Archive for the ‘Blog’ Category

Whew, we’re back from the Florida trip. I had a blast, and while the weather was a bit rainy at times it was nothing compared to the 800 feet of snow that got dropped on charlottesville while I was gone! But seriously, this was the first time that I had ever been to Florida and I can’t say enough good things about it.

I especially can’t sing the praises of Jan Atkins and Fish Tree Yoga enough. Jan responded to an email from me, a singer that just released his first album this year, and who had only lead kirtan outside of his home town a handful of times, and opened up her home and studio to us warmly. I can’t think of a person that has ever treated me as well as Jan did, nor a studio that was such a joy to play at.

Walking onto the grounds at Fish Tree Yoga is really like walking into a fairy tale. It is truly one of the most peaceful, serene places that I have ever been to, let alone sang at. Since we’ve come home there have even been plans made to create a lake outside the studio! I promise that any trip taken to FTY will be worth your while. It certainly became a home away from home for me.

Back here in cville, the snow is melting… slowly but surely. Don’t forget!!! We’re having a kirtan show at the Twisted Branch Tea Bazaar on Monday the 28th. It will be an excellent way to connect your christmas & new years celebrations! Why let the party stop?

A dear friend asked me if I would post the lyrics to the last song on Waves. At Sea is a pretty old song, originally written for and performed by my old band, In Tenebris, and released on the album From Blood and Water, which can be downloaded from the In Tenebris website free of charge.

At the time I wrote the song, In Tenebris was playing shows very regularly in the Norfolk/Va Beach area, and we were doing a lot of recording through the kindness of friends in that area as well. I had, to that point, lived a pretty land locked life, so exposure to large bodies of water was a new thing for me. Seeing the water had a calming, centering effect for me that I didn’t really understand. Somehow, seeing all that water, I seemed to gain a new perspective on my life, my feelings, and the negativity and problems I had. I walked away feeling new. This still happens to me, whenever I’m near that much water.

The essence of that feeling is what I wrote the song At Sea about – in particular a beach in Buckroe Va that doesn’t actually look out onto the ocean, but the bay. Pictures from that beach are where the cover and outside tray artwork from Waves came from.

Sometimes things happen that can get you down. People, places, things. When that happens, when you feel like the world is weighing on you, what is more comforting than picking yourself up and going off into a safe place with someone you love? That safe can be anywhere, and that person can be a lover, a friend, God…

A lot of the songs on Waves were composed in the same kind of way. When writing more “Pop” oriented music, I tend to start a brainstorming session by putting together a drum loop, or a groove with a basic chord change, and then just listen to it looped for a while. Invariably, the melodies just start to come into my head, and I use a keyboard or guitar to work them out. With Waves, this process was a little different; I’d start out with the tanpura drone, and try to build a kind of… atmospheric presence with synthesizers. For the curious, Native Instruments played a big part in this album, particularly Absynth and Reaktor. Once I had built this atmosphere, I would just sit and listen to it for a while, and try to see if there was a melody or mantra waiting in it for me to find. I did this one day, and started pecking around on the keyboard for a melody; before I knew what was happening, I was playing the old familiar piano melody from one of In Tenebris’ signature songs. I hadn’t intended to rebuild any old songs, but the lyrics and feeling of this one seemed to fit the mood of the album so far… and I also decided that including a new version of an old song would be a (probably less than) subtle nod to Peter Murphy’s album Dust, which had been a huge influence on the direction of Waves.

The version on Waves contains an extra verse, which, again, I hadn’t originally intended on doing, but as I was recording the vocal tracks, for one take I just left it running, and the sound of the tanpura inspired me to keep singing.

Rain outside the window paine

Reminds me of the life I used to lead

No one to be

Every day the others come

And tell me all the things I should believe

And what to see

This is no life to live

Come and take my hand and we will leave

And wait for the wind, At sea…

The future’s calling me

Leading us away to soon be free

To live and breathe

Trust me now and don’t look back

I know that you are hurt and long to sleep

And feel relief

From this life

Come and take my hand and we will leave

And wait for the wind, At sea…

Come and take my pain away

I’ve always tried to live as they would have me

But still they leave

Here and now, I’ve found myself

And I have never felt so well believed

When you hear me

I would give all that I have

And never think of what they take from me

When no one sees

With you I will walk away

We’ll never need the things that they would bring

And we will wait, At sea…

Throw away your restless thoughts

Realize the truth within your being

And do not flee

You and I are of one heart

Cast aside your doubt and you will see

This is my plea

Open yourself to the sound

Follow towards the names, the waves, be free

And wait for the wind, At sea…

I hope you enjoy it. Om shanthi,

Jdavyd

It’s been a roller coaster couple of weeks leading up towards the holidays. I spent last weekend at a Sufi retreat in DC, and the Baraka Center ended up hosting me for a last minute Kirtan on Saturday night.

This Saturday you will find me in Yogaville at 7:30pm to sing kirtan for 30 minutes before their weekly satsang. I’m also prepping for the Kirtan at Fish Tree Yoga on the 18th in Pensacola, Florida.

Here’s a flier for the upcoming Tea Bazaar gig on Monday December 28th. I’m really stoked about this gig because one of my oldest musical friends has agreed to open up the show with his blues band. It should be a really fun night, and we’ll definitely make coming out on a Monday worth it for you!

So, here’s the short (but longer than 140 characters) explanation about my change of heart regarding twitter.

Social networking has been on a climb for years. When I first go into the internet, we had to walk 10 miles backwards uphill in the snow naked just to update our diaryland pages.

After a while, livejournal was the cool thing… and get this, you had to be *invited* to join LJ, so it wasn’t just for everyone, only the *cool* people. Eventually that changed, and anyone could join, but by then we had all gone to myspace. Then came facebook (which you could only use if you were at college… sound familiar?) and then twitter.

(I know there’s a million others in their as well. Friendster, I still love ya baby.)

Now we can have a CMS on our own domains that updates all of our other various web projects. One blog update to rule them all!

Anyway, twitter always bugged me. The concept – updates limited to only 140 characters – seemed to be the perfect example of our culture’s short attention span. We aren’t going to write any more than 140 characters because no one wants to read more than 140 characters anyway, so why bother pushing our friends/family/strangers to do more? There were some exceptions, like the use of twitter in Iran earlier this year, but the majority of what I coming out of twitter was: Keep it short, make it shorter!

So this week I was at an AA meeting, and the topic was Slogans. There are a shitload of them in AA.
One day at a time.
Easy does it.
Meeting makers make it.
Keep coming back.

I mean there are literally pages of these things. One person said their sponsor hated the slogans, and described them as, “Like being stoned to death with refrigerator magnets.” Another said it made them feel like they were in preschool.

Sound like twitter to you?

I hadn’t though much about them one way or the other, but it was an interesting thing to listen to people talk about, because most people saw these slogans as tools, and not unlike the memory aids we learned in school. One small phrase to connect you to a larger, greater lesson. Please excuse my dear aunt sally, anyone?

This sort of got me thinking about Mantras, as well, and how if you develop a practice around saying a mantra, it can act as a rope to pull you back towards your center in any given situation. It’s not unlike Kirtan, either, right? A simple word or phrase, and we instill it with power. The phrase isn’t the important thing, it’s the power we put behind it.

All of this sort of made me rethink my disdain for twitter, and the culture surrounding it. I can’t deny that there are people who are and will use it to shorten their already dwindling attention spans… but that doesn’t meant that I can’t choose to use it for something larger.

So, here it is: http://www.twitter.com/jdavyd

I promise if you don’t like twitter, you won’t like this either.

Last night I went to Charlottesville High School’s performing arts center for a Town Hall meeting about health care reform with my congressman, Tom Periello. It was well attended by people who are on both sides of this issue, and while there was some disruption, it never got too out of hand. “In the shadow of Jefferson,” said Mr. Periello, “we know how to dissent.”

There were some legitimate concerns aired last night, but in my impression – not many. Most people that chose to ask questions basically told their personal story and then asked, “What are you going to do to ensure we get some reform?” True to his campaign message that he would vote for what he believed in, not party lines, Periello admitted that he, unpopularly, was not ready to sign the bill in it’s current form, but that he was leaning towards signing if some changes were made. He also (unpopularly) expressed disdain for the Single Payer system that many in attendance were in favor of, insisting that he felt “the private sector can do it better.”

I don’t think I’m personally informed enough about the Single Payer system to agree with him one way or the other, but I can’t fault the logic at work; if the public option is viable and inexpensive, it will force private insurance to improve their quality and lower their costs, else they lose significant business. This ideal is lauded by many on the right as being the backdoor to Single Payer, but I don’t agree. I think the door only opens if they are unwilling to compete, and they just want our money too badly to throw in the towel.

One thing that Periello did draw some attention to which I don’t think is said enough in the media is that many of the 47 million who are currently uninsured actually do want insurance and would be happy to buy it were they not turned down by insurance companies due to age, pre-existing conditions, and the like. I think it is really easy for the media to forget about these people and insist that we’re dealing strictly with illegal aliens and lazy people. I hope this gets a little bit more coverage as this debate goes on.

The greatest disruption came early in the evening, when an older woman told the story of her 78 year old mother being injured in Canada and having to bring her back to the US to receive “the treatment she needed.” She also spoke of some issues with her 84 year old father-in-law. She insisted quite passionately that she had read the bill and that in both cases, her family members would have been forced to go before a government panel to determine whether or they were eligible (actually, I think i’m just being polite, and the word she used was “worthy”) of care and treatment.

This question of “Death Panels” has become one of the more volatile messages of the current debate, and we can thank Sarah Palin for it. While HR 3200 does reference the establishment of a committee, it is not one that will make decisions on the type of care your family will receive in a time of need. Section 123 actually says that a committee of providers, consumer representatives, employers, labor, health insurance issuers, independent experts and representatives of government will work together to establish the minimum amount of care a plan can cover, not the maximum. This means that everyone in the country will have the same amount of basic coverage, and places no limitation on the care you can receive based on your age/condition/etc. We have those limitations in place already – the insurance companies put them there – and removing them is one of the basic tenets of this reform.

While frustrating, it was interesting to see this woman talk with such passion. I wasn’t personally convinced that she had actually read the bill, as she suggested she had, but I can’t deny the possibility that her life experience, and the opinion panels she chooses to read in the paper/hear on the radio/etc, has shaped her outlook in such a way that did impose a Death Panel in this bill. My knee-jerk reaction is always, “Well, it’s an education issue.” This comes down to my time working in HR I suppose. The thing is, I can’t help but equate this to the birther thing, or to the people who insisted during Barack Obama’s campaign for president that, despite all evidence to the contrary, he was Muslim.

My point is – Periello responded to this woman’s question with a simple statement – “There are no Death Panel’s anywhere in this bill.” I don’t think that statement was enough for her. I’m sure she went home that night secure in the belief that this reform meant the end for all seniors, with no change from when she arrived, and I fear that one of life’s most basic lessons is at work here. “You can’t help those who don’t want to be helped.” There are a lot of scare tactics being employed about this reform right now – and again I can draw a parallel to Obama’s campaign. While the answer to these situations is education, there are people out there right now that don’t want to be educated. They want to believe that the government is out to get them. They want to believe that politicians don’t have their best interests at heart.

They want to believe (as this woman insisted) that America already has the best health care system in the world.

So where does that leave us? I’ve always been told that “you can’t teach a pig to dance,” but I can’t help but be motivated to try, because I truly do believe our current system is broken, and that this reform bill is definitely going a long way to fixing it.

On a personal level, I think that The White House is doing it right. I think that these types of inflammatory attacks on the ideas of the reform bill should be addressed, but in a calm, logical, information-based way. I’m not perfect, so it’s not always going to be easy for me, but it is the answer. State the facts, and leave it at that. If the person isn’t ready for the facts, that’s ok.

Another way to say that same basic life lesson – you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make them drink. Let’s just make sure that when they arrive there is plenty of water to go around, ok?