I learned early in my touring days that being a sponge to wisdom is an incredible way to live, and makes the most of this very exciting life and career I’ve been blessed with. Here are the quotes that I’ve come across (or come up with) over the years and that I find myself using almost daily to help guide and shape my actions and experiences.
When you work and live in one place, you have the gift of predictability and control over most of your daily life. While that level of predictability is nearly impossible on the road, there are practices that allow us to retain some agency and continue to create a healthy and productive life while traveling every day. After all, unpredictability is part of the magic of travel life, and finding ways to accommodate it allows us to enjoy all the twists and turns.
Once the worrying brain has found something to attach itself to, it can spend hours hypothesizing and constructing elaborate tales of possible outcomes. It wrongly convinces us that somehow fixating on the future will change the course of action. While experiencing worry is a natural response to uncertainty, it doesn’t need to consume the amount of energy or number of hours it often does.
If you have experienced tragic loss you know there are no words to describe the anguish and the all-consuming weight that bears down on you. We’ve just passed the 6-month anniversary of my friend Kim’s death and the experience has evolved in different ways, so it is time to write again. Some aspects are worse. Some are better. Here are my experiences with grief, as they present themselves further along in the process.
Grief is volatile and all-encompassing, physically and emotionally, and we are at its mercy. I welcome you into this space because I believe there is healing in sharing, for all involved, and simply composing this has already given me the ability to write the more hopeful "next steps" included further in.
I strongly believe that “life is a journey not a destination”, but this doesn’t give me much day-to-day guidance. Where do worthwhile hustle and healthy productivity fit in the mix? When do we push, and when do we sit back? Surely our destinies are not written so entirely that we should just be along for the ride. Where do ambition, activism, and goal-setting fit?
Those of us linked to the performance industry receive our reinforcement in the form of an engaged audience, big smiles, applause, and maybe a personal story shared with us after a show, so it's no surprise that many of us are feeling more stalled and unmotivated than ever. The more successful we feel, the more eager we are to create, and right now there’s nothing to trigger that cycle. So then the question is: when we’re not creating, who are we, even?
“Missing Motivation” To say it has been a tough year for musicians is an understatement. We are all facing unprecedented challenges, and my personal view from inside the music community has been of feelings such as denial, disbelief, crisis, apathy, loss of self, and a host of others. I have had some very powerful conversations with musicians about their symptoms in addition to experiencing many of them myself, and I have spent the last several months taking a deeper look. This is all in effort to give words to our shared experience, and to allow us to find relief in…
Performing musicians across the globe are suffering greatly amidst the COVID19 pandemic. Live shows may not look the same for a very long time. While the rest of the world begins to slowly re-open, musicians’ very art form and profession are in question with no certainty in sight. What began several months ago as worry about show cancellations has now become a deep and punishing sadness. We are confronting the absence of a large piece of our identity and way of life that we still can’t quite fathom, much less know how to handle. I hope this article will both…
Florence– “Fierenze” as the Italians call it, is a movie-esque city shrouded in history and still buzzing with the creativity of the Renaissance. It sits nestled in the hills of Tuscany, and a wander down its storybook streets leaves you feeling miniscule in the shadow of its larger-than-life marble statues and iconic Italian architecture. It’s a distinct and breath-taking rush to gaze up and feel so small, and Florence delivers at very turn. On my first day I spent 14 hours speed-walking in excited exploration of the city’s museums, historical buildings, and shopping. IG-worthy photos at every turn. I felt…