Blog: What Am I Meant To Say?

I have been known from time to time to talk philosophically. The manner in which I speak & the way that I relay information often dips in & out of analogy & allegory especially where the advice column of my mind is concerned. I’m sure that a lot of people find this annoying, but it is my hope that those I call friend, whom I love, enjoy the manner in which I convey information, particularly when advice is asked or my input is given. For those that do enjoy the machinations of my mind, they often ask me how I go about formulating these imaginings into, hopefully, relatable assertions that leave the other person with a deeper understanding of the point I am trying to make. So I guess here is my answer to that question.

It is first worth noting that I do not view myself as some forward or crazy derivative thinker. There are a multitude of people more readily equipped with IQs that are beyond my deepest fathoming who I think could bury me under a mountain of logic & sheer might of brain if given the chance. I am not a prophet, nor am I a counselor, a teacher, a therapist, or a guru. I am simply a man who has put a lot of effort into educating himself & changing his mind when it so often proves to be wrong. So what is it that I think draws people to pick my brain & solicit my advice?

I am a storyteller. That is, after all, why you’re here no? I use my words both in lyric form & in the form of these assorted blogs to tell stories of my life & flood these virtual pages with the muck that spews from my brain. Commonality is my bread & butter & finding the through-line that many of us posses is an easy task for me. This, no doubt, is also partially to do with my neurodivergent brain which is highly tuned to recognize patterns. We all have this ingrained ability to an extent, but those of us who fall somewhere on the spectrum of neurodiversity often have an easy go at analyzing that data & forming a hypothesis that we either internalize or share with those around us. We as humans are constantly taking in new information, it’s just that some of us are more adept at filtering through it or at keeping multiple plates spinning at the same time.

So how do I know what to say? What is it that helps me convey my point outside of the aforementioned parts of my being? Well, I often tailor my response to the person whom I am speaking to. I know we all do that to a degree, & having written that out on here it just sounds like a “yeah, no duh” bit of advice, but it extends further than that. Remember in the last paragraph when I talked about how neurodivergent people are good at pattern recognition & application? You remember that? Just a few short sentences ago? Well, what if I told you that it goes farther than that. That a lot of times we can actively predict the way a conversation will go simply based on past experience & tend to drive conversations using said knowledge. Not going to lie, it sounds a bit manipulative, but think of it more in line of walking into a really, really nice hotel where they’ve called ahead to ask your preferences on music, temperature, scent, lighting, etc. etc. Truly I’ve never been in a hotel that does that, but I imagine it’s a thing. I tailor the experience to the person to help them see the point I am trying to get across.

The other thing that a lot of people seem to miss in all of this is the point of the interaction being a conversation. What does a conversation require to be more than just a lecture? More than one person speaking AS WELL AS listening to the others involved. You have to listen to what is being said, take in that information, & reconfigure your approach or even entirely reevaluate it. The saying “the customer is always right in matters of taste” applies to these scenarios as well. Just because you feel a certain way doesn’t mean the other person does as well. Each of us has our own lived experiences & our feelings are not invalid simply because they don’t align with someone else’s. You have to be willing to listen, adapt, & offer educated & thoughtful rebuttals based on what your understanding of what the other person is going through. Have a little empathy, imagine yourself in their shoes, & for the love of God, listen.

I hope you all have a fantastic weekend/week/whenever you find yourself reading this.

As always,

Much love to you all,

-C

Blog: I Guess I Need To Learn To Shut My Damn Mouth

I am someone who is often outwardly opposed to the cold. I have stated many times in person & probably on this blog as well that I would be fine going the remainder of my life without seeing another “winter.” Sometimes that sentiment also takes the shape of “going the rest of my life without seeing snow” but it feels like a similar concept either way. I live in the upper end of the American South, & while winters are slightly less harsh here than they were growing up in Kansas where there is nothing to block the wind sweeping from The Rockies across the plains, we still get our share of winter weather, especially with the recent surge of Arctic blasts that climate change has seen fit to give us annually. Part of the one-sided contract that I have with mother nature is that “if it’s going to be cold, there might as well be snow.” Well, I guess this week I got my wish & I fear I may have second feelings about the contract I, undoubtable, am responsible for securing us all in.

It snowed eight inches here in Nashville this week, an amount that I have not seen annually since I moved to Nashville in 2010. In fact, upon a minor bit of googling, I have discovered the annual average snowfall for Nashville typically sits around 4.7 inches, so we basically doubled that in one sitting.

Now, since Nashville typically is a snowless place, we lack the infrastructure required for maintaining our roads & clearing them effectively during our winter storms. Add to that the fact that my HOA, a mindless bureaucracy that oversees the neighborhood I live is, has seen fit to not contract a plow company simply because there is typically not a need for it, & you get me being mostly sequester to my home on the outskirts of Nashville for the last week. I am, for all intents & purposes, sick of the snow.

Was it fun & cheeky at the beginning? Yeah, sure. Did I enjoy a day or two of making soups & trying to make my furnace get my house above 65º? Sure. But I am over it & I feel like that is the sentiment for most of the people on my social feeds dealing with the same cabin fever from the storm, even those that I know live in walkable parts of town. I am humbling regretting the statement “well if it’s going to be cold, it might as well snow.”

So what’s my solution? What’s my ideal outcome? Well my ideal outcome is that all the snow melts today & the temperature returns to an area at the very least above the freezing line. What is the point of this blog? I guess in some way it’s me apologizing to you all if this is something that I, & I alone, manifested. I was unaware my skills of conjuring were so powerful. I shall do my best to be better next time & understand the consequences for the simple words I say out loud.

If you too are stuck in this frozen hellscape, wishing desperately for a beach & 80º weather, take solace in the fact that you are not alone in that desire. In the interim make all of the soups, take all of the baths or hot showers, pull out all the blankets, embrace the hibernation that we as a species are supposed to participate in, but somehow feel we are above even though every other bit of nature observes it.

Stay warm in there!

As always, much love,

-C

Blog: Insomniac, Revisited

I don’t know if I’ve ever publicly stated this, much less done so in a full on blog format, but the release of my song “Insomniac” was a traumatic one for me. If you were around at the time & a follower of mine then you would possibly remember that the song, upon its original release, had to be pulled, remastered, & redistributed. All of this was to do with background drama & poor choices that were made against my better judgment & with promises that the decisions being made would pan out & be for the best. Once again, my intuition was right on that, but that’s not what I’m here to write about today.

Last night, while working on something for my socials, I stumbled upon the series of videos that Evan & I created to promote the release of “Insomniac.” These videos stemmed from an idea that I had which I referred to as “things you do when you can’t sleep.” They featured a single shot of someone one would do when they can’t sleep & then about halfway through the 10-20 second video, the intro to the song would cut in, it would pull up a title card & give the date of release as well as a call to pre-save. I remember that we started with a much larger list of activities but ended up cutting it down to nine for the promotion; exercise, watching TV, taking a bath, playing video games, eating, texting, taking a shower, drinking, & surfing the internet. We shot these little blurb videos over the course of several evenings & filled them to the brim with little easter eggs as well, mostly as call backs or little features of the things that I enjoy. For example, the one where I was surfing the web features me going to my website, this website. It also has a “Country Music Allies” pin in the bottom right of the frame, a group that I partnered with for the release of the song. Additionally, I’m snacking on “Smart Sweets” a brand I was all over at the time & there’s an Assassin’s Creed lanyard dangling by the computer, a gaming franchise I enjoy. We put so much thought & curation into these little promotional videos that I don’t feel like people even gave that much of a passing glance to.

What strikes me as odd about “Insomniac” is that for a lot of you it still remains one of your Top 3 songs of mine, despite the fact that it is one of my lowest streaming. Background meddling & a botched release have a lot to do with that. It’s frequently one of the songs I get asked to play in the live setting most often but for the longest time it was the song that I wanted the least to do with, simply because of how grueling a process it was to get it out & how it essentially became dead in the water upon release. Nothing went right with its launch, all the way down to the album artwork file being corrupted upon hours of completion & immediately requiring a do over. I guess that was foreshadowing.

But the more time passes, the more the content from the “Insomniac” era resurfaces, the more it saddens me all over again that this song that Jared Scott, Evan, & I had so much writing, & Joshua Gleave & I had so much producing, ended up as essentially a lost cause simply because of incompetence by those who I was prodded into trusting for its release. Even when we went back in & tried to salvage the song & re-release it, everything got lumped back together & was immediately null & void again. Unfortunately, I think that this was one of the last releases that I went “all out” on with the promotion & the efforts behind it because the project that I worked so hard on & had so much fair in essentially ended up amounting to nothing. I may as well have just cold dropped the song. I guess that comes with the territory of trying to be an artist though.

There are still embers of hope somewhere inside of me that “Insomniac” will have its day. I’m not sure if or when that will be, but I still hold on to its vindication somewhere in my heart.

I understand that art is meant to be, simply, without expectation, but it’s really hard to watch the things you spent countless hours getting off the ground immediately crash & burn with no immediate chance of redemption or salvation. Countless hours, countless dollars, essentially amounting to nothing, it cuts deep.

For those of you out there who tried tirelessly to salvage this song for me upon its release, I am beyond grateful. For those of you who still stream it, who still have love for this song, I hope to be one of you some day soon, it’s just still a very tender spot of my musical catalog for me.

I will continue to revisit this song which I have exiled from my psyche, in the hopes that someday I rediscover my love for it & I hope to someday be at a place where I feel comfortable & convinced to share the full story around the goings on of it all, but until then, I leave it to you all to give the love that it so desperately deserves.

As always, much love to you all,

-C

Why I Love...: The Pacific Northwest

Hello,

Happy New Year! I hope that your holidays were relaxing, rejuvenating, healthy, stress free, & uncomplicated. I also hope that you didn’t miss me on the two week hiatus that I took during the latter half of December; I was traveling, seeing family, & even played a show or two. I appreciate you all allowing me the space to do so & having the patience & understanding for those times when I need to dip away for a minute. I always worry subconsciously that no one is going to come back any time I skip a week or so with the blogs, but amazingly so many of you return with your love & your hunger for the stories that I tell, the feelings that I share, the experiences I so exuberantly pass along to you all, & time that it takes to interject my life into yours for however long you choose to read these pages.

I was struggling to find a topic for today’s blog at first, until Evan shared with me a TikTok highlighting a minute of different vignettes around the PNW. Then, as the deep pang of homesickness hit me, so too did the idea for this blog. However, with the singular idea also came a myriad & the idea further blossomed from one stand alone piece to the series I hope that this will become.

I am privileged to call myself well travelled. I have been to many corners of the world & fallen in love with many of the locations & people I have come to know along the way. As someone who travels, & travels often, I often feel a deep sense of “Saudade” (see attached blog) but I also get frequently asked about my favorite places & the question that always seems to follow the locations I disclose is “Why Do You Love It?” So, therein lies the blog idea. My friend Josh Brady, an excellent writer & author himself, reached out to me regarding the PNW post & said “Now you’re making me miss it too. Only lived in Washington for two years, but I miss it every day. Been dying to get back ever since I moved away.” To which I replied “There’s something about the way that the mist & the darkness creeps into your bones & embeds itself there that is inescapable." Which immediately flooded my mind with all of the other things about the region that I hold so dearly intertwined in my DNA. Welcome, dear reader, to the “Why I Love…” series. May it help you find connection around the world & fill your spirit with a sense of wanderlust, comfort, & adventure.

Why I Love…

The Pacific Northwest

There’s a spirit to the PNW that is unlike any other, it maintains the wild, untamed energy that most of the land west of the Rocky Mountains carry, but there’s something deep & brooding about it, like slowly drifting into a bottomless slumber. The freedom that emanates from the “ungentrified, uncolonized, untainted” wilderness allows an unbridled sense of personal expression & peace that is probably, in part, reasonable for the coined slogan “Keep Portland Weird.” And while the free spirited, often aloof nature of its city dwelling people may not be everyone’s cup of tea, their sense of personal freedom & being is undeniably admirable. The PNW is undeniably a place where they have yet to kill their mother. Those who live on the land work, almost to a fault, to preserve the natural beauty & antiquity of their home resulting in a world that feels almost alien to those of us who have become so accustomed to the strip malls & park lotted developments of our modern, American, late-capitalist system.

The PNW is a palette of sullen vetiver, slithering grey, lush alpine, contemplative blues, & rich earthy browns. The unique & ravenous landscape sits nettled perfectly between the Cascade Mountains & the Pacific Ocean feeding & nurturing a rift of ultra-fertile volcanic soil that gives life to everything that plants roots in its ancient fields. Trees grow tall & slender, fed by the creeping mists & the drizzly, spitting rain & waterfalls & life flow freely throughout.

The coast of The PNW is a unmastered darkness that feels simultaneously like the cold embrace of welcomed solitude & the longing for something simpler & altogether uncomplicated. The ocean does little to hide its fury & ferocity here but also isn’t afraid to share the most vulnerable & quiet aspects of itself. The life that teems beneath its hushed waves is cold & hardy & embeds small bits of its soul into the driftwood & tumbled cobbles that wash up on its shore.

I have yet to meet anyone who has made their way up to The PNW & not fallen in love with it. There is simply something for everyone & I think that it connects with something intrinsically primal within us all & makes us feel strangely at home. Despite its urban developments & modern amenities there is something about it that just makes you want to reconnect with nature. It makes your soul yearn for darker days propped up in a cabin by the sea or in the mountains with an exquisitely crafted cup of coffee, some fresh fruit & berries, a fire in the hearth, & a warm bowl of chowder in hand. It is the coziness of a home but lives more so in the space of yearned for loneliness in the best possible way.

I love The Pacific Northwest because it is somewhere that the Earth still sings, it is somewhere that forces you to understand where you fit in the great circle, & that beckons you home away from the noise & the tech to just be in the pure surroundings of Mother Earth. The PNW feels like a fresh breath of the cleanest air, it is at the same time timeless & archaic. I love the PNW because it is the land that birthed me & it is also the land that draws me into the deepest embrace whenever I have the privilege of returning.

-C

Blog: Trying To Bridge The Disconnect

Lately my career, specifically where music is related, has taken a turn that I don’t think I expected. For those new here who read that first sentence & said to yourselves “wait, you do music?!” welcome to CharlieRogersMUSIC.com, nice to have you. The turn I seem to have made lives in the writing world, & no, not this writing world, the songwriting one.

I’ve been writing songs since I was sixteen, so almost half of my life at this point. I started in my bedroom writing about my life as a high schooler & while a lot of those first songs were definitely not the greatest, I am still proud that I took the step to start somewhere. From there I went to college where more often than not, I was writing for myself still. It wasn’t until around the time that I graduated from Belmont that I really started to write for other people. I had a hard time with that at first, removing myself from the art, from the narrative, but I soon found that that is where the empathy of the artist really comes in handy. Even though I may not have a specific lived experience, I can still, to some degree, project my own life experience into the writing & inject my own personality & life into crafting a song that is entirely to do with someone else’s point of view & story. Even though I had shifted away from being entirely self centered in my narrative, I was still writing a lot for &/or about myself, though the shift allowed me to create songs that were still about me but were filtered through the lens of an alternative character. See Jericho. This continued for a very long time until I kind of lost my way.

I would say around 2020 it became incredibly difficult for me to write. Probably in part due to the pandemic as well as a lot of personal change that I went through, my creative mind seemed to have departed my being almost entirely & when at long last it finally came back, it seemed to have left my introspection behind, wherever it had gone. However, what seems to have come back with my creativity was this new found ability to draw entirely personal stories & details out of those I find myself writing for & inject that into their songs.

I found myself entering rooms & leaving with songs that, to me, felt disingenuous. I knew a lot of my cowriters & their backgrounds & a lot of what they were projecting into the writing space was very counter to who they are as people or what their lived experience is. That’s not to say that we can't play characters as writers, but I feel like when writing for oneself, there needs to be a level of authenticity in the project or the audience sniffs it out near instantaneously. I started to get fed up with vague generalities & instead found myself craving the deep intimate details of each song being written. I wanted to know the story behind the prompt, how it made the writer or artist feel, what in their mind the specific imagery surrounding the song consisted of, any specific memories it brought up. It was no longer enough for me to play into an interesting rhyme or idea just for the hell of it, I wanted the music I was a part of creating to bear signatures of the soul of those who worked on it.

I’ve gotten very good at this practice, in fact, it’s one of the main reasons I get drawn into sessions these days, because I don’t settle for the generic in terms of the song’s personality signature. I am, however, finding myself incapable of extending this practice into my own writing for myself. I find myself utterly blank when I ask the same questions about a song & its premise that I drill my fellow writers & artists about during a write, I can’t seem to refocus the lens on myself & make something deeply personal. Maybe it stems from years of projecting an idea of who or what artist I wanted to be. Maybe it stems from years of censoring myself because I know if I said certain things in songs that it would offend or upset people close to me. Whatever it is, I can’t, at the moment, seem to shake loose of it.

So here in lies my struggle, the bridging of this disconnect that I have had the last couple of years. Having the ability to be almost overly analytical & receptive to the lives & ideas of those I collaborate with but lacking, almost entirely, the ability to be introspective & open with myself & the things that I want & need to say as a writer & artist.

Maybe there are conversations that need to be had that will allow me to feel like I can express my feelings, my history, my emotions openly in song without fear of retribution or backlash, maybe there’s inner work that needs to be done. Whatever the answer it, it has become abundantly clear to me that I am, at my current state, far more comfortable with being open & honest through the lens of other people than I am through my own works. Which as someone who strives to be an open & authentic artist, is incredibly discouraging for me. I think I’m writing some of the best works I’ve ever written, & am more proud of what I leave writing rooms with then I ever was before, but I would certainly like for the elevation to extend to myself & what it is that I want to work on.

As always, much love to you all,

-C

Blog: It's Giving...Gifts

Early this week I stumbled upon a post that talked about the anthropology behind gift giving & how we each have our own set of expectations & traditions that go along with them. The post was weighing the merits of whether or not children should all sit around watching the birthday child at a party open the gifts they’ve received from their friends or not. Apparently, a lot of modern parents are stowing the gifts away until the termination of the party, having the child open them up once all of the other kids have left, & then going through later or the next day & thanking people for the specific gift interpersonally instead of publicly. This allows kids & parents to not feel a specific pressure to match the assumed gifts that other children will give, it also allows each gift giver to feel they’ve contributed something without knowing whether or not they’ve been “one upped.” This then opened up a further dialogue about gift giving & the social contracts there in which then led me to want to share my two cents regarding this season we’re now in in which so many of us are buying & exchanging gifts with one another.

Another thing that the poster in question mentioned, of whose name I wish I could remember so that I could credit them for the points being discussed in these few paragraphs, is the idea the it is not actually the thought that counts where gift giving is concerned & I honestly couldn’t agree more. You see, I am someone who gives gifts not just to give them, but because I feel on some level, they represent how invested we are in the lives of those with whom we dote upon. Your gifts, in my mind, should come from a place of understanding who the recipient is, what they like, how they feel about certain things, what their interests are, etc. & should also have love & understanding behind them. A hollow gift is simply that, a hollow gesture with no meaning & no feeling behind it & if I’m the recipient in question, often times, I’d rather you just not get me anything at all.

To some of you that may sound ungrateful, it may sound privileged or cold, but I never said that the gift in question had to be something expensive or that required buckets of time, I simply think that if you give someone a gift it should be from a place of love & understanding that shows “I value you as a human being & a companion & this item or act made me think of you.” In my experience, hollow gifts end up either being returned, thrown away, given away, or hidden away because as Marie Condo would say “they don’t spark joy.”

Now does every gift have to be the most thoughtful, considerate thing on the planet? No, but going the little extra mile to show someone you listen to them & place stock in your relationship by valuing the things that make them unique, does go a long way farther, in most cases, to just buying them the thing they asked for or the thing they need.

Not everyone is the greatest of gift givers, I understand that, & if you yourself struggle with these things that’s why lists are made. If your idea is to gift something cheap (we’re not talking financially cheap), something you think would be a huge risk on whether or not they’d like it, or something non-specific that falls most often into the ‘interests’ category of the person (think just random merchandise from a franchise or random items that are branded to be representative of a part of a person’s individual expression) then I say stick to the list. It’s there for a reason & while you probably won’t end up being the top of the list for things received, they will at least still love & appreciate the gift in question.

Naturally all of this is entirely subjective & you may disagree with me on all fronts, but a someone who frequently gets called one of the greatest gift givers out there *toss toss, I feel I have a handle on the art involved here that will help you all to step things up for your loved ones this holiday season. Nothing needs to be bought, if you feel you can make something heartwarming from the things you have at home that still expresses an understanding towards an individual, by all means, go for it! Think “oh, I know you love bananas foster so I made you bananas foster cookies” or “I know you’ve been looking for some art pieces to have around the house that are expressive of your interests AND of who you are as a person AND your personal sense of style, so I made you this.” Homemade gifts are often the best kind.

I hope this sheds a little light for those of you out there wracking your brains for gifts this year, just think of the person & the things that make them unique, especially if they’re the things that you love about them, & riff off of that! You’ve got this, I believe in you!

As always, much love,

-C

Blog: The Part Of Pet Ownership That No One Takes To Heart

Hiya, Happy Thanksgiving to all of my US based folks or those who celebrate! If you’re going back through the log of my blogs & noticing that last week I was noticeably it’s due to two prominent reasons. The first is that my immediate family celebrated the holiday last Friday & thus I was busy cooking, socializing, & entertaining. The second reason is the topic of this week’s blog & while I don’t intend for it to be a downer, I’d be lying if I said the subject matter is a walk through the park. Nevertheless, it is something I feel drawn to speak on in this season of life as well as this season of the year since many people will soon be giving or receiving the gift of a furry, feathered, &/or scaled friend & should understand what exactly it is you or your loved one is signing up for.

Some of you may be aware of the ‘zoo’ that I have at my house; two golden retrievers (Harvey (12) & Peter (3)), two domestic shorthair cats (Jade (13) & Max (5)), & a 185 gallon saltwater fish tank. In addition to a jungle of over 150 house plants. Today we’re going to be focused on my eldest golden, Harvey, for the purpose of our narrative.

I grew up with animals, we always had big dogs when I was young, Newfoundlands to be exact. Over the years we also had cats, fish, frogs, & two terriers, but I always wanted a Golden Retriever. I remember a friend of mine’s parents from elementary school used to breed them & the movie Homeward Bound featured an old golden named Shadow, so I’m sure that’s where the obsession started. Despite the want, we never got goldens so after I moved out I rescued Harvey from an abusive mill at the age of six months old. He was incredibly hard to potty train as he’d spent his entire life up to that point on concrete & was afraid of grass. It didn’t help that my apartment at the time had concrete floors. Harvey, despite my early frustrations with him, is & has always been the perfect dog. He is loyal & loving to a fault. He is gentle & has the most kind heart of any being I have yet to come across. He was instantly my guy, the gold (pun intended) standard to which I shall now hold every dog for the rest of my life, but Harvey’s biggest fault & the one to which all great dogs falter, is that he grew old.

It’s hard, you know. It’s so damned hard to watch your best friend, your buddy, your companion, your most goodest of boys grey around the muzzle, then struggle to find their footing, then have a hard time getting up & lose interest in their toys or their favorite snacks. It’s so unrelentingly hard when those beautiful, loving brown eyes begin to cloud over & their breath begins to get labored & you start to have to think about the beginnings of the end of your time with this purest of hearts that you wish endlessly would beat on forever. & unfortunately this is the part of pet ownership that far too many find to be just way too difficult.

The shelters are full of animals whose previous owners truly didn’t understand. They didn’t know the commitment, emotionally, physically, spiritually, that it takes to raise & care for an animal & I feel sorry for them. Not just for the abandoned animals, of which the majority are over half their lifespan in age, but also for the people who will never know what it is to spend the course of their life being unconditionally loved by an animal.

About a week & a half ago Harvey fell. We were out on a walk & he just kind of crumpled. From there he spent the next couple of days incapable of getting up, when he’d try to stand or walk he’d fall or his legs would drag, he wasn’t eating, wasn’t taking treats & I truly began to think that this was it, this was going to be the last week that I had with this golden angel who poops in my yard & gets taken on daily walks around the block. Ev & I canceled our flights to Kansas City & loaded up both of the dogs in the the car to drive the 16 hours round trip not only so we could tend to Harvey, but also so my parents, who have so much love for my dear boy, could say goodbye to him. Over the next week he didn’t get that much better, though he did eat & regained a bit of his footing, & for the first time since I’d been bringing him back to Kansas he didn’t ascend the stairs with me to sleep at the foot of my bed.

Evan & I did our best to prepare for what we thought was surely the end; we told our friends who had special connections with Harvey to come say their goodbyes, we set Harvey’s paw print in a mold to have a token or remembrance & I don’t think there was a day in which I didn’t have to go off on my own for a while to break down & weep. It’s a truly impossible thing but you do it because you wouldn’t give back a single minute that you shared with that animal.

I’m sure I’m not too many blogs off from writing about my dearly departed dog but we’re not there yet. Harvey went from the shell of a dog he was last week back to somewhat of his older self. The vet explained to me that small scale strokes are common in large dogs of his age & there’s a potential that’s what happened, but I most fortunately get more time with my guy, time where he is still the happy, smiling dog I love with every cell of my heart & for that I am so infinitely grateful. But I know there will come a day, sooner rather than later, where I will have to say goodbye to my red, shaggy rock & I will face that with a broken heart & tear stained cheeks but I will be there, with him, til the end because how could I not be?

This past week & a half has been a rollercoaster & in all honesty, if I were to put into words how I’ve been feeling, the answer would be fragile. I wrote this blog with tears streaming my face, but I bare them with all of the pride in the world, because over the last twelve years I have had the utmost privilege of being loved, unconditionally, even on the days where I definitely didn’t deserve it, by the best dog I could have ever dreamed of & I have loved him back. But I know, at the end of it, when all is said & done & I am left to come home with nothing but a collar, I’ll know that for all of the love I gave him, he will always have loved me more & I would do it all again in a heartbeat knowing how it feels when it’s time to let a great dog go.

As always, much love to you all,

-C

Blog: A Social Media Fracture

After I smashed that “save & publish” button on last week’s blog & went about the internet to the various socials to post links so you all would know that it’s up & exists for you to dig your stunning little eyes into, I took a week long social media hiatus.

First off, let me acknowledge just how special, important, heroic, self sacrificing, & outright paramount I am for making that decision & going against the cultural & societal norms that inform our need to consume phone related snippets of content constantly. I know I am a monolith of courage & strength in these trying times. Secondly, if you don’t understand sarcasm, that was it, but I feel like that’s how we all behave when we “announce” our departure from our socials. We act as though we’re giving up a limb & as if our decision was the most refreshing, innovative thought to ever grace the idea space. It’s really not & I don’t think we should treat these breaks as novel things, they should be ingrained in us, because they are healthy. Anyway, here’s what I learned, what I felt in just the week I took off.

The rules were simple. No social media for a week with the singular exception of the daily allotted minute in which I could go into my messages & DMs to see if there was anything pressing that I needed to address. Outside of that there was to be no scrolling, no posting, no sharing, no engagement with the apps outside of answering the few things that needed to be answered & taken care of. The fast began at the time that I finished promoting my blog & ended this morning. Simple enough.

The first thing that I noticed was just how clear my mind felt. My thoughts didn't feel foggy or convoluted, in Scuba terms, my visibility went from a minimal amount of feet to 50-100 feet. Optimal dive conditions. I was able to process information, to make decisions, to form thoughts like I haven’t been able to do for years, probably since 2020 when we all got trapped inside & the only real thing to do was doom scroll into eternity until we all became massively addicted to the light boxes in our pockets. I felt more grounded & at home in my mind in a way that was refreshing.

The first & a half thing that I noticed, which coattails a little off of the previous point, was that I felt a lot more creative. I felt a lot more inspired, I was coming up with new melodies & songs randomly throughout my day instead of having to sit & try & force creativity to work in my favor. While I didn’t get the chance to full on sit & work on something creative during this time off, I am certain that it would have been an easy & enjoyable practice just based on the frequency & freedom in which ideas were flowing to me.

The second thing that I noticed was that I didn’t have the “doom scroll crave” that I normally do. By completely eliminating socials as an option my brain didn’t feel that pull to open up instagram, Tik Tok, or twitter & just scroll. This opened up a lot more time & space for me to do other things & in term made me a lot more productive & economical with my time. That being said, I found that not having the ability to scroll made time pass a lot slower, often to the point where I was often ready to be done with my day far before it was actually time to call it.

The third thing that I noticed was that my attention span was much improved. As someone with ADHD who is struggling to stay focused on this blog as I’m writing it because I know my phone is just a few feet away with the option of scrolling now that I can, I was actually wildly impressed with how much better I was able to maintain my attention span. I actually ended up getting pretty far along in a book that I’ve been reading for a while now & made my way through a few shows entirely focused on the plot & the goings on, without that constant tug to scroll.

Unfortunately, as I mentioned above, I have fallen back into the grips of social media having ended the fast this morning, especially Tik Tok. There's just something about it that feeds the dopamine meter in my brain in just the right way & I think I’ll need to put deeper limits on myself with it going forward. This morning I set my social media timer to one hour total for the day, of which I have already exceeded that because I often use social media in passing, splitting my attention while doing other things, in addition to using it as a messaging system.

All in all I think it’s incredibly healthy to step away from our socials from time to time. It allows us to reprioritize, to clear our minds, to put aside comparison, & rediscover our focus. I took my daily phone screen time from 6-7 hours down to 3-4 without it & I honestly thing I should have extended the break another half a week or more just to fully purge the need of it from my system. All things in moderation, right?

As always, much love to you all,

-C

Blog: Into The Unknown

I remember when Frozen 2 came out. Whether you’re a fan of the franchise, of the installment or not, the message of the film was clear; you have to embrace & chase the unknown to become who you’re meant to be. It was not my intent going into this blog to make it about the second film in Disney’s smash hit world of Frozen but I have been engaging with a book the last few days called The Pivot Year by Brianna Wiest & the stars ended up aligning with the computer animated universe in message.

If you read my last blog “If I’m Being Honest…” & saw my most recent Instagram post, you’ll know that lately I’ve been feeling rather lost & directionless in life & this feeling has been causing me mucho stress. I desperately wanted someone to come along & tell me which way I was meant to be going, what I was meant to be doing, etc. I was relying on an external someone I have now realized is irrational to think about & who I know is not coming. It’s also not someone else’s job to be that for me.

It’s now that I’d like to divert the conversation a little bit because apparently my last blog was not clear in my context. This is not how I feel spiritually, it is how I feel all around in life. In my thoughts, in my movements, in my motivation. I got a lot of “lean into God, lean into Jesus” comments & that’s not in the least bit what this is all about. I promise you, no one who is struggling with finding their identity wants to hear “you need religion” in any form. Apparently what we need is the hit Disney film, Frozen 2 released in 2019, starring Kristen Bell, Adele Dazeem, & Jonathan Groff…that’s a joke by the way, before you come for me in the comments section…

Back to my point.

This book, The Pivot Year, carries with it the tag line “365 Days To Become The Person You Truly Want To Be” of which there are 365 daily meditations for you to think about as you go about your business. Now, I’m going to be hyper realistic here & let you know with firm understanding or self, my ADHD will not allow me to get through all 365 days of this book. Just stating the facts here. I’m sure I’ll lose interest, or it’ll get put under something & I’ll forget the book exists entirely, but what it did do is remind me of the quantum mechanics in which the world functions.

I’ve stated this before & I stated it again earlier today in my Insta post, but we for the longest time knew the electrons of an atom existed not because we were able to see it but because we could measure its energy levels. It’s only recently that we discovered electrons, the physical negative charge of an atom that orbits the nucleus, exist in a quantum state. This means that they pop in & out of our ability to physical pin point them only at the point in which someone is trying to observe them. If we look at an atom, in its entirety, & don’t focus on the electrons of said atom, they won’t physically, visually exist to us. BUT if we turn our attention towards the illusive particle, they become precise before our very eyes. This is a phenomenon falls under something that we call the Copenhagen Interpretation.

I bring this up in part because it is what I have become. I have pinpointed the electron that says “I am lost” & therefore I am. I have become this thing because of a belief in its existence & the reaffirmation of its presence on almost a minute by minute basis. The daily meditations within The Pivot Year have help me to come to this revelation & to hopefully find a way forward by leaning into the unknown.

In the early meditations of the book it talks, as Joe Dispenza often does, about how the unknown is the opposite of a scary oppressive thing, but is in fact a chance for endless opportunity. Much as phrases like Carpe Diem try to express, tomorrow is not guaranteed, so why should the outcome be? If you have no idea what tomorrow holds why can’t it also hold the most positive, fulfilling thing possible? Why must we always view the vailed unknown with the fear of tragedy? What if we were to prepare for our future in a positive way instead the way we prepare for disaster to strike? Something akin to the opposite of doomsday prepping. What if I decided, today, as I write this, that I’m no longer lost? That I have purpose & drive & motivation to move towards the things that give me life? How quickly would a clear conclusion take form in my life?

If I can convince myself that I’m lost, that I’m not talented, that no one wants to work with me or help me or listen to/read my art, & have that manifest to some degree, then what would happen if I did the opposite? What would happen if I made myself believe that I am on the right path, that I’m abundantly talented, that everyone wants to work with me, support me, listen to my music, read my posts? Where would I end up?

What would happen if I leaned head first into the unknown & embraced it? Not as some dreaded thing but with wonder & as an endless stream of positive possibilities? I’m not saying to not be realistic, toxic positivity is very much a thing, I’m just thinking about reframing a mind set around the things we want, need, & the people we want to be. A mental ‘fake it til you make it’ if you will!

As always, much love to you all,

Thank you for reading!

-C

Blog: If I'm Being Honest...

If I’m being honest these blogs have become a difficult thing to maintain. It’s not out of any desire to stop creating them or any lack of time but instead out of a lack of inspiration. I started this part of my site as a way to engage with my audience about the things that I love, specifically when it comes to food & travel. I made this my public journey because I didn’t feel that I could properly share my expertise & adventures over further points of social media & wanted a place that was distinctly my own to fill with the inner machinations of my ever curious mind. However lately this has felt a bit like a constant uphill battle.

I used to look forward to writing these entries every week, but back when I started I had content to share & insight to give out. Now I feel like I’m doing my best to come up with a topic each week that people will find interesting & engaging. I wanted to start this as an expanded travel & advise blog but along the way, be it due to ADHD or lack of funds to cover the travel aspect of this, we drifted away. None of this is to say that I don’t still enjoy crafting this blog each week in the broadest of terms, I think I’ve just lost what made me feel like this was something special & am having a really hard time rediscovering that & creating entries that I think you all will find helpful & inspiring.

If I’m being honest, I feel burnt out but don’t want to stop the content drip because I know the moment I do I won’t pick this back up again. That’s just how I seem to function. This would be thrown to the wayside like so many other content projects that I started & fizzled out on & I really don’t want that to happen with this as well.

I’m sure many of you who keep up with me on the regular have noticed that my posts have been coming in late, or not showing up at all & I promise you it’s not from a lack of trying, I’m simply feeling entirely fried. If I’m being honest I feel as though, each week, it’s a losing battle to try & come up with a topic for this site that I can sit with & write an entire blog about. I don’t want to be this way & for a while the “requested blogs” were really helping that because it took my mind off of the pressure of what I feel is a near constant failing to incept anything meaningful topic-wise into my mind. I have become jaded & disheartened by the things that used to bring me joy because, if I’m being honest, I feel entirely lost at the moment.

I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing or not doing & it feels like everyone else has their life figured out or at least pointed in the right direction, but me. I just want so badly for someone to tell me, in earnest, what I should be doing & guide me along that path, but that’s not how life works is it? We are all our own people, our own psyches, our path is our own & it is distinct to each of us. I just feel like I got derailed somewhere along the way & I have been fighting to get back on course ever since.

I didn’t mean for this to turn into a rant or for it to become a cry for attention because, as always, I write these blogs to forge connection. I lay my thoughts & my heart out to you all, not for your sympathies, but in the hopes that you will see this & think “wow, that’s me” & realize that your situation is not as lonely as I’m sure it feels. I’m grateful that I have the ability & opportunity to make the art that I create & to have been so many of the amazing places that fill the archives of this page, please know I never take that or your patronage for granted, but I know sometimes we all get lost & want just someone to stand up & say “I understand your struggle & it is valid.”

I will continue doing my best to post here weekly &, of course, on time, thought I can’t make any promises. I am a human after all, prone to failure & struggle, & that’s okay. You’re not always going to agree with what I have to say or the messages that I try to share & that’s also entirely okay. This is my platform to speak freely & openly in the hopes of finding like minded people or starting constructive dialogues. If you would like your own echo chamber to do the same I’d be more than happy to share my Squarespace referral code with you.

Wow, this blog has really gone awol hasn’t it?! I hope wherever you are, who eve you are, that you’re having a great weekend or a great whatever based on when it is that you found this post.

As always, much love to you all,

-C

Blog: Saudade

“Saudade is an emotional state of melancholy or profoundly nostalgic longing for a beloved yet absent something or someone.” From its original Portuguese it directly translates specifically to the word ‘longing’ though the type of longing it is indicative of is so much deeper.

I’ve seen this word floating around a lot over the last couple of weeks, mostly on different social media platforms where my algorithm has been skewed towards to traveler in me. A lot of those who are sharing it are doing so in respect to this field of interest; travel, & it’s really struck a chord with me as someone who has been feeling rather “saudade” for a while now.

To those of you who are not travelers, who don’t crave the almost ingrained need to go out into different parts of the world & forge connections with the people who live there, this concept may be very foreign to you. But to those of you who are like me, this feeling is all too familiar & it can be immutable & often impossible to satisfy. You see a lot of us crave the authentic human relationships we make in our travels but we often do so all at once. We want the ability to have these people we love to see, whom we see seldom, if barely at all, in the places that they live their lives, but we want the ability to do so simultaneously with every one we’ve made connections with. We want to be able to call up our friends in Scotland or Singapore or Seattle or Australia or LA or Hawaii or New York & get dinner with them, or hang out face to face, because they make us feel that sense of what it is to be human & have genuine, effortless connection. Needless to say this is, unfortunately, an impossibility.

They say the marker of a true friend is that you can grow separately, living your respective lives & having your own lived experiences, but when you come back together it feels like no time has passed even though you’ve grown & aged as a human being. For those who truly find bliss in our travels, not because of how it presents outwardly & idealistically, but because of how it gives us an understanding of the different parts out this, our human tribe, these scattered friendships around the globe leave us in a constant state of this longing. But unfortunately travel is expensive & often the plans we so desperately want to lay fall through because of lack of funding or time.

I had a moment of great privilege a few months ago. I came to the realization that we wouldn’t be hitting The UK this year & that made me really depressed. Not just because I love to venture out, but because, in a lot of ways, The UK, its people, its culture, its locations, have grown to be a bit of a second (or third, or fourth) home for me. Any time I hope the pond it doesn’t feel touristy or like a vacation, but instead feels like a homecoming. My sadness came out of a realization that I wasn’t going to get to see the people & the places that I love so dearly & not out of missing out on a “vacation.”

I think that truly those of us who are “travelers” will tell you that our “vacations” are seldom that, vacations. We spend our time abroad doing the leg work to meet people where they’re at & experience a glimpse of life through their eyes or their shoes. I often return home from trips feeling like I need a vacation, not because the trip was draining, it’s often quite the opposite, invigorating, I’ve just been on mentally, physically, & spiritually the whole time & need time to recenter & recalculate my bearings.

As per usual, I say all of this to inform. I feel like the vast majority of people travel to vacation & those of us who view it in more of an ambassadorial way are seldom spoken about or acknowledged. Just know that most days your traveler friends are experiencing a state of saudade & whether you empathize with it or not it is a near constant in most of our lives.

As always, much love,

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: Fine, I'll Do It Myself...

When I started recording “When He Was Me” I knew instinctively that I also wanted to put out an acoustic/stripped version of the song along side its more produced counterpart. Initially I had what we are now calling the “acoustic version” for its own full release, but after talking it out with PR & some other friends in the industry it was decided that we would treat the secondary release as supplemental. At the time of this decision the only version of “When He Was Me” that was completed was that of the original version, or what I’m calling the OG version & the timeline for the acoustic work’s completion was very tight. I began my “hi, let’s do a song together” texts to the normal avenues & producers I know but quickly found them all occupied with their own ambitious & excitingly full schedules so I found myself a bit at a loss of what to do. That’s when it hit me, what if I just…did it myself?…

Call it divine intervention, fortuitous winds, whatever, but the stars really aligned on this one. At the beginning of this process of doing something I had never done before, release something I produced/engineered/recorded/played entirely in the spare room upstairs, all I had was my MacBook with Logic Pro (recording software for those not familiar), my Lauten LA 320 microphone that I’d been using for voice over & demo work, & my Apollo Twin interface (how you connect your microphone/instruments to your computer). I was in desperate need of some studio monitors, a better workspace set up, & some plug-ins (effects added into Logic to make tracks sound or behave in a certain way), but I guess fortune favors the bold.

First came the desk. I was writing with the abundantly talented Frye in LA a few times ago when I was there & commented about how much I love her simple but hella effective studio set up. She sent me an entire gear list, including the studio desk she was using which sat around $300 on Amazon. I’d saved it to my wish list & never really thought much of it, that was until I started this project at which time I got a ping from Amazon telling me that the desk was on sale for a third of its normal price, $100. So here I sit, laptop propped up on my bright yellow studio desk!

Second came the monitors (speakers). I happened into McKay’s here in Nashville one day in search of an iPod for my niece. McKay’s is a used book/video/tech/etc warehouse by the way. While I was perusing the tech section I noticed a pair of Rokit 8s up on the shelf for the price of $190 for the pair. Now Rokits are fairly solid studio monitors & 8s are worth about $300 a piece brand new. So it was a steal. I asked the attendant about them, he said they’d been brought in a few hours earlier & worked great, so on home with me they went. I’m actually sitting here in between them listening to focus music as I type!

Last came the plug-ins. I was running a version of Melodyne already, I’d purchased it at a dizzyingly low price during their Black Friday Sale but I needed to upgrade the software to have it be affective at editing not just vocals, but polyphonic instrumentation (multiple notes being played at once, think of a guitar, ukulele, banjo, mandolin, non-MIDI piano, etc.). Once again, in waltzed a deal, $99 bucks to upgrade, normally $250. Now the deck was stacked in my favor!

With all of the pieces of my studio Infinity Gauntlet now assembled, it was time to get to work!

The first thing I did was lay down a rough. Rough vocal over simple piano chords tracked on my Roland RD-700, the only technically non-acoustic instrument that I played on the track. Tracking live piano is next to impossible to make sound good in a setting outside of an actual studio. From there I added rhythm guitar, a simple chorded finger picked pattern on my Collings Triple O that was also supplemented by full swinging strums panned left & right in the latter choruses. That’s when I hit my first snag.

You see, I don’t own a bass. What I do own is a cello, the only problem was that the bow of my cello had popped meaning the fastening holding the hairs in place had broken on one end. Another problem was that my local music shop was currently out of bows & would have to order me one. However, in the interim, I decided that I was going to track cello like a bass, using it as a plucked instrument to fill out the lower range of the song. With the bones set it was now time to fill in the intricacies of the song.

I knew I wanted to pay homage to the slide & dobro in the original version but I lack both a pedal steel & a dobro so instead I opted for a simple bottle slide on my acoustic. Tracking it in two octaves I still felt it lacking so I waited for my new bow to come in & added in the cello part later.

Next came the vocal texturing. I feel like Josh & I always end up with a stack of “Ah’s” in most of the songs we do & the OG is no exception having them lay essentially the pad for the bridge. So the “Ah’s” got tracked. Then came the Gregorian section.

I always feel like Rami Malek in Bohemian Rhapsody when I bring up the Gregorian section, to me it bears the same energy as him saying “now comes the operatic section” & while the Gregorian section was essentially just a pad in the OG version, I wanted to do it myself in the acoustic. This ended up being the lowest I’ve had to sing since the time I sang bass in Kansas State Choir for an old Russian Hymn. We’re talking Ab2’s low. (My music nerds will get that one.)

The last bit of vocal flavoring I added in were what I refer to as the “call & response” parts. These can be found in the second & third chorus & are essentially just repeating the chorus lyrics back after they’ve been sang. They mad the original recording so I felt the need to replicate them here as well.

With all of that in place I set about tuning, adjusting, equalizing, adding reverb, etc. etc. etc. which took me the span of several weeks. From there I got some feedback from friends who felt it needed a little more drive to it, so I added Cajon & Shaker into the mix. With all of these parts established it was finally time to go in & retrack the lead vocals.

I think I ended up doing around twenty-five different takes of the song mostly all of the way through. There were times where I’d listen back & feel I was still missing the line & would go in to add another five or six takes just to make sure I got it. Then came vocal compiling, cutting & reassembling the vocal lines into the one you hear today. After that I went in to make sure the timing on certain lines fit well & certain notes that were too quiet were turned up & those that were too loud, softened. This is an entirely baseless, stupid, & not meant to be a “brag” because I have no issue with the tech, but I actually barely tuned the vocals at all, I wanted that raw performance. From there I added chorus doubles & a single layer of background harmonies to keep things simple.

Finally it was time to send off to mix. Jonathan Roye was more than patient with my steep & fumbled learning curve & allowed me ample opportunity to go back & fix the numerous mistakes I made along the way, including at one point having to go back & entirely redo the Melodyne of all of my vocals (quantize tempo, reduce loudness, increase softness, tune, etc.). After a few back & forth between him & I we passed it along to Mike Monseur who mastered the track effortlessly!

All in all it was definitely a struggle for me. There were many times where I felt like giving up or trying again to find someone else more readily equipped to do it, but I’m glad I pushed through. This is definitely going to be one of those tracks that I’m not going to be able to enjoy for myself for quite a while, simply because of all the work & stress around it. It doesn’t feel real to me that I’ve put it out, it doesn’t feel real to me that I’m not able to be hyper critical of it anymore & make tweaks, because it’s out. It’s done. It’s time to move on to the next thing & let the song be what it’s going to be!

If you’d like to stream When He Was Me (Acoustic Version) you can find it in the button below!

As Always, Much Love,

-C

Blog: Your Intuition Is Usually Right

That’s it. That’s the blog. Do with that information what you will.

Call it a “gut feeling,” “funky energies,” a “headed up from the universe,” a “download from your angels, guides, or the Notorious G. O. D.,” but for all intents & purposes today we will be referring to said phenomena as intuition. It’s an impulse that’s often indescribable in reasoning or conventional logic but it is something, nevertheless, that each of us has to one extent or another.

However, intuition is something that most of us like to ignore. Whether it’s because it’s inconvenient or goes again the grain of what we want, we often caulk it up to nothing more than a funny feeling & try to continuously hold down the ‘snooze button’ on the alarm telling us that we’re steering into dangerous waters. The longer we ignore the warning, the more it grades on our energy & makes us feel emotionally exhausted & to continue the boat metaphor farther, it’s very much giving the “you’re good” segment from SpongeBob in which he & Patrick are stewarding a ship saying “you’re good, you’re good, you’re good,” as the Flying Dutchman’s ship continues to scrape along the sides of the rocks.

Our intuition is one of those engrained programs that most of us humans have, just like the uncanny valley, though I’ve seen animals exhibit their fair share of intuitive abilities as well. If an animal is aggressively afraid of someone, there’s usually an intuitive reason (unless there’s past trauma involved).

I’ve been notoriously bad at listening to my intuition which, of late, has come back to smack me over the top of the head with a big, fat “I told you so.” There have been certain people in my life, certain events, that I wanted so desperately for my intuition to be wrong about, but it never is, & that brings us to the point of this here blog.

Your intuition is seldom wrong, it’s usually right. Again, let’s read that together:

Your. Intuition. Is. Seldom. Wrong. It. Is. Usually. Right.

Yes?

There are usually reasons that the energy feels off, or even the opposite, there are usually reasons that your energy steers you towards something even when it’s not the path you want to take. As the saying goes: Man makes plans & God laughs. I for years put off coming out. I for years put off being open & honest about who I am as a person & as Stephen Lovegrove will tell you, the path that you find the scariest is usually the right one. It’s not hard either. If you sit there & ask yourself “what do I need to be doing?” You’ll usually get a very swift & clear answer. Say hello to your intuition. It knows the path, it knows where you should be headed & you’ll watch as your life gets easier & easier once you stop fighting it.

I once heard a story from a self made millionaire who said the key to his success was his belief that there is no such thing as a coincidence. Any thought, any feeling, any event that happens that feels coincidental is that propelling force trying to rocket you forward, trying to give you a chance to stop & listen & fall freely into the flow of the powers that be, whatever form that takes for you.

I had intuition bite me in the ass this last week & in all honesty it was something I’ve known forever but didn’t want to accept. I didn’t feel angry or betrayed, I felt disappointed. Disappointed that I seemed to be right about something that I really didn’t want to be right about & that sucks. But the beautiful thing is, I have the faith to recognize that maybe it’s for the best & maybe it was something that needed clearing so that something better could come my way. Time will tell.

I’m going to try to be better at listening to my gut, to the voice in my head that says “that’s not right, or that’s absolutely correct” & acting accordingly, because I’ve found when I do I’m a lot happier, a lot healthier, & a lot more good comes of it.

Trust yourself & trust your intuition!

Much love as always,

-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: For The Love Of God, Pre-Save Your "Friend's" Songs!!!

Hi, it's me again. I know some of you may be looking at this somewhat passive aggressive title & be thinking “well, that’s not very comforting” & to that all I have to say is that neither is looking at your list of people who have pre-saved your single, as an artist, & not finding your friends among them. I know, in the past, that I have written a similar blog to this but I feel the point I am trying to make is worth restating because I don’t entirely think that most people realize the simple impact that pre-saving a song can have for an independent artist such as myself.

Pre-saving essentially is just pre-adding a song to your Spotify library. Even if you never plan on listening to the song, a pre-save tells Spotify that there is demand for the song & that they should be pushing it on their end. In doing so it boosts the likelihood that the song could actually get in front of an actual Spotify curator & not just sorted with the rest of the millions of submissions that they receive from the millions of other struggling artists trying to get heard. Tech companies only have so much bandwidth & so many employees, so showing them that something should be a priority to them will actually get it listened to. If they boost it in turn it gets said content boosted, just like any other content based platform. These technical reasons aside its also just a good practice to pre-save the material that the people that you call your friends are putting out.

I have so many people in my life who call themselves fans of mine & my work but who seem to be MIA when it comes to the pre-release of the work. Sure they’ll share the song when it comes out which is fantastic & we love to see it, but they are sorely neglecting the support that is desperately needed on the front end. It is almost more important for you as a supporter of the artists in your life for you to pre-save the song than it is for you to share it or stream it once it is released because it gives it the potential of being heard by a much larger audience than just said artist’s social circles.

Here’s the kicker of it all. You never have to listen to the song that you’ve pre-saved if you don’t want to. Ever! And guess what else? It still counts! Meaning that you can have no love for your friend’s music, whatsoever, & still support them with this simple act that takes literally five seconds to do. Is all of my friend’s music my cup of tea? No. Do I still pre-save as much as I can? Yes, of course, because I know how impactful that can be on boosting their aspirations in even the smallest of ways!

Going off of the blog that I wrote last week about supporting the hard work that the creators in your life put out; Copious Content Creation, this is hard, time consuming work that we are literally giving away for free to you all. It takes a lot of time & effort to make a song & have it at a level that is worthy of being streamed. Is it really that difficult to make three or four clicks to support that?

All of this also acts as a bit of a round about way of trying to get you to pre-save MY single that comes out in just two week’s time, When He Was Me. You can find the pre-save link in the massive button below & I would appreciate, more than anything, if you would go in & give it a pre-save, even if you have no intention of ever listening to the song!

As always, much love to you all!

-C

Blog: Copious Content Creation

Hiya!

Over the past week I’ve had a ripple of commonality come through multiple times between multiple conversations with several different friends of mine, the issue of content creation. All parties involved, in each individual dialogue, are singer-songwriters, none of whom are signed or have any sort of team behind us pumping out content on our behalf. The complaint that we each had was just how long it takes to make scrollable content & how taxing it can be to constantly be in that mode of creation that has to be, by nature, a tad frivolous.

If you're not someone whose job depends on how many eyes are on you at a given time this whole blog may come as a surprise to you, but content, in any form takes a long time to put together. I’m going to show you a few examples along the way to help illustrate this point but just know, that’s what you’re in for on this blog.

I’m going to start with a few examples of my own. Let’s talk about blogs. These ones, these one off, ten to fifteen paragraph numbers that I do almost every week take me on average an hour & a half to two hours. If that seems like an odd number to you then let me break it down. If I’m being honest, the days leading up to Friday are spent brainstorming, coming up with ideas for what this week’s topic should be & typically going with the one that feels the most natural or that I feel the most passionate about. We aren’t counting that time in our final number here simply because my ADHD’d brain allows me to do that while I’m doing other things. It’s not dedicated time, but it is still taking up mental space. Then I set aside time to sit down & do what I’m doing right….now! right…..NOW! which is typing out the blog. If there are specific points that I want to hit along the way I’ll type them down below in the order I want to present them in so that I know which way to steer this whole stream of consciousness train, otherwise I derail. Oh look, Squirrel!

Next, after my ten to fifteen plus paragraphs are done, which usually takes over an hour, I go in & edit. After I’m satisfied with my post, or at least deem it passable, it gets uploaded to square space with tags & categories, & all that good stuff. Then I’m still not done. I have to share this mother so that you all will see it. I post it to Facebook, swapping back & forth between my personal & artist page, I make an Instagram story post, & I post it to Twitter (& now I guess Threads too). All of that amounts to the total time of an hour & a half to two-ish minimum. That’s a completely different story for travel blogs.

Travel blogs take me days. I honestly don’t know if I can calculate just how much time goes into them but I have written about this in the past as well. For a travel blog I first have to travel which, yes is fun, but the way I do it, to be able to share an experience that others will want to immolate, I do a lot of research first. I find restaurants, activities, cool locations & dives, & put together a loose itinerary for my trip, broken down (again, loosely) by day. There are certain elements that are higher priority than others on said itinerary that get shifted around as needed.

While on the trip I have to be sure I’m making content; taking videos, taking pictures, writing down where I went, what I ate, etc. I keep a running tab over my whole stay that I refer to throughout my time writing these once I’ve returned. If I’m diving I have to go through & edit the video I took, as well as take screen shots from said videos so that there’s underwater photo content to attach here. That’s usually a several hour endeavor. Then I have to repeat the above blog process all while linking the places mentioned within said blog. Then after the written portion is complete I go in with the photos, upload them, & position them so that they look all nice & pretty. Truly travel blogs take me daaaaaaays to do & that’s even after I split them up into two to three day parts.

Then there’s music. The average songwriting session lasts around three to four hours & often you don’t get to finish the song in its entirety. After that you have to go in & do rewrites for lyrics or melodies that don’t quite work. As far as production goes, there’s tens more hours thrown in. Tracking all takes place in real time but you need to do multiple takes & then also go in & edit said takes. Equalizing, adding effects, mixing, mastering, etc, etc, I would guesstimate that most songs have a minimum of twenty hours thrown into them even before you start promoting, doing photoshoots for promotional content, reaching out to different publications, playlists, etc.

Going back to what each of us were specifically talking about with content creation is video. The first conversation I had was with Leena Regan who put together little highlight videos from the writing camp that Songbird Society put together. Each thirty second video took her around five hours to complete. You have to go in, edit the clips, color correct the clips, pick a song to have them synced to, sync the cuts in the video to the beats of the song, write a personal, catchy caption, share it everywhere you can.

Kate Cosentino was talking about the same thing, about how exhausting it is to make content for scrollable sites like TikTok or Instagram that you pour hours into just to have it be seen by a handful of people. Throwing your efforts into the void, hoping to catch someone’s attention enough to engage with them, failing & having to do it all over again.

For my Tarpons video I had to find a karaoke track of Feed The Birds from Mary Poppins to sing over, rewrite the lyrics to be about tarpons, record & edit vocals, then sync my dive footage up to the beat changes of the song. Probably a good four to five hours of work & the video went nowhere.

All of this is not meant as a poor poor me type of thing. I write all of this to make you all aware, to show you what it looks like to be a modern artist trying to promote yourself in hopes that one day you’ll have a team behind you who pays someone else to put hours of their time into these posts instead of cutting into your already limited time. I also write all of this so that maybe you’ll be a little more loving to the content people put out, especially your friends! These videos that make you laugh or smile or cry take time & work. These songs that you put onto your shuffle & never listen to with intention again take time & love & effort & are snippets of people’s lives! These blogs, especially the travel ones, take a lot & we do it because it’s what we love, but when you’re constantly throwing yourself out there into the oblivion & finding yourself fallen short each time it gets incredibly disheartening. That’s what causes creators to stop, that’s what causes musicians & artists to sell their gear, causes creatives to get a desk job, because they have tested their metal against the void & the void has swallowed them up.

If you’re here, reading this blog I’m so grateful for you. If you listen to my music, share my posts, anything that supports me in even the tiniest bit as a creator & an artist, I thank you. From the bottom of my heart, I thank you. You never know how far a simple comment, a like, a repost, a whatever else that takes five seconds to do means to someone in our field. Please be appreciative of the content creators in your life, without them this life would be so damn boring.

Much love as always,

-C

Travel Blog: Bonaire: Part Two- You Are Now Free To Dive About The Island.

BONAIRE

Hiya! Welcome back! You’ve stumbled upon the second part of my blog regarding my dad & my trip to Bonaire! If you haven’t read Part One you can find it linked below! I would advise reading the original before venturing into this here sequel, simply for continuity’s sake. Once you’re done you’re more than welcome to join the rest of us here on our second & final part!

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PART TWO:

Day Three

We were officially free to roam about to cabin, or in this case, the island. No longer were we contained to Calabas Reef or training dives, it was time to go out & have some leisurely fun. I’d planned out our dive sites the evening prior & basically gave my dad the “trust me” when it came to choosing them, which he did.

One of the main reasons that divers flock to Bonaire is the sheer freedom of it. The vast majority of Bonaire is shore diving, boat dives are few & far between & if they are involved it’s usually at Klein Bonaire or the National Park, both of which are currently closed because of the spreading coral disease. Resorts rent out tanks & vehicles & people load them up to go off to one of the many sites around the island & walk right into the ocean.

I’d planned four dives for us on the Friday in question, loading up the truck with three tanks each before heading off. The first dive site in question was to be at the Southern tip of the island at a spot called Red Slave.

Not a great name, I know, & it detoured me from buying a few shirts later on that has the dive sites all listed on them, but the site gets its name from the historical site adjacent to it. Red Slave is so named because it features a red obelisk & a number of red huts which were former slave dwellings during the days of the slave driven salt trade in Bonaire. There are several obelisks along the west coast of the island, each bearing a color of the dutch flag (including one for the monarchy), & each representing a different grade of salt that was sold at that specific site.

History aside, Red Slave is a well sought after dive site that is typically skipped over because of the swells & the current, but we’d been tipped off by Jack the night before that the current forecast was calling for lower than normal currents at the site in the morning. So we set our sights on Red Slave & made it the site of our first dive of the day. After parking & suiting up we made our way into the water.

The site at Red Slave has a long expanse of sand before the reef drop off. The sloped is rather aggressive, though no where near a sheer wall like the dives up north are. The majority of the coral life here are different varieties of whips & gorgonians, things that like to flow in the current. Apparently this site is also an almost guaranteed turtle sighting, of which we saw none. What we did see were lots of little Pederson Shrimp, a Flamingo Tongue, & as is common in the Caribbean, a plethora of Royal Grammas.

Once we were out of the water it was time to lightly dry & head up the road to our next site, The Lake.

The Lake is so named because of its double reef structure, a common trait among many of the dive sites on the southwestern side of the island. A double reef structure means that you have your normal shore reef, then you have a sand flat, & then you have yet another reef farther off into the ocean. Another thing worth noting about diving is that you always want to start your dive at the maximum depth that you plan to go in your dive. With all of that in mind we made a beeline for the outer reef once we entered the water.

The top of the outer reef at the lakes sits just above the 60 foot mark, which for a new diver like my father, is as deep as he is certified to go. My max depth is double that & some change at 130 feet or 40 meters but being the stand in guide for the two of us, I limited our dives to his max depth. As we were crossing the sand bed, which sits at around 80-90 feet in depth I noticed a massive Queen Conch scooting across the sea floor. It had to be at least a foot across.

On top of the reef we were greeted by the usual suspects; Parrotfish, Trumpetfish, more Grammas, but as we were cruising along we began to hear a faint grinding sound, indicative of a motor boat. Sure enough, right above us on the surface rocketed a motorboat. It always surprises me just how load boats are underwater, it makes me feel bad for anything down there with ears.

We doubled back across “the lake” & investigated the coral colonies along the shoreline reef. My father made the joke at some point to someone that I’m really good at finding the little things in the ocean; the tiny crustaceans, the interesting mollusks, the tiny fish. I think that Lembeh trained me on that front, but on this dive I managed to find a little group of Neon Gobies who had set up a cleaning station amongst the stony corals. They were cleaning the dead skin & parasites off of a couple of Bicolor Angelfish when we rolled up.

When we got back to shore we were met by two Pelicans who were fishing for baitfish in the shallows. We also met a couple from Southern California who had moved to Bonaire when they retired to dive every day. We asked them where we should grab lunch, as we were both damn near starving, & hadn’t eaten breakfast. Despite being a leisurely sport, diving can really take it out of you. They recommended the Ocean Oasis Beach Club just down the road, so that’s where we went!

The Ocean Oasis Beach Club is exactly what the name says, a beach club! It has a rather large restaurant with a full service bar & an assortment of different cabanas all along the beach front. The cabanas can be rented for different time periods throughout the day & are full service with cabana attendants. As I stated, we were starving as well as parched so I got an Awa Di Lamunchi (Curaçao Limeade) & a Salted Caramel Espresso Frappé. Both were to die for, my dad also ended up ordering the limeade after trying mine & the frapp was nothing short of a milkshake. For lunch I got the Ocean Club Sandwich which was a mix between an egg salad sandwich & a grilled chicken sandwich with a side of Yucca Fries. The fries were topped with Sambal which is an Indonesian sweet chili sauce that I hadn’t seen since my time in the South Pacific! My dad got the Crab Roll which was served Maine Style with a Japanese twist! It smacked too!

After lunch we made our way back to the resort to trade out the four empty tanks & add another two to our truck bed. The garage at the shop that serves as a self serve tank depot closes at 5 PM so you have to have all of the tanks that you wanted out before then. Once they’re closed they have a separate bin with a lock to drop your empties after your evening/night dives. With one tank left a piece from the morning & a newly acquired one for the night we headed back down south.

The salt trade in Bonaire is still very much alive, in fact, the majority of the south end of the island is devoted to the harvesting of sea salt. There’s a spot about halfway through the salt flats that Cargill uses to process & load the salt onto ships to send out all over the world, it also features one of the most famous dive sites in Bonaire, the aptly named Salt Pier. I was advised by Rob at Island Hopper here in Nashville to hit Salt Pier in the evening one, because there are far less people diving there, & two, because there are occasionally dolphins there in the late afternoon/early evening.

We didn’t run into any dolphins, but that’s not to say that Salt Pier wasn’t still full of wonders. There’s something eerily awe inspiring when you find yourself forty feet below the surface, under a man made structure, surrounded by aquatic life just going about their business. It has a bizarre unnaturalness to it, almost like when you come across an abandoned building in the woods or an old car that’s just a pile of rust, enrobed in plants. Diving under the salt pier had that time of dissonance to it. The columns also emerge at you from out of the mirk & stand before you in an almost intimidating stature. It’s also entirely easy to forget how massive these structures are until you’re literally right up underneath them, from the shore they don’t seem as daunting.

At Salt Pier we found huge colonies of Sergeant Majors brooding on the discarded building structures the dotted the surroundings of the pier with their purple clutches of eggs. We found a few Purplemouth Moray Eels, tons of Fire Coral, & a school of Yellowtail Snapper.

After our dive we once again went back to Tropical Divers to retrieve all of our night dive gear (lights, locators, etc.) & ditch the wasted tank.

I’d been doing a bit of research & found that a lot of people recommended night diving at a site called Something Special, which was actually a fairly urban spot. Located at the top of Kralendijk’s downtown area, Something Special is half a muck dive, half a reef wall. The site serves as a mooring camp for a lot of smaller boats & the bottom is doted with mooring sites & just a little bit of trash such as tires & even a typewriter. The appeal of Something Special is two fold. The first perk of it is the Tarpon. Tarpon are large, prehistoric sporting fish whose whole bodies are covered in flashy silver scales. They look for the lights of divers at night & come out of the dark to use the light to help them hunt smaller fish. The second appeal is the muck species such as frogfish, seahorses, & the like.

Once again we missed out on the intended fauna of the dive with the exception of the Tarpon. We got in the water right about sundown & made our way through the dusky shallows until evening hit, that’s when the Tarpon began to show up.

The first glimpse of one that I caught was through the edge of the beam of my flashlight. The large fish cruised slowly by wary at first of us. As I continued to follow the Tarpon into the darkness with my flashlight my torch ran smack, dab, right into another one, only this one was staring straight at us, its eyes reflecting its own beams into the night. It wasn’t long until the Tarpon found their courage & were right up next to us, waiting for us to find fish in the muck for them to try & consume. When they’d spot one in the light they would head towards it, slowly turning sideways to try & get the fish in their mouths. The only one that I managed to help catch a fish gulped down a toxic Sharpnose Pufferfish, which is swiftly regurgitated.

Tarpon aside, the dive also gave us many fun saltwater critters; a Slipper Lobster, an Arrow Crab, & more Moray Eels.

As we were wrapping up our dive we ran into a school of Needlefish pressed right up against the water’s surface. If you got close to them or put your light on them they would go so far as to jump completely out of the water. As we were walking back up the bank to the car my dad said to me “I kept waiting for the Jaws music to start playing” when I asked him how he enjoyed his first ever night dive.

After we’d driven back to the resort, dropped our tanks, & dried off, the hunt for dinner began. I’d been recommended Joe’s Restaurant many times from people all over the states & in Bonaire & it just happened to be next door to Tropical Divers, so we thought we’d give it a shot.

Joe’s menu is an interesting assortment of food but the area in which it truly shines is its tasting menu. You get the option of either four or five courses of whatever the owner, Bart, has decided to make for that week. We chose to go five courses & it did not disappoint! The first course was a Goat Cheese dish complete with Langoustines, Microgreens, Mango, Brandy Poached Onions, & some form of Apricot Sauce. It was outstanding! Second was a fish course topped with a different varietal of Poached Brandy Onion, Sun-dried Tomatoes, Garlic Croutons, & an Herb Emulsion. Again, out of this world. The main course was Duck Breast served with a Carrot Puree & a Morel Mushroom Au Jus. Bangin! Then came the cheese course which was an assortment of Dutch Cheeses with different jams & preserves. The Rhubarb was exceptionally good. Finally, the dessert course, A Flourless Chocolate Cake made with Prunes, Apricot Puree, & some form of Sweet Dutch Ambrosia-esque Salad. Dinner was topped off with a house made Liquor that tasted of Vanilla & Caramel.

Perfectly full, exhausted, & a wee bit tipsy, we walked back next door, I popped into the shower to wash the day off & then it was once again off to bed.

End Of Day Three

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Day Four

The rule of diving where flying is concerned is 18-24 hours, you’re not supposed to dive within 18-24 hours of a flight. With that in mind we limited our day to two tanks during the morning load-up, though in hindsight we probably could have done a third. That’s okay though.

Since we’d exclusively dove the southern sites on the island we decided to make our last two dives northern. I’d picked out two dive sites for the day: Tolo or Ole Blue & Karpata. Both sites came recommended from both folks in the states & those on Bonaire.

The dive up to Tolo took about thirty minutes. We stopped on the way at a dive shop for a couple of Cokes & a new writing pad for me as my pencil had decided that it had had enough of saltwater & was going to break away a la Kelly Clarkson. When we arrived at the site there were already about a dozen other cars parked with divers &/or snorkelers getting in &/or out of the water. We too had soon parked & were readying our gear for entry.

The shore on the north side of Kralendijk is far rockier than that to the south. It often features sheer cliffs & the dives are much more in line with a wall dive where you need to monitor your depth since the bottom isn’t always visible & your depth in the moment isn’t always as apparent. It’s very easy to find yourself sinking lower & lower without even realizing it, something that my dad didn’t believe until we were in it.

Both sites, Tolo & Karpata are wall dives, both also feature a top reef at around 15-20 feet in depth which makes for a nice, active safety stop. You can cruise around looking at things while you’re breathing off some of the nitrogen that has entered into your bloodstream.

We made our way into the water, through a large rock beach that required a bit of fancy footwork to navigate on your way down. Really fun to do while lugging a scuba tank on your back & fins the lower length of your legs in your hands. We cruised along the top before spilling over down the wall.

The northern shore had its fair share of Creole/Ruby Anthias, something I actually used to have in my tank at home until they got too big & started eating the other fish on my reef. Additionally it has a large quantity of Grammas, French Angelfish, Parrotfish, Bicolor Angelfish, & assorted corals.

When we reached the top of the reef we found a pair of Caribbean Reef Squid hovering just above the whip corals. We followed them for a few minutes but it was very clear they wanted nothing to do with us. Occasionally you’ll get squid who want to interact with humans, not today though apparently.

We finished the dive, got out, went ahead & switched over tanks while making small talk with the groups of people readying or tearing down around us then piled back into the car to head up shore to Karpata.

I mentioned Lewis in part one, the geologist who came to Bonaire with the student group & stayed longer to go out dive on his own. Well he’d been diving with a man named Mario from Rio De Janeiro whom he’d met at Tropical Divers. Lewis had departed a day earlier but Mario & his wife Bene were still going around the island to dive sites. Mario spoke minimal English & I speak little to no Portuguese but Bene spoke a bit of English & a bit of Spanish & so do I, so she & I would basically mediate the conversations between the four of us.

Anyway, as we’re pulling out of Tolo we almost ran smack into them in their car arriving. We continued up the road to Karpata & were starting to gear up when up rolls Mario & Bene.

I, up until this moment, was under the impression that Bene & Mario had been diving together but she explained to me that she doesn’t dive, just Mario, so I extended an invite to him asking if he wanted to dive with us & also wanted me to lead said dive, which he did.

The climb down to Karpata is about twenty steps. At the bottom of the steps is a bouldery beach covered in foot in diameter cobbles that shift relentlessly & are covered in algae. Needless to say, it was tricky getting into the water. Apparently a lot of people start at the previous site, cliff jump with their gear, & drift dive to Karpata. Ya boy is afraid of heights, so the jump wasn’t happening.

The drop off of Karpata is a lot more abrupt than that of Tolo. As we started down the wall my dad & I leveled out right around 60 feet, his max depth. Mario just kept going. I watched him descend further & further until I think he hit around 100-120 feet in depth. I indicated to my father to stay at his 60 foot depth & I went down to about 80 to be the middle space between the two since I was leading the dive. Mario stayed at that depth pretty much the whole time until we looped around to come back. Just before we looped around though he motioned for me to come down to around 90 feet where he’d found a massive Lionfish hiding in the reef wall.

Lionfish are invasive to the Caribbean, usually only being found in the South Pacific. They began to populate the Caribbean because fish tank owners decided to release them into the ocean instead of trying to sell them or turn them into a local fish store. Now there are many countries in the Caribbean that actually have bounties out for Lionfish, paying for people to kill them & turn them in to help to stop the spread of them as they have no natural predators in the Caribbean.

Back on the top reef of Karpata we found even more squid, this time a whole school of them, I’m talking at least 8-10! I found another Flamingo’s Tongue Snail & there was also a massive school of Atlantic Blue Tangs that swam by, picking algae off the rocks as they went.

For lunch we had planned to head inland & visit the town or Rincón. Rincón was built in a valley away from the ocean to hid it from the frequent pirate raids that used to occur around the time Bonaire was being colonized. We went to visit Posada Para Mira, a local Bonaire cuisine restaurant that, as the name suggests, has quite the view!

As I mentioned, Posada Para Mira is a restaurant that serves local cuisine. This includes everything from conch to goat or iguana stew in addition to plantains, beans, corncakes, croquettes, etc. For lunch I ordered a cup of Goat Stew, Fried Conch, & a fresh pressed Passionfruit Juice. The goat stew & the juice were bomb as were the sides, but to be honest, I was expecting the conch to be breaded & fried, not just pan fried, but I guess that’s my own error.

After lunch we decided we were going to go up to Washington Slagbaai National Park & drive around. Diving in the park is currently prohibited, but there’s still a lot of wildlife to see & the park makes up about a third of the island’s total area. Unfortunately we arrived about forty minutes too late because they stop drive arounds at a certain point. That’s not to say that we didn’t still get to enjoy parts of the park. There’s an educational center there with several different areas set up to demonstrate the former goings on of the area, which at one point was a plantation.

After exhausting the limits of what we could do at the park entrance we decided to take a loop around the island to see the East Coast.

Certain parts of the eastern side of Bonaire are mangrove forest, others are coves, at any rate the eastern side has much higher tidal activity & while people do dive it, it’s not advised as a beginner because of its often unpredictable nature. So, leading a trip with a novice diver, the eastern side of the island was off limits, at least where submersible pursuits are concerned. We did manage to stumble upon a plethora of the island’s invasive Donkeys & a large flock of Flamingos hanging out in the salt flats.

We made our way back to Tropical Divers where we returned our tanks, washed our gear, & began packing up for our flight the next day.

At around seven we started to get hungry again & decided that we wanted to go back to Joe’s, this time to try some of the items on their regular menu! We split the Goat Cheese appetizer since the goat cheese app the night before had been so bomb. It was different, but still smacked! I got a Joe’s Salad which was decadently light & refreshing & ended up with the pot roast-esque Veal Cheek for dinner. For dessert we had a Three Musketeers which was a Dark Chocolate Lava Cake with Milk Chocolate Ice Cream & White Chocolate Sauce & a Red Fruit Cobbler. Both were exquisite!

I can’t recall much of the rest of our evening other than planning for the next day, getting timings down, & showering before bed.

End Of Day Four

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Day Five

We had a few things to get done on our final morning. First, we needed to check in with Prisca & make sure we had everything in order & finalized for out Stress & Rescue certification. Second, we needed to check out. Third, we needed to collect our (hopefully) dried out dive gear & pack it. Fourth, we needed to go get breakfast & Fifth, we needed to go get souvenirs.

We got everything squared away with Tropical Divers & were able to keep our key until eleven. We then set off to town in the rental truck.

We parked in the town square & went in search of a few trinkets for my dad to take home to Kansas. Most of the souvenir shops were still closed but we happened upon one t-shirt shop & loaded up. One for my dad, one for my mom, one for my sister & brother-in-law, one for my niece, one for my nephew, etc.

Shirts acquired we went back over to Rumba Cafe for breakfast. I once again got a Smoothie & I think an Egg Sandwich. To be honest, I was a little distracted by my dad’s order of Tuna Salad at 9:30 AM to remember what exactly it was that I’d ordered.

After breakfast we stopped at one more shop so that I could get a tank top, then we headed back to Tropical Divers one last time so that I could try to cram my shirts into my already overstuffed lack of luggage.

Our flight was at three-ish but our rental car had to be back at noon, so we were early. Everything from there went fairly smoothly! The flight back to the states was smooth, though Miami International makes you walk six & a half miles just to get through immigration, recheck your bags, & go through security.

All & all it was a good trip, a lot more work than I think either of us were honestly anticipating it being, but in the end I feel confident in my abilities as a Stress & Rescue diver & now as a Master Diver! I can’t wait to see where the next adventure lies & I can’t wait to tell you all about it!

-C

End Of Day Five

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END OF PART TWO & END OF BLOG SERIES!!!