I got a call from my father the other day and he told me that my nephew, who just turned 9 years old this past Monday, has inherited our genealogical bug for music recently.  This instantly painted a huge smile on my face.  I remember being young and getting just completely obsessed with music, not with playing it, but just listening to it.  My father was always searching out new sound and turning me onto bands, since I can remember he's had a strange obsession with seeking out fresh, unique music.  My own love affair with music has (and continues to) run from one end of the style spectrum to the other, stretching from stripped down acoustic music to the synthetic plastic coated wonderment of the electronic world.  Oddly enough, I was a late bloomer as far as playing music goes, with my introduction of making music coming when I was 20 years old in the form of two Gemini turntables and a mixer which were set up in my basement apartment on the outskirts of Baltimore city, I remember I had them set up on an old door that I had covered with a tapestry and set on two massive subwoofers, and below the makeshift table were a few milk crates full of vinyl which contained breakbeats, drum n bass, and house music.  Those turntables provided me with the perfect introduction to counting music and keeping time, and pretty soon I was off and running.  After long I acquired a four-string bass, and soon after that my first six-string acoustic, and I began to split my time up between spinning records and teaching myself guitar.

During that time I met a friend, who sadly has since passed, and watching him play guitar or mandolin, just floored me with inspiration, and the more I played, the more people like him I met, and it just kept blossoming.  His being was bursting with energy, his presence was larger than life - and those people, those true performers have a deep and lasting impression on whomever they cross paths with, and this particular person was kind enough to take me under his wing and show me the ropes of stringed instruments.

Over the next decade I continued to play, though I eventually sold my tables and in turn delved into the production aspect of electronic music.  I continued to play guitar, mainly focusing on my six stringed acoustic.

These days I don't play nearly as much as I should.  Life got in the way somewhere along the line.  But as my perspective shifts, and the layers of complacency peel off, I identify music in the same light as I do surfing, both are soul food.  Both get the mind into that magical place, into the realm of operating in the present... both effectively remove the chains of contemplation and expectation and allow an odd form of meditation to take over.

These days I get into that mode in nature.  Whether it be walking up on an expansive sunset over the water and setting up my gear and shooting it, or laying in the grass shooting hoverflies atop the blades, that is where I allow my mind to take a rest from the rush, to take a break from circles it runs in.  But music is still the steady ground on which it sits; it remains the backbone and basis of connecting all things creative in my being.    

On that note, here's what I've been listening to lately.  

Asteroids Galaxy Tour
[link]
[link]


Selah Sue
[link]
[link]