Hello there and welcome to tonight’s episode of thoughts flowing from Chris’s mind onto the computer screen via Chris’s fingers… the same fingers that flit across the piano keyboard in my musical career. Incidentally, my mind-finger relationship is huge in my life, as it seems that most of the time I’m either at a computer typing, at a piano playing… or teaching someone else to be at the piano playing. I still remember being a child, no more than 11 or 12, and my dad offering me $50 to learn to type 50 words a minute. I was so proud of myself when I accomplished that goal, and so ecstatic by the reward: $50 is no meager sum for a unemployed youth such as I was!
Anyway, typing at the computer keyboard came to me easily… just as, i suppose piano playing did. And soon after I learned to type, I realized an extraordinary thing that continues to this very moment: I had an internal typing keyboard in my mind… and I was ALWAYS using it, always typing words up there. That, or I was using the internal piano keyboard in my mind… mentally playing piano. In my conscious mind is a constant processing of words and music. Words and music. Mind and fingers. Thinking and typing. Thinking and playing. Words and music. It is almost as if my mind and body were created for those two things… the mental and the digital. The verbal and musical.
On another completely unrelated note, a few minutes back I told my wife I was inspired to write this new blog post. We ended up talking about our respective blogging styles, as she has started a blog recently as well. And I said to her, “We probably have different blogging styles. My blogs come in a knee-jerk rush of jerkdom… jerking through me” (no doubt aided by the aforementioned mind-finger relationship). And she said, “There’s your title for your blog!” And I thought, “No shit! You may be right.” And here we are!
Yeah, so anyway, this is another free-form ramble that hopefully has some merit (while hopelessly having no form to speak of), where apparently I am reminded of my childhood days back in the early 90s where my dad lived in Berkeley, California, near where Green Day used to perform at the Gilman before they were anybody. And one bright spot in that time period was when my dad offered me $50 to learn to type 50 words per minute: a business offer I could not refuse!
I can still remember the delight at being given a chance to accomplish this. I remember it clicking for me… I can do this, I thought. I’m on board with this! It seems to me that all accomplishment starts in the mind, with us believing that we can do something. And soon enough, voila–we can. That was the case for me in learning to type 50 words a minute for $50.
Okay, I feel now that I need to address my last post. I have been thinking about it all weekend, and I would like apologize to whomever happens to be reading this for the fact that I published a post in which I was cranky and depressed. I find it VERY stupid and lame, and even probably unforgivable, to share anything whatsoever coming from such a state of negativity. That is probably because it leaves me feeling completely vulnerable to looking like a needy idiot, or an irritable ranter… and frankly, I’m just not really sure I want to show my underbelly like that. I really would be more comfortable if you only saw me in a controlled state of self-deprecating humor or, even better, enthusiasm or happiness.
But then again, I must admit that it is precisely this vulnerability which so far is proving the most interesting to me about this blog. Because I get to show up (and be an idiot if that’s what comes out!). Somehow it seems to be going well so far. In fact, writing this blog is really helping me to change my life… the topics I bring up here are spilling over into my daily conversation with loved ones and friends, and giving me a chance to look at myself and figure out what is on my mind. This unearthing process is helping me figure out what is important to me, and giving me a chance to do something about it.
Of course, I really could have chosen not to publish the post from last Thursday… but I’m not sure that would have been the right thing to do (or that it would have been allowed… this blog seems to have it’s only system of rules, a mind of its own, so to speak… and I seem to be here to serve it).
So anyway, thinking through this stuff and really FACING it has been good for me. For one thing, it is forcing me to face the need that I have to drum up more business professionally (Translation: earn more $$$). Secondly, I am facing the fact (I almost typed “fuct”… can we say Freudian slip?) that I have had massive internal resistance to moving forward in my musical career. Yesterday I had another talk with my “higher self”, and it dawned on me that I have been making my life really fucking complicated by telling myself all sorts of stories that leave me being a victim… where life is happening to me… where I’m not in charge of my life, blah blah blah. Thoughts that obscure how things really are: that we create our lives, that I am free to create in every moment.
Here is an excerpt from the conversation (I have left my higher self in ALL CAPS, while the pathetic small-minded me is featured in small-minded normal case):
Help me, show me what to do. what do i do? what do i do?
DO YOU REALLY WANT TO KNOW?
of course, i want to know. tell me.
OKAY, HERE GOES. YOU MUST EXERCISE YOUR RIGHT TO SPEAK UP. YOU MUST INFORM THE WORLD ABOUT WHAT YOU CAN DO TO* THEM. YOU MUST TELL THEM THAT YOU EXIST YOU MUST PUT THE WORD OUT THERE. YOU MUST GET BUSY, YOU MUST GET VERY BUSY JUST PUTTING THE WORD ABOUT YOUR SERVICES OUT. YOU MUST TELL THEM. YOU MUST COMMUNICATE.
And then later it told me:
YOU HAVE ALL YOU NEED. YOU DO NOT NEED MORE GUIDANCE AND DIRECTION. YOU JUST NEED TO GIVE YOURSELF PERMISSION TO CREATE. YOU NEED TO GIVE YOURSELF THE APPROVAL YOU SOUGHT IN OTHERS. THAT TIME IS OVER. YOU JUST NEED TO APPROVE OF YOURSELF NOW. YOU DON’T NEED SOMEONE ELSE CAPTAINING THE SHIP. YOU NEED TO CAPTAIN THE SHIP NOW.
Well how about that? Pretty neat stuff, yeah? I’ve been meditating on this all day.
Thought I would share.
Another knee-jerk rush of jerkdom… er, inspiration (hopefully). From my brain to my fingers to your mind. I’m not sure I can yet tell you which treasures these insights will yield, but I appreciate the nudging. I shall take the journey. To go further with the captaining analogy, I shall double my efforts to be the best Captain I can be of my ship.
Because my entire life, and this blog, are about feeling for that internal navigator, and letting him guide me. My happiness obsession is about following those little “rushes of jerkdom.” Which really have nothing to do with being a jerk at all… but they do have to do with being honest, and being true to myself. And I guess that, for all my good qualities, being honest and true to myself haven’t always been normal to me.
But every day is a new day, and I am always learning, so maybe there is hope. Bottom line, it sure feels good to be able to sail these waters today…
*I’m not sure what ‘YOU CAN DO TO THEM’ is supposed to mean. But since these words are from my “higher self” I figured I shouldn’t change it!