Blog: Life Through An Ever Shrinking Lens

I know that title sounds daunting, maybe even fringing on the nihilistic, but I promise you, this blog will be quite the opposite. Over the years I’ve written many blogs with the title of “life through” or “life in” or something else along those lines, so that’s how the title came to me naturally in the midst of the brainstorm that was coming up with the topic for this blog. Life through an ever shrinking lens. Okay, so it’s not nihilism, it’s not deprecation, & I promise you it’s not claustrophobic as the imagery probably draws into your mind. So what is this blog about? This blog is about the shift in perspective that seems to be coming with age, or maybe it’s just a sign of the times.

A lot of the time when I sit down to write blogs at the end of my week they end up being about synchronicities, those moments in my day to day life that shared an over arching theme for the week, month, or however long the greater powers that be saw fit to hammer the lesson into my brain. This week was one such week. I had a friend send me a tweet on twitter (I shall never refer to it as X. it’s idiotic) that said the following:

“Me at 22: Wow, life really ends at 21.

Me at 25: Wow, life really ends at 24.

Me at 28: I’ve really been in the mood for an apple danish lately, I can’t wait to get to walk to the corner store & get myself an apple danish! :)”

— @LeftAtLondon On Twitter

To which he accompanied with the comment, “tea kinda” which then sparked a conversation which then led to the inception of this blog. & you know what? It is “tea, kinda!”

Again, I haven’t decided on whether to caulk all of this up to age, as both he & I are in our early thirties with a fully developed frontal lobe (in theory) or whether it’s an experience that those younger than us are also feeling of late, the data sample is far too small & limited for anything conclusive there. What I am noticing, however, specifically speaking for myself, my friend, & even Evan, whom I asked his thoughts on when the topic originally came up, is that we all are finding ourselves more & more in the mindset of enjoying the little things. Caring more about the “sweet treats” that make us smile, the company that we share a kindred soul with, & finding wonder at every turn.

I’m sure there is a term for all of this, I’m also certain that if I allowed myself to venture into the internet in search of it that this blog would end up being delayed another hour or two in its completion simply from the rabbit hole that I would no doubt stumble headlong into. What I do know if that the lens is shrinking. I no longer care so much what the broader collective thinks & feels about me, I no longer care what they want from me as an individual, & I no longer seek the approval of those who I know I would have to encase myself in some false presentation of who I am to be in the good graces of. I am, all in all, in search of simple, humble, minuscule happiness. I am looking for connection, not out of need for acceptance or desire to expand a social circle, but simply to share something human with another person on the same level. To laugh & collaborate, to create & feel & empathize with because I think we have lost a lot of that in the rat race of clout, fame, popularity, & ambition.

I live a lot of my days of late in more silence that I had allowed in before. I sit & ponder the thoughts that pass through my brain, I think of the daily cross sections of humanity & how beautiful a lot of what we encounter in our day to day lives actual is. I think about life & its cycles. I think about evolution, adaptation, passion, experience, & I marvel at how grandiose it all is. How precise, calculated, & yet utterly wild it all is. In a lot of ways, in shrinking the lens, in minimizing the focus away from things that really don’t matter, I am finding infinite streams of beauty & expression.

I know that last paragraph sounded pretty ‘woo woo.’ I hope that I didn’t lose you in it, but in all honesty that is what I feel, that is what is flowing through my mind. That is how I am living my life at the moment. & it’s simple & mundane at times but it is so refreshing to live in the quiet sometimes. To just be. To experience the marvel that it is to be human & the astonishing ways in which that manifests.

I’m going to leave you with one last anecdote before I sign off on this blog & let you all continue about your day. It’s a story that involves one of my favorite topics, Harvey. I’m going to keep this story light. I’m not going to delve into the pain of missing him or any of the grief there in, but I do want to tell you all a story that involves him in his later years.

Harvey on our daily walks was prone to literally stopping & smelling the roses. This was probably way less to do with the flowering fauna he frequented himself & more to do with the other dogs & animals who had done the same, marking as they went along. Either way the story rings true. Harvey, on our walks, would stop often to take deep long inspective sniffs at many of the plants along the path, most of whom flowered at one point or another. Often Evan & I would try to hurry him along to keep the walk moving, that was until we read something that mentioned that dogs stopping & investigating is ten times more stimulating for them & their brains than just the walk itself. Then we too slowed & allowed his reprieve from the walk.

When Harvey passed our vet sent us an ink print of his nose. Evan & I then went around to each of the spots that he would stop each day on our walks, collected & dried the flowers from the plants that he had spent so much time & waining energy interacting with. They now adorn his nose print in a wooden frame in our living room.

So what’s the lesson here? Why bring it up? How does it connect? Harvey saw the value in stopping the motion that often was difficult for him to stop & start & taking in these expression & signatures of life. It wasn’t til he was gone that I truly appreciated them for what they were, that I truly understood how important if is to cut it all out, stop, & experience something just for the beauty of what it is or the signature that it bares.

We live in such a grind culture. We live in a culture that idolizes, that rewards the image & not the individual. We project our most attractive aspects up onto social media or our blogs but seldom do we take the time to shut it all out & really experience what it is to be human. We don’t think about the years that pastry chef spent perfecting that danish that lives at the corner shop you love, down the street from where you build your life & the cross section that all of that is. We don’t allow ourselves to feel the embrace of our partner or our friends without the fear of judgement or the pretense that we feel is required because that is what media or life has taught us we must do. We don’t ask for the things we need simply because we don’t want to be a burden so we suffer in the discomfort. We don’t stop & ponder the rain or the birds or the plants & the cycles they exist in & perpetuate. We try to force our lives into an all encompassing, broad lens, but I think if you zoom in, shrink it down, you will find all of the magnanimous happenings that you have been searching for.

As always, much love to you all,

-C

Blog: Has The Tree Begun To Fall?

Last Friday now former country star, Maren Morris, announced her departure from country music at large. Along side Morris’s announcement she released a two song EP called “The Bridge” effectively acting as her literal musical bridge from the country world to where ever she decides to stake her claim genre wise going forward. One of the songs on the album, The Tree, is all about Morris’s fight for social justice & equality & finding it a losing battle year after year after year making the claim that she is “done filling a cup with a whole in the bottom,” & for me this all spells the beginning of what I fear will be a mass exodus from country music by artists who are tired of fighting for a better tomorrow within the genre & receiving nothing but the vitriol from its fans.

There’s a term that makes me want to gouge my ears out at the mere stupidity of it; go woke & go broke, because for starters, it’s simply not true. Many people or brands that “go woke” have done so either out of something they’ve always aligned with & feel passionate enough to speak up about or out of a highly calculated marketing plan that typically ends up working in their favor. Many people have claimed Morris & artists like her, who stand up against the disparaged treatment between the sexes in the country world, side with minorities or those being targeted in the public eye, or voice their political beliefs & morality, will end up “going broke” as a result of their “wokeness;” a term that seems to boil down into actually giving a shit about the struggles of your fellow humans & trying to make room for them to live comfortable, fulfilling lives in society. But in reality, outside of the comments section on Facebook or Twitter, have seen little to no depreciation in sales. In reality, the opposite tends to happen. People show that they care & hear the voices crying out for change or assistance & they tend to be made an ally out of it, bolstering the numbers in their fan base. Morris & the country artists that state their claim & fight for better conditions within the industry are baring their soul, not just in their statements, but also in the openness & honesty of the music they put out & I for one can understand growing tired of the hate & what appears to be a losing battle.

As I stated in the introduction to this blog, I think this is a trend that will continue, especially among the left leaning artists in the country world. Country fans have shown again & again that they’re fine making excuses for hate, racism, & bigotry in the name of often mediocre music. They’re emboldened by an artist being called out for their hateful or outdated rhetoric & end up shooting their songs to the top of the charts not out of genuine love for the songs but out of spite which then screams loudly to these mostly CIS white men, that their actions are not only perfectly fine, but are in the eyes of their fans, favorable. It’s no surprise to me then that when faced with these disheartening, unsurmountable odds that artists like Morris are dipping out of the country scene in favor of a more loving, open minded audience. I’m just amazed that it took this long.

I’ve had a note written in the “Song Ideas” section of my phone that simply reads “I’m finding it harder & harder to be a country artist & a fan.” That’s from 2020 & that sentiment seems to grow more & more as the years go on. It’s hard to stick it out & believe in an industry that frequently praises & promotes the worse in us instead of embracing those who are genuinely trying to push the envelope & make country music better for everyone. Not just the angry & the stagnant, but embracing genuine stories from genuine people. It seems the more people I talk about in this industry who are trying their damndest to cast something meaningful into the space, the more this sentiment is shared & the more disheartened we all seem to become from it. That is why I wonder if Maren is correct, if the tree that has rotted at its roots has already begun to topple under the weight of the regression that it props up.

It breaks my heart to see this, every time I see a pride playlist, or a black opry playlist, or anything remotely different pop up in the country music space it is instantly met by the worst kinds of ignorance & hatred, & when the opposite happens, when some other white dude does something problematic, it pains me to see their music fly to the top of the charts simply to “stick it” to those who called the problems to attention. I think Maren is the start. I think country will lose a lot of its current trailblazers & those who have a heart to give to this & I think it’s going to happen more & more frequently. Mark my words on that. Sometimes there’s only so much fighting you can do before you have to find your own peace, especially when the enemy is constantly advancing farther & farther into your lines. I stand with Maren & her decision, as it’s one I fight with daily, but I also understand the other side of the coin, & I don’t think I’m ready to give up my fight just yet.

As always, much love to you all,

-C

Requested Blog: The Music Man & The Sea

Today we have ourselves another blog request. It’s funny, for a long time I put out feelers on weeks where I was feeling a bit like the well of my creativity is running a bit dry & most of the time those have come back with zilch. Once I rephrased the blog type as basically being my own personal request line, the requests came flooding in. I got a ton of suggestions this week but this one, which retapped the well & that felt the most intriguing to me to explore. This week’s prompt comes from my line time friend, the ever brilliant Dr. Morgan Turner. Doc Turner proposed the question: how do the ocean & music relate in my world, or how do they not?

A truly intriguing question!

If you’re someone who knows me or follows me in any small capacity you may have taken notice to my undying & blistering love for the sea. Why I don’t live by one, ask Nashville. But you see, there lies the disconnect. I have these two great loves; music & the ocean & yet the nature of the music I do & the place I inhabit keep these two worlds apart for me. Could I move to Los Angeles & be by the ocean, yes but I also have the conundrum of not wanting to inhabit a shoebox for the price of what I have here in Nashville. Really what it boils down to is that I’m unable to have my cake & eat it too, at least in the capacity that I want to be able to. So I guess that’s how they’re dissonant on a logistical & physical level, going deeper than that requires a bit more thought though.

How does the ocean relate to my music, or how does it not? To be quite frank & curt in my response, I’m not sure they do & maybe that’s a problem. Maybe a part of the reason why I feel so disjointed, disconnect, & lost most of the time is because I have forced my two great loves to be separate entities that I have to portion myself out for both spiritually & physically & maybe I need to find a way to marry the two. Maybe I need to spend a little time in & by the ocean sampling the sounds, the subtle nuances, & figuring out in what ways they inspire me to create. In all honesty, I’ve never tried to join the two & maybe that’s part of the problem.

Maybe I’m looking at my life the wrong way. Maybe instead of seeing myself as this person looking down a million different paths trying desperately to choose the right one, hoping I do, maybe I need to look at my life with the path starting in a different location.

On another note I think the ocean has always been an escape for me. It’s the place that I go to be at peace, to disconnect, to be in wonder & marvel at the world. I don’t know if it’s a place that I feel inspires me in the musical sense. Music occupies less of a therapeutic lens for me & more of a lens of enjoyment & fun. I make music because performing is what makes me feel alive. I make music because my narcissism loves a stage & a crowd & if I’m being honest, being the center of attention, something that I feel like I loathe in my day to day life. The stage is where I go to feel like I matter to society at large, the ocean is where I go to heal & dissolve away into nothing. So I guess in a lot of ways they sit at opposite ends of the spectrum.

This got a lot more introspective & revelationary (I know it’s not a word, but it should be) than I thought it would! Maybe I do need to attempt to bridge the gaps in my life a little better. Maybe I should look into finding a place that allows me to have all of my loves in one place while still keeping me out of life in what is basically a dormitory. Maybe I should be more open to that idea & the idea of relocation if I feel it’s something that will serve me & mine.

Keep these recs coming, they’re fun! If you have a blog suggestion please don’t hesitate to reach out, I’m definitely going to start a list & keep track of the ones I feel drawn to even if another occupies the weekly space!

As always, much love to you all!

-C

Requested Blog: Grown Ass Artists

I think I’m going to start doing these, I’ve definitely done a few unlabeled “requested blogs” in the past but I think this is going to be a thing, & I think I’m going to put up a submission form somewhere for people to send in their suggestions for what they would like to read me write about. That was a fun sentence to say by the way, read me write about. Anywho, our first official “requested blog” will be coming to us from Bryan Oliveira, who is a phenomenally talented designer that I will link in a button below! I want to also state that this blog will be more about what this request stirs in my brain than specifically answering & embellishing everything stated by Bryan.

Their prompt for me was as follows: (write about) …How as artists, life keeps pulling us away from our art, & the older we get the more of a fight it becomes to carve out time to create, but that time created is what keeps us going & fed & our creativity sustained.

The statement in & of itself is incredibly profound & honest & a feeling I’m sure many artists such as ourselves feel deeply, especially as we age out of what the industry as decided to claim as ideal time for our success. As a now thirty-one year old still trying to make it in music, I define feel this, in fact it’s something that often keeps me up at night.

I remember distinctly being asked by a higher up in a massive company in the entertainment business how old I was. When I answered “twenty-seven (at the time)” his reply was to say “well you’ve still got a few more years that you can make it in, I guess.” This sentence rings through my brain at least twice a week, if not more. It seems, at least to all of us on the outside of major label/publishing deals, that turning thirty in Nashville or LA is a death sentence. It’s a “well you tried, time to sell your soul to an office job” simply because we lacked the connections, the funds, or whatever to be in the right rooms at the right time, completely devoid of whether or not we actually have the talent & drive to take it from there. The more time passes, the more the pressure is increased to ‘give up’ & ‘find a real job.’ As if art isn’t the thing that everyone on the planet consumes & actually remembers…

In the song “Nothing New” by Taylor Swift she sings the line “how can a person know everything at eighteen but nothing at twenty-two?” A line that she wrote when she turned twenty-two out of fear that the industry would do all it can to replace her as she aged, calling attention not only to the misogyny of it all, but also that the industry has this knack of signing people who are still children & claiming their most profound & impactful work when they still are lacking a fully formed frontal lobe.

I do recall it being a lot easier to find creative time & energy when I was younger though. Time & to-do lists tend to get in the way the more the years creep on, but what I can also tell you is that what I was creating was not nearly as deep nor was it an open & honest expression of who I was & am. The blessing of time & the lessons that come with it are that we gain insight & perspective. We learn & grow & become fully fledged humans with interests & passions that surprise us. We learn to stop hiding behind the walls of perception & feeling like we have to create in a certain style or pattern simply because the people we look up to did/do. We learn that true art is the expression of the individual & not creating something just because we feel like it’s the right more or it’s what’s commercially viable or trending. In all honesty, I wish more artists were signed around my age, selfishly of course, but also because I feel like most of my friends who are in their late 20s/early 30s actually have something to say & contribute, but no one is willing to take a chance on them because of something as trivial as age. Yes there are the rare exceptions; Sia, Chris Stapleton, Old Dominion, etc., but they are definitely that, the exceptions, not the rule unfortunately.

It saddens me that grown ass artists don’t seem to be given the time or resources that our younger compatriots are, because I think it wholly eliminates & diminishes an incredible talented group of people, their individual outlook on life, & their lived experiences. Maybe we as humans are more inclined to the “mess” of growing pains & the lessons there in but a lot of those of us who are old also have that lived experience & the benefit of weaving it into our art.

If you are a grown ass artist, with a fully formed frontal lobe, keep going. Don’t give up because the industry you’re in tells you to or your parents start asking about what other careers you might be interested in or society says one thing or another. If you are talented, genuinely talented, express that! Share it with the world. Someone will connect with it, someone will see the greatness, & it will spread like wildfire. I believe in you & wish you nothing short of the best.

Love Always,

-C

Blog: Stop Pressing Mute

Do you ever find yourself minimizing yourself, omitting parts of your personality or who you really are as a person just to make the other people around you feel more comfortable? Do you often do so even when you have no idea how that other person will reach? It’s sometimes like you have this whole preconceived narrative in your head about how they won’t want to be around you any longer or you feel like they won’t love you anymore because it doesn’t fit into their ideal of who you are as a person. You’re not alone if you do, I think to some extend we all do this, we all mute parts of ourselves, situationally, in an attempt to fit in.

I mean, why shouldn’t we? We evolved from hunter/gatherers, a society where being outcast could mean life or death. We depended upon the tribe or the collective for shelter, food, water, & other resources, so of course that mentality has been drilled into our brains. From there we cultivated farmland, becoming agriculturally bound & even then if you didn’t present properly to the ruling faction or the person in charge of getting your food, granted you weren’t farming it yourself, you would starve. These social constructs continued on & on & on perpetuated by class, religion, tradition, & other miscellaneous societal contracts that we’re all expected to adhere to, even if some of those contracts have long since expired.

We are now living in the 21st century, never have we ever been, as a global community, more connected. I know a lot of you would argue a dissonance because of technology & while I definitely think it’s a double edged sword, it has never been easier for us as human beings to find communities where we belong. There are people out there who believe the same things, feel the same way, geek out over the same material or hobbies as us & yet still we mute ourselves.

I am beyond guilty of this, it’s something I still fight to break on the daily because there is an expectation when you grow up a middle-class midwest American white boy in a baptist church with an often old school family. That’s nothing against them or my upbringing, it’s just a lot of the time for so many of us, the expectation & the reality collide & usually the expectation seems to win.

Think in terms of tectonic plates. One plate represents who you are as a person, the other being who you’re expected to be. As you grow up those plates fight for dominance & eventually one wins. I have always been envious of those who let themselves win over the localized social constructs. To many of us, they bear the name of “black sheep.” I always thought myself a black sheep because the person living inside didn’t match the mask I was presenting, but I let the weight of expectation submerge me.

There are so many things, even to this day at the age of 29 that I wish I could be, so many regrets for times I wished I were bolder or more “me” so that I didn’t have to actively & delicately tear down the person that so many thought I was in order to reestablish the truth. That, however, is a waste of time. Living in regret is giving energy to a past that is already written, not a future that is yours to make. There are so many things I wish I could be outwardly without the fear of losing those I love or feeling their affections diminish. There are so many songs, speeches, blogs that I’ve written, that no matter how much I want to share will probably never see the light of day & that sucks. They are the parts of myself that I continue to lock away out of someone else’s comfort because at the end of the day I am still choosing comfort over the truth.

I hope you’ll do better that me. I hope you will choose yourself. It’s a hard thing, believe me, I know, I just want you all to know that you’re worthy of love as you are, as who you are, unapologetically. You are worthy of love. This is as much a reminder to me as it is to you all but I hope you take it to heart. As I said before, there is a community out there that would love nothing more than to embrace you, as you are, complete & whole with no alterations & no subjugations & I ache for you to find them if you haven’t already. It’s time to pull back the curtain & show the world the beautiful being that you are. It’s time to stop pressing mute on who you are.

Blog: Are You There Seasonal Depression, It's Me, Charlie!

I’m going to try & keep this blog pretty light despite the subject matter at hand. This being September, it is also Suicide Awareness Month & as someone who has definitely looked my own existence in the eye & found myself wanting just to come out the other side of it, I like to touch on the topic at least once annually throughout the month. I don’t plan to expand upon the topic of the month in this blog but I felt the need to come on & talk a little about my on going battle with the root cause of my own past self harm thoughts.

If the title of this blog weren’t indicative enough, I struggle with seasonal depression. It’s the reason for my distain of fall & winter, it’s the reason I have a hard time with the holidays, it’s the reason I want nothing more than to be a snowbird. I was reminded yesterday of my biannual condition when, while running errands, I began to feel the pull of the sun drifting farther from this hemisphere of the earth.

It’s a weird feeling & kind of hard to describe to those of you who aren’t sensitive to energies. I know that comes across as leaning metaphysical but a lot of us roaming this earth are sensitive to those types of energies. I, personally, find it very difficult to sleep during a full moon. I don’t think it has anything to do with the light but instead has more to do with the gravitational pull. Think of it as being able to sense rain. A lot of animals can feel the barometric shift in the atmosphere, some people’s joints start to become sore right before a storm. That’s how my brain works when it comes to serotonin production during the colder months. I feel the departure of the sun usually before the rest of the populous does.

I was also presented with this prompt due to the change in month. A lot of people are under the false impression that September marks the beginning of “spooky season” with technically doesn’t begin until the latter half of the month. I tend to try & cling to summer with every fiber of my being simply for the fact that I want to cling to my natural serotonin production as long as I can. Autumn often marks the turn of my mental state & it is something I dread annually.

I had the unfortunate experience of my body sensing the shift yesterday & immediately, despite my best efforts, it sent me into a debilitating depressive episode. I say all of this to inform, to give you a lens into the mind & body of those like me who dread the cold season every year. Last night seasonal depression hit me over the head like a ton of bricks & has left me trying desperately all day to shake the feeling.

I take antidepressants throughout my year but usually end up having to vamp them up from October to March. Some years are worse than others. Last winter, with all the COVID mess, it was worse than it has been in a long time. I pray this year is different. I pray this year is different for all of you out there who live with the same prognosis.

All I’m here to do is offer insight, to show & tell exactly why I have such an aversion to Autumn & Winter, to why I welcome the return of summer so fervently. I’m not going to go into the fact it also plays host to the widest array of possible activities & foods, hence summer being the best of the seasons, I’ll simply leave it at the medical & bid you all a fond weekend.

I hope each of you knows that you have value on this planet & that you mean something to someone. I know there will be times where that doesn’t shine through the gloom but light can only shine in the dark. I love each of you dearly & am glad you exist. Have a fantastic week!