Today...

Today I begin my journey inward. I bought Donna Farhi's book Bringing Yoga to lLife, not because I'm certain it's is a superior text but and entry point is an entry point and so, as this is the first and only recommendation I have, I've just invested $7 at NYC's The Strand bookstore. It's a used copy. I like used materials. The pre-endowed soul in used goods gives me some kind of a boost-up. I suppose that's why I like my old beat up guitars too.

Yoga & the Echo

   I'm one week into my 100-hour yoga intensive. When I first was moving back to NYC I was flirting with the idea of teaching yoga. When I signed up for the training I was sure about it. But as the time approached, as I worked a lot of hours to pay for it and spent less time making music I started to consider more what that life would actually look like.

   Teaching yoga is serious business and takes a lot of research, hustle, and passion to do well. Mind you, I don't think all yoga teachers are doing it well, but I don't half-ass things. But the fact of the matter is that if I wanted to teach yoga the way it should be taught it would require so much of my time and energy that I wouldn't ever get to the music.

Fuck that.

   What's interesting is that I don't feel like I'm in the wrong place in this training. My instinct to do it was dead on. But the story I had to tell myself to get myself to do it was not. I had to entertain this fantasy about teaching so I could get myself to advance my practice for my own betterment.

   So it's a good learning experience. Evidently I've been unwilling to invest in my own betterment for it's own sake if it didn't have commercial or public use. Time to explore...

Training Wheels

I am here to have a good time. That has never changed. But a good time that is sustainable {doesn't kill me via substance addiction} and can be replicated. For better or worse I set out a long time ago on a massive experiment with myself as the subject and the world as the indended beneficiary. If something cannot be somehow mapped and replicated, it may be fun, and even worth experiencing, but it can't go in the book and it can't help that many people. I was raised Christian. It was fucking boring. That's the worst thing about it. Church is dull, even with a rock band. You to sit there and let someone orate at you until your ass tingles. People can say otherwise. Hell, you might be one of them. Maybe you have found a contented blissful state through Jesus Christ our Bored. I'm not saying you're not having a fine time. It's just that there are also enough people like me that I can confidently say that your technique is wholly inadequate for a good chunk of the world.

Hope

enochumentary

You have the sun, you have your music

kind hands of the people who care for you

Everywhere there is a painting sprawled out in front of you.

we build things

and string lights across the yard

Stay in castles with the millionaires

sweat in the southern heat

make monuments to gods and heroes

monuments to law and money

treasure relics of the past

and keep our neighborhoods

take a little something to ease the pain

of the last time we laid eyes

on ones we love

make new friendships

the past falls into the distance

a new idea

a familiar song

animal friends

sex, drugs, rocknroll

an old friend

 an old city

wait

then come back home

  

What I Saw From a Window

The street here from the water is so far
I wonder if as we pushed nature back
We didn't build these streams of rolling cars
To fashion us the rivers that we lacked
The waves massage my thoughts from here to there
And extricate my feelings from their sneak
The architects, it seems, had been aware
That the view was too compelling on it's feet
Curved continuum of water 'round the wheel
To play it's ancient magic on my head
Then finally this voodoo at my heels
When breathing, I traverse the riverbed

It was a winter.

Here are some photos I shot around my neighborhood in Harlem one day.