Happy Thanksgiving

Happy thanksgiving y'all. This world can be a crazy place. Yesterday I watched Democracy Now and said to myself "no wonder people watch Fox! At least they make up shit and put it out there, less depressing than reporting the facts." What's going on is overwhelmingly depressing. Yikes!

Then I got in the subway, the sky was dropping pellets of rain and the air was stinging. I just noticed again that I'm alive and can walk to the train, find pennies in the street and play music with total strangers. That's all I need to keep going. None of us can change this world on our own, not even our chosen "leaders", but we can change our minds. It's those little moments that still leave me in awe, taking energy from the ether and making music, allowing ideas to flow from a source and making them into something, or sometimes just noticing that on a rainy day I miss the sun but know it will be back, it just needed a break, and noticing the rain is pretty awesome too and I get to be wet with millions of other Earthlings (people, trees, cats etc!) at the same moment. It's those moments that pass me by far too easily and when I choose to notice them I know I'm okay. That is something to be thankful for. Today the sun is shining. I'm going to do my best to stay in a state of gratitude.

jb

Demons.

  I have many demons it turns out. Today I have yet another urge to shop or practice my horn to placate them.

  I don't wish to practice my instrument to placate these feelings. That's the worst. Maybe that's what killed Coltrane. I want my relationship to music to be something that rest on love, not dependency. I don't want to play music, have sex, shop, drink, take a pill, take a bath, watch television, go to the movies, get a therapist, smoke pot or do anything to push these ancient demons back inside. I'm committed to having all of my relationships be they musical, romantic, financial to be rich as can be and filled with nothing but love, including my relationships with my demons. I do not seek to slay them but to love them and release them.

  What am I afraid of? People will think I'm nuts? Hurting my friends and family with my feelings? Do I really care what people think? I need people, but I don't need people that don't listen or don't try to understand. I don't need people that are upholding the 4th commandment for the sake of preserving ancient destructive tribal ideas. So to those who know me, I may seem a little unstable these coming weeks. But try to understand, if any of us is committed to letting old demons go in the name of their own biological and very natural preservation, and if you seem crazy for doing so, find support. That's what I'll be doing. If I seem nuts it's only cause I'm being 100% honest for once in my life. If I seem nuts you're seeing my authentic self. My body is rebelling, and I no longer have the strength to uphold the lies this culture has done such a great job of keeping the illusion of safety and security. To be a well adjusted citizen in a sick society is sickness and itself. We all to help one another. We shall overcome if we really want to. Today I take responsibility for my word, my self, my body, my being.

Love, JB

Turtles!

 Those who know me know that I love Turtles, I used to always have them as pets as a child. We'd go in the woods behind my house and find them. The ones that ate and were sociable, we kept around. If they didn't we released them. Turtles somehow have the reputation of being peaceful and mellow, and that's really not true. They are pocket dinosaurs, primitive, crude and have a violent streak. They don't really like their owners, but I love them anyway.

Around 1998 I did something I never did before. I had just returned from Mexico in the dead of the Portland winter and sunk into a deep depression. I must have wanted to connect with my childhood so I drove to Southeast Portland and bought 2 three toed box turtles, Bitty (deceased) and Babar (pictured). When Bitty died I bought Bindi and she and Babar lived together for the next 7 years. Now having box turtles, well, they can be pretty low maintenance so long as you feed them right, and hibernate them for the winter. The only health problems I ever had was when they stopped eating their greens (they get addicted to meat just like we do! babar once ate a whole dead baby bird!) and became vitamin A deficient. I has to give them a course of A vitamins by hypodermic needle. that sucked. They hated me even more! Every day for 10 days I had to inflict pain on them to keep them alive. But that time passed and they did well. 

Their lives are pretty simple. Eat, sleep and re-produce. You can learn so much about your own nature from other earthlings such as these. They have no obvious expression, but you can see joy and sadness through their eyes. Look at Babar! look at that joy in his eyes! this photo was taken the day he was freed. He was probably farm raised and never had such a vast place to explore. Being a reptile, the brain is wired for mere survival and yet still, I know there are feelings taking place. As humans, the most powerful part of our brain is the reptilian. It's that rather insane voice keeping us alive and out of trouble, talking us out of ever trying anything great, that voice that says "you can't do that, you'll fail!" Or, at least this is what I was led to believe.

I spent most of 2010 in Los Angeles. When I first arrived I stayed at my friends place in Beverly hills, beautiful spot on a vineyard. His house is one of the most positive energy spots I've seen and feel blessed to have been a guest. this is where I met Dave Cousin, someone who has really helped me see this world differently. Dave has a love for animals. He noticed I had unloaded this plastic sweater bin with my turtles in it. He couldn't stand the thought of them living in there so within a few days he built an apartment for them. Beautiful house with plexiglass walls and plenty of plants! I felt so happy for him and my pets there was no way I would move them to my apartment, they had all that good California sun to bask in and fresh air, and yes, in that part of town the air is so nice.

Every once in a while Dave would call me worried about the turtles. "They are not eating" he'd say. I'd drive up, check their weight and their eyes and determine that they are eating something, i had never seen them so energetic. Then one day in October I got the call. "jef, I can't find the turtle". He sounded so alarmed and sad. I drove up but took my time, I knew Bindi, the female was gone. When i arrived we walked out to look for her, but I knew that was pointless. Dave said "i just can't figure out how she got out". He was bummed. I said, "Dave, no worries. She's been getting up at the asscrack of dawn and timing you every day, figuring out your patterns. She's been sizing up her apartment and figuring out how to escape since the first minute and she would never give up until she figured it out." Persistence. Bindi has always been the smarter of the 2, the more sociable and the most persistent. She was free at last! About 2 days later I decided to let go my fears for Babars survival and let him go too. Turtles have strong pheromones and tend to find each other. But I figured even with the raccoons, coyotes, dogs, and bobcats, they are better off figuring life out without my constant protection.

In the end, I figure, if Bindi the Boxturtle could figure out how to get out of the box, so can I and so can any one of us! It's a matter of never giving up until you have achieved what you are after. If it's freedom from your oppressor, in this case, me, you just have to continue to keep a positive mind and make positive action until you've hit the promised land. And for them, a vineyard in Beverly Hills? They hit the jackpot!

xojb

Norway and the division phenomenom

It was a pleasantly dull morning at work, and I was doing my best to keep myself feeling alive while people blasted away on their heavy metal riffage, never letting their fingers stop for one second trying to out do the other player in the other aisle. So strange, guitar playing in 2011, so strange, dull, loud and competitive. What are people trying to say? What do they not wish to hear? Why so many notes?

Out of the corner of my eye I caught 2 folks about my parents age. The man looked oddly like a biker, but not really a convincing one. Large, round with a handlebar moustache, and dressed like someone trying to fit in. The woman looked more comfortable to be herself, so she didn't strike me as odd. Something told me they were foreigners, retired and enjoying the American experience. When I finally heard them speak, it was a language I never heard. She came up to the counter and bought 2 cases of strings, probably expensive where they are from, a total of 24 sets. I asked her where they were from and she said "Norway". I said "I've not been yet, been to Finland and Sweden but only saw Norway from the boat."

Just a few days prior, Norway experienced that horrific tragedy. A rightist lunatic murders over 80 people in the name of preserving his country. I felt raw from just reading about it. I said to her, nervously, "I'm so sorry about what happened in your country". She said "thanks, it is impossible to even understand what happened." She had tears forming and so did I. It's not something I wish to do at work, cry that is, though I wish we were all free to do so. But I'm glad I got to share this tiny warm moment with her, this tiny connection in a world of division.

At this point the husband bought something too. His manner was gruff (i established their marital status cause they had the same last name on their separate credit cards!) and rather cold, comically cold actually, like my favorite grumpy ass characters. I couldn't help but chuckle inside it his manner and his dress. He was wearing blue jeans, motorcycle boots, a black t-shirt with the sleeves cut off that said something about Baltimore and had a big ol' crab on it, and to top it off, a baseball cap with a confederate flag and on the back it says "rebel". I wondered if he indeed understood the meaning of that hat. The energy behind that symbol. The squareness of it all. I had a customer in Portland who wore an iron cross and I missed the opportunity to ask what I always wanted to: "so, like, are you into Hitler?" He clearly wasn't and he clearly had this symbol mixed with other medals he liked to wear such as his Woody Woodpecker medal. I wondered if anyone will ask this Norwegian man, who just experienced such a loss in his land "so, are you like into slavery?" It's strange. To wear such symbols is to declare "I'm really square and proud of it!" I have the same feeling when I see a Mao Tse Tung bag or t-shirt, and yes, I have seen that. "are you like, into mass murder?"

All this declaring and comparing, it's so dull. Division and more division, the need to be right all the time. Square as can be. I asked my Granmother and her Boyfriend the other day "if we didn't have robbers, would we need cops? and if we didn't have cops, would we need robbers?" I see little difference these days, just more humans trying to solve problems by dividing themselves more and more. It's insanity. I can remember a time when my father took me to a cubscout meeting. I remember walking it and feeling queasy immediately (same feeling as I got from church, creepy!) and seeing my peers in little uniforms, knives and award for some stuff I wasn't interested in, I left very quickly. My gut feeling was this is a dangerous situation. I don't think I was an exceptional child, I just had those feelings intact. Say you are in the woods and you come across a rattle snake (this happened to me when I was 13!) what does one do? A deer or rabbit would move away, quickly. It's a simple, natural reaction right? It's mere intelligence to move away from a snake or bear or lion. You see a shark you get out of the water right? Animals don't inflict nearly as much death in this world as allegiance does. Why do we continually move towards race, religion, nationality, political alliance, gangs, etc when these are clearly more deadly situations than that stroll through the woods. Why do we need to continually divide ourselves? I feel we have evolved past this point, and we can do much better. We are enormously intelligent beings, it's our choices that remain stupid. Insanity lies in doing the same stuff over and over and over again and expecting a different result. I don't think a hamster is insane, she just needs to get exercise on that wheel in her cage. We don't need a wheel cause there is no real cage.

Back to my Norwegian customer, I wonder what he was thinking wearing that hat. Was he merely trying to fit in? Fit in with whom?  Americans? Whether he is into the ideologies of the pre war south, that wasn't his war. All of it is really baffling. To see so much death and destruction in the name of preservation, it simply doesn't make sense just like his wife said. And until we let all this symbol worship go, we'll keep going around and around that wheel of madness. I know we are much better than this.

jb

What inspired me this week.

I Had an annoying evening. I got myself in a situation that really triggered some harsh feelings and now that I have the space to really process those feelings I realize I wish I could have simply said "Ah, HELL NO!" and moved one quickly. I don't know what stops me from speaking my mind in such moments, perhaps I still have this need to please everyone and "not be a bummer". My gut tells me that's a waste of precious time, and my gut never lies.

Yesterday I was working my usual sunday shift at the guitar store. I had a customer, a tall and handsome  man and his 2 lovely sons and he was looking for a DVD that featured guitar scales. Now, I haven't given such material much thought since the 80's when I practiced 8-12 hours a day learning as much as I could absorb and building the foundation for my future house. So I was fumbling about trying to find something that may work for him when I came across one called "The Guitar Grimore" or some medieval sounding Gandolf shit like that. I handed it to him, he looked at the front carefully then flipped it over. He says "Huh? What's all this minor looking shit? I don't like this! AH, HELL NO!". I took it back from him and looked at the back cover and saw what he was talking about. A picture of a sacrificial Altar with some smoke and these red neon looking pentagrams and a hand making that cheesy heavy metal devil symbol pointing to some music staff paper, the kind of crap I thought was groovy in my teenage D&D Black Sabbath days. I said to him "man, I usually don't apologize for much but, I'm really, really sorry! This ain't my vibe either!" I found another DVD made by Fender that just had a guy playing a Telecaster on it. That worked.

What inspired me about this interaction? I loved that guys response, swift and no bullshit. He could care less what I thought, he just wasn't into it and felt free to express his feelings. Life is too short and precious for jive. And whether if I agreed with him or not, the point is to not waste time and energy. Freedom lies in allowing your delights and irritations guide you on this temporary journey. When I'm walking alone in a city and I avoid what my body says is dangerous, and walk to places that fascinate, I feel truly free. When I'm improvising and I turn down a boring road that I've worn out, it irritates me, so I move towards a place that delights. I'm free to make that choice and it happens in the moment. I know this is available to me at all times and would like to figure out how to get rid of the filter. When I did finally speak my mind tonight I was met with respect. I almost always am in irritating situations. So from this moment on, I am committed to practicing the filter bypass. I am committed to the moment. This, like learning an instrument or how to drive, will take practice. It's a good thing I love to practice! Time to practice saying "Ah, HELL NO!" when I need to and "Fuck YES!" when the love screams at me to move towards the awesomeness!!!

xojb!!!!!!!!!

God

The following is from an e-dialogue I'm having with a friend about god. I think about this subject a lot these days.

Actually my favorite bit about god comes from a dialogue with Krishnamurthi where he ask his audience "what is god?"

The replies ranged from, "the universal one, the creator, pure love, pure energy, pure light, the universe etc."

He replied, "I am surprised not one of you said I don't know! which is the correct answer!" I don't really feel the need to explain anything on the subject myself. I don't care for concepts, science, religion or any of it. The mystery is enough for me, and I'm happy to leave it just that.

One Rabbi was speaking of atheist and their adamant dis-belief in god. He thought the question was wrong,"do you believe in god?"

The question can be "have you ever felt the presence of god?". That opens the dialogue by not starting with a conclusion. We've all experienced things we will never be able to explain, and we've all felt things that we can't explain. So for me, I just like to remain open. I find the atheist as silly as the religious zealots. A declaration of disbelief is a declaration of belief in something, and half these cats are just as righteous about their beliefs even trying to impose them on others. 

So the pros and antis all start with a conclusion, to me this is where the problem lies, there is no room for exploration. Silly humans. If we go with our inherent feelings, we will not be steered wrong. Trouble with religion whether it's muslim, christian, jewish, satanist or atheist, is there is such suppression of feelings. Shame and guilt really serve no purpose. We are supposed to make plenty of mistakes, to me that's why we got kicked out of the garden! What is life without curiosity and the occasional trainwreck? Maybe the garden is nature, where we are trying to return to? "Our souls will always turn to the light like a flower turns to the sun" said Khalil Gilbran. I like that. We are so disconnected from our own true nature. Nature is feeling. Nature should keep us in a state of awe!

And it's where we ultimately return to.

peace, jb

Plan B from Outer Space

If you make a backup plan, you will fall back on it. I've heard these words of wisdom from another fellow traveller before. Almost 30 years ago I picked up a guitar and I knew what my life was going to look like immediately. It was the day before high school and I found my dads' old Kent electric in the basement, dusted it off and walked to the mall to spend the tiny sum of money I had saved up on a pack of strings at Harmony Hut. I was scared, going to a school the next day I had never gone to, my head filled with poison lies from my former private school classmates about a public school filled with drugs, knives and fist-a- flying. "First day you have to kick someones ass in the lunchroom, or you'll never survive!" Yes, I'm not making this up, this is what I was facing, and it wasn't true. But I had to do something, sports I hated, I found school boring and was socially pretty akward. On my good days I wore the class clown uniform, on my bad days I just kept to myself.

So music really saved me. I could be "cool" with music.

High school, 2 years at Berklee, dropped out and started playing in bands around Baltimore. Good bands, no, great bands. And those bands came and went with little to show for it than a great time.

It was around this time I started forming a backup plan. Perhaps it was the smartest thing I could do at that time. We all need money to eat right? And punching a clock just doesn't suit me. So I started fixing amps. I got good at it, really good. That was 20 years ago.

Last summer I had to great fortune to spend my birthday with Kim Deal in a dark, roasting studio in Los Angeles helping here work out some new tunes. That was truly a gift, very intimidating and a great flashlight illuminating how much of my ego has gone quiet. I felt good about how I responded to her needs, i.e., if she didn't dig something I was playing it was great to not get impatient and just say "okay, what would you like?" If she did dig something even better. My biggest observation though was  no matter how much ability you have, talent, chops etc., it doesn't make up for someone just doing something every day for 30 years. I felt lost at times. Here was this person in front of me who is pretty psychedelic (in a great way!) and probably couldn't work at any other job, but the second she started playing an instrument or singing, that focus and intention just killed me. I felt like I had lost a lot of time along this journey, plan B space had consumed 40 hours a week for the last 20 years of my life.

Today I feel sad and frustrated about this. I've had moments in the last year where I didn't even know if I can play as well as I can solder. I'm going to go ahead and feel these feelings till they are done, and see what is on the other side. It's very hard to put plan B down after you've been living it for so long. I've helped alot of folks along the way, brought a lot of smiles to alot of faces. It's enabled me to have a comfortable existence for so long. And I know that if I chose to work on music 40 hours a week, something else would have happened by now. How do I trust something that I don't know? I make music here and there now and have little incentive to do anything with it. The messages from my peers screaming "but you are such an excellent amp fixer, just keep doing that cause I need your services!" are so loud, much louder than the occasional friend, customer, peer saying "Jeezus Jef, if I could only play like that, what the fuck are you living this plan B for?"

My only answer today is I've been living plan B from outer space rather than plan A from inner space. Outer space is that old "approval" space. What can I do to feel safe, or give the illusion to my loved ones that I am safe and earning a living. Don't get me wrong. I appreciate the B plan. It has provided. But not knowing what the A plan looks like without giving it my all is torture.

So what's next? Do my best to live what I tell young folks every day. Is this something you really want to do? Than just go do it, and don't live plan B from outer space. You can do it, and so can I.

xojb