3-06-18

the comfort of a soft bed. Soft sheets. A long warm shower. Running water. Clean water. A walk to the store. A few good tunes before bed. Random internet perusing. The kids at work. Well-wishers. My discombobulated state. Switching gears. Trying not to overthink too much. Just letting it happen. Some things you can control. Some things you can't. Some things are so easy we bring wrecking balls to swat flies. Some things are just different. Different smells. Different climates. Different kinds of people. I keep wondering about the 'why'. Not because every other blogger suggests to do so. It just comes as a result of seeing my living room turn into an isle at Costco. From the nonstop movement and creation of plans once so foreign. The mind naturally looks at all this and goes: Why? The answer is small and silent usually. There are shallow reasons and deeper reasons all mixed to together but they all interconnect somehow. Get healthier sure. Quit smoking. That'd be great. Challenge myself mentally and physically. Never hurts. Process the past 10 years. Process the past 5 months. Process mortality. Process things that seem so important on the surface but might lack depth in the broader context. Look at stars next to lakes below towering mountains. Climb Mt Whitney. See what happens when total strangers become trail-buddies. Take pictures. Lots of pictures. Learn a deeper level of self-reliance/self-confidence. See where I'm 'at'. Take inventory. Assess values. Share the experience with family and friends. Maybe inspire a few people. See the sun rise more often. See the sun set more often. Heal. Smell the air in different parts of the country. The wind in the desert. The rain in the Washington. There's a sum total that makes up any experience. Any decent challenge. What one takes away from it all I have no idea. No over-arching expectations. No demands. That being said I'm not a total relativist. There's something to the idea of 'being so open-minded that your brain falls out." I gravitate toward achieving balance. Toward some level of harmony. An appreciation of struggle. The notion of honing and doing without you don't really need. All I've needed for the past 10 years was a place to record. People to do it with. Random inspirations. I've never desired anything beyond some semblance of mobility or freedom and I haven't always had that. I suppose that's the dream isn't it? But I've also experienced moments of such profound freedom that I wasn't sure where the ledge was. Where 'freedom' meant a level of such intense responsibility that I had to pull back and accept my limitations at the moment. And years later...it's not necessarily about this vague thing we call Freedom. There's other things. Many other things that make up a life. I read once that "To be an outlaw, one must be honest". You'd be surprised how difficult that can be. There's all kinds of notions attached to the idea of being an artist. Perceiving the world through this strange subjective lens where things take on multiple meanings and betray layers of depth to them. The idea of 'feeling' things rather than thinking about them. That alone is a strange thing even though we all do it. I used to be such a romantic in my early years that I couldn't hold a job. I honestly felt like I didn't know how. It wasn't until my mid-twenties that a series of events led me to a more tactile honest approach. Apart from the basic reality that I couldn't pay for a studio or the life I wanted without making some compromises. I learned a great many things. How to build houses, paint them, fix bicycles, serve tables, cook, design, write, invest and sell, help others make records, get people on labels...make a decent latte, etc and since then I haven't worried a great deal about just how to survive. But over the years...maybe it makes you more honest. At least it disallows grandiose levels of bullshit to infiltrate and take over...and that's why I stopped being such a relativist and more of a harmonist. These days it vacillates between objective and subjective and I can appreciate the yen/yang within both. The objective side of subjectivity and vice-versa. But I'm not immune at all to the effect music has on me. I've never been able to entirely separate the sounds from the emotional hold they have...but that too has made me less of a relativist. Music is the same as food and I can't put garbage in my ears any more than I can stare at ugly pieces of post-modernism or crass television or live on Twinkies. Of course...I'll be living on lots of junk food on the PCT. That's ok. I'm not sure what this entry boils down to...the idea of the 'why' perhaps. I started writing about it last night but it wasn't coming out very lucidly. I'm not bored with what I'm making per se. Some days it's a yes. Some days no. I'm used to that constant flow. But there is a part of me that understands that five months of hiking could have a profound effect on how I approach or experience music and other things. There's just no way around it and...to be honest it's time for me to evolve. I don't think the PCT will make me 'better'. I have moody shitty days no matter what I'm doing alongside plenty of beautiful inspired days. It's the flow. But change happens whether we're expecting it or not. It happens slowly but surely. I just can't say what sort of change this will incur. It will just be what it is. At this point it's more about the challenge than looking for some kind of panacea. A self-imposed kick in the pants. I already like my life quite a bit in some areas. Others could use some work. Sometimes you just have to do these kinds of things.