Tag: experience

anywhere else

I got back from a trip to Vancouver recently.

It might be hard to imagine for a person who values music as highly as I do, but I’ve never just gone there for a concert before. Every trip to Vancouver I’ve ever taken since I was 16 years old; with the exception of 1 family Christmas, was to perform… and I’m certain that we were underpaid in almost every instance, but that’s beside the point.

I went to see Drive-by Truckers and Deertick. Both were astounding, but Deertick were particularly surprising. That show made me want to write songs and make rock & roll records and go on tour. I’ve seen a lot of shows… some of them are good and you’re glad you went. Some of them are life affirming and stay with you for a long time. I didn’t have a religious experience, or anything like that… but I did feel the fire in my belly – the fire that was already there – flare up a little bit.

Along with that, Lu and I ran the perimeter of Stanley Park, I bought too many records from too many cool record stores, and we put on around 27,000 steps a day seeing cool shit and eating amazing vegan food and staying in a nice hotel.

As an Albertan, I have to strongly encourage you to get out of Alberta periodically. This place is mega-hard on your soul, particularly if you’re a creative person.

I’m lucky in a lot of ways, not the least of which is that my friends and I can pile into a Ford Explorer, hitch up a trailer full of gear, and roll into towns & cities where people don’t know us personally and we can all commune in a bath of rock & roll guitars and pounding drums, and we can all come away from the experience with our cups filled up. I get to do this in places that don’t know about our day jobs… don’t know our families… they only know what we tell them, and we only know what they tell us. It’s a magical experience where we see people as people… with none of the pretense.

Traveling to Vancouver was a similar experience.
Nobody asked me what I do for a living.
Nobody knew anything about me… I was just a spiritual being having a human experience and I truly enjoyed it.

If you haven’t gotten far enough away from home to feel that for a while… then it’s time.

Today, I am loading up the aforementioned trailer with those friends and driving to Twin Butte, AB to play Soulfest. It’ll be a riot. If you’re going to be there, come say hey!

the next indicated thing

Recently, I talked to a friend I haven’t talked to in a few years. It was truly magnificent to reminisce and think back on the simpler times, when we lived in the same house and played music together. The conversation really affirmed me and the way I try to live my life.

As I think about it now, it brought to mind another conversation with another friend a couple days earlier. We’re at different points in our child-rearing days, and was a good reminder for me in my artistic life as well.

The undertones of each conversation was: Don’t get too far ahead of yourself.

We have a tendency to wish away the hard parts of life without savouring the magic. We can so easily say “when our kids are older” or “once this recording is done” or “after the holidays” without ever allowing ourselves to sit in the moment and experience life, and feel what’s happening as it’s happening. The truth is that everything is amazing – even sometimes when it’s amazingly bad.

It’s a reminder to enjoy the holidays, though parts of them are hard.
Enjoy the recording process, though it’s challenging.
Enjoy this time with our families and our kids…
… because when it is over, and we’re no to the next phase, there’s no turning back.

We can only do this, now.
And we can only experience this, now.

And we really can’t move on past the next indicated thing until the next indicated thing is complete.

So as we move into 2025, I hope you are able to just… take it in, and don’t sweat the small stuff, and don’t give in to the distractions.

Happy New Year.

trauma

“Trauma is not just bad things happening to you.
It’s also good things not happening to you.”

Trauma might be the biggest 6 letter word of 2022… and maybe 2023 since we’re right in there now. I’m not sure if it’s my own algorithm treating me to a nice, shiny shovel with which to dig into my own psyche or if it’s actually everywhere, but it’s certainly a thing to be aware of.

Trauma is most often defined as anything that guides or reroutes neuropathways in the brain, and is completely experiential. That means: a thing happened to you and it changed the way you think. Typically a trauma response is something you implement to prevent yourself from experiencing that situation (or one like it) again, and it’s an understatement to say that most of these situations happen to you as a child or some other variation of young person. This is a time of great brain development and it’s a given that your brain has adapted to your bad experiences just as it has your good experiences and your educational experiences.

But trauma is not just bad things happening to you.
It’s also good things not happening to you.

The hard part of acknowledging trauma in your life is concluding that your parents had something to do with it. And basically, you’re right – they did, just as you as an adult likely have something to do with the trauma of your own children, perhaps your nieces & nephews – but assigning blame isn’t the point. Well, not always. To be trauma-free would make you an outlier in this world.

*** if you’re dealing with serious trauma from childhood you should talk to a professional who can guide you through it.

We’re all sculpted by our experiences in this life, and we’re all graced with a unique view of the world as a result. Often times our world view is what limits us and prevents us from success, just as there are many people who are propelled forward by those same factors.

My personal challenge has been to change my world view. I obviously can’t change my experiences, but I can change my reactions to them. I can use them to grow and see things in a new way, I can redefine what terms like success and growth mean to me after years of simply accepting the status quo. I won’t say it’s easy and it’s certainly not instantaneous.

But… I choose growth.