Tonight I had my last practice with SAVERCOOL for a while. This year has been very tell for me in what it is I'm doing as a musician and as an artist. With the past few performances with my set, Savercool, and Deondra's set, I've come to know what it is I want and don't want: what is important to me and what's not.
I don't want to play music for people who aren't interested in hearing me. Pretty straight forward idea really. I've played about three or four shows this year where people were genuinely uninterested in the performance (which is to be expected), but what's the point in that? What is the purpose. Why would you waste your time "casting your pearls".
I want to write again, and focus my thoughts and artistic drive towards my craft. I don't feel like I've been able to give myself to that because I'm stretched so thin. Ten years ago when I first wrote "Flamingo Fandango", I had a lot of time to refine that music. I had a lot of spare time to concentrate on recording, and words, and research, and meditating on melodies that my heart was singing. I had more time to give to my instrument in practice. The more I adult, the more I have less time to do the things I love. Not to mention, it's difficult to do your own music whenever you've just spent two hours rehearsing for someone else's project.
I want to continue with the church. That is ultimately the most fulfilling play time I have as a musician. I've met with the Lord with music on many occasion in private, and to meet him like that in a corporate environment is where I find a true purpose; it's something divine. I feel like I've been lying to myself by saying that I want to chase this dream of musical pop star. When I was a child, I wanted that--and a part of me still does--but a bigger part of me want to seek a greater communion with Jesus and the God of the Bible. It's an honor to be a musician in the house of the Lord, and I don't want to take it lightly anymore. I don't want to pretend that it's not the high light of my week. To sing songs of reverence and praise to the Great Architect of the Universe, Jehovah God, and enlist the people in the room with you to join in is chorus is a high calling in my opinion.
In 1998 the church began grooming me musically, for this time of my life. This time I'm going to pursue the path that I was destined to fulfill.
I may play a gig here and there, and I'm definitely going to continue writing and recording music, but now it's standing up for what I believe in: Identifying with my Christian heritage and upbringing.
I started writing this entry because I have had a strange shift in the visual context in which I see myself artistically. The following images show the iconography that is above my piano in my writing place. Like always, this space has somewhat organically arranged itself. Also, Like always, I can see a narrative developing: a theme. This is a bit outside of the realm of the board but in this intangible existence these images exist in the same place. It almost beg to give a different title to the board.
This has always been a sacred place for me.
A digital recreation
