hard on oneself is not useful in the least. I would never talk to a child the way I talk to myself.

One of the ways this under earning shows up is in my clutter problem. I lived in a house in Portland, Oregon for 9 years. I was a technician that fixed tube amps and guitars. I used to go to Ham Fest, electronic surplus shops, junk stores, thrift shops, wherever I could find parts. My room was always a mess, my shop a mess, my mind a mess. I would compulsively buy little things and wonder where my money would go. I was in a band with people that had very little and seemed to make time to travel and enjoy themselves. I grew resentful of these friends and continued to buy more parts, instruments, books, records, old clothes. Part of it seemed like I was saving the world by recycling but it just got out of hand. If took me 2 years to move out of that house, just getting rid of things through Ebay, or just giving stuff away or throwing things out. Prosperity doesn't like to show up where crap hangs out! When I moved to LA it took me 2 days to pack my stuff, when I moved from LA it took me roughly 2 and a half hours. That was over 2 years ago and now I am almost done getting rid of the excess. It's hard to part with things. "What if I need that someday?" I need to burn the bridge to my former life, get rid of my tube tester so I cannot look back.

And what about that music career? Well, I've never actually tried. I've played guitar for 31 years now and am quite good at it. I just never took it seriously. I've always had the passion and the desire but a career in music? That's not an hourly wage. That's a job where I need to be visible. I don't even know what my earning potential is. I do know it's way more than I have earned before, but there is no security, no guarantee. It was a great day when I turned 39 and said "Oh my God, where did that last decade go?" and decide I cannot mess around any longer. I live in NYC and am allowing myself for the 1st time to really go for what I know I came to planet Earth to do. It requires a tremendous amount of work just to get started. I've needed to clean my spirit. My friends sometimes don't get it but I've had a way of simply pushing the good things in my life away. Why would I do that? The good things want me to commit to them. Good people, good opportunities, love, talent, bands. The mediocre likes to keep my options open, cruise along and never be seen.

I had this revelation yesterday. 22 years ago I was working at Kinkos in Baltimore. I had lost my super cool newspaper job and went through a series of awful temp jobs before I joined the Kinkos team. I was resentful of that job loss. I saw it as the end of another great American stream of revenue, computers were taking over. I stewed in hatred. But I had a great band and we were in the recording studio. For some reason the technician there liked me and saw some kind of quality I could not see myself. They hired me even though I had no skills as an amplifier technician saying "you'll learn". I went from $7 an hour to $25 and hour, difference being I had to hustle up clients. If I didn't hand out cards, I didn't eat. But really, the moral of this story is I was hired just for showing up and being visible. Hired for shining. No skills, just a likable guy who showed something. This became my career for 20 years.

So, Under Earning. The funny thing is I do like to work. I like to work hard. I've earned lots of money for other people and little for myself. Where did this come from? This negative thinking is baffling. I realized last year I modeled my life after 'poor' people. I mimicked the ways of poverty. I liked the way homeless people looked. Poor people were sufferers and were always right. This of course is my projection. I didn't grow up poor, I only method acted the role as I saw fit. It was my excuse to substitute negative thinking for positive thinking. I used to be a compulsive complainer. It's taken me years of hard work and support from other people to overcome this. Complaining, swearing, this pushes the support nature provides away. Trust me on this. If I am around complainers, I run. That's a great way to drag me down. It's addiction. Being around complainers is like being in a bar and you are a recovering alcoholic. It's getting easier every day to not be around this kind of energy, making proper boundaries. But it's also very easy to slip into an old way. I need support around this every day. Complaining to me is not owning up to my side of the street. Placing blame on someone else for my lack rather than just taking care of my actual needs. You don't see me hanging around free improv sessions these days cause they are like a bar for compulsive complainers! Imagine if the vibe was positive. There may be an audience!

So this will be an ongoing piece. I need to go earn now to pay for this blessed vision. For now:

Never stop trying!
Get help!
Support other people, don't say "well, good luck with that", just say "thank you for sharing your idea and vision."
Never let anyone tell you you can't, that's jive.
Always choose love over cynicism, jealousy, hate, fear. Those old negative thoughts will keep you small. If you like living small, great if you are happy. If you aren't happy, do something about it. There is help.

Love, JB