http://www.encorepub.com/read_articles.php?r=read&cat_id=51&section_id=3

Tags: Press

This song has been stuck in my head for a few days…

For those of you who are wondering how I am following the car wreck I am alive and for the most part unharmed.  I am sad to see my new truck smashed up the day after I bought it, but things come and go I am just happy to be here.  I don’t have any word on the other driver yet, but I will post up here as soon as I know how she is.

For those who don’t know anything about it, I was hit in my new truck by a young girl who ran a red light.  She never slowed down ( I guess that she was distracted the light had been red for a while) and she T-boned me at about 50 mph… She was taken away in an ambulance and I really hope that she is OK.  I am pretty sore, but not dead.  The show must go on anyway, I am playing tonight at the pavilion on Carolina Beach… There will be fire works and much hoopla… Here is a little song that I wrote to commemorate my little brush with that fine line between driving along without a care in the world and the end of it all. It is very rough and unedited so please excuse the sound and quality.

Tags: New song, video, wreck

For years there has been an “American personality” type that has endeared itself in our hearts and to the hearts of others around the world. The ideal of a hard worker, who is willing to fight for justice, and who roots for the underdog. These characteristics were forged though the hard work necessary to carve out a new free country of our own from the harsh oligarchy of the old world. Through our grit, determination, sweat, tears, and blood, America was created and the rest of the world was forced to stand back and admire us. After creating our own haven we did something else that was quite honorable, we called out to the world, to anyone who dreamed of the freedoms that we have, to come here and work with us. Millions answered the call throughout history, and they all have helped to make the great country that we used to know. In the America that exists now, that archetype is no longer.

Something has changed in us as a people, and it seems that everyone sees it except for us. We are no longer willing to work hard, fight for anything close to justice, and we root for whoever seems to be winning at any given time. The years of the strong men and women of the USA are fading into the obscurity of a suburban haze where comfort and isolation from your neighbor is held far above our former great ideals. The world sees us as fat and lazy bullies who try to push everyone smaller than us around with money and guns. They aren’t making this image up, and it’s not being fed to them through anti-American propaganda. This is a long earned image that we have created, and unless we accept it and make changes, it will be our undoing.

This is something that I have thought about for quite some time, but it really struck home the other night. I was out with some friends for a birthday party and I saw the UFC 100 fights while standing outside of a bar. The card on this night featured a fighter named Brock Lesnar, who is the biggest fighter that I have ever seen in these bouts and has yet to fight someone his own size (I’m not sure that someone his size exists). He is listed at 6′3″ and 265 lbs. and is a solid mass. He has been caught with large amounts of steroids in the past, and from looking at him now, he looks like he is no stranger to them still. He was fighting a much smaller opponent (yet still a giant man) who has long been respected in MMA named Frank Mir. It was a classic David and Goliath matchup and it stunned me to see how many people were there to root for Goliath. The crowd cheered at the top of their lungs for Lesnar (the current champion) and oohed and ahhed as he beat the tar out of the smaller guy. I was appalled. I’m not trying to discuss the merits or detractions of blood-sports at all, what I am talking about is the rooting for the proverbial Goliath.

As a culture, when did we switch from rooting for the underdog to rooting for whoever wins the most? Why are we such a winners-only culture? How can anyone be a fan of a known cheater?

I think that this winners-only mentality stems from a horrible bastardization of our original ideals. We have been overcome with zealous interpretations of what it is to be an “American” and have in turn changed that very thing.

The honor that came from being the best was there because it was earned.  We were the best at things not because we won everything that we tried (there have been a number of losses in our country’s history that aren’t mentioned in our history classes) but because we tried hard and had a great amount of honesty and humility in our efforts. We were great because on a level playing field the “American archetype” was out there giving everything he had.

There is no honor in cheating, getting what you want regardless of the consequences (pollution, subjugation, outright theft), or in being Goliath. All of the honor lay in David’s hands in the old story. David was the underdog who used his ingenuity and bravery and luck to overcome odds stacked up against him, he didn’t cheat or lie or steal. Somehow we have lost that, and until we no longer embrace the “win at any cost” mentality, we will continue heading in the direction of a nation of people without collective honor. As long as we think that it’s okay for our sports figures to use steroids and for our politicians to lie and cheat, we are without honor.

This begs the question of “Who would you rather be in the fight? David or Goliath?”  Simplified as in, if there must be a stronger side and a weaker side, which one would you want to be on? This question is the one that has put us in this situation.  It is obvious (and in our nature) to want to be on the strong side, but what we forget is that Goliath picked the fight. It’s okay to be stronger than others, but with great strength comes great responsibility. As a nation, we need to remember what it was that we have overcome to be where we are and endeavor to support those same ideals in others.  I’m not sure that we do that anymore, it seems like now we are only concerned with staying the strongest no matter the cost. That simple idea has filtered down to the people watching a fight at a bar and screaming for the big guy to beat the crap out of the little guy. It has filtered down into people wanting to keep immigrants out of our country. It has made us into the Goliath throwing down the gauntlet on all of the Davids of the world. There will never be a shortage of underdogs with a bit of ingenuity, bravery, and luck.

I think that we need to stand up collectively and earn our honor back. We should remember ourselves. When we see inequalities we should fight for justice, when we need or want something we should be willing to work hard to earn it honestly, and when we see a fight between David and Goliath, we should root for David, because he is the one who has all of the honor.

Here is a song that I love by Dire Straits… Beautiful and simple… I am enjoying doing some of these videos… they are very quick and dirty and quite a bit of fun to make… I hope that all of you enjoy them.

In response to a number of questions I would like to let everyone know that I began working on the new album yesterday.  The first step for me is the toughest part.  I have to sift through a bunch of songs and figure out which ones I am going to use,  then I go into the studio and record all of these songs acoustically to get an idea of how they work together and flow.  For me this is the longest part of the process (not the recording, but the selection process).  At some point I may post some of the acoustic recordings on here.

In the meantime I am going to post a couple of drawings that I have done recently.  It has been a while since I have had the time to get back into drawing a painting.  I have been trying to make a bit more time lately and I would like to see where it goes.

I am of two minds about the current economic “crisis”.  I am deeply saddened when I see people losing their jobs and watching people’s lives turned upside down, but what if a bit of time off is what the people of this country need?

I am not talking in terms of the economic ebb and flow, people being forced to learn practical money management skills, or about the reformation of the rampant corruption on Wall Street.  I’m talking about a much needed paid vacation for a large number of people.  I have quite a few friends that have been laid off or downsized in the last few months and who have what I could only call “a huge sense of relief.”  They aren’t crying and moping around saying “why me”, they are taking life a bit slower and taking this opportunity to make changes in themselves.

For as long as I can remember the average person who gets into the “rat race” between 18-25 and starts working the 40+ hour weeks that it takes to get by runs out of time to advance personally from whatever age they are introduced from.  All of the work that it takes just to fit into our society takes up all of most people’s time.  I think that this keeps them from advancing themselves personally.  “Who has time for introspection, there are bills to be paid?”  Now time has been forced on a large number of Americans and quite a few are embracing this lifestyle change to recharge their mental batteries.  I have noticed that many are taking this time to seek personal growth.

We are told that stress presses down on us from external forces and that the best we can hope for is to find easy coping mechanisms to deal with it.  This is flat out wrong, but if it is all that you are ever taught I can see where people would believe it.  The reality is that stress is not an external force pushing down but an internal force pushing out, it is created by our minds and then presented to the world through our actions.

It is easy to control how much stress you feel as long as you realize that it is you who is creating it.  Once you accept that realization you can begin to look into yourself and see what it is that you are doing to bring this feeling on yourself.  If you know what it is that you are doing to cause stress you can make changes in your life to let yourself relax.  The only problem is that this process takes time that most people don’t feel like they have.  It takes a while sometimes to figure out the whys inside ourselves and I am seeing more and more people who have been forcefully ejected from the rat race taking that time and coming out much happier people.

So it makes me feel both saddened and happy to see that our economy has slowed down tremendously but maybe that is just what Americans need, a forced vacation.

I consider it a positive trait to be comfortable in many different situations, and it’s something that I have always worked on in myself.  When I feel awkward or uncomfortable I try to realize that (unless the situation is physically dangerous) these feelings arise from me and are not the product of the actual place.  The squirmy sensation generally comes from a lack of real understanding about my surroundings.   “A lack of real understanding” is a bit vague so I will give an example.  If I were in a meat packing plant I would feel uncomfortable.  I would be surrounded by death and blood and would think that it was gross, but the butchers who work at that plant would not be affected by it at all because the butchers are intimately familiar with the process.  Some people call this being desensitized but I think of it as the complete opposite, all of their senses are working perfectly; they just understand what is going on and are no longer put off by it, due to their understanding.  This is a bit of a philosophical rant, but it relates to the story at hand.

Last night I spent the night sleeping on a hard linoleum floor in the stroke ward of a hospital.  Let me be clear in that I haven’t had a stroke and as far as I know that isn’t the particular problem going on with my friend either, but it is the neurological area of the hospital to which he has been assigned.  To give his wife and family a break I ran watch last night in a place that I can easily say made me uncomfortable before I was sensitized to it.

The room that we were in was a shared room, and the other half of it was filled with a young Asian man who seems to have had some type of terrible stroke.  He is almost completely unresponsive to the world except for the occasional long eerie groan.  There are no cots and only very uncomfortable straight back chairs for visitors so my options for sleep were pretty limited. I chose the floor, where at least I could stretch myself out a bit (I’m not a small guy).  As the night wore on, there were nurses and orderlies coming in and out every hour to do room checks and their approaching steps would wake me up from any small respite of sleep that I could snatch.  But the main culprit in the uneasy feeling was the deep resonating depression of a stroke ward.  It is a long hallway filled with people have recently had their lives smashed by a horrible affliction.  There are tears constantly around the waiting rooms and outside of half open doors.  There are stern faced nurses who have seen it all.  There are half drooped people slumping through the halls with a family member and a rolling I.V. stand.  It had me unnerved at first.

After I realized that I was actually emotionally uncomfortable I started to look around with deeper eyes at my surroundings.  Those half drooped patients were striving to recover and bring back their life.  Those nurses were steely eyed and stern faced because they were working as hard as they could to help heal those who had hope and to give hope to those who did not.  Those tears were from the hurt that can only come from really loving someone, these people were not alone and unloved.  The stroke ward of that hospital was not a scary place, it was a place of peace and I was just a cog in that turning wheel by sleeping on that floor and trying to give some of that peace to my friends.  Once I realized that, despite the physical discomfort I was out like a light.

Tags: Hospital, life

Today all of my toughts are with my friend Sean.  I hope that you read this and all is well.

-tom

I am new to the world of MacBooks, but I am in it.  I decided to play around with mine today and this is what came out.  iMovie and GarageBand are amazing programs.

The song in the video has been in my head for weeks and sometimes playing it is the only way to get it out.  This song takes me back to my youth.  I can still feel the warm wind through the pick-up truck windows.  The music still sounds thin from the old speakers and worn-out cassette tape.  I’m in the truck with my Dad and we are going wade fishing in the Shenandoah river… The only other things that gives me vivid visceral memories like that are smells.  Songs are a lot like smells.  Smells that you can hear.

Tags: video