Beulah Land

By the time I reach Beulah Land perhaps I'll really have a mop of white hair and a scraggly white beard. I've got the scraggly part already.

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I’m talking to a friend on the phone. She’s driving around a mall parking lot complaining about traffic and the fact that all her friends are out of town and always busy. She called because she can’t stand texting. She wants more face-time with people. I say it’s just the time and culture we live in… Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, texts and e-mail…these things have become skills almost as essential to modern life as reading and writing. I’m having this conversation from a table inside a Chili’s in North Carolina. I’m eating chicken again wishing I could eat some home cooked vegetables. There’s an idea in my head that goes something like this, “There’s a lot about modern life that I like to think I don’t like…but really I pretty much like things the way they are.”

I love e-mail. E-mail is easy. I get to be the king of the conversation and there’s no-one to interrupt my train of thought. I interrupt myself quite a little bit though. I’m pretty much addicted to Facebook too. I get a little excited when I have comments on my wall or messages in my inbox. I like being able to share everything that’s happening in “my world” with the world with immediate effect. I don’t own a t.v. and I take pride in the fact that I don’t really miss it. But the reason I don’t miss it is probably because I’m connected to my computer 24 hours a day. I’m ok with that and that’s the scary thing.

Modern life consists of working hard to pay for things that make our lives easier. Living in America it’s especially obvious that people trap themselves in this cycle of working to pay for things that end up forcing them to work more.

I like modern life. I like the conveniences we have. I like watching movies and playing on my computer. I like being able to record songs from my living room. I like the things that I can buy with the money I’ve earned. But I believe with all my heart that modern life is not the way we were intended to live.

Beulah Land is a better place than here. It’s the hereafter. It’s heaven. You may not believe in heaven and if not then you can think of it as a better place in the here and now. This song is one that always resonated with me so I decided to record my own version of it.

The original author of “Beulah Land” is Squire Parsons. He was recently diagnosed with chronic myelogenous leukemia.

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No Matter What.....

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You can’t just follow your dreams. I used to think that was enough. It seems noble when you say it to people… “Hey man. You’ve got to follow your heart no matter what.” The thing is most people forget about the “no matter what” and concentrate on the “follow your heart” bit. When you say “follow your heart” people relate to that immediately because everyone has a heart and there’s something in it that they want to do or be. It’s easy to grasp that part. But when you get down to the “no matter what” part things get a bit tricky. What is “no matter what”? What if “no matter what” sucks ass? What if “no matter what” becomes more than you can bear and you just can’t follow any more?

Following is passive. Being passive never got much done. Passive is nice to be with and cool in certain situations but mostly it just stays too long and doesn’t get the hints that it’s time to go home.

You’ve got to fight for your dreams. You’ve got to fight just to keep them alive let alone actually realize them. When you’re doing “no matter what” you’re fighting for your dream. So keep fighting. But if you find that you can’t be ok with that then maybe you should be doing something else.

When you build something up and focus your mind on only that one thing for an extended time frame, you start to forget everything else. When you put so much emphasis on one thing, that one thing begins to define you. That one thing becomes so big that it is bound to disappoint you. All the little things you lost focus on are now out of your life or forgotten or hazy and they cannot comfort you when that one thing lets you down. I’m not saying that having a very important “one thing” is bad. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t try hard to reach your dreams. But enjoy life along the way. Don’t stop doing all of the things you enjoy. We humans are fragile…we get broken and hurt. We need inspiration. In addition to great films and poetry and songs it is all of life’s little pleasures that inspire us. It’s the coffee in the morning and the painting and small tasks and social gatherings where that one thing isn’t mentioned. It’s the food and drink and fishing and yard work that inspire us to be better than ever at that one thing.

I built up a dream. I put it on a pedestal. I forgot about a lot of other smaller things that I enjoy in life. I placed my life’s value and enjoyment in the hands of an idea that was somewhat idealistic. After a few months I started to feel like a failure because my idealistic picture of myself living out my dream had not become a reality. So I put my head down and worked harder and after a few months felt even more like a failure because of the same reasons. I never thought to reconsider the details and parameters of my dream. I never thought to acknowledge the small victories along the way. I never thought to mark the milestones. I just kept looking for this utopia-life in which everything I thought I wanted was happening around me.

There is more to life than that one thing. There always has been and there always will be. Try hard. Do your best. Get better. When you fall down get back up. Don’t let disappointment stop you from trying some more. Don’t let failure make you fall to pieces. But don’t let ‘success’ define you either. That one thing is important and you should keep it important. But it isn’t who you are. It is not the entirety of you. Your personhood, your happiness, your fulfillment, your love, your hope, and the sum of your life does not rise and fall on the outcome of that one thing. You are more than that one thing. You are the masterful artist and that one thing is your product. You hold the reigns and that one thing cannot guide you…so don’t let it.

There’s a scene in the movie “Greenberg” where the main character is talking to his best friend. The two have lived in different cities for ten years and they are having some difficulty reuniting because of things that happened fifteen years ago. The two had been in a band during those years and Greenberg ruined their only chance at a record deal by turning down their only offer. His best friend tells him that he’s finally embracing the life he never expected.

I understand this statement perfectly. You have a dream that doesn’t pan out. You always feel ‘stuck’ no matter what else you do because you can’t let go of this idea that you could have been different or that your life could have been better. Sometimes you meet people who once had the very dream that you have and they are bitter, unhappy people. Sometimes you meet people who moved on from their dream and did what Greenberg’s friend did. The latter is usually the happier, more fulfilled person. There is value in embracing the life you live in the present. Bitterness eats you up inside and can taint every aspect of your life. You stop enjoying the thing you love because it never delivers.

I think that Greenberg’s friend was in a good place but it took him fifteen years to reach that place. I think he gave up on his dream when maybe he didn’t have to. I think he spent a lot of time wishing and hoping that things had been different but without knowing how to change things he was forced to live a life that he ultimately didn’t want because it wasn’t what he expected. It’s not that it was a bad life…just not the one he expected. This, in my opinion is the worst possible thing he could have done. He could have simply moved on or he could have kept fighting for his expected life. He sat somewhere in the middle though wanting a different life but also not really wanting to go after it and also not wanting to acknowledge that he was the one steering his life the whole time.

I’ve always thought of giving up in negative terms. This is something I learned by default. No one ever sat me down and told me that giving up was wrong or bad. Instead it was instilled in me that “finishing what you start” is a noble and good thing that builds character. Now I whole-heartedly agree that finishing what you start is a good thing if what you’ve started is a good thing. Everything you do builds character but what happens if you start something that you never should have started?

I have a bad character trait called smoking. I call this a character trait because it’s more than a habit now; it’s part of my personality. When you start smoking you never think of yourself as a smoker. Smokers who have smoked for a long time still don’t think of themselves as smokers. They say that they just smoke socially or that they are trying to quit. This is because we’ve all seen real smokers; the woman at the Laundromat who has a voice like chalk, and wheezes as she walks and coughs every five minutes. We don’t want to think of ourselves this way. So we refuse to acknowledge that we are smokers. But when you smoke every day; when you get uncomfortable when you haven’t smoked for a few hours then you are a smoker. It’s part of who you are. It’s a character trait.

I should have never started smoking and the best thing for it would be to quit. In this instance quitting would be a good thing that would build good character. I did start smoking though and I built myself a character that I do not like and do not want to be. Yet I do want to be that or I would stop.

Smoking is an easy example but the point holds true. What if my dream is bad for me? What if the thing I started is a bad thing that will build bad character? Quitting is not always negative and finishing what you start is not always positive. Giving something up so that you can live a better life seems like a reasonable and even good response. But it still feels bad.
Greenberg’s friend couldn’t decide what to do. He couldn’t give up and he couldn’t have what he wanted. He was the bitter, unhappy person who felt trapped not only by the life he was living but also by the life he wanted to be living. He didn’t want the one and couldn’t have the other and it was all really in his own mind.

What if you are doing something you ought to give up? In that circumstance then giving up should be applauded and in certain cases, like smoking, it usually is. But when people give up a dream they are thought poorly of. People assume they weren’t good enough or that they didn’t work hard enough. Maybe they weren’t good enough and that being the case we ought to pat them on the back for quitting. Surely it’s a noble thing to admit to oneself and the world that although you made a valiant effort you ultimately were not up to scratch and have decided to move on in order to find something more suitable?

I’m not really talking about giving up here though. I’m talking about the fact that life will kick your ass time and again and that’s not something you can get away from. A dream is not going to look in reality like it does in your head. It’s not always going to feel good. Life is difficult. Life is hard. Life doesn’t really give a crap if you succeed or fail. If life cared at all about you we would have no rich and no poor. People would all look exactly alike if life was trying to make us all comfortable. There would be no ugliness and no prettiness. But life is just life and we live it until we are dead. So why do we waste time being depressed and unhappy and wishing for things we don’t have?

Greenberg’s friend was doing something that I want to do. He was accepting his present tense and being ok with it. We are all smart people and we can all realize that whether you are born privileged or disadvantaged you can’t expect to be fabulous all of the time. So maybe it’s better to be ok with the present tense wherever you happen to be…good times and bad…thick and thin…sickness and health. It doesn’t matter if you give up your dream or if you fight for it. Just be ok with your decision whatever you do.

As for me? I fight on.

I Think, Therefore I Think. I Am Alive, Therefore I Am Alive.

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Steve Murray is a friend of mine. We used to play open mics together at Zack’s in Durban, South Africa. I met Steve through another friend of mine, Esjay who now lives in San Diego and who is the soul’s core of the band Stealing Love Jones. Before I moved to Nashville I got together with Steve to practice one afternoon and on a whim decided to record the proceedings. In the song you’ll hear Steve and I communicating and since this was a practice there’s a couple of rough bits. I always liked Steve’s style of playing and I miss having chats with him about Seinfeld and beers and music.

picture courtesy of: http://www.motorcycleridesnow.com/roadtrip

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There’s a million and three thoughts going through my brain about life, music, God, girls, babies. I need it to slow down so I can pick a few things out and take a bit of time looking over them. I’d like to reach in and find the ‘off’ switch sometimes but I know there’s not one there so all I can hope for is that things will slow down in there a bit.

You keep moving and doing what you have to do. You don’t focus on the stuff that seems impossible to understand. As soon as you focus on that you lose your mind completely because it all seems ridiculously complicated. But if you keep on keeping on; if you just keep doing your daily things your brain keeps working and these thoughts pop into your head in the middle of doing something else:

I spoke to a woman outside RuSan’s the other night. I was on a smoke break and so was she. She was digging through her purse with a cigarette dangling from her mouth and I offered her a light just as she found hers. So we started talking about the weather and which Hooter's was the best and she ended up telling me about a trip she’d taken on a motorcycle. “We kept to the back roads and only stopped to eat where the locals eat. We figured that the place with the most pick-up trucks outside was the local hang out and we usually got the best food and lowest prices at those places.” After a few minutes I realized that this woman was really cool.

I talked to my co-worker and buddy, Ron about it a little later and said to him that I was really glad I’d talked to her because she was with a party of people whom I’d served and my impression of them was terrible. If I hadn’t offered the lighter and hadn’t had the conversation I would have left that night with a totally wrong impression of her by association with her party.

People get crazy when they eat in restaurants. I know this because I work in one. Even though I know this I still fall into the trap of misjudging people. When it comes to food and restaurants all social normality and politeness falls away. People who keep their own kitchens as tidy as a surgery room will leave trash and bits of food and gum and toothpicks strewn about for their waiters to clean up (seriously people...I don't want your toothpicks..throw them away your own self). So you can’t always judge a person by the way they eat in restaurants (maybe first dates should remember that). But I still do judge people and it’s a shame that I do. I might be missing a lot of opportunities to hear great stories about motorcycle trips.

That’s what I mean though about things coming to you in the middle of doing something else. You get these flashes of comprehension all because you bothered to talk to a middle aged woman for two minutes about essentially nothing at all. I don’t think I could have mined that little life lesson from all the millions of thoughts in my head if I’d been sitting and thinking about it. Maybe you have to be doing life to understand life. Maybe you can’t sit and think everything to its logical conclusion. Instead the conclusions jump out at you when you’re out walking your dog, or ringing up a customer at the till (cash register) or plonking a plate of sushi in front of their nose. Maybe….

Success Is Nothing.....Rejection Is Everything

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Everyone likes stories about sticking it to the man. Maybe that’s why this particular piece caught my eye amidst all the stuff floating around the facebook universe: http://www.theboot.com/2010/04/19/lady-antebellum-american-idol/#comments. Hillary Scott, the now famous member of country music sensations “Lady Antebellum” was rejected, in her former life, by American Idol. Twice.

She’s not the only success story with rejections in her past. There was a time when Google was unsellable. The Beatles were rejected by Decca Records before being signed. They were told they had no future in the music business. Steve Jobs got fired by the man whom he himself had hired to help him run his company. Later he returned to the company and revitalized it. Seven different publishers passed on the Harry Potter series. Apparently they couldn’t see the market for it.

It seems rejection and failure are as much a part of success as is the moment when you realize the glory of achievement. Rudyard Kipling’s famous poem, “If” contains the following lines, “If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster; And treat those two impostors just the same…Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it, And–which is more–you’ll be a Man, my son!” It’s a sign of maturity, and a wise strategy for life, then to assume that failure and achievement are equally meaningless, or equally meaningful as the case may be. Failure doesn’t mean that success will never happen. Success doesn’t preclude a failure around the next bend.

Most people have hopes and dreams and they are often wrapped around the idea of one particular kind of success or achievement. We talk of “making it” or “reaching our goal” or “winning the prize”. Yes, I want victories. Yes, I want to achieve very specific goals. But what do I do after that? If my life’s enjoyment is dependent on one particular success or failure then I am already failing in some way. It might be better to see the destination as the journey itself.

I hadn’t come to the above realization when I wrote the song, “close my eyes”. The song though still has elements of this idea in it: “Seems like I always get the smoothest ride when I'm not even trying; I close my eyes.” What that means, in case you want to know, is that the journey is mo-better when you’re not worried about where you’re going or how you’re getting there and you just go. If you take the time to figure out all the stops along the way, all the songs that are going to be on the radio, all the pee-breaks, all the delays, all the sights and sounds, before you ever leave then why do you need to go on that journey anyway? What makes it a journey is the fact that you don’t know the outcome.

Life is a journey and I do have some ideas about where I’d like it to go. Despite what my very own song says, I want to make it with my eyes wide open and breathe in every moment of it. But at certain times, when I catch myself fretting about the final outcome, I might just close my eyes and let myself feel the wind in my face and remember again that bouncing down the road, taking in the magic of the moment (whatever that moment might be) is probably just as awesome as the part where the car stops and I get out to take a snapshot of the world’s largest ball of yarn….. And it may just be even better.

It is said that many of the great composers conceived entire symphonies in their minds before putting pen to paper. That may be true but they still had to write each note of it out so that it could be played by musicians. The Mona Lisa would not be hanging on a wall in Paris today if Leonardo had not painted the first brush stroke. The symphonies and the painting are just trophies that commemorate the journey that created them. So go take a trip.

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Life.......Oh Life.........Oh Li..i..i...fe.......Oh Life.....do do do do.

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Last year about this time I started noticing the magnificent outfits that the ladies of Nashville were sporting. The emphasis was less on the outfits and more on the ladies themselves I suppose. I wrote a blog about it and my brother said I sounded horny. Well I’m not saying he was right but 2 months ago my first child was born. Her name is August. Probably more than anything else in my life right now she has brought the idea of life and all its mysteries to the fore in my head again.

There’s a porch adjoining the back door of my apartment in Nashville. It’s a small porch but I like it. I go there to drink coffee and survey the neighborhood and smoke cigarettes and think. There is a nearby tree whose branches hang down just beyond the edge of the porch. Throughout the year these branches go from being bare and brown to having thousands of small green buds then suddenly leafy and green and then finally through a death scene during which the leaves turn yellow and then red and then brown and then end up scattered all over the ground.

I grew up in a town with a very constant climate. It’s pretty much always warm in Durban. So I imagined that in places experiencing the full range of seasons it must be a gradual undulation from one season to the next. But it seems that seasons in Nashville arrive suddenly as if they were relatives from out of town. There’s no mistaking their arrival…. You get a cell phone message saying they are on the way and should be there around supper time, but things seem pretty much the same until the moment they arrive and then everything changes suddenly.

I didn’t notice the leaves beginning to grow on my porch-tree this year. I just looked up one day and realized that the branches didn’t look dead anymore and were covered in green leaves. As if they sprouted overnight…There must have been a lot of activity going on under the surface.

In a strange way, that tree porch and my daughter give me a kind of hopefulness about life. Not that I have any reason to not be hopeful but for some reason I have an extra helping of hopefulness lately. When my daughter arrived she was this little, squirmy, beautiful person. Every time I see her now she’s grown just a little. She’s changing daily. As adults we reach a point where we think we are in kind of stasis where we are about the same as we were the day before but it’s not true. We never really stop changing and growing. That tree and my daughter have reminded me that change is inevitable and constant. I can’t control everything about the way I change. Eventually we all end up old and dead. But I can direct myself towards positive changes.

Hopefully if I keep toiling and building and moving and direct things in a positive direction I’ll look around one day and realize that, just like August and the relatives from out of town I have suddenly arrived at some place I’ve been traveling towards. And like that tree, I’ve bloomed into something perhaps a little better than I am right now.

NOTE: The above painting is titled: "Tree of Life" and was painted by Tim Parish in 2008

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Of Life and Storms and Cloaked Men

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Hey!!!! Push Play!! Woohoo...

Eagle’s Wings is a song about being bigger than your troubles. It is often said that life is hard. I used to get a little annoyed at that statement because often when people say it, they do so from a high horse, admonishing someone for having the indecency to share their troubles.

Nevertheless it’s true. Somehow I figured that much out when I wrote this song. I also figured out that you can’t let that get you down. You have to be better than your circumstances.

Looking back though I think I stopped short of another fact. A lot of times, the things that seem so hard and painful are really the things that make us who we are, get us where we want to be, give us character and generally make life less boring. So I wrote this poem-thing and posted it here for you to read while you listen to my song.

Of Life and Storms and Cloaked Men

I met you on a dance floor on a Monday night.
Early Tuesday morning, I guess, is when we gave her life.

She must be impatient; A little bit like dad.
Thirty five weeks later, she came early, just a tad.

It’s true we made a people. That still surprises me.
After all it was the first of firsts and I’m the son of a missionary.

I know there’s folks a sayin’, “Pshaw!” with mouths agape.
The news was too unbelievable. The irony had no escape.

I traded in my silver ring for a night of lust.
Now I’ve got a daughter. It’s true. Her name is “Gus”.

I said I wasn’t ready and I may have complained.
But she locked eyes with me and I knew it was a good thing.

You see life is all a mystery; A stranger in a hooded cloak.
He’s waiting in the alley. By all accounts; he’s a charming bloke.

He waits ‘til we’re not looking. He sits and smokes and bides his time.
Then he does some silly party trick and we give him each a dime.

Then later, buying cigarettes at the local grocery store,
We all get mad and cuss a bit because we came up ten cents short.

Later as we think it through amidst thoughts of regret,
We realize the treasure of smoking one less cigarette.

Now if you think I’m saying that I’ve got it all worked out,
Then you’d be wrong. That’s for dog gone. ‘Cause I still have some doubt.

But I liken myself to a skipper at the helm in a stormy sea:
The wind in gale and waters crash and on his breath, fresh Hennessy.

And he knows the storm is a lady who needs a steady hand.
But she’s mad and bad and raging and he is but a man.

He’ll use his skill and wisdom gathered up through stormy years.
He’s seen ones like her before. She laughs at tears and fears.

He knows that she will storm and crash and boom and wail.
But soon she will grow weary and calm seas will prevail.

There will be days of sunshine and easy sailing more.
But firm resolve is needed to get his ship to shore.

With the storm subsiding he breathes a sailor’s sigh.
“One more for the books.” He says, sparkle in his eye.

For he is yet alive, and more fully quick, at that,
For having sailed one more angry sea and placed one more mark inside his cap.

The storm, she is a lady. Make no mistake, she’ll make you quake.
The stranger in the hooded cloak; He’ll make your fists to shake.

But as you sit and drink a drink upon your old age porch,
You’ll know that storms and cloaked men were no more than a torch.

They lit a fire inside you and sparked with flame to make things bright.
They stirred up dregs of dullness and made you curse and fight.

In fact they put some beauty in your ordinary life.
They were the balm of vigor and not the bonds of strife.

They gave you life and memories and people to love and trust.
They gave you battle-scars of beauty…
And a daughter, named “Gus”.

Take My Hand

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Love songs are strange. They are a testament to a deep emotion that once was and may or may not still be. Emotions are not static. They change. I imagine that’s the reason that a lot of love songs get classified as ‘cheesy’ after a while. When you are high on love you say cheesy things. You say all the clichés from a thousand songs and poems and you think that they mean something when you say them because you actually mean it. They don’t feel like a cliché when you are the one saying them. The song though, remains the same as it was the day it was recorded. Whatever happened to the girl (or guy) and whatever happened to the feelings, the song stays the same.

There’s a song on Dave Mathews’ latest album in which he says, “Someone’s broken heart becomes your favorite song.” It’s true that we don’t always get the whole story when we listen to a song and we don’t always care. We just like the way it sounds. Maybe we like the story that the song evokes in us and that story may be far from the actual one.

They say that true love isn’t so much about feelings as it is about doing. Love is a verb. The kind of love that makes people stay married or makes people give money to poor people is probably a more important kind of love than most of what gets sung about. That’s because that kind of love seems more boring. It’s not as exciting as the emotions of new love.

As a songwriter I’m continuously desperate for something to write about. There’s plenty of stuff out there to write songs about but it’s always obvious when I’m trying too hard to write about something that’s not real to me. So when love comes along it makes for a great muse. Suddenly clichés come rolling out of the abyss and present themselves in ways that seem normal, and even good, even though they are mostly the same things everyone has been saying and writing and singing for hundreds of years.

“Take My Hand” is a love song. I suppose it’s a little cheesy, and more so to me because I know the full story. I’m not going to tell you the whole story because I’m tired of that particular story and the telling of it. I hope that it tells a good story for you.

As a songwriter I hope to write lots of cheesy love songs that are so catchy that people can’t help but buy them. As a person I hope I get to write a love song one day that I won’t look back on and wish that the love was as enduring as the song.

Response...Something Inside Me

This is a response to the previous blogs comments. I had originally intended to write something about this in the previous blog but it didn’t seem to pan out. After the comments I realized that I didn’t quite express myself accurately so here goes….

I picked up a guitar one day and began learning to play. Another day I wrote a song. Another day I stopped watching t.v. and wrote another song instead. After that I played my guitar most days and became better at it. Some days I wrote songs and in the past 14 years I’ve gotten better at that. Another day I played my first song for an audience…I kept doing that and got better at that too.

When I was in college studying Biology and later while getting my masters in Biotechnology I was completely distracted by music on a daily basis. Whenever I had a minute free I’d be writing or playing or trying to figure out how to get enough money together to record an album. One day I started recording my own songs. I kept doing that and I’m still getting better at that too.

One day I made a decision to make music my career. I stopped teaching so that I could do that. I turned down a job with a missions organization so that I could do that. I started playing lots of shows in my hometown. I got better at playing shows and got better at promoting myself. Later I turned down a job with the company I’d been stationed at during my masters degree so that I could move to America and continue pursuing music.

The examples above are the highlights but the point is this… For the past 14 years I’ve been working steadily in this direction. It has been said that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become truly successful at something. I don’t know if I’ve reached that mark yet but I’ve certainly put in a few. Over the span of 14 years a person makes a lot of decisions… In my own life my decisions keep drawing me further down the path of a career in music. It doesn’t happen all at once but when you look back you realize that returning to where you once were would take almost as much work as it took to get to where you are now. When you stop using a path it stops looking so much like a path and becomes a faded remnant of a trail that once was. Bridges get burned and bottles get broken on your back trail. To go back might sometimes be necessary but it’s not going to be any easier than putting your head down and slogging it out with whatever is ahead that keeps making yesterday look so attractive.

What I’m saying is this… I am where I am on purpose. It’s no accident that I do the job I do or that I live where I live or that I’ve made the decisions I’ve made. Little by little, one decision at a time, I have burned bridges and broken bottles for 14 years to get here. I’m not sure just anyone would want to live in my shoes but I do want to live in them. I don’t expect everyone to understand what I’m doing but I do understand it. In general I’m excessively happy that I’ve made it this far and that I’m on the path that I’m on. There are specific things about the current moment in the path that I don’t like and I’ll admit that I probably spend way too much time dwelling on those things and preaching my woes for the world to read. I’m a complainer…so sue me.

In writing about the songs on the album I’m trying to capture the emotions of the songs and of the album in general. Sometimes that means putting myself back in the moment of whatever I was feeling at the time. The song “Something Inside Me” was written when I was absolutely confounded and frustrated and ready to throw in the towel. I wanted to give up. I wanted to stop trying. I even tried to give up music. But I found out that my passion for music and writing is something that is deep within me that I can’t control and which will never die. It’s too deeply ingrained. Perhaps it’s by design that I am this way. So I wrote the words “I’ll never give up because I don’t know what those words mean.” At the time in my life when I was utterly frustrated, completely depressed and most wanted to give up I wrote a song about not giving up. When I say I can’t give up… I really mean I can’t give up.

The album was titled “Beautiful Frustration” not because I thought it sounded like a cool name but because it captured the sentiment of everything I’d been through to get the thing done. It was the overall emotion that I was feeling during the writing of that album. I was frustrated but it was the kind of frustration you get when you are continuously working on a project that seems to progress too slowly. But there is progress and that’s why it’s beautiful. It’s the knocking of yourself against a problem over and over again that makes you stronger and eventually leads to a solution. I imagine that the guys who built the space shuttle, or Einstein (no I’m not comparing myself to them) would understand ‘beautiful frustration’ completely.

I am beautifully frustrated. My apologies if I let off steam about that too often. But I am determined and I am stubborn and I am committed to this thing I’ve set out to do. I’m investing in a future that I can live with instead of fixing my present to be satisfied now.

I will reach 10,000 hours. I will reach my goals. Say what you will or think what you will, I am realizing that I don’t much care anymore what people think because it doesn’t matter and it doesn’t change what I’m going to do. When I find myself in those moments of complete disgust and frustration with my reality I remember this song and I tell myself that “I’m trying…come try with me. I’m fighting…come fight with me. I’m flying…come fly with me.” I sing those words to the heavens as a kind of challenge. I sing those words to the walls that seem daunting as if I were a boxer squaring my shoulders to my opponent, bouncing lightly on the balls of my feet, glint in my eye, jaw set and saying, “Alright. Let’s do this.”

Something Inside Me....To Thine Own Self Be True

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I’m worried about where this is heading. Is it heading anywhere? Am I deluded? Should I just ‘get a job’ and do what everyone does? Maybe I should. But I’ve been down that road. I know what happens to me when I’m stuck in a job that I don’t want to be doing. I start to become someone I don’t want to be. I start to come unglued and disheveled. I start to become a bitter old man and I’m not even an old man. I become unhappy about pretty much everything. I start to die….just a little bit….every day. I lose that part of me that loves the sunshine. I forget how much I like to be outside. I forget the joy of feeling wind in my face.

I studied Biology in University. During our third year we went on a “field trip”. It was one of the most gratifying experiences of my college career. I remember coming home after ten days in Itala Game Reserve with scratches all lover my arms and legs from walking through thick African bush. Each day after we’d finished in the field we’d walk down to the river and sit in a small pool of water and check ourselves for ticks. We’d let the tiny fish nibble our skin. Each day we ate lunch off the back of a truck. It was horribly wonderful. At night we’d type our data into computers and then sit by a fire and talk.

The scratches hurt but I was kind of proud of them. I said to someone that walking through the bush, riding on the back of a truck, sleeping in a tent by a river, cooking in a makeshift kitchen for ten days, getting scratched and tick-bitten made me feel alive. I don’t remember most of what I studied… I remember that trip. I remember conversations and truck rides and scenery and moments. I remember it because for those ten days I was more alive than I had been during my entire time at University to that point.

We had to stop working one day because a rhinoceros was too close and the game guard thought he looked agitated. Walking with rhinos makes you feel alive. In 1996 I learned how to play the guitar and I wrote my first song. I still don’t know why or how but something about writing a song; something about performing it for people makes me feel alive the way working too close to a rhinoceros does.
I’ve had people tell me that I should be using my degree instead of working as a waiter. I’ve had people tell me that I shouldn’t be doing what I’m doing. To those people my response is this song.

I don’t like serving sushi one bit. I’m not even sure I like Nashville one bit. I don’t like worrying about money and whether I’m going to earn enough this month. I don’t like the demeaning nature of the job. I don’t like picking up after people and dealing with their “I deserve everything NOW!” attitudes.

I spent seven years in college studying something that I didn’t really want to do because…well..I had to study something. But the moment I wrote that first song I knew what I really wanted to do. There is a deep motivation in me to make this happen. It simmers in my soul. It’s a glowing coal that never dies.

I could give up and go make money designing pharmaceutical drugs, or working with genetically modified somethings. But I don’t want to do those things. I want to write songs. I want to play them for people. I won’t stop trying because…honestly…I can’t. Something inside of me won’t let me.

Holding On

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I’m grabbing some straws from the server’s station, hurrying with a tray of iced-waters to my next table. The restaurant is full and the computers have been crashing all night. Customers are waiting for their checks and other customers are waiting for food. Still other customers don’t realize that their order hasn’t yet been put into the computer and they are going to have to be told that they might miss their movie if they wait because computers suck. It’s not a good night and it’s that very moment, as I’m pulling five straws from the straw box that I’m struck with this thought, “I went to college for 7 years for this.” In fact I say the thought out loud much to the amusement of Toto, my fellow server, who happened to be standing close enough to hear.
Later as I munch a mouthful of noodles with the enthusiasm of a very hungry man Toto laughs again and says, “Angry makes you hungry!”. Anger does indeed make one hungry. On certain days I do get angry and that anger feeds my ambition. It makes me hungry for success.
They say that Rome was not built in a day. Most things that are worth anything were not built in a day. It’s easy to look back and say, “Well, it took time and hard work but just look at it now. Amazing!” It’s a little more difficult to do that when the first bricks are being laid. Sometimes you have to just hold on and be patient. I hate that that is true. I don’t like waiting. But it is true… so what can you do but hold on?
There are days when I have to repeat this sentiment to myself as a kind of mantra. “Hold on, Tim.” “Be patient, Tim.” I feel like that fish in Finding Nemo that likes to say, “Just keep swimming.” over and over again.
This is a song about a guy asking his girl to be patient. He wants her to know that she is awesome and that he wants to take things to the next level but he doesn’t want her to suffer for his dream. He’s asking her to hold on.

_________________

In 2007 I played a gig at a small club called Tanz Café which is Bryanston in Johannesburg, South Africa. After the show I started talking to a guy who introduced himself as Tibi. To this day I still don’t know his full name. He liked my stuff and wanted to record some songs with me so a couple of months later I went back to Johannesburg and spent a couple of days in Tibi’s flat recording. While I was there he played a guitar riff for me and asked if I could write some verses for it. And so the song, “Holding On” was born.
When I was planning the album in 2008 the track “Holding On” was pretty high up on my list of songs that had to be on the album. I was going to include Tibi as a writer in the album credits but it seemed like it wouldn’t do any good since “Tibi” isn’t a definitive name. After trying to contact him several times by phone and e-mail I gave up. I figured that if the song ever went anywhere Tibi would hear it and contact me.

If you like this song click the button below: Listen to more songs by Tim Pepper. Buy the album or just the songs you like.

Yellow Dress Girl

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There’s a photograph of me and her. I’m standing in the back yard of my brother’s home in Johannesburg, South Africa. I’m dressed in blue jeans, a black, button-up shirt with blue pin-stripes and a black suit-jacket. My arm is around her. She is wearing a yellow summer dress with a floral pattern. We are smiling.

I met her at the airport. I was waiting for my mom who was coming back from visiting my brother when she walked through the gate. I knew her from university. We’d both attended the same classes for four years and had hardly spoken to one another the entire time. Roughly 9 years later we met again at the airport.

I liked her. That’s probably the main reason I never talked to her. So when I saw her at the airport I called out after her. She was focused on getting home and didn’t see me. I had to chase her down a bit. I managed to secure her attention and I think for a moment she didn’t recognize me. I had my musician hair and my 3 day beard going (which is equivalent to about 1 ½ days growth on most guys). At university I had always had short hair. I was clean cut. I even went through a phase of tucking my t-shirts into my shorts. I was being the unconventional American at a foreign University but I think I just looked like a doofus.

Anyway..she did recognize me after a moment and we talked the way people do when they don’t really know each other and have never really been friends but who know each other enough to stop the other at an airport and say, “Hey! Gee whizz, it’s been a long time! How are you? What are you doing with yourself these days?”. We exchanged numbers and she had to go. I sent her a text later to ask if she was still single and if she would have coffee with me. I liked her.

When we started dating I was full of myself. I mean that in the best way possible; I had recently begun my journey of being a full time musician. The year before I’d been working with a volunteer organization and I’d toured South Africa as the leader of a team of teens-through-twenty-something-year-olds whose mission it was to save the world from STDs. So I was full of free-spiritedness and the excitement of a new adventure. I’d also discovered that I liked the artistic me more than I liked the versions of me I’d tried on in my previous occupations. I was comfortable with who I was.

Maybe it was my confidence that made the first few months with her so good. I really liked her. I knew then that I was falling for her in a way that I’d never fallen for a girl before. I wanted her in every sense of the word. I wanted to be with her. I wanted to touch her. I just wanted her. I wanted to make her fall in love with me.

That photograph was taken during that phase in our relationship when everything was perfect. I was perfect. She was perfect. We were perfect. So I wrote a song about making that yellow dress girl fall in love with me.

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Are You Coming?

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I’m an impatient person I think. I want all the things I want in life right now. My album is called “beautiful frustration” because I spend a lot of time being frustrated with where I’m at and trying to figure out how to change it for the better. I like to spend time thinking. There’s probably nothing worse for an impatient person to do than sit and think, but this is who I am. I’m learning to be a more patient version of me.

In November of 2006 I turned down a job with the volunteer organization I’d been working for earlier that year because I wanted to pursue music. Although I’d been writing songs since 1996 I had never tried to make it a career. A lot had to happen before I felt like I could legitimately hope to be a songwriting artist for a living. So I moved back to Durban to live in the spare room at my parent’s house so that I could keep my overheads low enough to survive as a musician. I went to all the open mics and I found a couple of regular gigs by handing out demos to restaurant managers everywhere in town. I produced and recorded my first EP, “Believe” that year. I got paid to play music and even though I didn’t realize it I was making progress. I should have been happy with what I’d accomplished.

A little over a year later and I remember writing this song out of complete disgust. I’d been pouring my heart and energy into music for all of a year or so and I felt like I wasn’t getting anywhere and I really wanted my reality to be something different than it was. I like this song a lot. If I hadn’t been impatient or if I wasn’t the person that I am I wouldn’t have written it. So I’m happy for the experience. But I also like the fact that I can look back at this song and realize that I was a bit of an idiot. It’s an angry song. To be honest I was talking to God in this song. I was asking Him if He was damn well doing anything about my situation. How dare He make me wait for everything I always wanted. Right?

In retrospect it was ridiculous to have expected huge changes after only a year. Stranger things have happened but usually they don’t. A year used to seem like a very long time. These days a year is just long enough to do a couple of really good things. I’m building a career and my goals for this year read a little different than they did in 2006. Back then it would have read something like, “Monday – prepare to take the world by storm. Tuesday – Get ready world. Here I come”. Let’s just say I’ve downsized my goals a little. I believe in aiming high but if I’m going to achieve high I’ve got to do all the little things that high requires. So I’ve got to do the nitty gritty. I’ve got to plan to do the nitty gritty. I’ve got to shift my focus from the big dreamy goal and concentrate on the tiny little steps that make dreaminess happen.

When I was studying my masters degree I had several conversations with my supervisor, Barbara Huckett. She turned out to be as much a life mentor as she was a supervisor. I’ve always had a great deal of respect and fondness for her. She told me once that I was a dreamer. Oh but she was right. Like everyone else we dreamers have our strengths and weaknesses and it’s taken me a while to start to understand what the weaknesses of that really mean. I love being a dreamer. I love being an artist. I love to create songs. I love to imagine what all this seemingly thankless work will amount to in ten years time. But thanks to people like Barbara and thanks to the wisdom that comes with experience (and I know I need a lot more of that) I’m learning to be aware of the pitfalls too. Do dream big. Do everything your heart desires. Do enjoy the things that you enjoy. Do work hard. Do work smart. Do everything you need to do to get to where you want to go. Don’t worry about how long it’s taking because that sucks the very life out of you and destroys the thing you love.

_____________

In the coming weeks I'll be updating this site with more songs and stories from the album "Beautiful Frustration". Check back regularly or 'follow me' to get the latest updates.

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Kevin Costner Eats Sushi

It’s Thursday night at RuSan’s and Denny is all excited about something… “It’s him! I can’t believe it’s really him! Kevin Costner is here!” I’m thinking, “Sure Denny. Sure.”.

Today is the official first day of the weekend in Restaurant-Land and that means I have to work an hour later and there’s too many servers on schedule…. Because it’s still Thursday…people have to work tomorrow….mostly they don’t want to be eating sushi at midnight. An hour ago I was wondering who I could call to get out of work tonight. But here I am so hopefully we WILL be busy and I’ll make some money tonight.

Well, shoot me! It is Kevin Costner. Unmistakably, the man sitting in the corner of RuSan’s really is Kevin Costner. I’m trying to remember the movie’s he’s been in. All I can think of is “Dances With Wolves”. My brain starts spitting out Indian names for RuSan’s patrons… Grabs With Chopsticks, Sits With Sake, Makes Noise With Chewing. Robin Hood, Water World, The Post Man, Tin Cup; all these movies don’t pop into my head for some reason.

We are pretty busy tonight and it’s a little bit awesome that no-one seems to notice that Kevin Costner is here. They say that music celebrities appreciate Nashville because they don’t get hassled here. Well I guess it’s true.

Santo is asking me if I will ask Kevin if he will take a picture with him before he leaves. Santo is a sushi chef and he’s awesome but I don’t want to be the guy who approaches the famous movie star and attracts attention to him. Pretty soon we’ll have a restaurant full of people clamoring to get a picture with Kevin Costner and all he wanted to do was eat some sushi and go play some music with his band. Yes….if you weren’t aware Kevin Costner is the front man in a band called Kevin Costner and Modern West. Listen to him sing here (http://www.myspace.com/kevincostnerandmodernwest).

Kevin is getting up from his table and getting ready to go. So I approach as nonchalantly as possible. I realize as I approach that Kevin Costner is taller than he appears in movies. He’s wearing boots which add a bit but I think he must be at least 6’3’’. So I look up and say, “Excuse me, our sushi chef wanted me to ask if he can have a picture with you before you go?”. “Where is he?” Kevin replies. I say “He’s the short Asian at the front… Also I wanted to give you these” I hand him my EP, “believe” (with card cleverly slipped into the sleeve) and my album, “Beautiful Frustration”. I follow that up with this amazing statement, “You can listen to it in your car…I hope you like it.” He stares at the CDs for a few seconds and says, “That’s cool. Thanks Tim.”

I’m not making money from music yet. I’m pretty sure that Kevin Costner is. Even if he isn’t, it probably doesn’t matter for him. I hope to one day make a living at this but for now I can say what probably few independent musicians can say; I gave my music to Kevin Costner. Judging from the tour schedule on their myspace page Kevin is a busy man but I hope he finds time to listen to it.

Review 2

I copied the review mentioned in the previous post below: Several people in South Africa told me they couldn't view it from the link.

My apologies also.. I was informed of the review by Keith but it seems Abbey did the review. Thanks Abbey. I may have made it sound as though Keith did the review in my previous post.

Anyway, here it is:

Artist:Tim Pepper
Album: Beautiful Frustration


Tim Pepper knows how to write. His intelligence and way with words shows not only on his latest album, Beautiful Frustration, but on his website and his personal blog. He calls himself quiet, saying he does more listening than talking. Maybe he should speak up more often; he clearly has a lot to say, and a smart, quirky way of doing so.

Beautiful Frustration is a poppy, happy album that sounds like Jason Mraz, without being so cutesy it hurts. Pepper is smart, and his lyrics show it. Though he's sometimes cheesy, he has a way of capturing a melody that makes it okay. “Life is a journey/life is a road/every man carries/every man's load” he says on “Life”, a song that could be painfully cute if anyone but Pepper was singing it – instead, it comes across wise. “Yellow Dress Girl” is a warming song about a beautiful girl Pepper ran into, as though he's a much happier James Blunt, looking at the bright side of wanting someone you can't have instead of lamenting it. “I wanna learn to fly on eagles wings/I wanna fly into the sky/above the troubles in my life” he sings on “Eagles Wings”, an upbeat song about looking to God for help. Pepper is a Christian musician, but even those who don't share his religious views can appreciate his wit and charm.

The music on the album isn't phenomenal, but it does it's job. Pepper writes his own songs, but has a backup band that do their part in wrapping up the songs without adding enough to make it a band instead of an artist. Pepper isn't an extraordinary guitar player, but he's not trying to be. He's playing songs with genuine lyrics that you can tell he honestly means, and the music isn't as important. In another genre of music, this could be disastrous, but in the Mraz/Jack Johnson genre (most male singer-songwriters), it's not that big of a problem.

Beautiful Frustration is, seemingly, exactly what Pepper wanted it to be: a friendly introduction to his honest way of speaking and his simple but pleasing guitar parts and melodies. It's an album with a perfect name – the tracks are about frustrating subjects (life, love, living for God, etc), but they're written and sung in a happy, upbeat way as though to prove that while life can be frustrating, you should still be happy about it. Pepper might not be groundbreaking, but his music is sunny and fun, and since that's what he's aiming for, he's done his job.



Abbey K. Davis – MuzikReviews.com Staff
January 23, 2010
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