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

I’m not scared of this swine flu (or whatever it’s called).  I have also had a very hard time finding anyone I know who is actually scared by it at all, but it is all over the mainstream media right now.  This says something to me.  It means to me that the media has become the boy who cried wolf a few times too many.  Their stories are beginning to lose their bite because their credibility has been lost.  In the mainstream media it is alway the apocalypse with just a slightly different flavor.  Maybe a better metaphor is the little chicken that screamed that the sky was falling, but I’m not sure that I remember how that story ended.  I know that the boy who cried wolf end with him being eaten by wolves, and I’m not trying to say that I think that we are all going to die if we don’t listen to the news on the one time that we need to.  What I am trying to say is that we don’t need to be scared to be informed or interested and I hope that the media in this country learns this.  Here are some stats that I have found.

- 36,000 people die from the regular flu every year. (not the Swine variety)
- only 1 person in the United States has died from swine flu. (an infant, still sad though)
- In Mexico the total number of confirmed deaths from Swine Flu is only between 7 and 18, and while there are around 2000 confirmed cases, that is less than you would see during a regular flu season.

So why are we supposed to be afraid?  What good does it do?  Are we as a society that addicted to fear that we will buy it whenever it’s sold?  If so are we coming out of this addiction or is it only getting worse?

While I don’t personally know any people who have expressed any fear about this “pandemic outbreak” there have to be some people out there that are soaking it up, because they keep spreading it on.

Mostly this thing is bugging me because I was supposed to go to Cozumel, Mexico this week and my travel plans have been changed for me, and no one asked if I was afraid to go.

With all that said, I am very excited to be leaving town for a while.  If anyone needs me this next week they can reach me by airplane messenger in the Caribbean, but don’t send the plane unless you really need me.

Tags: Media, News

This is a video that I stumbled across… it is a very beautiful and eloquent way of saying something that I have felt for a long time… the animation is OK, but the point is fantastic.

Music and Life – Alan Watts

Tags: life, video

I have had a bit of a dry spell for writing songs for the last few weeks.  I have been very busy and haven’t had that much alone time.  For me writing is a private process for the most part, but I was finally left alone for a while the other day and it all came rushing in.  This is kind of a round about way of saying that I have a new song, and not just a new song but one that I really like.

The basic idea that has been rolling around in my head the past few weeks is how people limit themselves, and what thoughts and ideas they use to do that.  I think that fear is our biggest counter-motivator, and it sticks its ugly head up in so many different ways.  One of the biggest hindrances to mankind is rising above this “holding on to fear” mentality that we are programmed with.  It makes sense that we as human beings should feel fear and retain a healthy respect for it.  If you are going to physically survive you need to have knowledge of that which can kill you, and because of that our brains are wired that way just like every other animal.   The problems start to occur when the real lions and tigers and bears ending your life are replaced with concepts of future pain based on current actions or non-actions.  Our brains use the same wiring that tells us to stay away from sharks to tell us to avoid letting our hearts be open to those around us.  Our mind doesn’t differentiate between physical and emotional pain when it tells us to be afraid.  That is to say that we become as emotionally skittish as our ancestors were mortally skittish on the plains in Africa a million years ago.  That fear is what weighs us down and keeps us from reaching our potential (which I believe is limitless).

One of the fears that consumes many of us is our fear of a vengeful God and of the unknown that that God represents.  This new song deals with that a bit.  I was aiming to point out that the weights that we see as holding us down are of our own creation and that we can and must rise above them.  Winston Churchill said “The only thing to fear is fear itself.”  It’s as true today as the day he said it.  When we stop fearing the things that won’t kill us we are freed to live a weightless, constantly expanding existence.  I will post the new song when I get it finalized.

Tags: New song, song theme

I am currently sitting in a bar in Raleigh getting ready for my last set. It’s empty here. Well not technicaly, there are three people sitting here watching me tapping on my phone and eating. It’s an empty night that used to leave me feeling hollow, but there has been a change.

Tonight I feel freed to do whatever I want. I have been playing all kinds of old and new original music tonight, the stuff that you can’t pull off in a crowded loud bar. It’s strange feeling contented to play to no one. This emptyness used to be something that I would dread, but now it seems oddly freeing.