Keep Those Hands Busy

Being in the midst of a very up and down summer: Quit a band that really messed with me... continues to mess with me, having a big family crisis with my dad that i was directly in my line of work and turned my head and emotions inside, but it's still been a beautiful summer and i'm trying not to take that for granted.
A goal for awhile has been to build a cigar box guitar, making things by hand as much as possible - from nut and bridge out of antler/bone, to detailing the wood, hand made piezo pick ups and keeping a focus on my desired semi-deco approach. A slow labour of love and a learning curve that has me really juiced to keep up with building cigar box guitars, wiring homemade pedals and really taking the love of guitars and accessories and mixing them with a love for working with hands and making it with style, thought and some of me.
So here is a link for the detailed photo set of my first cigar box guitar build.

PS: i still need a idea for a volume knob, so feel free to pass those along.


Find more photos like this on Cigar Box Nation

That and Those That Matter

In looking at the idea of jumping ship and leaving where i am currently living has led me to really focus on a few things that seem small at first examination but turn out huge with a small amount of applied focus. First is vain and degrading but honest: just how much i own, how much crap there is surrounding me... all of us. Second, the things that really matter like the events and areas that mean something to you in whatever stink-town or shit situation you're looking at bailing out of. Thirdly, perhaps most importantly are the people.
i've been trying to really cut down on how much i own. Eliminate the things that aren't necessary, especially if i don't love it. The amount of garbage that when you're really looking at it is insane. Shitty DVDs, weird little appliances, old shoes, crapped out electronics, and accessories for things you can no longer identify become sickening. The list is endless as is all the crap. i've recently been going through boxes, literally, full of stuff that i used when i first moved out... why the hell do i need so many glasses and mugs?!?! My god. The Salvation Army has been seeing a lot my old stuff. i hope that in some small way my stupid self-excess can benefit someone in some way.
The second one has been a very hard mixed blessing. As i think and feel more and more about the things i'm involved in the bigger the questions seem to become as do questions about motivation, sacrifice, desire, dreams... acceptance, even. Being a part of a music scene and more emotionally in a band i love has been strangely been the biggest mixed blessing of them all. i truly love this band, i love the music we play and i love the people in it so much but i'm also realizing that my willingness to commit to it is no longer what it once was. i appreciate the challenge of this loving dichotomy. It hurts realizing this, but in a way the draining and emotional charge that keeps coming with this kind of questioning is in a way revitalizing. Most of the time our lives seem so full of acceptance of what has just always been. At least in re-evaluation of my loved things i can understand more about my loves, the things i want to be a part of and myself.
Lastly, the heart breaker... the  connection... the relationships, the god damned people. Family and friends, their influence on our day to day lives are hard to really quantify without allowing yourself to register the hurt and loss that will ultimately accompany this change of winds.
All of this if done honestly really allows one to see the good in many places, things and people that you may not expect. The hilariously awful truth in the ying-yang, in all things terrific and special there is some small amount of crap, and in all things shit storm and intolerable is some small piece of gold.

In craving an adventure and a change i faced these all before but it has been probably 9 nines since my last one. This time things seem somehow gigantically bigger.

Connections and Cold Memories

Have you ever had a moment in life where you've been interacting with someone and felt that you might have been this same person if only a couple of choices, lucky breaks or downright random things might have happened along the way? That though your histories, past or many, many things might be different that there is a kinship beyond others you've known?
i have recently been struck by this feeling again. This time my professional life and responsibilities brought in contact with this person. There was a sense that when i was dealing with this person that without knowing them i could have been them in another life. The connection was immediate and struck me so that i've been thinking about it solid since. It made my day a bit distracting and led me to reflect about how much the things we don't choose end up impacting our lives. Life is so full of uneven roads and unexpected potholes along the way. So many choose to believe that these mere highways are meant to lead us somewhere personal, original and just for us. For me, i am feeling more and more that the roads, the universe and life is totally indifferent and why shouldn't it be. In some ways that is a freeing thought and feeling but also leaves the responsibility for all we can control solely on us.
The connection i shared with this person led me to reflect that the things that truly change and form who we become is thinner and more transparent than any us of truly expect or obviously acknowledge. The things that make us up are only microscopically different from a tree, a cat, a car, or a brick, and the only differences we see between people are the taught and learned cultural, ethnic, spiritual and circumstantial garbage that we drag around with us as we age and learn from the places and people we have encountered.
So thin yet so defining in so many ways.

i don't expect to understand these moments, frankly speaking that feeling and moment might be simply my own, perhaps these moments are not something others can identify with, but this is the second time i've felt this feeling in the past 5 or 6 years. Each time it stops me dead. Last time it was in my personal life, and i've tried desperately to maintain contact and a friendship with that person. This time because it's been under my professional capacity i feel somehow more responsible for this person more than most others i've dealt with.

#mebutnotme

Days

Stress has been getting me. Getting me in ways i haven't had before, or that has felt this acute. i wake up scared. i have nightmares. i feel depression weighing on me. Once or twice a day it feels hard to breathe, just too much weight on my back and chest and shoulders.

Not sure how to proceed. i've made the kinds of errors and choices that put an end to potential dreams, and has truly affected my quality of life. i worry about what happens if i make choices now that will intentionally hurt myself. Fall-out of my own making. i feel irradiated by this. Marked for life and disfigured.

Riding this out is necessary but hard. i have to take the blows and responsibility for the outcome, but it hurts physically, emotionally and mentally. 

Hymns of Emergency

Being a promoter for the need to be connected to people, to the physical life, adventures and activities in the real world i have been finding myself more and more in the midst of strong feelings of being disconnected. My current feelings about best laid plans and my level of energy has begun to haunt me. Being exhausted leads to an increase in the feelings of disconnectedness but also makes me feel as though i haven't slept for four days after having just woken. Black and blue through and through, dreaming of the past and future fully aware that it is an attempt to deal with my current private SOS that i'm drowning in. Preparez-vous...
Black and blue, there's nothing i can do, and usually i feel as though there's nothing i can't do. So how to shake the shivers and aches?
Old habits die hard, and knowing that the feelings of disconnect are linked to sadness and realizing that i have been left behind and have removed a limb covered in old, well-earned and loved scars. To be in, but on the outside of in... to feel it, but to not know where you'll be standing once you're back standing instead of lying flat and weak. But it's very new territory after having been so used to being a part of the service, a part of the action, a man of the hymns of danger and sweat.
Guess i'm just jealous and feeling left out.

Breathing hard? Naw, it's just something in my Eye.

It's taken awhile to accept this. i haven't wanted to think about this, and i certainly didn't want to feel it. i gave my heart, sweat, for lack of a cheesier statement, my ALL to this band. Walking away and giving all the dedication and work a funeral so quiet, undeserved and perhaps premature leans heavy on me. The work of partnership building a feeling and momentum was so refreshing and liberating. To know that we came together to make ourselves bigger and better into something we all loved is hard to duplicate. The energy that carried us forward gave me hopes for dreams that have always been secreted in journals and in the birthday wishes you know could never come true... somehow though this felt like maybe, on the outside chance, there was enough given to this that together we could make it count.

i'd like to feel that i was part of something special, and special to more than just three lovers of music. i'd like to imagine that in some way the work and successes marked other peoples memories. i want to say that the Sinsters were always great, but all things have moments of hurt and embarasement, this is no exception. Looking past the hard times, giving myself the due i feel i've earned and moving forward in the things i love help but it does not entirely save me or shake the sense of loss. Maybe that's the point, maybe the point is the hard parts, maybe the hard points are what make this mine all the more. i'm being tempered by this, much in the same way i carved my love for music into something physical. i do not want to become tempered steel, i do not want to believe that is the best of what i have to offer, i do not want to believe that i have lost something i could never feel again.
Like i said, i didn't and don't want to feel all of this but it's over now. Slowly down this road i walk, and slowly i recognize how much i loved, hurt and have to accept this... and yeah, that's just something in my eye.

R.I.P. the Sinsters 2004-2010 ~ Are you ready? Well, i'm Ready...

First in Eight Years

The energy and refreshing energy of a really big first is somethings that seems rare of these by-gone days and nights. To feel the excitement, oh and the nervousness, racing throughout the night. After three, four, or five recordings, finally having a release party and a well put together release gave it a feeling of legitimacy and importance that i'd never had before. A celebration for something of which i am very proud of, and vinyl to boot.
i love music. It's one of the few things in my life that i feel has the ability to be limitless, truly limitless. Music has been a part of my life for as long as i can remember, and so many memories have a music element ingrained in them. To create a memory based on a piece of music that i had a part in feels natural in many ways, like destiny in others, and as though it's something i could never have imagined being a hand in.
i love the people that have helped me come this far, and i want to thank them.

There are people i wish that i could have shared this with from years and days gone-by, but it is not an issue of lament. Sometimes the best things bring up ideas about what make it special.

Panic and the Shape of Things to Come

Where did all this panic come from? It's as though one minute i'm fine the next i'm shaking and panicked... actually that's exactly what it is. As this short month full of so many events, assignments and other various agenda filling things rolls along i'm hoping it'll relax. The hope that once one or two things is off your plate then perhaps there can be some sort of attempted relaxation, or maybe i'll have burnt out my synapses from the fits of panic and be forced into a medically induced coma to recover. i bet comas are good sleeping too.
Waiting for March to arrive is the idea, but the knowledge that this month will be a full on sprint really doesn't have me jumping for joy, rather ducking for cover and hoping some will come to my rescue (Superman, Spiderman... anybody out there?!).
Long dark, cold nights ahead. Little sleep ahead. Little free time ahead... not that i've really had much of that over the past couple years.

Just trying to maintain this course towards that impending shore. Eyes on the horizon.