03. Stand or Bend

I wrote this song when feelings of anger, confusion, emptiness, self restraint were bubbling up to the surface. I was doing door to door sales for solar panels and I was started to get success, but I’d be so exhausted after work that I’d have nothing left for music. The other aspect was I was confused and anxious about a girl I was dating because we were supposed to go to Hawaii but there was so much harsh static constantly going between us. I had a lot of ideas for how I could start to do music, but I kept connecting to people that are sources of craziness and drama so I can stay distracted from my purpose of making music. Much can be said about social upbringing and values that say art is just a hobby or you’ll suffer for following it, but what about what I have to say? This point in my life was really scripted out either by the work pitch for sales or methodically choosing my words around the girlfriend. The inner artist wasn’t having this for much longer and it was screaming at me “Why don’t you say what it is you stand for? Why don’t you say what’s on your mind?”. I had to heed that call. At least document into a song. This is the first emergence of deliberate positive language as well with uses like “overstanding” instead of understanding; a common Rastafarian practice of using uplifting language, “trubrary” instead of “library” as an example. However with this impending doom of the trip and even after the terrible Hawaii trip I finished the song and added the “Blood Clots” at the end of for the breakdown. “Blood Clot” is like “What the fuck?” in Patois, Jamaican slang.

I wish to say that this song was when I made the change to stand up for what I believe in, or rather to believe in myself, but it was not. This song wasn’t even finished for 2 months after the initial tracks were laid down. I spent the next 3 months in darkness, despair, confusion, even the Hawaii trip was an absolute nightmare where I got on a plane and left the whole trip. Friends had died to suicide, work was still a grind, and people were jerks at the door; yet the only thing that made me happy at this point was teaching guitar.

I was working a lot on the why to why I do things. I learned that our intention and “Why” is 99.999% of the reason why we succeed at anything rather than the how or what. There was a moment when I got a sale and my girlfriend was nice to me, that I decided this isn’t worth it; why am I doing this? Is this as good as it gets? So that day I left feeling ambivalent and numb; pretty hollowed out and sore. At the time a girl I knew, super sweet, hit me up and she said she was super proud I’m pursuing music and I felt for a moment, my emotional pain had been lifted. I started to date her instead, pretty quick turnaround time; and when I worried about money I had 6 new people ask me for guitar lessons within two weeks. The why was a I wanted to express myself to max which is usually a positive message. I believe when we decided to serve the universe and God are down with the cause. The world is always serving, whether it’d be trees giving us oxygen or the sun giving us light, the universe is structured into service, and when I decided to use my talent to serve it started happening.

I listend to the book “Starting with Why” by Simon Sinek and really honed down on my intentions and why that I do things. It usually comes down to “Can I fully express myself?”. This lead to the creation of the Crossroads guitar program where I give the principles of the guitar such as chords in a basic 12 bar so people are forced to transform it into something the want, so they can express themselves truly instead of just following or copying me.

The process isn’t always pretty or easy, but this was the time when I finally started believing in myself and believing in God as the ultimate source of creativity, not a strict parental figure or scoreboard, just a source of creation that’s within everything and helps me create things to serve the world.