gillian chadwick

Antique brass necklace set with large smokey topaz drop and faceted metallic Czech glass beads/Garnet briolette and Czech glass headpiece. This was a super fun commission from a great patron of the arts and intended for a well-known glamorous torchy songstress. I was given free reign on what to make and I chose this from what I know of her: classy, a little regal, and in touch with an older lineage of quality. The design is rooted in the ’20s, art deco and etcetera.

I decided to make a necklace set – there’s two separate pieces here with common themes, meant to be worn together but also autonomous. The longer of the two rests down below the chest bones, and the shorter is a slender choker style. Very dainty and ladylike but there’s also an edge given the darkened color scheme. Like the recipient herself.

The matching headpiece is a mini-tiara, meant to be work at the crown of the head. It’s mounted on a comb and is in a classic style of mine from the headpiece biz days. Nice to use my newly sharpened jewelry-making skills (Thanks, day job!) with my own aesthetic and favorite techniques. All in all, a satisfying project. Here it is wrapped to go out to the mail:

Pumpkin, sage, and brown butter breads. I made about 10 of these and gave them to the friends for the holidays. Time was short this year, as I’ve been traveling up a storm since the beginning of autumn. Even so, I knew I wanted to do another friend community gift. Coordinating groceries, baking, and drop-off times in the last week of December was tricky but I finally got it together just before New Year’s.

The first time I made the recipe it produced far fewer loaves than I anticipated, so I was forced to eat those myself and make a triple batch the next day:

Tripling the recipe made so much batter it only just barely fit in my biggest mixing bowl. A standing mixer would help in cases like this but damned if I’m going to buy one. If money is to be spent on a machine there’s a long list of guitar pedals that are way further ahead in line.

These breads were particularly tasty, probably owing much to the large quantity of butter steeped with sage leaves. Giving holiday gifts is a good excuse to drive around the neighborhood and reinforce the mental map of the fine community we have here in Philly. Our lives may all diverge domestically as time glides forward, but the love and good intentions remain.

Sterling silver necklace with pearls, crystals, and faceted citrine. I whipped this up for my mother for a Yule gift. She’s been getting handmade jewelry from me for gifts since I was old enough to string a bead, but I thought this year should be extra fancy. I’ve been making necklaces along these lines for a living this year, so this one is just a little more pro than my old designs. Cleaner wire work. Sharper technique.

The holidays came fast this year, since I was away for the month of November in Wales recording an album. Lots of prep for a trip, so the myriad smaller art projects had to go on hiatus for a season. December is always the zenith of crafting, though, so I jumped back into it feet first. I can make way nicer things than I can afford to buy right now so making it was! After about a decade of working my way through supplies from my old business I’m finally ready to acquire some new stones and chain, but there was enough left to make this sparkling number for my mama. She loved it, of course. My easiest-to-please audience ever.

Red Stone Fruit (Satsuma plum & cherry) Cordial. I wanted to harness some of the August ripeness, all sun-soaked and with fruit sugars at a delirious high,  as it crests and collapses into autumn. My darlings from up north, Christopher and Courtney, were due to visit and so I started this brew a couple weeks ahead for our celebrations. Easy, as I still had materials on hand from the cordial I made for my birthday soirée at the end of July. That one was strawberry-basil and it went fast on that rollicking, sweaty dance party of a night:

When I first starting making cordials years ago in the Compound era, we followed recipes (Orange Coriander Brandy was a winner) and made giant vats that infused over a minimum of two months in my prehistoric earthen basement. These were bottled & corked for holiday gifts. I have a few books on the topic but those first recipes came from Food For Friends , a lovely little guide to what my life will be in retirement age. Making lavender cakes for the neighbors and space operas on vintage synths in my basement studio (not shown in book).

For this summer’s brews, though, it was shorter term and I just winged it. Plain spirits (vodka is a simple base) went in a glass container (food safe plastic is ok too) with about a third of the container filled with sliced and slightly mashed fruit. The basil I tore – you want to get the flavor to release as much as possible.

About 24 hours later the strawberries blew my mind – they were ghost white and the brew was bright pink! Plums stayed in for about 2 weeks but I learned short-term infusing can still work. The flavor was lighter so I mixed them into cocktails with mineral water and fruit purée or juice just to be safe.

This method of preservation also works for tinctures & tonics with medicinal herbs. A true cordial also usually has a sweetener added, so I’d say these were somewhere in between. A tangible sip of the spirit of summer, tonic for the soul.

Hand silk-screened black light poster. My band’s new EP was ready to go, and I was trying to choose the release format. Vinyl is preferable but prohibitively expensive. Digital is practical but unromantic. For many of us the listening experience is linked to the physical artifact…especially if we’ve been vinyl freaks. For me that’s certainly true. I want to hold something beautiful while I’m taking in the sound. In this weird new era when the music can transmit through a short download code, the artifact can be almost anything though, right?  I chose an art poster, specifically one with the parent’s basement/stoner contemplation demographic in mind.

“Where is my Roger Dean?” I asked. Kind friends pointed me to artist and awesome fellow musician Jason Killinger, and I commissioned him to come up with the image. I threw out a couple of reference points and definitely said something about the cosmos, but was still blown away by where he took it. Mind-bending space landscape! Originally I’d planned to have it professionally printed, but when Jason said we could do it ourselves my irascible DIY/art nerd self brushed aside all planning concerns and happily agreed.

That’s how Jason, me, and my friend David Brant ended up in listening to prog, drinking beers, and printing the first two colors, the flourescents, late night in a heat wave.

I woke up the next day looking like an extra from some electroclash video: totally covered in day-glo pink and blue ink. That said, it was really Jason who did the lion’s share of the work. From design to burning the screens to finessing the registration of the three screens, he made the visual side of this project come to life. Here’s the man of the hour holding the first finished poster:

We quickly turned out the lights and huddled giddily around it as I snapped on the black light bulb. Success! Torrents of pink lava & eerie blue illuminating possibly my favorite part of creative living: quality collaboration.

Custom headpiece for the wedding of my dear friends Sarah and Phil. In my early twenties I ran my own business designing bridal accessories.  Each piece was made as the real deal, not a plastic sequin nor a poly flower in sight. My tiaras were solid silver & precious stones, my silk flowers were real silk or velvet…some imported from a tiny village in Cremona, Italy (had to Babelfish the hell out of that 2001-era Italian website). I’m still proud of my sourcing, obviously! Eventually I folded the business when I realized my daydreams were shaping up as crowns instead of songs. Not an acceptable trade of creative energy in my book at that time.

I love breaking out the old skills for friends, though. A custom piece is way more fun, and I get to fit it to the bride’s face instead of guessing. For this one Sarah had the idea of matching a beaded motif on her dress. I sketched the basic shape and started free-forming:

I’m still without a work table in my new place, so this was a spread-out-on-the-carpet job like my earliest art days. In addition to the beading we also chose some Edwardian-yet-kinda-Avant-garde stripped peacock feathers, and I decided to sew them to wire so they could be better controlled…an extremely delicate task.

Early on I concluded this should be several separate pieces to pin into the hairstyle for greater flexibility. It total we had the main motif, the wired feathers, and also several matching pins to continue the sparkle around the up-do. Fun fact: most of my headdress design inspiration came from close study of paintings. Thanks, Mucha!

Projects like this take quite a bit more time and thought than some others, but the payoff is proportional. I want the people I care about to have exactly what they want and the best I can give them, always.

(First & last photo by Love Me Do. See more here: http://lovemedophotography.com/blog/?p=2641)

Homemade almond milk. Just almonds, water, a few dates, and a little vanilla. This is one of those cases in which homemade is substantially better than store-bought. I learned this years ago when my friend Margie started whipping up batches of this stuff. It tastes way fresher, is free of weird stabilizers, and is ridiculously easy to make.

Put one cup of almonds in a bowl of water before bed. Wake up and rinse them off. Throw ‘em in the blender with about 4 cups of water and a few pitted dates. Maybe some vanilla. Strain through cheesecloth. That’s it. The almond meal that’s leftover is great to add to all kinds of dishes. Recipes abound on the internet.

My current favorite thing to do with this milk is make a smoothie with just it and a frozen banana. Wow. Try it! Milkshake without dairy coma.

I moved to a new house back in February, and my workshop is in boxes until renovations are complete. This means all art-of-life pursuits are concentrated in the kitchen. Sometimes this sparks a mild identity crisis involving too much domesticity (give me whiskey and tour vans, quick!), but I’m trying to keep in mind that it’s all part of a bigger beautiful-life picture. Drinking my own almond milk from a glass bottle makes me feel off the grid in some way. Knowing how to make things is part of how I like to live.

A trio of infused honeys for a bridal shower gift. Lemon ginger, rosemary, and sage. The couple getting hitched are both excellent cooks with exquisite taste, so I thought they’d appreciate having these to add nuance. I made a lavender honey from my garden years ago, and it was killer on roasted on figs with pink sea salt.

The infusing method is slow but simple. You start with a mild honey and warm it gently in a water bath, trying to keep it below 120 degrees (any hotter and the medicinal qualities of the honey can diminish). Add chopped fresh herbs or zest, let it steep, strain. I wanted a stronger flavor so I also added fresh herbs so they can continue to cold-process on the shelf.

There’s also something about hand making gifts for these life-milestone events that I find extra meaningful. Something involving an older sense of community spirit, the kin and kindred stocking the cupboards of a new couple or family to show support of their venture. One of my favorite gifts from my own shower, approx 100 years ago, was from an artist friend – a set of mismatched & lovely china tea cups and saucers she’d compiled from yard sales, all wrapped beautifully in a fabric in a wooden crate. In a bohemian world it was a queenly gift, and it showed me that she’d considered and comprehended my aesthetic. That thoughtfulness saturated the gift, and I still think of it today when I reach for one of the cups.

Feather-covered boudoir slippers, a housewarming gift for my friend/new roommate. I started with a pair of plain cork heels I found in her size and carefully glued on a design with feathers from my collection.

This project started as a half-joke. We’d been happily brainstorming about the household we would create together and the lifestyle it could inspire. Kimonos and feathered slippers, sunlit rooms. Quality conversation, convivial spirit. A bohemian salon, relaxed but rich with a spirit of artful living.

To honor my part in making that more than idle talk, I decided to start our time in this house with a ceremonial gift of the slippers. Research quickly revealed that most available feathered shoes are pretty hideous. Since I’m physically incapable of buying something I think I can make better,  the day before I moved found me surrounded by boxes at an empty worktable…covered in feather whisps.

A home frames a lifestyle. A lifestyle informs an identity. From identity we take action. The most frivolous of objects imaginable, an ornamental indoor shoe, becomes a piece of proof that a beautiful life is taken seriously. No moment is too common to celebrate.

Variation on theme. Same pattern of strands as original earrings but wider-gauge chain and new top-mount design. Applying the common policy of more to the first design, I thought: why not bigger chain? The results were surprising – a wider gauge chain is indeed larger in size but is less dense. So now we have pretty, tough, and…ethereal? I like the idea of a thing that is a statement but has some subtlety to it. Fearless but with finesse.

Each earring has seven strands. Given a chance to number anything and my abundant mysticism will wrench control and choose seven. I was born in the seventh month on the seventh day on the week, seven minutes into the hour. I heard once that the Queen of Sheba wore seven stars on her robe when she seduced King Solomon. Magic number. Whether you believe in the objective power of a charm or just the benefit of focus it can bring, nothing wrong with adding a little luck.

Time flies, time crawls, and time stands still. It drips and ebbs, dappling sun on trees like a Leslie speaker, slowly pulsing.  On a 100 degree day it hovers your dry, sun-soaked body just over the freezing mountain river before the moment of contact. Tempus Edax Rerum: Time, the devourer of all things. Time, the 4th dimension: the veritable Mobius strip of experiential existence itself.

Or, as I like to think of it: Time, the great Super Mario Brothers game in the sky.

As other kids raised on early Nintendo may understand, Mario Bros was set up to progress the action forward on a linear temporal plane. Even if you made no move – say you went to go get a snack and threw the control down – the left side of the screen would quickly plow up behind your stationery character and push you along forward just the same. Very likely this course of obliviousness would get you promptly pushed off a cliff, or smack into an aggressive force. Sound familiar?

So in one sense time is kind of a ruthless creep. Like the undertow, it has little regard for moments of dithering. Distraction will get you in trouble with both of these intractable forces. Life will happen to you even if you try to ignore it. Time ends things, too, and that’s the hardest of all. The very hardest of all there is to know, even when you know some endings are good, and no ending is necessarily ended.

At this particular moment, though, I’m more concerned with time as it wears its healer hat. I’m interested in how we can consciously use time as a tool in our lives. The first application of this principle is one we’ve all experienced but can’t be overstated: letting time pass after an emotional hurt will help you feel better. It seems impossible at first but that’s the trick of it. Learning this trick is a big part of maturity. Interacting with time in a manner respectful of its powers is part of growing up. Take love as a classic example: your heart may feel broken, but you know from experience that in a year it will resemble a bruise more than a break. It may even feel good as new.

Trusting time, even when the pain is fresh, shows foresight and willpower. The rational brain must insist on override. The situation may not hurt less but you know to wait it out. The most dangerous depression I’ve ever witnessed is the kind in which history is revised (“It has always been this bad”) and the rational brain is out-muscled by the raw heart (“It will always be this bad”). Past and future are warped or dismissed by an overactive pain response in the present. Trust can quiet the irrational yowl and show a path forward.

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Time can also be applied like a compress. Lately I have been focusing on wielding it consciously, with steady pressure, to push through moments of anxiety. In the past my initial problem-solving response was usually to take action. This originated from a desire to control a situation, to fix it. It was a never-ending battle to bring my emotions back to zero setting: neutral calm. I was constantly putting out fires. I didn’t want to be a passive force being pushed through the video game of life. I liked to think of myself as an agent of change, that I had a dynamic role in the great balance. More than a little hubris was inherent in this perspective…and if there’s one thing I’ve learned lately, it’s the danger of hubris.

Over the years the approach of aggressive action has brought me any number of backlashes, amplified dissonances, and new snarls to unravel. It’s no surprise, really. The channel to which we’re tuned is the frequency we will receive. Taking action from a position of fear produces more things to be afraid of. Be an agent of change, sure. But dynamic roles require nuance. The hasty reaction/action has all the subtlety of a game of whack-a-mole. Like all things it’s a skill to develop. We must remain engaged and aware but also take the time to choose action carefully. Instead of the epic poem, try the haiku. A tough task for a wordy woman!

Using time as a tool requires a tremendous amount of faith. Trust is substantiated by a constant review of past experience. We must remember how quickly an argument can dissolve back into laughter, how the gossip spotlight swings to new star weekly, and how the heart itself is capable of phenomenal readjustment if we get out of its way.  Faith in the consistent patterns of human interactions is what tells me this week’s drama could be tossed over the shoulder without a second thought in a matter of days.

Utilizing time also requires an ability to sustain some discomfort. This has been my own biggest trigger in the past. If something is wrong I want to change it back to right immediately. However, enough years navigating the world of people and their story lines has taught me this is not always possible. Sometimes the splinter hurts until it works itself out. I’m learning to live with some amount of discomfort if necessary. I am trying to raise my emotional zero-setting to a higher pain threshold and accept uncomfortable situations with faith and patience. Fingers off the gun, rookie – get thee to a mountaintop and take some deep breaths.

At the heart of all of this duress is a faulty equation. Putting out fires is a backward response. It assumes that in order to be at peace internally, external situations have to be arranged to your liking. This is a losing battle. File under: Tomorrow is Only an Idea. If we want to be ok, we must be ok now. Be ok already. Trying to control the external world is thankless to the max. If we wait until everything and everyone acts the way we want before we’re satisfied with life we’re in for a life of disappointment. That control is not given to us. Luckily, there are some infinitely powerful tools we do have at our disposal. To review: we have our lens of perspective (see: The Honor in Happiness), the composition of our internal landscape (to come: Location of the Self), and this, our own relativity of time.

Our relativity of time allows us to work within our moments. Sometimes when I am in physical pain I can manage it by finding the place in my mind that is not hurting and staying “there”. I’m trying the same thing now psychologically. I find the sweet spot in each moment that is just fine despite whatever is going on externally and I hang out there. From this place I can gather an arsenal of support: all of my life currently that’s already fine, all that’s been fine in the past, and faith in all the fine to come. I emerge fortified by this little zen crux and I proceed through time as someone who is once more enjoying the game.

Integrity is starting to seem less boring to me these days. The word used to make my eyes glaze over. Trotted out ad nauseum in business writing, there it would be again: leaning pseudo-nonchalantly in header-size italics at the top of the page. It practically buffed its nails on its shirt. It was a word for the pacific northwestern venture capitalist wearing organic cotton. It bragged about not skimming from the till as though that was cause enough for praise. It all seemed kind of smug.

Integrity also seemed to crow: “Don’t succumb to wicked and decadent temptations!” Alright, logical enough…but how to reconcile the logic with the life experience? Frankly mine has been rich with evidence that some wicked decadence can be  invigorating. For many years a wild-heart, burn-it-down spirit suffused me. It was rooted in that exhilarating frisson of being at least a little bad, scoffing at rules and morals set by pious squares. Who wants advice about how to live from people who don’t seem to make the most of life? How can we trust any rule predicated on fear? Besides, re-inventing the wheel is a rite of passage. It’s the flag planting of individuality. I want to do things my own way, hell or high water. Even if that wheel doesn’t turn quite right…long live the hubris of youth. It’ll rattle proudly on half-wheels and polygons. The jet-fuel of ego alone will make the thing move forward, even if it’s in fits and starts.

Recently this bias has started to evolve.  I began thinking about integrity as a structural concept. From this position the term means a coherent system. A coherent system is built on solid principles, on equations that add up. Even the Hubble was crippled by a simple math problem. A system with integrity is free of weakening internal conflicts. Our psychological system should be the same. Of course in these lucky lives we’re always going to be faced with interesting new conflicts over which to puzzle, Rubik’s-like, in the long drives and sleepless nights. I’m not talking about that kind of conflict. I’m talking about the ones that go deeper. The ones you ignore.

In the final couple years of my old life, there existed fault lines I observed and did not know how to resolve. Memos were sent to my brain that went direct, unread, to the shredder. There were incompatibilities between me and a situation or between my abilities and my desires. When faced with such, I swept them back and rode forward on a kind of faith that it would all work out somehow. Riding the positive expectation horse through your badlands is usually a good plan in my book, but this is a little different. Things will still work themselves out, but if you’re not addressing the inconsistencies and working to shore up what you can, you’ll find it works out in a start-from-scratch kind of way. I saw fault lines, I kept building on them anyway. Soon enough, the city fell to the ground.

More recently I’ve also been noticing internal integrity when it comes to creating art. The aspects of my craft that I’ve most glossed over through the years are knocking on my door. I’m talking about the topics I’d think about, feel an uncomfortable twinge, and brush away. Turns out you can’t outrun them forever. At some point the whole operation is going to stop and wait for you to locate the missing part, or learn to fix it yourself. The artist needs a coherent skill set. The machine of life needs integrity to run smoothly and reliably for you through the years.

How does the system get integrity? For one, do what you say. Seriously, do it. This is coming from someone who firmly believes talking IS a kind of action. I do much of my best thinking in dialogue. Be it with patient friends over a beer or in dialogue with myself through writing, the intention to do something and the discussion of methods or motivations is an pivotal part of the process. Ok. But then…do it. Put your money where your mouth is. Put up or shut up. What a difference a conversation makes when both parties can reasonably expect that the intention has a fighting chance at being made manifest. How much we more we respect people who identify an intention, resolve to make it into action, and then act! At times you’ll find your intentions aren’t the right answer, but that information will at least get you closer to your goal. Stone simple, but true.

Also: don’t do things that feel wrong. I don’t mean fun-wrong. I mean living-with-it-in-the-morning-wrong. Do not do things to other people that would make you miserable. Do not do things that drive a wedge of internal inconsistency between yourself and the life you want to live. I have done this, as many have. In the darkest days of personal pain, I tried my hand at nihilism. If my life was unrecognizable, what did any of the living of it matter? This is earthquake survivor shock. Decision making in a landscape of rubble. But I am no victim; as noted above, if I hadn’t ignored the fault lines I could have been better prepared. Internal inconsistencies have a terrible quality of snowballing. When you already sense that there is wrongness, what’s the motivation to prevent more? Not much, and it gets less every time.

Face the faults. Don’t fear them. Don’t sweep them under the rug because you don’t want to see them. There is nothing to fear unless you believe yourself to be incapable of change. If you believe yourself to be incapable of change, there’s not much to recommend except that someone shake you by the shoulders and give a good: “My god man, wake up!” You can change. So do it already. Face the faults, work to improve them. Try. If you don’t, you’re not allowed to complain when things don’t work. Give your life integrity. The machine will purr and run like new. You’ll be on your way, and your trip will be a good one.

I’ve told this story more than once, but I think it’s a good example for a number of topics that involve my favorite tool, the lens of perspective. Here’s how it goes: I am walking to work. The job is one I took when I still had a car, I no longer have that car in the wake of my life implosion/divorce. So I walk. Let me be clear for a moment: it isn’t very far. But in this moment it is far to me. The weather is punishing, a seemingly malevolent wintry mix that fills my leaking boots and pelts my face. I am so beyond broke that I can’t buy new boots yet and I need to get to this job to not-really-quite pay my survival bills. A car drives by and splashes me. At this moment the litany, heretofore a muttering shadow, begins in earnest. It’s a riotous clarion of self-pity and it rings through the grand chambers of my present like the voice of a holy rolling revival preacher…and I’m just getting warmed up.

This sinker begins with the basic details of physical discomfort but wastes no time jumping gloriously to the general and absolute: once I had a house, I think. I had a husband, a business, a working band, a decent car, a well-run life. Images flash of a warm room, laughing loved faces, comfortable jaunts out in the minivan to Ikea to pick up some puzzle piece of cozy order for my cozy life. Who knows if these images are even filled in with my own details, at this point in the self-pity slide they may as well be the stock photos in frames sold at Target. Maybe we’re toasting something. Maybe I’m wearing a turtleneck. There’s probably a golden retriever with a dolphin smile on his face catching a Frisbee, for all I care about accuracy. At this moment the point is that I used to have it all and now it is gone. Fist shake at the sky!

“My husband left me and now I am reduced to the state of a wretch!” Now I’m galloping roughshod over reality, blurring edges with the fire in my eyes. I’m not even being true to the subtle truths about a long term love affair. The sad and decent complexities of a long love lost are trampled beneath the heel of my leaking boots.  Before I left my house I was a normal enough young woman heading to work, now in my head I am essentially a rag-bedecked hobo moaning over a barrel fire in a gloomy/blue-filter-heavy post-apocolyptic sci-fi movie.

Somewhere mid-hobo the meta-cognition kicked on with a clumsy hum and I started to laugh in the rain. Wretched, pathetic, maligned…or silly? The lens of perspective clicked down like a Viewmaster from childhood, and I saw myself ten years forward shaking my head at this bedraggled fool: “You are still young, rich with ability, and free to do literally anything you choose at this moment.” Ten years forward I hope and expect to have many of the comforts and successes I felt so sorely lacking walking in the freezing rain that day…but I know some part of me then will look back on this time as one of robust youth and opportunity and wish that I had fully appreciated it. To honor this perspective I choose appreciation. In appreciation peace and happiness are right at my fingertips.

Life feels difficult sometimes. In the relatively of our temporal experience, sometimes it feels more difficult than it used to feel. Sometimes it appears more difficult than a friend’s life (often). When the sense of humor is operational we can recognize many of our concerns as “first world problems.” Still, it’s the nature of our emotional focus that we get really relative, really fast. We could all find a reason to bemoan something basically all the time if we want to.  So I say to myself and you both: Stop wanting this. That’s what I am getting at. Let’s just give it a rest. Quit bitching.

Complaining is easy. It is satisfying on a very cheap level. It’s giving the crying child a candy bar. What is less easy is stopping the sinker and looking around at how good you actually do have it.That sinker train has gained momentum! As we saw in the earlier example, within in one block of 6th street I went from Normal Tuesday to Wretch of Misery. It was hard and uncomfortable to stop that slide, hard like…solving a tricky word problem in a timed test. Hard like…using your rational brain under duress. Sort of a wrenching sensation. A pull-up in gym class for the bookworm. It’s also hard to be faced with proof that you’re being a jerk. I’d prefer to keep my bad angles away from the camera, please. But if you are secure in your identity you can face your bad angles and your weaknesses and, by doing so, improve them with grace.

Self-pity is unattractive, but it’s greater insidiousness is the dishonor it does to genuine lack. Each day I get to walk myself through the sleet with all my limbs, all my mental faculties, and knowledge that my loved ones have the same is a shining gem of a day. It’s a ruby in the sun and I’d damn well better appreciate that it is mine. If I appreciate what I have I honor the time when time will take these away, and I honor all that’s come before to bring me to a state of such abundant wealth.

The state of appreciation feels like the easiest and most natural thing imaginable once entered. It feels right. But there are many times when getting there is incredibly difficult and requires a tremendous act of will. I make no claims to mastery on this front. It requires the acuity of a psychological lens able to project forward, to accurately survey the past, and even to broaden out to see the breadth of alternate options. It also requires the basic premise that appreciation is your desired state of being. I say do this. Aim for appreciation.

The word ‘honor’ has been dragged through wars and churches in our human history, but to me it is this simple and pure thing thing: try to be happy. Appreciate what you have when you have it. From this state your actions will be peacefully motivated. You will be humble and also more powerful, for you will have better stock of your strengths and assets. This is a state of honesty and also efficiency, as you will not waste your time. When you complain you fork over extra precious moments of your life to the very thing you’re against, whatever it is. Remove the fuel and watch it fade away. Look forward.

It is true that you can’t always control what happens to you, but you can control in what context you view it. Make the choice to adjust your lens out to a broader perspective. Let’s do ourselves and each other the respect of living in a positive story. Let’s walk in the sun.

Break the seal. Cut the ribbon. Get out the door. Jump in the puddles. Test a theory with practice. Leap with faith. Move. Act. You can walk on air if you don’t look down.

Sometimes I picture consciousness as a house. I like to spend much of my time way in the back, digging through the mysterious trunks and old books. It’s amazing what you can find there. Treasures. Sometimes I look up to see that the sun set hours ago. Weeks have passed and I’m still sitting on a stack of boxes, turning some interesting concept over and over again in my hands. I could stay in this reverie indefinitely. Ok. Wake up. Rub eyes with the heels of the hands.

Walk to the front room. Open the door handle and the pupils dilate at the brightness of a day out in the world. Molecules and light and activity. Oxygen and weather, everywhere. Go!

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You know about top-down vs. bottom-up models of creation, right? In top-down you come up with the idea first and then try to make it happen. With bottom-up you improvise with available materials and see what comes of it. For many years I was surrounded by avant-garde noise musicians, near-religious in their devotion to bottom-up, and I went a little reactionary: “The emperor has no clothes!” I defended editing, planning, and the cerebral above all else.

It was an easy enough position, I’ve always love ideas. I love concept records. I love highfalutin mega-meta blueprinted storyboarded ideas. I love words that need italics. When I write a song I’m usually sketching the idea for an opus with some power chords, essentially just writing an outline that I’ll fill in later. “Later” is where it gets tricky…sometimes trying to manifest a concept with available materials or resources leads to compromised quality. Nevertheless I stuck doggedly to this concept-over-content stance until it struck me that, as with all reactionary positions, it was narrow-minded. If I love ideas so much I should allow them whatever earth they need in which to grow. Sometimes that’s a chaotic clatter of amplified silverware, run through loop pedals (rarely). Sometimes it’s a found material I get my hands in and start shaping.

Plus, both models have their own strengths. Top-down is good for plot, for dramatic arcs in emotion or melody, and for overall shape. Bottom-up is good for detail, for nuance, and for the surprise connection. For some time now a list of topics, titles, and outlines for essays has been growing over here. The day has come to start manipulating the raw material of words to see if I can approximate the shapes I have in mind. What will they look like out of reverie and into reality? It may be a loop of noise at times, phasing like a dog whistle and making wish you were in the back chatting with a pal instead of sitting here in the front row. Hopefully other times it will be two pieces I suddenly realize click together to make a single song. There’s only one thing I know for certain: if I don’t start it will just be silence.