ON LIFE:
It's warmed up a bit here even though we're super far north. The guitarist in this band (his name is Dave) and I have taken some long walks though, which have been nice. Day before yesterday we walked 6 miles. It's really quiet and calm out here. A dirt road for miles. I like the experience, because I haven't been in such a sublime place in a long time.
I finished tracking all my parts a long time ago, and have just been reading and thinking. I have a book on music theory which I've been tackling really quickly. It's crazy how fast you can learn and make your way through something when you have a lot of time, few distractions and, a little dedication. I didn't know a think about theory of musical notation 10 days ago and I'm already reading simple lines, and putting things in my head on paper, so that's pretty rad. It's surprizingly more interesting than I thought too. Sometimes a teacher here or there would try to show me some stuff. It's just a lot more fun when you're going at your own pace.
A few days back the engineer "producer" for the recording session had some stuff going on until 2:00pm so we (singer, guitarist, and I) had some time to kill. We went to a barnes and noble bookstore and I just hung out there for a couple hours. I found a book I remember my friend Eric reading a while back. I always liked the title, but didn't have a chance to read it. It's called The Art of Happiness. I read the first 110 pages of it before we had to leave. It's really super great. Basicly is just about cultivating positive thoughts in the mind and living a kind and compassionate life. It's pretty relevant right now to me because of some things going on in my life. Now, generally I'm a happy person. Always a lot happier than most people about jobs and whatever happens to be going on in my life, but it's nice to hear more information about something I'm striving towards. The book is kinda one of those books that reminds you of stuff you should already know and throwing in a few new ideas. Here are some points The Art of Happiness hits.
1. The purpose of life is happiness.
2. Happiness is determined more by the state of ones mind than by ones external conditions, circumstances, or eventsat least once ones basic survival needs are met.
3. Happiness can be achieved through the systematic training of our hearts and minds, through reshaping our attitudes and outlook.
4. The key to happiness is in our own hands.
The book also talks a bit about the difference between pleasure and happiness. Again, something we're all aware of, but also something that gets blurred quite a bit.
ON LOVE:
The idea of romantic love as an important part of life is a very recent addition to culture. It's caused a lot of trouble, and ruined a lot of lives. Not to say that it's all together bad, but I'm not settled on it as a positive thing either. Organisms which are proned to having that feeling are more proned to breed, so if you give evoloution any chance of validity it's easy to see why we have the tendency. It's also easy to see how it could be on some level misunderstood.
ON RELIGION:
Here's the thing about christianity/religion in general. I haven't had any experience that would lead me to believe that it's not just something someone fabricated out of nothing. Now that's not to say that is what what happened, because I haven't had any experiences that could prove to me that christianity isn't the complete spiritual truth. I feel that from my perspective, believing one thing or another would be totally ignorant. Some people claim to have had experiences that for whatever reason prove to them things I can only consider as possibilities. Far be it from me to discount those experiences simply because I haven't had them. Those experiences do contradict eachother often though, so from a human point of view some people must be wrong. Then I'm presented with a whole new can of worms. If there is something beyond the tissue and chemicals that I am, something spiritual, it simply doesn't seem possible that I could even relate it by analogy to anything a human could understand. In that case, spirituality as more than simply a passing thought or theory seems like, a waste of time or perhaps downright delusional. Maybe not the case, but I'm just pointing out what seems to be most feasable.
ON SLEEP:
I've considered that I might operate better in a 26 hour day. Seems like I don't feel good unless I have 8 hours of sleep. If I do however, I'm not tired until 18 hours later, in which case to get up at the same time the following day I only get 6 hours of sleep, which is not enough to make me feel good. I've tried naps, but they just push the time I can get to sleep further back. 26 hour days...the key to happiness.
