Story: Throw Some Perm On Your Attitude

Prior to around 24 hours ago, I hadn’t had a haircut since October. While three months isn’t the longest stretch of time to go without a trimming of the hairs, my hair tends to grow in rather quickly & rather full so I was rocking a mess AF mop. I had an idea, while my hair was at length, to do something new with it. I’m always one who is up for a “hair adventure” & my brain came up with the bright idea that I should attempt a perm. My hair naturally is rather stick straight with only the slightest, tiniest, incremental bit of natural wave, that pops its little head out when salt is introduced into my follicle formula, but I was after a more permanent solution for my hair.

A bit of trivia that I learned while on this quest, but the term “perm” is actually short for “permanent hairstyle.” Maybe I’ve just been living under a rock & should have known that, but whether or not you were in the know regarding that information before, it’s out there on this site now for all of us to share in the common knowing of the thing.

I started by posting on my social to see if anyone I know or who knows me knew of anyone in the Nashville area who still offers perms, they’ve fallen a bit out of vogue, I feel, so I wasn’t sure. I was given a few names from friends & I reached out to each of them but ended up only finding dead ends. (Tried to refrain from making a hair joke there.) My next step was to reach out to local salons & see who could help me with my request. I reached out to a few local salons in the area that I’d either been to in the past or had people around me mention. They each told me that they didn’t do them until I got to Bea Rose Salon.

Bea is where I typically get my haircut on the reg from a guy named Joe Linkin. Joe is a veteran in the men’s haircut & styling space & always gives a trustworthy & thorough haircut. I didn’t reach out to Joe first simply because I knew HE didn’t perm & I wasn’t sure the studio he works out of now does either. I decided to reach out to the salon just to see.

When I got in contact with them they initially told me the same story I was hearing around town, that no one really does them any more, but they offered to check in with some of their stylists to see. Not more than thirty minutes later they were calling me back to tell me that while one of their stylists, Andi, hadn’t done one in a while, he was willing to give it a go & attempt the perm, however, he first wanted to meet with me to do a consultation. We set up the consultation for that same day & I came in to see what we could do with my hair!

Andi Sylvester & I met in the evening about two weeks ago now. He took me over to his station in the salon, sat me down, & began to examine the untamed mass atop my head. He & I came to the consensus that, while in order to perm the whole of my head I’d need to grow it out for a month or two, we would do the top & ditch the sides so that I had something manageable to deal with during Grammy’s week which was approaching. Additionally, he didn’t want to ‘poach’ me from Joe, so we met with Joe to go over the plan to cut my hair prior to the perming, as well as following up the perm with a trimming. We decided to block out three hours on the salon schedule to make the whole thing work. Initially this whole saga was planned for last week. The weather, the pile of snow that we got in Nashville, & the week worth of below freezing temperatures said otherwise, so we got bumped til yesterday.

I arrived at Bea Rose just short of noon. Andi, Joe, & I sat together at Joe’s station & further established the plan. I pulled a few pictures of permed styles that I liked & we decided to go almost the undercut route; longer on the top with very tight faded sides. Joe got to cutting & in under an hour I was partially styled, the rough was in place. With the roughage gone, it was Andi’s turn.

We first clarified my hair, stripping it of any chemicals, products, or oils that would stop the solution from taking to my hair. Next Andi got to rolling. It took him around an hour fifteen to an hour & a half to get the top of my hair in rollers. The method he used would take a strand, press it between to sheets of some sort of hair paper, then roll. He told me that the paper helps to insure that the ends of the hair also end up curled so there’s not some weird disconnect. With my hair all rolled up it then came time for the solution.

The way a perm works, at least from my understanding, is that it breaks down the bonds of the hair. After around twenty minutes of those bonds being eroded, you rinse the solution & add a neutralized that helps to resolidify them in their new position, which when your hair is rolled up, ends up being in the form of curls. Andi decided to pull my rollers prior to using the neutralizer just so the curls wouldn’t be quite so tight. It worked wonders!

I’m going to be honest, when I got back to the chair I was a little startled. It’s a rather weird feeling to go away from an area with one thing that you’ve had your entire life & come back forty minutes later with something completely different. Additionally the curls were a lot at the beginning, they also weren’t styled. It wasn’t processing in my brain that this was as tight as the curls were going to be & that over the next 48 hours into the weeks that followed, the curls would loosen up & settle somewhere between a curl & a wave.

I think that Joe caught the slight look of panic on my face & quickly ushered me over to his chair to trim it up. He explained to me as he was reshaping the new form of madness the different ways in which I could style it, additionally he talked me through ways to dry it that would allow the curls to loosen a bit & give more of the wave I was initially looking for. Styled & dried we met back up with Andi who took a few pictures & video of his masterful work & out the door I went.

It’s still a tad jarring. Every time I look in the mirror or touch my hair I have to be like “oh yeah, it’s curly now.” I would assume it’s a similar feeling to getting a new tattoo & forgetting about it until a mirror or your eyes remind you of it. The shock of it aside, I think I really like it & I’ve gotten a ton of very positive feedback thus far from those of you who have seen it! The team at Bea Rose Salon did an incredible job & we all got to go on a little bit of an adventure where we didn’t entirely know where we were going to land, which I think we all need a little more of in our lives.

Key take aways here. One; don't be afraid to change up your look. I know that can be intimidating but at the end of the day it’s just hair, it’s just make-up, it’s just clothes, they can all be changed. Two; the perm solutions smells a little like cat pee. It does, but with almost a fragrance aspect to it too. If you want to know what a similar smell would be seek out Mixed Emotions by Byredo. Three; be playful. At the end of the day a lot of the things that we obsess over or put a lot of stock into are just frivolities, have fun. Life doesn’t have to be serious all the time.

Here’s wishing you a phenomenal weekend &/or week!

As always, much love,

-C

Release: When He Was Me

I first heard When He Was Me about five years ago now. I believe it was 2018 but it very well could have been 2019. I had a session with Josh Gleave at his studio on music row. When I walked in Josh was wrapping up work on a demo for the song that Shay Mooney had just recently come in to lay down vocals on. He played me the song in whole since I was present & it immediately grabbed ahold of me. It was one of those songs that catches your breath from the first line & doesn’t let go until the final chord strikes. Time went on & I patiently waited for When He Was Me to make an appearance on a Dan + Shay album, but it never did. As soon as the track listing for the duo’s third album came out I & I saw that the song wasn’t among them I immediately texted Josh to find out if he could reach out to Shay to see if I could cut the song myself. Shay gave not only his blessing but also sent over a folder of about six other songs of which I chose two; When He Was Me & Something To Do (we’ll get to her at a later date). Then began the process.

Being an independent artist can make getting a big boy industry song cleared amongst the big boy music industry a bit of a daunting task. After a few months of my former manager not making any headway on securing the rights we parted ways (for a number of reasons outside of the song itself). The task then fell upon Evan & I, but mostly Evan who loves himself some admin work, to get the song cleared. Of which he went through multiple different sources to find the proper avenues to secure the song.

We ended up doing the recording of When He Was Me right before the pandemic hit but I found that the more I sat with the recording, the more I felt it was lacking something, specifically where my vocal performance was concerned, so once we had a dip in quarantine restrictions & covid numbers, I headed back in the studio with Josh & Greg Breal to do a different vocal take, which I much prefer to the one we initially had. We also added a few more sets of BGVs to the song & a bit of vocoder!

After the song was sent off to Jonathan Roye for mix & Mike Monseur for master it sat. For almost three years it sat. Why you may ask? Well this is one of those songs that I wanted to put out right. I wanted all of my ducks in a row & everything to go smoothly, & thus far it has! Additionally, remember how I said I was dealing with big industry things with clearing this song? Well, that was beyond true! Evan counted last night that it took 78 different emails to different people to get this song cleared. That’s not counting the direct messages, phone calls, intermediary texts to find contacts, etc. This song took this long to put out in part because of my status as an independent artist.

But alas, we’re here now! The song has been released! It is out in the world for you all to make your own & to listen to & share amongst your friends & family & in all honesty, I feel good about it. For once I’ve got a release going smoothly with more things to follow. For once I’m not at a place where I’m sick of the song by the time it’s been released & that feels good. I’m at peace with it & am ready to see what comes of it. I’ve released the art to you all to do with as you see fit. I’ve done my part in its execution & now it’s time to let it fly!

When He Was Me was written by Shay Mooney & Benjy Davis. It was produced by Josh Gleave & vocal produced by Greg Breal with drums by Lester Estelle Jr., bass/keys/programing by Josh Gleave, & acoustic/steel/electric/dobro by Devin Malone. It was released through Distrokid & promoted by Trend PR. A special thanks to all who helped this song along the way: Noreen, Patricia, Kendall, Ashley, Alison, Amanda, Ben, & Hunter. A special thanks to Evan for all of his incredible hard work & beautiful content creation & a shoutout to The Fox Bar & Cocktail Club for allowing us to use their venue for photos!

I’ll place a link to the song below though you’re more than welcome to search it on whatever your favorite streaming site may be!

Much Love As Always,

-C

Blog: World Oceans Day 2023

Hiya!

Just incase you missed it, or the title of this post, Thursday of this week was World Oceans Day, a global celebration of that which covers 71% of our planet’s surface. For many the ocean is a bit of an illusive thing that we only come face to face with on vacations or when we’re driving along the coast, for others it’s a part of their daily lives. Whatever amount of time that you perceive the oceans play in your daily life, the impact that our oceans have on our daily lives is as immense & deep reaching as the bodies of water themselves. If you were unaware, the ocean produces between 50-80% of the total planetary oxygen, most of with comes from algae & phytoplankton. Additionally, the temperates & currents of the oceans have a massive impact on the weather we receive on land. The sad part is that we are killing our oceans, at a rapidly accelerating, & it will most definitely end with the extinction of us as a species along with the countless unique & beautiful species that dwell in the depths.

But the soapbox was not why I chose to write today’s blog about World Oceans Day, instead I really wanted to take the time to share a few stories from my experience in the big blue since 2022’s World Oceans Day. I know a few of these stories will be repeats of those already detailed in my travel blogs, but I know not all who find their way here have read those & those of you who have may have forgotten the stories there in, so please indulge me as I regale you with them now!

I suppose it is worth noting that I have always been a great lover of the ocean; it is a place that has both fascinated me, grounded me, & calmed me. The ocean is the place that I feel the most at home. I got my dive certification in May of 2021 & it has been my often pricy addiction ever since. These stories use this place of great love for me as their home place. Enjoy.

Fiji, July 2022, Sharks

The story I often get asked to tell the most happened in Fiji, where I went shark diving. I’ve never understood the infatuation with my shark story though I am also someone who has never found themselves afraid of them but this is the story my father requests I tell any time that I’m amongst friends, family, or newly forged acquaintances.

One of the main draws of diving the Beqa Lagoon in Fiji is the shark dive. For decades fishermen from Siwa would cross the lagoon going West to fish in the open waters that lie just beyond. On their way back across the lagoon they would clean the catch & return that which was undesirable to them to the sea. This chumming of the water naturally attracted sharks. At a certain point the Fijian government caught wind of the practice & decided to monetize this phenomenon while at the same time doing their bit for shark conservation. The Fijian government started to purchase the chum from the fishermen which they collected in bins & hauled back out to the site which they have now designated as a marine reserve. The authorities allow two boats of divers three or four times a week to come & watch them feed the sharks.

Within the pass where the sharks reside there was been built an arena. Literally called “The Arena,” it sits at one of the widest points of the passage where there has been constructed a three foot tall wall made of reef rubble. Divers line up around the edge of The Arena, behind the wall, & kneel in waiting. The way they feed the sharks is actually borderline hilarious. A member of the national park dangles a yellow rubbish bin about ten feet above the sharks & takes it over to a mooring spot where it is secured to the center of The Arena about fifteen feet above the bottom. When I was there they only had enough chum for one feeding on a two tank dive so the first dive they just marionette-d the bin around, taunting the sharks with the food they were still about an hour & a half away from getting.

Remember how I mentioned not being afraid of sharks? Well, that doesn’t mean that I don’t respect & understand that they are not beautiful, misunderstood creatures who are still capable of taking my arm off & then some. I knew that the longer I stayed on the boat at the dive site the more anxious I would become about getting into these shark inhabited depths, so I designated myself first one off the boat. Once I was in the lagoon & on the line I looked down & immediately caught a glimpse of a six foot bull shark circling the reef about thirty feet down. Once the whole group was in the water we descended where we were met by the same bull shark, only this time at a distance of around four or five feet away, swimming along beside us.

As I mentioned above, they didn’t empty out the chum bucket until our second dive at which time the sharks naturally frenzy. At one point one of the sharks decided the bin wasn’t dispensing fast enough & took it upon themself to enter the bin in an attempt to grab as much food as sharkly possible. The shark got a little stuck & after a lot of wriggling finally freed itself with several fish heads jutting out of its jaws. The shark then took off from the frenzy but was unable to make it out before another shark noticed its collection. The second shark chases the first right in the direction of my face. From where I was situated, pinned between the end of the wall of The Arena & the reef wall my options were limited on how to get out of their way. Fortunately one of the guides was positioned not too far from me & was able to nudge the sharks away with a large ring attached to a pole.

Before we left the dive site Elaine & I were ushered over to a small crack by the guide who had been sneaking food to a moray. The eel came out, wrapped around him, then returned to its hole where it stuck about half of its body out. We each offered it a scratch before it gently returned home.

Fiji, July 2022, Drifting

One afternoon we set out on a drift dive. The plan for the dive was to enter down current, drift along, & get picket up pretty far down the reef wall. About fifteen minutes into our dive the ocean had other plans & we ran smack into a wall of current.

Normally a little current is fine, but this was the level of current where you find yourself kicking with everything you’ve got to go little to no where. So our guide gave us the signal to double back & hope that the captain of the boat would catch on to our dilemma.

When we surfaced we all pulled out our SMBs (an inflatable, six foot tall beacon that sticks out of the water) & began to make as much noise as possible. We did this for about thirty minute, all the way slowly drifting farther & farther from the reef. Luckily the captain took notice to the lack of divers where he ended up & circled back to find us.

In the midst of all of this happening Jodie, the dive guide, began to tell us a story about this elderly couple she was guiding a few years back who she was stuck out at sea with for about forty-five minutes to an hour before the captain found them. She said that she was in full panic mode while the couple was having the time of their lives, taking picture, laughing, etc.

The crazy part about this whole endeavor was that none of us felt panicked by it. We were all chatting, making jokes, planning our very long swim back to shore. None of us, at least outwardly, seemed worried & the sentiment continued even when we were headed back & on shore!

Had we have stayed where the current hit us we most likely would have been swept out to sea even farther than we ended up. Now I dive with a mile radius whistle & a satellite phone enabled watch.

Indonesia, October 2022, Butterflyfish

At a site called Angel’s Window in the Lembeh Strait there exists a 100 foot rock tower that sits smack dab between the mouth of the strait & the open ocean. This rock has many caves & swim throughs as well as a flourishing reef. During the second half of our dive we rounded the edge of the rock & were met by a large school of butterflyfish who immediately came & schooled around us.

I suppose it’s worth noting to those of you who don’t dive that damselfish are a rather aggressive lot of fish, they come careening off of the reef & attack you, which feels like little more than just a stern poke wherever they hit. These damsels often attack the largest member of a group first, which in this case, & every other case, is usually me. Back to the butterflyfish.

So we’re surrounded by this school of butterflyfish. I was immediately both utterly confused & over the moon with excitement. As we got closer to the reef I was once again the victim of a feral damselfish attack only this time I had a posse. My posse dipped immediately. As soon as the damselfish came off the reef the butterflies went in. You see the butterflyfish, my new found homies, were just using us as a diversion to get the damselfish off to the reef so that they could swoop in & eat the eggs the damselfish was protecting. I was fascinated by what was happening & watched it as long as I could.

Puri, our guide, indicated that it was time to move on & seeing the ‘but, but’ in my eyes over leaving the spectacle that was happening he wrote “they will follow us” on his board & showed it to me. Trusting in Puri I left the butterflies only to turn around & find the exact occurrence Puri had predicted happening! The entire school of butterflyfish were following us, when a damsel would spring off the wall, they would slide in to eat the eggs. This continued for the duration of the dive until we got to a point where the current became too strong for them.

Story: Let's Go Back, Back To The Beginning

Earlier this week I grabbed coffee, or rather tea because I’m trying to cut my caffeine intake, with a new friend. At one point in the conversation he brought up my blogs. You know, this thing you’re currently feasting your eyes upon. The first thing he asked me was “how & why did you get started doing blogs” & it occurs to me now that I’ve never formally had that conversation with you all who return week after week, drift in & out, or have randomly stumbled upon this here post. It was an interesting thing to talk about & kind of piece together along the way as I told him the story but the idea of recounting it here hadn’t occurred to me until today when I sat down to write, at which time I was met with a random passing “how did you get started, how far have you come?” question while pilfering through the internet.

My blog page started as a recommendation blog. I had a former manager who commented on the fact that I always have food & drink recommendations for people when they go anywhere & that I should compile a list so that people can access that information at any time without having to text or DM me. The first one, naturally, was Nashville. I compiled a list of restaurants on one blog post & bars on another & published it to actually fairly moderate success. In fact the blog still remains actively edited to this day when I remember to make edits & feel like adding in new restaurants/bars or when some of the ones on the list have closed. From there my recommendation blogs continued. I did an LA food one next, followed by LA drink, then came Kansas City, which I’m pretty sure is a combination blog, & Portland, which I know for a fact is.

Now around this time the mailing list craze was really kicking off & I went to a seminar about marketing for artists such as myself. Someone on one of the panels brought up that one artist they knew did a weekly blog where she detailed & documented her week & then sent it out as a newsletter before the weekend. This sparked the idea of these now weekly blogs.

I knew I didn’t think my day to day life was interesting or varied enough to entice readers to come back week after week so instead I opted for a different approach. My blogs would be varied. Sometimes they would be recommendation blogs, sometimes recipes since I cook quite often, sometimes they would actually be about an event I experienced if I found that event to be interesting enough for a retelling.

Around the time I started to write blogs happened to coincide with the events & civil rights travesties of the Trump Administration. As someone who found himself incredibly politically literate & in possession of a platform, I started writing blogs highlighting the damage that was being done to The USA at large. Additionally, within that same vein, I started to write think pieces directed towards those reading who I knew might fall on the conservative spectrum about more liberal policies & why they are beneficial. I tried to frame them from the perspective of someone who would be against them to mixed success. I continued on this track, using my blog to post my opinions as well as resources when natural or political disasters struck. It wasn’t until May of 2021 that I started doing travel blogs.

Evan & I ended up in Maui right around the time that the tourism industry reopened in Hawaii. I had gone to finish the open water side of my dive certification & had just invested in a GoPro to grab footage of our time there. I did it partially for content & also so the people I knew that cared to know about my adventures had a place to turn to & get the inside scoop of all the goings on of my travels. Additionally it allowed me to combine a lot of the elements of what I was doing; storytelling, recommendations, etc., into one single post in one single place. The thing I ended up underestimating was the time in which each of these travel blogs take.

So the travel blogs ate up a lot of time, most of them ended up being around a two to three week series that took me around the totality of the week to complete for each. I had to write the stories, link the places, go through edit & add the photos, place the photos aesthetically, etc. etc. etc. but I quickly found that these were my most popular submissions. That’s until I wrote a blog called “No Hate Like Christian Love.”

NHLCL was really a think piece for me, a plea for the evangelicals of the world to look at how they were asked to behave in the book they claim to cling to & compare that to the way they are actually perceived by the world & also understand why “the church” is dying. It remains my most popular blog to this day, out performing each of my weekly submissions during the week they’re posted. NHLCL still garners easily around one hundred individual views a week just from people either searching for something of the like or having stumbled upon it some other way. It has, aside from each of my travel blogs, been the biggest source of outreach & foot traffic to this, my website.

So where are we today? Well, this piece, I suppose, could be filed under “story.” The shape that my blog has taken over the years is very reflective of who I am as an individual, all encompassing. I think, if I were to choose a direction for it to go, it would mostly remain in the story telling world, specifically as a recounting of my travels & the highs & lows of my life. I like to think that my blog has a positive influence on the world, as small or large as that is, but I suppose that’s for you all to decide, not me. The hard part about getting travel content for you all is getting to travel, having the funds & time to scour the globe for my next adventure to bring back & share with you all. If that weren’t as much of an issue, I think this blog would definitely take that shape more often than not. I’m always down for feedback though! I’d love to know what you’ve liked & disliked about my blog over the years. I’d love to know what you’d like to see more of or less of. I’m always intrigued to know who is reading my posts, why, & what they got out of it.

As always,

Much love to you all & thank you for supporting this crazy weekly thing that I do!

-C

Story: Have I Shown You The Peace Lilies Yet?

For those of you that don’t know, a large portion of my at-home COVID quarantining has been spent redecorating & repairing my home. This is partially due to the fact I want to sell it & move closer to town (I live out in BFE) but mostly to do with the fact that I haven’t redecorated my home since I was in college. She needed a serious update. Aside from new paintings, a new couch, new comforter, wood flooring, rugs, etc., I’ve also begun trying my hand at plant parenting, something I’m very much not good at.

If you know my mother you’ll know that she was blessed with a green thumb & then some, it’s truly more of a green hand at this point. That trait is apparently not genetic as both my sister & I can attest. That being said I wanted to add a little more green into my redecorating than I’d had before. The only problem is my house is shady all day with the exception of the very end of the day when the setting sun blares through the few west facing windows I have. I also have animals that like to get into everything; two mischievous cats & a golden retriever puppy that eats anything he can get his mouth around. (Harvey, my older golden doesn’t bother anything, he’s the goodest boy.) So I had to be very strategic when going about my plant buying.

I needed:

• Something that likes low light

• Something that’s low maintenance

• Something that won’t harm my pets when they eventually eat part or all of it

  So armed with these three basic requirements & my extreme lack of knowledge when it comes to plant care Evan & I headed to Lowe’s.

I know I should have gone to some mom & pop but I didn’t, I’ll do better next time I swear.

Anyway.

We entered the plant section of Lowe’s & began scanning the tags of each plant & the internet for options that met the above criteria when we were approached by a young, brown haired woman in a red vest. She was about 5’6'“ & was vibing. And when I say vibing, I mean this lady was high AF!!! Enter the head of the plant department. I.E. this woman. She shot us a sluggish smile before asking if we needed any assistance. We did. So we asked.

Our first stop on the tour de plant was the peace lilies. It was clear from the moment she walked us to them that this woman adored her some peace lilies. She stood there with us rattling off fact after fact about peace lilies; how easy they were to maintain, how much they thrive in the shade….she failed to mention that lilies of any kind in your home are toxic to both cats & dogs…..don’t worry, I didn’t buy one. We move on from the peace lilies & she brings us over to these squatty little palm trees with prickly trunks. She was not a fan. Her love for the peace lily did not extend to this perky little palm. Why? Because no one buys them apparently so her job as head of the plant department is to arrange them in size order; older, tall ones in the back, newer, small ones up front. A simple enough task. However, since they never sell, according to her, she has to move them all the time to make room for the ones they get in & apparently they scratch your arms up real bad.

Dissuading us from purchasing this palm that she also deemed “boring” she pondered a moment before becoming filled with excitement over her next choice in plant!……The peace lily. That’s right, right after showing us the peace lilies & stepping away to show us a palm it had completely escaped her altered mind that she had already shown us the peace lilies.

“OH! Have I shown you the peace lilies?!” she exclaimed as she moved between us back towards their pallet. Before a word could be said in protest she had begun her speal about the lilies once again. This happened, & I kid you not, three. more. times! She’d show us a plant, show us the lilies, show us a plant, show us the lilies, & on & on it went.

Finally I interjected, thanking her for her assistance & picked out a few of the other, smaller plants she had shown us. A fern & dragons tongue I believe, not that it really matters. From there I stumbled upon the clearance section of the department where I found a small, sad looking bulb cactus planted atop an old beer can whose label read “can’t touch this.” The pun lover in me had to get it, had to get the sequestered, full sun plant, had to place it in my shaded home & nurse it back to health. As soon as I went to turn around from the shelf, cactus in hand, there she was, the department head. She explained the cactus would be fine, it just needed a little sun & a weekly misting before she took it & slapped a 99 cent sticker over the $5 price tag. “Truly the easiest plant to care for” she said. “Not unlike the peace lilies!”

“Have I shown you the peace lilies yet?”