What Do You Expect Me To Say

You come up to me, with your multiple nights in an expensive hotel room

What do you expect me to say

Tell me there's some folks driving round asking for some help

What do you expect me to say

I try and do my job and listen respectfully and tell you something proper

What do you expect me to say

Tell me their request for spare change made you uncomfortable

What do you expect me to say

Said she had a "real nice story" like the world's out to get you and it might be too

What do you expect me to say

Tell me they were "panhandling" like it's a secret curse word 

What do you expect me to say

You just wanted me to know, since the customer's always right

What do you expect me to say

So I turn to you and shake my head with an understanding smile

What do you expect me to say

"Well, ma'am, yknow everybody's in need sometimes and just trying to get by the best they can.

What do you expect me to say?"

Why I Write Angry Songs About Hope

And that's why we speak of hope like a spark.

It ignites.

It begins.

It can, at times, be so visibly different from its environment that the contrast--which may one day be quite illuminating--is in the moment glaringly offensive.

Hope isn't the butter on your popcorn when you sit down to watch a movie about the good ol' days.

Hope isn't the cool glass of lemonade you sip, sweet and crisp, at the end of a long, hard day.

Nah, hope...

if it comes in any liquid form besides an infinitely corrosive and foul-smelling acid...

if it's any sort of refreshingly cold water...

it's the kind they chuck at runners as they pass.

if it's water at all...

maybe it's the violent rushing stream from the hose...

pushing you down

and back

and letting you know that you got someone up there angry enough to slip up

because hope is the spark

and Eden is burning.

Art is Honesty?

  

I write “socially conscious” lyrics not because I’m necessarily of the opinion that music can change the world (although it has been known to help), but because I feel as an artist, it’s easiest for me to write about that which I’m passionate.

Every topic is affected by my own personal perspective, though, and topics such as race, ethnicity, culture, sexuality, and class are especially capable of forcing me to realize how inappropriate it would be for me to try and write for someone else.

Write what you knowcan be a bit disheartening when it comes to trying to create something new, but I’ll always remind myself and others that each person has a very unique perspective and set of experiences. It would be vastly idiotic for me to try and expound upon being rich and famous living in a New York penthouse or growing up struggling on the streets of Detroit.

Does this mean that everything I have to say about materialism or classism is null and void, no, but it does mean I need to recognize where I’m coming from and write from there.

Once again, this is because honesty makes the best art. Sure, I can envision a character for myself to play that grew up in a very different circumstance, but that’s more the realm of my fictional prose writing than my songwriting.
The songs that seem to really hit the hardest often come from a place of personal experience connecting with relatable expression.

Here’s to Hope - living in a suburban area where the racism, gang violence, bigotry, and class issues are starting to reflect stereotypically urban problems among an increasingly belligerant cultural mashup of young families moving out of the cities, old farmers trying to protect their old ways, and immigrant families all trying to make a life together - that’s the person experience (living in the midst of that tension) but it only works as a song because I didn’t try to appropriate the feelings of any of those groups, only to express my own feelings and then funnel it into a catchy chorus about changing ourselves to make a larger change in society

Mend - being in a relationship where I put the other person on a pedestal of what I wanted them to be more than trying to get to know them, listen, and care for them as they really were, whether or not they returned my emotions or desires, and then attempting to bridge the gap, apologize, and forgive so that a new, more healthy relationship could begin not based on any expectations but rather on mutual communication - okay, so this one is probably a bit more preachy, but I promise it’s still based on (sadly) many negative personal experiences where I now realize honesty could’ve solved a whole lot. my attempt was to write a love song that was actually about love, not about possessing the other person or longing for some made-up thing that was more than and therefore less than a real person. the only way i could do so was to combine personal experience with personal growth, otherwise the message would just be a preachy and probably quite misogynistic mess.

Oh well, that’s two examples for ya if you care to be interested. I’ll keep working to be a better, more conscious writer, and I hope you’ll keep reading/listening.

Art is honesty and sometimes that means showing your scars and crying on the page.

At Least

Dear Internauts,

As I sit behind this desk at work, once again waiting for the local authorities, having moved my car in probable futility against those breaks-in's which the previous shift informed me occurred in surprising multitude earlier this evening, I wonder why I'm here.

As my coworker's shift around and the environment of my employment, once so warm and welcoming, has become an eery reflection of the desperate, rude, entitled, and often intoxicated presentation of those guests for whom I earn an hourly wage, I wonder why I'm here.

As I read through the message from the last oasis of encouragement--a manager whose confidence in my ability to lead is weighed heavily against my struggling desire to care very much about a job where respect is a dream more distant than the rain-drenched flowers on the other side of this ever-thickening window, I wonder why I'm here.

As all sense would tell me that writing something about my job in this manner while at work and then proceeding to share said thoughts over the internet simply to prove some abstract yet oversimplified existential concept of self-worth is too big a risk, I wonder why I'm here.

As I reflect back on how last night's concert--a guerilla, DIY, all acoustic musical experience on my back porch for a little over ten audience members featuring very un-Nashville-like Nashvillian artists--contrasts so greatly with the plastic, expensive, and overhyped nature of the contemporaneous CMAFest while still serving as a springboard for my dearest hopes and personal aspirations, I wonder why I'm here.

As I write all these wicked long sentences, the soundtrack of traveler's gossip and Springtime downpour in the background, I wonder why I'm here.

In a town of wanna-be's and has-been's, I wonder why I'm here.

"At least you've got a job," she said.

"Well, sure," I replied, "At first I was simply grateful to have something to eat, then to have a job, then to have a place to live, and now I'm complaining about being fulfilled."

Maybe Maslow was right and the big questions are a privilege for those who've got the rest in the bag. Or maybe Green had it right, that as humans, we are all complexities and questions, and no matter our situation we want something bigger.

Perhaps desperation breeds the necessity for those big questions as pain breeds art or any extreme situation can squeeze the deeper truths and higher beauties from our choking lungs.

Truth is, every day I see people on both sides of this desk who want things and are afraid to reach out for them. We become comfortable in our miserable mediocrity. We think ourselves safe inside our cars, using the anonymity of the metal box to pollute the air outside with toxins and the air inside with curses. We dream of absurdities and let fiction teach us morals and about what it means to believe in ourselves, because the alarm will always beep too early.

And we live our lives hovering over the snooze button.

But then, the other day the alarm sounded and for the first time in who knows how long, I was so incredibly excited to get up. That night I would get to live my dream, if only for a few minutes on a stage in my own backyard for only a few people.

"At least you have a job," she said.

It won't ever be good enough, I thought, because as blessed as I am to have "at least", I only wake up smiling for much more than that.

Eh, I don't know.

Uncomfortable

In continuing my thoughts on actual utopia (remember not the silly individualistic kind but the real better world), I’d like to say something about equality.

I think it shouldn’t surprise me as much as it often does when the words of those critiquing inequality in society make me uncomfortable. When a world exists where a significant shift has occurred toward racial, sexual, ethnic, and/or class equality, my upbringing and current existence within a culture of inequality will make living in such a new society very uncomfortable for me. No matter how good my intentions or how openminded, tolerant, and loving I can try to be, I must accept that this is all so new to me.

It’s okay to be uncomfortable, confused, even scared. Change feels like that. Even good change is hard to come by. The fires of revolution line a road of glass and coals not soft grass.

This not only means that I need to grow toward bravery in terms of speaking the hard truths I know need to be said but also in the humility of being able to listen to the hard truths that others have to say and I desperately need to hear.

It’s okay to be uncomfortable.

In fact, it’s necessary.

Signals and Time and What Really Matters

Hello Internauts!

This age of mostly (if not only) watching TV shows online has made me realize a few things. One of those is that there I certainly shows I probably would not love or even like as much as I do were it not for having watched most of their runs in a marathon whirlwind of from 2 to 10 episodes a night (okay let’s not kid ourselves, sometimes it was a couple seasons). Of course, I only noticed this after reaching the point where I’d caught up to the current season and now have to watch it one episode at a time once a week. And then the season goes and freakin ends!?!!

Would I have liked these shows or even followed them at all if my first impression hadn’t been one where I could dive into the larger story-archs and immediately satisfy my craving to catch the cliffhangers in a net before their bloody doomed descent?

(And another point, would I like shows that are now finished as much if I couldn’t have watched them altogether?)

I think it’s the same for me with comic books. I’ll generally prefer if I can read a bound collection of the whole story arch over going issue by issue once a month.

Sure, I recognize that both shows and comics are works of art, usually created by a big team all working very hard to give their best on every level in a relatively short period of time. I also recognize that this need for constant entertainment overload is a product of an age of accessibility.
However, for some works if you’re not really worth the wait of a week or a month (or a few years for certain fandoms), it really seems like you’re going to lose not only your audience but many times the very point of what you’re doing.

In this day and age of drowning inside a sea of mediocre yet constant media presentation, there really is no struggle to find constant exposure of some sort of creative work. However, just because it’s there doesn’t mean it’s good. I think maybe I’d prefer quality over quantity when it comes to most art, in the end, but there’s also something to be said for the good that can come from regular, steady work.

It’s an uphill climb, but there’s sunshine on the mountaintop.

And as always, art is in the questions.

I know it's been a few months since I've come out with any studio jams, and there are some decent reasons for that, but please know I am always creating. Whatever your outlet is, you gotta work on that every day. I try and write every day and play guitar and even draw a little, but really it's also about living in a head space that says no matter what happened yesterday I can do and be something real and honest today.

Without further rambling, please feel free to check out a new song for ya:

Video: What Really Matters

Download: What Really Matters

All proceeds from the track will be going to help widows, orphans, and adoptive families at http://www.bothhandsfoundation.org

The awesome Kelly Aus, who played violin on this track, introduced me to this foundation, and I'm really glad for any help we can send their way.

Have a fantastically new day, every day! (or something like that)