Tree Cemetery

Driving home from Austin Tuesday, I was looking for dead trees. Now that I am actually taking pictures, my awareness has increased dramatically. Most of the trees that I photographed I had noticed before, not this one.

I was coming out of a river bottom and just happen to glance off to my left at the last second and I spotted this incredible sight in the distance. I made a U-turn and headed back to the tree. I parked my truck walked up the hill to the fence line and stared in amazement at what was before me. This incredibly inspiring tree, standing alone, with a cemetery right behind it! When I first spied the tree I could not see the tombstones behind it as my vantage point from the road was too low. As I stood at the fence line I knew my camera would not zoom close enough to frame the shot properly. I am very leery of hopping fences, even though all I want to do is take a few photos, yet this tree called to me. I surveyed the pasture to make sure there were no critters to contend with, and over the fence I went.

As I got closer to the tree the beauty and power really began to stand out. The contrast and texture was so rich I was completely taken over by the sight. I framed it up from 3 different angles and took 15 shots. I finished turned my camera off, and started walking back to the truck. When I approached the fence line I turned to look at the tree one more time. It was irresistible. I turned the camera on, set it to color, and snapped one more shot, a reference of what I first saw.

The Monkey In The Jungle

I was typing an e-mail to a friend describing my loss of center. As I was typing, a story about my chatterbox began to unfold. When all was said and done I had actually defined my chatterbox in a way I had never thought of before.

In the e-mail I began describing the racket in my head as a "900 pound gorilla on the loose" and that caused me to think. "If it's 900 pound gorilla when I loose my center what would it be when I was focused?" It dawned on me that it would be monkey. Then I began to think, "What kind of monkey?" As I sat there I began to visualize a chimpanzee and I thought "That can't be right" my chatterbox is a vile disgusting thing not a cute chimp, but the visual would not go away. Then I began to realize it was a chimp, but with the attitude of one of those small hyper/aggressive monkeys. Now it was beginning to make sense. It looks cute as a way to trick me into thinking it is harmless, but in reality it's the nasty abuser it has always been. Then I began to visualize the monkey loose in the jungle of my mind, and it all came together.

Living my life is like walking through a jungle never knowing what is fixing to happen, and my monkey is always with me. It use to be that the monkey would set on my shoulder and harass me constantly. Now that I have a degree of control over it, it follows me through the jungle. Sometimes it is real close, screaming at me, and other times it's distant still harassing me from afar. The funny thing is how tricky the little bastard is! I can hear him in the distance and then instantly he is popping out of the foilage in front of me, scaring the daylights out of me. I am not quite sure how I know its a male. Maybe I just figure that a female could never be that crude.

When I lost my center my little monkey became a gorilla in an instant. The racket inside my head was horrendous. After being in relative silence for over a month it was amazing to realize how loud the noise use to be. It was a very scary sensation, it literally petrified me. I could not think, nor could I take action. I was frozen in my tracks.

Once my sister shared the tool with me I needed, my gorilla instantly became the monkey again. I know my monkey will always be with me, and it will be a constant battle to keep him in perspective.

The monkey is loose in the jungle of my mind, and life is as it should be.

Centered

Living in that somewhat "elusive" space of being focused on the moment is an incredible challenge. There are different degrees of "losing it", as we swim in the sea of possibility. Some times it's a little wobble, and sometimes it's a big wobble, but you can still stop the wobble, and gain control over your internal dialog...your chatterbox.

I have read The Power of Now, by Tolle, and it was was a powerful, moving, experience. Yet, I felt like a little man looking at a mountain, with a big ball, I am supposed to push up this hill. I would push the ball up the mountain and get it to the top. The ball would balance for just a brief moment, and fall to the other side. I would climb down the mountain, walk around to the ball and begin to push it up the mountain, and again the ball would balance for a moment, and then roll down the other side. On and on this went, as the moment I had the ball balanced, a brand new world opened up. I just could not balance the ball.

Once you find a way to balance the ball, it becomes easier...and when the ball slips a little you know how to catch it, and return to center. Today, I lost the ball, the mountain, all of it, due to the racket/noise in my head.

Thanks to my amazing sister, I am now centered again. She has done the Landmark forum, as well as the Advanced course, and is an incredible coach. Even though she is my sister, she ain't pullin' no punches. She went in to the trenches with me and shared a tool to see where I was going wrong.

"Stop fighting it, by fighting it you are feeding it"

That brought everything back to center...the silence...

"Hey Todd...Let go of the banana!"

Peace All!

My Chatterbox

You know that internal dialog you have with yourself? That is what I call my "Chatterbox". My chatterbox, is a very ugly, vile thing, that can be quite nasty and mean. Recently, through the Landmark Forum, I learned to control the chatterbox to a degree. When I am really focused and centered the chatterbox get's pushed way into the background. When the chatterbox tries to come back, I can usually push it away. When I am not focused, the chatterbox is around in varying degrees. Since my completion of the Forum in early December, I have been in control more or less of the little box.

Today, I lost my focus, and the chatterbox is in complete control, which is not a good feeling.

I am in a Landmark seminar, and the assignment was to be unreasonable at least once every day. For the first 7 days, I was unreasonable at least once a day. We all have our reasons why we can't do this or we can't do that. Those reasons are a byproduct of our little voice...the chatterbox. So, in essence the assignment was an exercise in getting control over the internal dialog.

Yesterday, I was not unreasonable, not intentionally anyway.

I made a commitment to do my homework assignments in this seminar. I broke that commitment, and therefore I have gone back on my word. This is where I began to loose my focus. Once I lost my center, the chatterbox took over, and it's beating me up with a vengeance. It almost seems as though it is making up for lost time. It is not a pretty space I am in, and it's not getting better.

I must find my center...

"Ok, We're Rolling...On Two"

Ever since I can remember I have wanted a drum set. I can remember being about 10 or 11, and digging different sizes of boxes out of a nearby dumpster. I drug the boxes home and assembled them in the walk in closet in the shape of a drum set. There were probably 5 or 6 boxes total. I went to the kitchen and raided Mom's large spoon drawer for some large wooden spoons. I "borrowed" Dad's AM/FM radio, which was pretty big for that era and had plenty of volume. Tuned in a Top 40 radio station and began playing my "drum set". I think Mom lost more spoons through my drum set adventures.

Years later when I was 15 or so, I got a little more inventive with drum set creations. By this time I had my own room separate from the house. I had an old recliner that I would tilt back for the perfect "tom" height, put a hardshelled suitcase on the floor for the base drum, and I had gone to the lumber yard and bought a dowel rod and cut to the approximate size of drum sticks. I sat all this up near a wall in my room so I could use that as a ride cymbal. By this time I had a stereo and albums. I was jammin'.

Finally in 1977 I had saved enough money at a part time job to get a used drum set. Whoo Hoo! The real thing! I was playing every day to all kinds of music, Legs Diamond, Moxy, Rush, Kansas anything I could get my hands on. Mom became kind of concerned as she saw "Rock Star" all over my face. How is it Moms know everything? One day she asked me "What are you going to do with your life if you don't make it as a rock star?" That was an interesting question that I did not have an answer for.

So I thought about it for quite a while. I knew I wanted to be involved in music some how, but if I could not play what would I do. Then it dawned on me, I would be a recording engineer, I could actually be involved in making music, just not performing. Even at that age, I could see one the benefits of being an Audio Engineer, I would not have to be on the road all the time...go figure. Mom and I never finished that conversation, but I had solidified the thought of being an AE in my head.

In 1980 it was time to graduate from High School. I knew what I wanted to do, there was just no financial way to pull it off. Back in those days very few Colleges had Audio Engineering programs. There was an independent tech school in Florida that was offered an associates in Audio Engineering, but the school was not accredited, therefore no traditional funding sources were available. So, after graduation I attended a local Junior College for three semesters floundering around in the Liberal Arts program. I really felt like I was wasting my time so I dropped out.

I was going through some counselling at the college I had been attending, and the councillor had a contact to somebody in the music industry. She did some research and found out about a class put on by the RIAA at a major studio in San Antonio. The cost was around $500 and it was a 40 hour hands on class. Mom and I talked about it, and she agreed to help me accomplish this goal. I was working for Holiday Inn at the time as a bartender, so I transferred to a Holiday Inn in San Antonio taking a job as banquette houseman. I stayed in a cheap hotel room until I could find some place to stay.

I will never forget walking into the studio the first time, I was completely awed! The live room was so huge, the grand piano looked tiny. The control room was equally impressive a 32 channel mixing board, 2 1/4 inch 24 track MTR, and outboard gear out the wazoo. I was completely dazzled. Most of the people in the class were there for fun, but I was there for business, the business of learning. I was taking notes in every class, and absorbing everything I could. To complete the class there was a final written test, and each student got a chance to mix down the material we had recorded earlier in the class. We also had a final interview. After reviewing the mix down I had done the engineer giving the class said he had noticed that I was taking the class very seriously. I told him that I wanted to be an AE. He said I had potential as my mix had impressed him. He told me that if this was what I really wanted to do, go to an electronics tech school, as studios will almost always take an intern with electronics in their background.

So, off I went searching for a school to attend in the San Antonio area. I did attend a tech school for a year and was doing good in class. Love ended up getting in the way, and I missed to many days in one semester and got booted from class. Funding dried up, and I ended up in the US Army Signal Corp.

My last duty station was a mountain top in Northern Germany with six guy on a Microwave radio site. I had been playing acoustic guitar as opposed to drums, as guitars fit better in a wall locker! So I was still playing music while I was in the service. The last 6 months I was in Germany, I decided I wanted to engineer and produce a demo tape. So, with three $20 mics bought at the PX, two cassette decks, my home stereo equipment, and a small consumer mixer, I worked my butt off in almost every spare minute I had, to track and mix a 7 song demo tape of my original music. I was proud of my accomplishment.

Upon honorable discharge from the Army in 1989, I went to work in Houston working in the telecommunications industry. I was making more money than I had ever made in my life and all of the money was going to buying gear and instruments. After 3 years of hard work, and a lot of luck, I ended up building a small demo studio. I began producing demos for local musicians and bands. I was having a blast and producing some pretty good recordings with the limited equipment I had. I was beginning to get a small reputation in certain circles as being a good engineer.
That all came to a screeching halt in 1996, when somebody decided they wanted my gear more than I did. They kicked open the front door and walked off with almost $8K in gear. By this time, technology had replaced my telecommunications job, so the good money I was making was not there anymore. I put what equipment was left in storage and gave up on my dream. I did not want to play anything, or have anything to do with music. Heck, I couldn't even listen to the radio for over 6 months.

Fastforward to 2004, I am out in the office, and I get the bug to play my acoustic. I dig it out of storage, tuned it up and played for almost 2 hours. The connection to the music was back, and along with it the desire to record again. I decided, it was time to begin the rebuilding process. Little by little, piece by piece, I am rebuilding the dream of playing and engineering/producing music.

My Grass Is Blue

My Girlfriend had a mandolin occupying space at her house. It actually belonged to her ex-husband and had ended up in her possession after her divorce. I had been eying the mandolin for almost 6 months or so, and I finally ask if she thought her ex wanted it back. She was not sure, but stated that she would ask him the next time she spoke to him. So, she did and he did say that he wanted it back.

Well the mandolin sat around for almost a year and he never picked it up, although he came by every other week to pick up the kids. Finally in March last year I told her, I was going to clean it up and restring it and see what I could do with it. I headed to the local music store and picked up a couple of sets of strings and an instruction book that looked appropriate.

The mandolin was in pretty bad shape as paint had been spilled on it and it was just dirty. I went to work on it getting the paint off of it as well as cleaning and polishing it up. I oiled up the tuners and did some other light maintenance on it, put the strings on it and tuned it up.

Being the fact that I play guitar, I figured the mandolin would be a little easier to pick up. I figured out a few basic chords and I was off on my new adventure. The mandolin is a fascinating instrument in it's own right. The small scale and the fact that it is tuned in 5ths as opposed to as to 4ths like a guitar make it a unique sounding instrument. Plus it's a blast to play!

I get home with the mandolin, and begin searching the Internet for related sites. I wanted to know more about the history as well as the different types of music that mandolin is prominent in. Of course I am also looking for lessons, tips, sheet music. On the Internet all mandolin roads lead to The Mandolin Cafe web site. While looking around I happened on a thread about a picking festival scheduled for late April called Pickin' In The Park in Fayetteville Texas. I went to that web site to see what it was all about, and it looked really interesting. My interest was definitely piqued.

Let's back up here a minute and talk about my musical background a bit. I come from the Rock and Roll side of things. I was essentially raised on Top 40 radio in the early 70's as my Mom did not listen to country music at all. Top 40 evolved into Rock and Roll in my teens.

The Pickin' In The Park event was a bluegrass/old time music event. Something I had never experienced in person before. The extent of my exposure to bluegrass would have watching Hee Haw with my grandparents, and The Ballad of Jed Clampett from the Beverly Hillbillies.

The weekend came, and I ended up getting to go. The premise behind Pickin' In The Park is, you bring your instrument and set in with musicians and jam. The event is scheduled the second weekend of every month but the one in April was the kick off for the season. There were all kinds of vendors as well as Bluegrass bands scheduled to play on different stages through out the weekend. The best part is...it's FREE!
I did take my guitar, leaving the mandolin at home as I was still to new to the instrument to feel comfortable trying to jam with other people. I arrived at the festival around 11:00 on Saturday, and was completely blown away! There were pickers everywhere, of all ages, playing all kinds of instruments. Upright bass, banjo, mandolin, guitar, bouzoukis, dulcimers, resonator/Dobro guitars and probably a few other instruments I am forgetting.

There were groups of musicians jamming all around the town square. These groups would form and dissolve as the musicians would move from group to group. Some of these groups would get really large, especially if the core pickers were really talented. As I walked around listening to different groups I was so deeply touched by the music. The music was refreshing to me...all acoustic, no electronic processing, no gadgets, just the pickers and the music. Of course I was not familiar with any of the songs, but that did not stop the music from tugging at the strings of my heart.

Bluegrass and Old Time music are often referred to as "Front Porch Music", as was usually where it was performed. In this case I felt like I was on a revolving front porch, all of these incredibly talented musicians forming jams/groups spontaneously was like something out of a dream. What was more amazing were the teen pickers, I saw a kid that was probably all of 15 tearing a banjo up, he was so good he impressed the old timers in the groups he played with. There was another youngster probably around 17, that could fiddle his heart out and then turn around and play the mandolin, resonator, as well as regular guitar with the same finesse. And not a one of them looked like they had fallen face first into a tackle box!

I finally left around 1800 as it had been a long day, but I was seriously moved by this event. For the next 6 months all I listened to was Bluegrass music, what a wonderful world that is.

Dead Trees

Ten years ago I was driving through the country heading to a near by town. There was a dead tree that immediately captured my attention. I slowed down to take in all of the details of this carcass of a tree. It had been a tall strong tree when it was alive and yet some how the strength remained even in death. Most of the limbs had fallen to the ground surrounding the base of the trunk with decay. The stubs of limbs still attached, pushed up into the clear blue sky, the contrast between life and death was mesmerizing. I continued on my journey, and yet the vision of the tree followed me.

Every time I drove by that tree it was just as powerful. Over the years the tree continued to decay, limb after limb falling to the ground, yet somehow it still retained the magical beauty of the first time I saw it. I began to notice more dead trees, each one unique, all incredibly moving. Through the years I kept telling myself, "one day you need to get some photos" and yet talk myself out of actually doing it.

Yesterday I took action. With camera and tripod in hand I hopped in my truck and took off on a slow cruise looking for dead trees. I started out down the road wondering if the first tree was still there, as I don't drive that road very often. I found the tree...it was a pile of rotting wood. I slowed down and paused to remember the inspiration that tree had given me so many years ago.

Three hours and a few miles later, I had 60 photographs of dead trees. After uploading the photos I decided this shoot was just a beginning as I will carry my camera in my truck and I will take the time to capture this phenomenon every time it moves me.

In The Moment

In The Moment

In the moment,
Your life transforms…
What was… is gone.
You are now free to perform.

A miracle in the making,
Right before your eyes.
The impossible, is possible,
You are now free to fly.

Let your vision guide you,
The light is the way.
A dream taking shape,
There can be no other way.

You accept the challenge,
For you know it is true.
From dream to reality,
This, you know you can do.

Nothing can stop it…
No holding back,
You give it your all,
You are on the right track.

Make the difference,
For all to see,
Along the way,
Your dream sets you free.

The love you share,
Will return three-fold,
For a dream taking root,
Is a sight to behold.

TRY
12 DEC 08

Welcome

Welcome to The Silence of Your Mind. This blog is intended to be a creative outlet, where I can share not only creative babble, but poetry, photos, and music that I create as well as things that capture my creative spirit.

After a 20+ year hiatus, I am finally writing again. What spurred this creativity? I took a class offered by Landmark Education called the Landmark Forum. This class caused a profound transformation in my life, and that transformation is unfolding in this moment.

In fact, "In The Moment" is what I wanted to call this blog, as that is the title of the first poem I wrote after completing the forum. Unfortunately, that title was taken, so I chose the second poem I wrote for the name of this blog.

I am looking forward to the challenge of staying creative, through the ups and downs of everyday life. With this blog I intend to share all of my thoughts regarding my day to day struggle of staying focused, and being fully creative in my life. The successes, the failures, and everything in between will come out here.

I will explore The Silence of My Mind.

Peace Always...

The Silence of Your Mind

The Silence of Your Mind

Logic and emotion,
The voice of each, go round and round.
Throughout the day, into night,
Incessant churning, a never-ending sound.

Your mind grinding away,
With nary a thought.
There can be more to life,
Than this continuous onslaught.

The concept of “now”
Has become so clear.
The voices in your mind,
Grapple with fear.

Neither past nor future,
Come into play.
Silencing the voices,
Along the way.

With voices gone,
Between space and time.
Infinite beauty,
The silence of your mind.

Now you are at rest,
No expectations, no regrets.
Logic and emotion,
No longer your mindset.

Freedom abounds,
Your beauty is true.
Nothing clouds your senses
You are free to be you.

TRY 19 DEC08