How Many People?

I wrote this song when I was in a wierd state of newfound confident purpose and mournful remorse. I’d used people, places, things, to block myself from creating music possibly because of a long history of shame that surrounded it. Whether it’d be from football coaches saying “You choose guitar over music?” or it’d be from parents saying “How is that going to make money?”, when everyone else who is my equal tells me how awesome I am at guitar and song writing and making content. So the writing is on the wall and I had to have a funeral of the old person I was that believed I could live a double life of working professional and wildman musician. Often times when I’m overwhelmed I do self hypnosis which I learned from “Self Hypnosis for Dummies”.

Basically I have designed a place where I close my eyes imagine myself falling into a black void. My body gently converts into light particle snowflakes as I pass through to the other side and into the atmosphere of my own world. In this world the atmosphere has a barrier where none of my responsibilities and worries can enter. There is a beach made of soft golden sand, the waters are made out of emeralds, and there are sea rocks are made of gems and diamonds, and the temperature is perfect and soothing. It smells like sea salt and hibiscus flowers. In this world I have a spirit guide which I confide in. I decided that I would rather have a romantic like partner, basically the best girlfriend in the world and her name is Amara; and most of the time she gives me positive reinforcement or we go on wild adventures. The other figure in my dreams is an older looking me who stands at the tops of snowcapped mountains. Often these conversations are stern but also free from the ideologies and myths of this world. So I’d encourage you to make you own “astral” like world too.

Anyway the conversation basically was how many people can play music like you do? how many people have the ideas that you have? how many people have a job teaching music? how many people have what you have? And it inspired this feeling of intense gratitude when I realized not many at first, but more importantly I realized I did. I was thinking about going out to do something else after I went back to my body, but the opening riff came into my head and I sat down to record it. Originally I recorded this with a bunch of beer keg samples for the drums so I could sound like Slipknot. Mostly because I was mad that Joey Jordinson wasn’t in the band and I feel like he is what makes their songs great. So I created the drums to sound like how Joey would play and the song took on this Slipknot meets Rage Against the Machine vibe. I think the duality in this song shows the turbulent and unsteady forces of my conscious mind being in the world that moves so fast, has so much information pushed on me, so many opportunities to compare successes and failures and the other part is the openness, steadfastness, and clarity within that I can tap into and bring back into the world.