Acid for the Children

I ’ve often felt separate from other human beings. I have my moments of togetherness with others; I love all sentient beings with my heart and am wildly fortunate to have friends I can talk to, share joy and despair with; we loyally have each other’s back. I wordlessly communicate with other musicians, sometimes plumbing great depths. But I’m awkward with other people, sometimes even my closest friends. My mind wanders, seeing others hold hands in a circle, from my separate place. My earliest memories are rooted in an underlying sense that something’s wrong with me, that everyone else is clued into a group consciousness from which I’m excluded. Like something in me is broken. As time passes I become more comfortable with this strange sense of being apart, but it never leaves, and on occasion, I go through phases of intense and debilitating anxiety. Gnarly fucking panic attacks. Perhaps it is a form of self-loathing, that I’m often unable to find comfort in community. Am I the only one who’s fucked up like this? Can I get a witness?

Everything that is not love is cowardice.

While reading, all my confusion and hurt dissolved, and when I reentered reality, I was a little bit better of a person, a little more capable of learning from my missteps.

Nothing special about me, we've all got our own sacred place, but to access it, your mission must be pure and your aim true. Just a little thought of trying to use it for a power tool, a career move, and the process becomes corrupted. You gotta go for the joy, the pain, the adventure, the search, the journey to love. I learned that from Kurt Vonnegut. You have to be willing to dedicate your life to that journey, not as a means to an end, but just as an opportunity to trip the fuck out. Ya gotta suspend all self-judgement, and embrace all. The reward is the journey itself. And that's how I became the bass player I'm still trying to be. Just exploring for a sense of purpose.

Tears are not a sad or happy thing, they mean you care. I’m a wimp who cries too, so be it.

The greatest fault of humankind belongs to those who think their view of what’s real is the only truth.

The universe gives us the ones we need. And the ones we deserve.

Life is naught but a journey to achieve love.

The physicality and speed of the music, the sheer free abandon of the crown and the band joining together pulsing as one. Something awakened in me. I realized music could jar people out of their comfort zone, challenge them as to the very meaning of their existence. All the times in my life I'd wanted to disrupt things, to shake things up, and I now saw it being done in the healthiest way. Real alchemy. I fell in love with punk rock.

Thus my lifelong meditation on the concept of groove, what is to make deep rhythm. This becomes a huge part of my life, as a musician of course, but also the question of how it relates to all of existence. When I'm rocking a groove, there is only nature working, ain't no one gonna rock it harder than me. Free from all prison of the mind's construct, I am a fucking mama grizzly bear protecting her cubs, and I don't care if I die. I trust my animal instinct completely. I let go of every thought, let go of all the world, and KILL the groove. The hurt and pain in my heart is my ticket to fly, I surrender all earthly desires in the moment, when it's time to rock and tap the source. I gotta be the groove and nothing else, fuck the world so I can uplift the world. To all you kids out there hurting like I hurt, I'm gonna be with you there in the magic place.

LSD was good to me. Opening me up to another dimension, it helped me see what life was for, and the purpose of my yearnings... In a conscious way, it stripped away my fear of being criticized and freed me from the petty judgements I often doled out. Dissolving my ego, it magnified what was truly important, and unmasked those things that sapped my vital energy and distracted me from the path of divine beauty.

What you do now can fuck you up later for real.

I love it; I love how we are all the same, eating, pooping, fucking, and sleeping; yet the way we feel and act is profoundly different from place to place. I’m driven to try and understand the hidden differences in what motivates us, to crack the code. I’m amazed when I experience humans living in different rhythms. They have not yet violated my trust, and I yearn to connect. It seems like anything is possible in a new place. So much potential, like a newborn baby.

I've been saved again and again by angels all around me. Not just from the insane stupidity of banging blow, but from becoming an aimless flounderer. A person who maybe talked a good line about doing shit but never ever put in the word to see things through. I could've easily dug myself into a hole, become someone who never got a clear picture off cause and effect, holistic health, or emotional well-being. I bow before the guardian angels that always showed me a light and a way up. My sanctuaries of friendship, books, basketball, music, and nature kept me sane.

All my life has been a search for my highest self and a journey to the depths of spirit. Too often disproved by the competitive world, and tripping over my own foolish ego feet, but driven by the beauty, I keep trying, and I stay the course, trying to let go and feel the truth of the moment.

Such a fool was I. It's a fool who's seduced by that which feels good. Nothing but a simple fool.

I fell deeply in love with the books of Kurt Vonnegut Jr. They parented me, and gave me a sense of what it was to be a decent person, without any of the usual hypocritical rhetoric. They fired my imagination and opened me up... they gave me the soul nutrients I needed... He taught me that it was fun and beautiful to be humble, and that human beings are no more important than rutabagas. That we've got to love with all we are, not for some reward down the line, but purely for the sake of being a loving person, and that creativity was the highest part of ourselves to engage... His humorous detachment from the world's insane and egotistical violence - "So it goes" - my first hint of a spiritual concept.

I realized that music was a force that brought people together and gave them power. People living outside society need a sound to believe in. A sound that cannot be opened or emulated by squares. It inspires the marginalized and the rebels. It gives a soundtrack to their walk that only they understand. It speaks for people who might not otherwise have a voice.

I so often felt like a stray dog. A beautiful animal yes, but something ragged and wrong about me, that I'd never be fit for a more civilized society, and maybe never really know love.

Hillel, I love you. In my dreams, I love you. In my soberest assessment, I love you. In my thoughtless silence, the sun rises and sets for you.

It’s so hard when you know someone is sweet and beautiful inside, but they can’t outrun the demons and ignorance of their family culture.

It became clear that virtuosity and musical sophistication were no longer essential to me and could even be an impediment to the power of expression! This realization did not diminish my love for the most complex music, but made my world a less limited place, blowing to smithereens the walls of judgment that obscured my view of art. I was a freed man. All that mattered was the integrity of motivation, the ability to express your own world, your own emotion, with whatever vehicle was available to you.

That man is richest whose pleasures are the cheapest,” said Thoreau

this tortured energy could morph into a love that would uplift the world. True alchemy, letting go and letting anger articulate a divine vibration.

No explicit art ever hurt me.

Love. Love above the disappointment, judgment fear and hurt. Love to clear the fog that blinds us, and unlock the shackles that bind us. Life is naught but a journey to achieve love. Beyond thought, greatness resides. Anything is possible there.

All music has magic in it ya know, even shitty pop music. Thelonious Monk was once asked about what kind of music he liked to listen to, and he replied, “I love all music.” The journalist persisted, asking, “Even country music?” Monk said, “What part of what I just said do you not understand?

Many years passed before I learned of other ways to access the healthy and limitless part of my mind that psychedelic drugs had opened in my youth. In 2001, deep into a Vipassana course, a few days into silence and ten hours a day of meditation, I found myself in a psychedelic state. My body had become nothing but light, I was one with the universe and anything I could imagine was possible. I was a rock in an Alaskan stream purified by the freezing water rushing over me as a massive beautiful brown bear lumbered by. I looked up to see an intricate geometric pattern of shapes in motion in the air above; changing and unfolding, the most beautiful vivid and sharp color combinations to make Josef Albers cry with joy. I realized a profound simplicity of purpose, my focus crystal clear, I saw the beauty in all, and was overwhelmed with love and gratitude for all the joy and pain in my life. In that moment, I learned that no drug was ever necessary for a mind-opening experience.