Writer / Director Eric Schaeffer ( http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0769703/ ) has offered Stuart Davis starring role in a full length feature film to be shot in Boulder, Colorado this August, 2008.  Davis’ character is a happy family man with a spiritual practice, who’s nonetheless hungry for a break in his music career.  Eric Schaeffer will play a successful actor seeking love and deeper spiritual life.  The inverted arc of these two narratives intersect with a Boulder back drop.  The film will feature an all-Stuart Davis sound track (including live performances) and will be completed by the fall and submitted to Sundance and all other festivals, etc.  No working title as of yet.

Schaeffer also announced last week he’s using Davis’ song Already Free as the theme music in his new 14-part Showtime Series “I Can’t Believe I’m Still Single”, which will air Sundays and Tuesdays this June, July, and August on two Showtime channels. The series will also be available in Showtime’s On-Demand section. 

Song of the Day: Heaven / Live
Word of the Day: Phonyxal (a word Eddie K made up last night)

Eddie Kowalczyk (Buddha front man of Live) came in last night. We had Miracle all ready, and sure enough, Eddie arrived and in about an hour knocked it OUT of the astronomical park. Can’t say how much it has meant to me to be working with him. His giving, gracious nature (and it goes without saying charisma + talent!) has absolutely blown me away. He’s done this twice now. A year ago, we tried to put this song on my album ¿What. We just couldn’t hear it. Sitting next to the songs in that collection, it didn’t make sense to us. We tried recording a version of it, Eddie spent a day back then (in colorado) building it with us, and his parts were fantastic. In the end, we set it aside, simply not knowing what to do with it. When I called Eddie to tell him it wasn’t going on the album, I was quite dejected. Really bummed out, because I believed and felt such a conviction about the song, felt bad after all he’d done for it, telling him it got cut. His response really made an impression on me. He just said “don’t worry about it. really. that song will have its time. its time hasn’t come yet, but it will. i know it.” he was right!

Three days ago, Alex and I sat down and started working on it (starting from scratch), and the music, arrangement, and production simply FLOWED out of us. it was one of the easiest, seamless things we’ve ever worked on. we thought we’d be rushed to have it ready enough for Eddie to sing on, but in fact we were sitting around six hours before he arrived, trying to think of anything else it needed. but there wasn’t. it was as though the song had gestated for a year, and came out fully formed, done, ready to run. eddie arrived, effortlessly put his magic in, and voila’. we sat and talked about movies and ken wilber and spirituality for an hour. it was one of those nights that leaves me wondering how on Earth I got so lucky. it have spent a lot of time lately living in gratitude for the people in my life. i LOVE everyone i work with. i mean i really love them. it is a mysterious recognition, a way of knowing each other that is hard to describe, but impossible to miss. Love is the way.

In that work-play of love, Eddie is an exemplar to me, has been from years ago. I have learned from him for years. As a father, artist, spiritual practitioner, friend. I have drawn so much inspiration from him as an artist and person, it feels like a profound milestone to have this song come to fruition with him so central to its realization. Thank you, Eddie!

Today we have moved further in working on Fear of Light. Lyrics

Trapped inside a theater
of faces I defend
I say they’re only stories
but I am what I pretend
to be

You show me a lover
who has wandered
toward the flash
I’ll show you a layer
in the sediment
of ash

All I want to do
is melt back into you
still I fight
fear of light

It’s easier
to focus on a figment
in the sky
than look
into the secret
in someone else’s eyes
and I know why

This fevered dream
this suffocating night
keeps my heart asleep
in fear of light

All I want to do
is melt back into you
still i fight
fear of light

Song of the Day: Real Fine Love / John Hiatt
Word of the Day: Delibation / A slight taste or knowledge of something

The great 2008. Gateless gate. Weightless weight. Stateless state.

Of all the New Year’s Eve’s I’ve had in this, last night was probably my favorite. Just me and my wife. Quiet dinner for two. Conversation, absolutely fantastic food (thanks Trilogy!). I felt like dining on the light side. Had a cheese plate, some bruschetta, a hot pastry stuffed with brie. Exceptional at every turn. Marci had a four course meal including some of the best pasta and thai rolls I’ve ever had. We made our New Year’s resolutions.

I am filled with such an immense feeling of gratitude and wonder at 2007! Before I move on from it, I want to give it such a big bow of love and thanks. 2007 highlights:

*My daughters changed in ways that put a bittersweet ache in my belly again and again. In 2007 I was guided by my girls into new rooms of love. Every day they crack a new combination, and another vault inside me swings open.

*My wife and I became closer and stronger than ever. We made it through a wall of white noise. White noise is white light unrecognized.

*Alex Gibson and I finished my new album, Something Simple. I got to be the person who was there as he evolved from great producer to a Master of the Art form. No lie, no exaggeration. On my album, this summer, I experienced Alex transform before my eyes. It was like watching a horse become a Unicorn. Two month gestation period. Womb of sound. At the end of the summer he turned in an album so perfect and undeniable I felt like we suddenly had a magical sphere around us. Like we had something fortified with X factor. We can go anywhere with it. Do anything with it. Ride it like a magic carpet! It dissolves walls! It fixes leaks! Shine it like a beacon! Apply it to wounds! It’s important not to get to grandiose about projects, I know. But sometimes you get to be a part of something that’s time has come. It’s not a rush of Napoleonic delusion. It’s an emergent Presence who’s time has come. The atmosphere assembles anew around it. It transfigures. It has a way of dispelling struggling, demystifying the puzzle. And somewhere in the making of this album, that quality began to define everything about it. The album kept showing us over and over that it was *CHARMED*. It started when:

*Steve Brill let me write a song for his new movie Drill Bit Taylor. He sent me ten minutes of footage from the end of the film, and asked me to try writing some things. I put together a song. He said “It’s catchy, but… what’s that humming? I like that humming thing you do at the beginning.” I re-wrote the song around that humming. It became Already Free. I wrote the whole thing watching Owen Wilson’s character in those last scenes. Seeing his part and the female lead (Leslie Mann, I believe), I was hit by Relationship as the Way. The way we wake each other up. Enlightenment through family, love, relationship. And something simple and new sparked in me. I saw all those years of Zen meditation and retreats and esoteric practices as an audition for an even deeper form of practice. Family. Kids. Wife. And the song came from that place. My wife, my family, mandala of Mystery.

Steve liked it. He put it in the film. It was time to make the rest of the album. The day I landed in L.A., Steve called me and said ‘come to the lot’. I drove from LAX to the Paramount lot, walked into a cavernous theater where Steve and a half dozen people were finishing up the movie. They had my song cued up with the movie, and I watched and listened as Already Free played on an absolutely gigantic screen and piped through a surround sound system. They were mixing it on a board that was literally the largest console I’ve ever seen in my life. It looked like a 400 channel mixing console, it went from one side of the room to the other. Watching the footage with my song was one of the great milestones of my entire career. It hit me, at that moment, that things were about to change. A lot. Sounds romantic but it’s true. Not just the movie, but what that situation represented. I was on the Paramount lot watching my song in a major motion picture. I definitely felt a shift. That was the first definite sign the album was charmed.

*But the signs kept coming. For instance. We were recording at Henson Studios, an enormous lot which is sort of the epicenter of rock ‘n roll in Hollywood. It’s about a dozen studios on one lot, plus sound stages, video and film production facilities. Virtually any act or producer you can think of has worked there. U2 to Karen Carpenter. Legends are always walking around, that’s not unusual for that kind of facility in showbiz. It’s a lot. But what is different about Henson is the community. There really is actually a community feeling there, and the artist support each other and interact. That is VERY unusual in my experience. Usually getting rock ‘n roll egos to co-operate is like herding cats. But at Henson, it’s different.

For instance, one day John Shanks (grammy winning producer, has sold some 50 million plus albums in recent years) was taking a lunch break from his Celine Dion project. He goes “what are you guys working on?” We tell him. He says to let him know if we’d like him to play some guitars. We look at each other and smile YES! We get out our calendars. When would be a good time? He shrugs. “How about now?” We jump up, scramble, get our gear, head over to his studio (which is next door) and John spends the night laying down all the electric guitar tracks on the song, and they are SO good.

It was CHARMED. Fairy dust. SURREAL. But that kind of thing happened over and over. Eddie Kowalczyk came in and spent the day recording gorgeous vocals for Miracle. A highlight of my life to working with that Bodhisattva. He’s an exemplar for musical agents in the Mystery if there ever was one. Wendy Melvoin came in and put guitars on Sugar Bullets. Brendan Obrien played guitar on Already Free, and in one of my favorite moments of my career, I got to hear Alex Gibson and Brendan Obrien cutting heads on guitar solos (Already Free). Dave Levita absolutely hit Twisted Mystery and Wand out of the park. At every turn people arrived and sprinkled LOVE on this project. It was that kind of summer. Alex would be on the lot, he’d see Randy Jackson. Randy would say “what are you working on, Alex?” This new album. “Oh, come on up. Let’s talk about it.” None of it was planned or pushed, it all just came together in a series of perfect surprises.

2007 blew my mind. I cannot wait to see what wonders will come in 2008. I have some incredibly strong intuitions…

Song of the Day: Miracle
Word of the Day: Pregnant

The problem is I only brought one shirt to Hollywood. Literally. I stepped onto a plane with one shirt. the one I was wearing. I’ve been wearing the same shirt for the last three days. today I sent my assistant Leslie to buy me some t-shirts. i’m still getting the hang of having an assistant. i had to come up with tasks for her to do, and made some mis-steps. first i had her work on a rubic’s cube. but we were both like “how is this helping my career?”. then i had her write apologies to my wife (for future use), but she was like “how do we even know what you’ll have done wrong?”. good point. that’s WHY they call it the “future”. it’s not determined. it wasn’t until i had Leslie begin working on a press release that i glimpsed something… constructive. i felt -assisted-. and that was a clue. now i follow that feeling.

had a great morning. steve and i had one of those morning brainstorms. i think there was peyote in our coffee. we discussed making a movie together. i would tell you more but it would incinerate your retinas.

tonight Eddie K comes to cut vocals.

can’t get a hold of my wife. missing my family like nuts. get over here, honey! dreamed i was playing with my daughter last night.

speaking of daughters, here are the lyrics to the song we’re working on:

that night your comet fell
into our wishing well
it made your mother laugh
it cut your dad in half

my love we knew your name
a year before you came
even then you pulled us close
and scattered all the ghosts

ache of a hundred funerals
in the miracle
ache of a hundred funerals
in the miracle

we’ve studied scripture since
some secret left its hints
etched in your finger prints
with a love your life evinces

what moves between the sand
that falls between the hands
hides in the open sky,
looks out behind your eyes

ache of a hundred funerals
in the miracle
ache of a hundred funerals
in the miracle

your mother and i kissed
it ripped a hole in space
you tunneled to her womb
at the point of every place

in love your life begins
in the midst of a million twins
and death is just a door
to the love of a million more

ache of a hundred miracles
ache of a hundred miracles

Song Of The Day: Stay / Oingo Boingo
Word Of The Day: gaudiloquent / speaking joyfully or on joyful matters

I’ve been sick. Haven’t been sick in years, so I’m enjoying the peculiar quality of awareness that comes from fever-visions, nyquil, and sudden weight loss. What a curious Universe we live in. The other night the Orchid in my bedroom transformed into a spectre and literally scared the living shit out of me, and then made me laugh out loud. Sure. Alright.

Song of the Day: Sky God
Word of the Day: Skeuomorph skyoo’e-morf, n (Greek skeuos vessel, tool, and morphe, shape)
A retained but no longer functional stylistic feature. This term was originally used in architecture and archaeology to refer to a feature whose origin was functional, but whose only vestige was as a decorative ornament. It is of great use today as imitation seams, supports and other things are applied to bits of plastic that came directly out of a mold.

Right now in the studio we’re working on Sky God. This is a new song I wrote after I saw that movie with Mandy Moore in it where she plays a Christian fundamentalist girl. I was inspired to write a song from the perspective of her character. So, I wrote Sky God, mostly sincere, actually. Just envying (loosely) the simplicity of a mythic belief system that has all the answers pre-fab. Then I remembered talking to Sam Harris and he said something like, ‘instead of praying to some sky gods’ and I laughed and laughed. Just thought that was a funny phrase I hadn’t heard, but loved. I wondered what it would be like to try and write a trans-denominational fundamentalist Mythic Belief System song. So then I imagined myself as Mandy Moore’s character and I wrote Sky God, which is one of the happiest, bubbly songs I’ve ever written. Very catchy. You might hear it in clubs. Lyrics:

Sky God
This one’s real
my God
is revealed
when I bend and kneel
I can’t tell you how good that feels
No more asking questions
I better count my blessings
If I’ve learned one lesson
Why ask Why?
Give it to the Sky God

My head feels fuzzy
and it’s all because He’s
doing what He doesn’t
’till it’s what it wasn’t

(Refrain)

You better take a look now
at the one true book now
Read it, open hearted
Till the clouds are parted

(Refrain)

All the drugs I used to do
Alll the sex I used to have
were only shadows on my path
Now my heart has been redeemed
and my spirit is remade
and the world will feel His
righteous wrath and anger
Cuz the end is near
the end is here

Sky God
(Refrain)

Of course it gets a little dark at the end there. But whatehv. Now I’m trying to get Mandy Moore to sing on it. It turns out she’s in town next week doing a concert. I’m going. We’re getting the song to her. I mean, my two dream artists to work with were Saul Williams and Eddie K. Saul came in and did Easter on the last album. Eddie did Miracle on this one. So, I feel the next natural step in the mystical progression of the Mystery is to work with Mandy Moore on this song.

Went golfing this morning with Alex, Nate, Steve and me. Very funny to listen to Steve tease Alex and Nate. It was like 400 degrees outside. I dressed like a frat boy. I can hit the living shit out of a ball off the tee. I’m not just saying that. I drove a ball 320+ yards on more than one occassion in my life. But today, my short game was deplorable. I was an embarassment to Denmark. Whatehv. I still had fun as heck.

I’m implememting “Suit Day” on this record. We’re all going out this Sunday and buying suits. Then, one day a week we’re coming to the Rock Office in our suits. And it’s going to freak out everyone on the lot. They’re going to think we’re cops or some shit.

song of the day: desire / u2
word of the day: caconym / wrongly derived name

today we’re doing live drums and bass. in the studio that U2 recorded Rattle and Hum in. sean hurley on bass (extraordinary) and Craig Mcintyre on drums (killer bad ass). we’re doing the live drum / bass combo on seven or eight songs. things have been moving, but also somewhat scattered. there has been a lot going on for Alex, Nate, and I in our individual ways, and we’ve struggled the past few days to find our perfect rhythm together. we sort of started out of the gate super fast, knocking out songs in two or three days, but we’ve hit a different zone. i believe after today, when we have our drums and bass totally squared, we’re going to accelerate again. not all songs are using “real” acoustic drums. many are electronica type things. this album is another step away from the singer-songwritery kind of thing. some songs (nothing in between) clearly have to be me and my guitar. others (encore, deja vu, sky god) are not anywhere in that zone at ALL. and i love both. bottom line is music is music, and my loyalty is to manifesting the fullest vision of a song, rather than trying to remain in safe, recognizable territory.

moved into a new house for the rest of the month. spent part of yesterday getting sheets and rugs and stuff at target. my wife and family arrive in a couple days, i want the house in L.A. to be cozy and happy for my three angels. it really made me happy getting stuff that i know my oldest daughter will love. the house is very spare, empty, but i find myself really loving that spartan / quaker / zen vibe. it’s amazing how much we don’t need. plus, whatever i buy has to travel across the country with me to Colorado when i leave at the end of the album (which seems a long way off, but i know time will fly). it will be our first cross-country trip as a family. i’m quite excited about it. i bought a hybrid car which gets great gas mileage. i ran my old into the GROUND. that flawless car went 200,000 miles without a single thing going wrong with it. blew my mind. this time around i researched and went with another car based on environmental points and family safety. kind of splurged and got a lexus hybrid. Insanely enviro-friendly. Each time I change vehicles, I feel It’s time to look back at my car history.

When I started touring, almost 20 years ago (i’m 36 years old, I began doing shows when I was sixteen or seventeen) I drove a Ford Bronco II. It was marvelous, cozy, and my p.a. fit perfectly in the back. It was four wheel drive. My main memory of that car is having sex in it. Sort of a cramped space in terms of the nasty, but you could put the seats down in back and manage if you were nimble enough. Adolescent male bodies become remarkably pliable when intercourse waits in the balance. That car, I believe I put 100,000 miles on. Then I got a subaru station wagon. Very good car, adequate for sex, but I happen to hate two things above all else: Station wagons and the color blue. The Subaru was both, and how I was persuaded to buy one is beyond me. But it was incredibly durable and practical, and it went a long, long way without need of repair. 150,000 miles in that one, at least. After that I got an oversized Dodge Conversion van. It was horrible for the environment, but great for sex. It had an enormous bed in back. I had so much room, it was basically an apartment -a very dangerous and unwieldly apartment- on wheels. A sink, an area for my meditation cushion. Blinds, fridge, the whole nine yards. A lot happend in that van. A lot. Including narrowly escaping death on a half dozen occasions. That piece of shit rear-wheel drive monstrosity almost put an end to me in ice storms, floods, tornados, thuder storms, blizzards, and even dust storms. I simply abhorred it as transport, but adored it as mobile residence. Slept in it 150 nights a year, pretty much. Probably put 150,000+ miles on that thing. Toward the end of our relationship I developed acute headaches on every trip, and wondered why, until a mechanical type pointed out that the exhaust pipe was broken, and there were also holes in the floor of the van right above the hole in the exhaust pipe. The inside of my van was a vacuum, sucking all the fumes from the broken tail pipe up into the cabin, where I grew more benumbed with each passing hour. My dad and I took it to the garbage dump, where they CHARGED me to take it. I had to PAY to get rid of it. Sad. It was a shrine to promiscuity, in a way. But even that crumbles. After the “Dodge Mahal” as we called it, I got a Ford Escort Station wagon which I bought from my mom. What is up with the station wagons? That car simply would NOT die. It was exceedingly uncomfortable to drive, but of course, it was indestructable. A deer committed suicide on it once as I was on tour in Wisconsin. My favorite memory from the Ford Escort was the time I made out with a girl (who was in a different car) on the interstate, going 65 miles an hour. We stuck our heads out the window and kissed on the freeway. Total stranger. Long story short, it sounds outrageous but it’s true. It is actually very hard to do, and our faces kept smashing into each other. Incredibly noisy too, the wind. Not safe, so don’t try it. After the Ford Escort I had a Honda Accord, which went 200,000 miles with not one bit of trouble. Amazing car, but we sort of outgrew it as the family expanded, and my wife always regarded it with contempt. It connoted convention and pragmatism to her (*my phrasing, not hers), and she felt matronly behind its wheel. She won’t lament its passing, but I will miss her expression of distaste each time she climbed in. Adieu, Accord.

speaking of the environment, looks like the movie i just did with Steve Brill is going to make it into Save Ourselves, and be seen around the World by millions. everywhere from Tokyo to…. other places. very excited about that.

going to get some painting supplies today. feel a bunch of calligraphy and crow work coming on. have to have my book finished this month (edited by Ken Wilber). it’s almost there. just have to fill out the ending.

finishing my first screen play. very gratifying, writing in pictures.

let’s see. what Hollywood gossip can I tell you? Don Was was walking around the lot yesterday. i mistook him for a homeless person. it’s a fine line between music legend and hobo. uhhmm… what else? briefly met jeremy piven the other day. no luck on getting Mandy Moore to sing on my album, i think i’m going to release that dream of hearing her sing on Sky God she’s got a new movie out with Robin Williams though. haven’t seen it. i got an email from Marc Rosenbush, the director of Zen Noir yesterday, i’m very excited to see his film and we’re going to hang out and talk movies and have fun while i’m here.

been meditating a lot, actually. something has really clicked in that zone. i feel so very lucky, and alive. have been re-reading Grace & Grit, and that book really has settled me into an open space of joy and clarity, with an understanding how incredibly brief it all is. i’m always blown away by Treya and Ken and their story. reminds me deeply to appreciate our friendships, our precious families, these wonderfully mysterious relationships we play in, with their ineffable beauty and acute pain; its all so incredibly transient. for the last six months, it has so deeply sunk into my belly how much i love my wife, my kids, my friendships. what an amazing privilege it is to get to participate in the Mystery, serve the Bodhisattva’s vow, and especially at this time on the planet. our species is in such a blessed riddle; evolve or dissolve. i really think that’s the case. Earth will be fine, evolution will continue, but…

it strikes me over and over again how we don’t seem to grasp how utterly fragile and delicate civilization is. how oddly tenuous our very existence is as a species. that’s what i love about Save Ourselves as an environmental campaign. it’s the first I know of that has that message built-in. it’s HUMANS that are in peril. the planet will bounce back. the biosphere will re-emerge in a few million years. there have always been meta-cycles to organic life in that regard. but we, the highest evolved self-reflexive consciousness, are also perhaps the most precariously positioned. and we have gambled with that role, wrecklessly. it won’t take a nuclear war. it won’t take meteor from space. the features of human life we take fore-granted, the aspects we assume to be our bedrock are actually wispy phantoms. they could evaporate at a moment’s notice. society? civilization? the global economy, democratic governance? very very fragile. and i believe the next century or two will be decisive in a way most of us can’t seem to imagine. that’s the problem with lack of imagination. the incapacity to imagine better worlds can render the existing one undone. what is art, but that imagination?

i really love humans. i hope we make it.

song of the day: Witchita Lineman / Glen Campbell
word of the day: filemot / dead-leaf colour; dull brown

Fun news. John Shanks just recorded all the guitars on The River, which may be the first single on the new album. Sort of like having Zoro dice cucs for your salad. Or taking the space shuttle to go to 7-Eleven. It was an amazing day. First, John’s talking to my producer Alex Gibson- “hey, I’ll play on Stuart’s record”. Really? What day this month could work? “Right now would be good. Let’s do it right now.” So, on a moment’s notice, we run the song over to John’s studio, which is next door, and he spends the night recording guitars on it. Out of love and generosity. For me, it was a magic moment. I was bouyant. This album feels charmed. I keep getting chills when I sing the River, like a premonition it’s going to be the first break out song. I’ve been doing vocals to it today again, re-singing it now that I have John Shank’s beautiful guitar parts, Sean Hurley’s killer bass lines, and Craig Macintyre’s perfect drums to sing to. Makes it much easier to dial in the Spirit of it. Feels effortless singing it now.

It’s a simple song about Love. Big Love, the always, already Awakened Presence. The other experience I’m having with this song is the Grace and Grit connection. I just finished re-reading that book, and I have a feeling of Ken and Treya as I’m tracking, especially this song for some reason. In my heart I have such a feeling of gratitude to each of them, for living and dying so fearlessly, and offering the story of recognizing Self in each other. It seems corny to say, but I’ve been tracking a lot of vocals while staring at Treya’s face on the cover of the book. I would love to honor her and ken with this album going out into the World everywhere. I feel their presence in the daily life of our family. Obviously Marci and I met through Ken (they were a couple when we all met). He was best man at our wedding, is Godfather to our kid. Even though I never met Treya, I do feel her presence in all of us, including my daughters. I think she would have been happy to know of the way our stories have intertwined unfolded.

Word of The Day: Love
Song of The Day: Lightening Crashes / Live

I am releasing my single and album to commercial radio, putting the CD into retail all over the U.S. Also finishing the first six episodes of a TV show. Finishing a book, making apparel, developing movies. It’s quite intense.

So can I keep perspective? How can I find confirmation that my motives, my drive comes from the “right” place?

Is that even the right question? Is there one “right” motive? What would that be? Depends on who you ask. Today I am asking my self, and this is what comes through; There is more than one “right” reason to want a successful record. But some reasons are more right than others.

Over the course of my career, I’ve had conflicted feelings about the entertainment industry. More accurately, I’ve sometimes been conflicted about my role in it. There has been a part of me that wants to indulge. Binge. Submerge myself in Saturnalia. That part spent a decade sewing wild oats. But then more oats showed up. I still like to fuck, frolic, and fight my way through a night of naughtiness now and then. I guess even 15 years of meditation can’t erase our 1st and 2nd chakras.

Another part loves to be the center of attention. Showboat. Performer.

Yet another part was born in love. In love with creativity, spontaneity, and the simple joy of discovery that is artistry. It is no exaggeration to say that creative Mystery has been my citadel, literally my “religion” since it re-connects me to something higher.

Still another facet is deeply devoted. Devoted to awakening, to serving, not only the realization of ultimate identity as Love, but also its expression in all beings. Setting each other free with that simple recognition that is inexpressible, but immediate. When we see each other clearly, without the distorted lens of our stories -we see God looking at God through God, arising in God dissolving in God. It sees Love looking at Love through Love, arising in Love, dissolving in Love. Just Reality, as-it-is.

I used to think the different parts couldn’t get along. Like if I brought them to the same party, there would be a scandal. Embarrassment. Violence. I’m not a conspiracy type, but I think we are programmed (via mutual consent) to compartmentalize. We worship categories. Good, bad, lovable, deplorable. Sinful. Holy. Reality is more digestable parsed into these nuggets. The problem is we no longer have Reality. We have fragments.

My life in the entertainment World has been a Rubik’s cube of these fragmented perspectives. I have been a hedonist, romantic artist, social revolutionary, mystic, father, husband, saboteur, savior. Since we’re conditioned in the binary reflex, I kept trying to figure out which role was authentic, true.

They’re all true. All genuine, all RIGHT. Some are more right than others. Let everybody on the tour bus, but only have one driver. Who’s driving? Who’s in charge?

The more ego-centered passion is, the more it craves and the less it has. It’s an inverse equation. Think of a radius, a sphere. Everything inside the boundary is “I”. Everything outside the boundary is “not-I”. The less “I” includes, the more there is outside it. The more there is *out there* to crave, want, desire. Because it is literally beyond me, outside of my reach. I define my self by that separation. Impelled by the limit, I crave what is not “I”. I want a bigger “I”.

But do I crave my beating heart? Do I desire my finger tips as they type these words? Do I long for my eyeballs? The thoughts “I” have? No. It seems wacky to imagine craving your own beating heart, or longing to possess your own finger tips. But that’s exactly what I do, all the time. When I long for love, when I crave the energy in sexual discovery, when I desire to possess, succeed, or attain.

What becomes clear (if we are blessed enough to be ushered into the Mystery in this way) is that boundaries are bogus. Every one is a chimera. They are still useful. They remain relevant. But relevant doesn’t = Real. Inspected from the Point of All Places, boundaries are just beautiful ephemera. I am grateful to Show-Biz for showing me that. Very literally, my Tantric Teacher has been the Entertainment Industry (aka Samsara Circus). Oddly, my insatiable lust and craving have put me in contact with the simple recognition of what always, already is. We are free. That’s our nature. There is no lack. Nothing is missing.

Back to the original question. Why do I want a hit record? Which boundary of “I” seeks that? They all have their reasons. Let each reason be. Also understand the reasons are not equal. Some have more Love than others.

One reason we make and share music is Love. That is very literally how Love spontaneously expresses itself. It’s what Love looks like when the Light is refracted through millions of lamps. It’s what it sounds like reverberating through one “I”, or a billion. The Mystery loves echo. And echolalia.

Each motivation has its place, and we can distinguish among them.
The ego has its reasons.
The heart has its reasons.
The soul has its reasons.
Love has its reasons.

Song Of The Day: Personal Jesus / Depoche Mode
Word Of The Day: Salvediction / A greeting upon meeting

It’s official. Yesterday at about 4pm KBCO played my single Already Free as part of their New Music Monday. So it begins. First station in the World to play the single! It would be hard to overstate my excitement. I literally squeeled like a field mouse when I heard the news, and spent a good hour bounding around the house. Could there be any better way to start the week? The single and album went out to radio last week, and this news put a perma-grin on my face all day. Over the coming months me and Team Love will be touring and working hard to get the record out there. This is a great beginning. Thank you KBCO!