Miscellaneous thoughts in bullet form.
• I am really excited about the new Coldplay album. I love how serious they are about what they do. Also Brian Eno produced it which means a feast for the ears.
• I bought new running shoes yesterday. New Balance– $50. It was time. My old shoes were shot. Yay for new shoes!
• Op is back! What!? You don’t remember Op!? Well let me refresh your memory…the year is 1989. The style of dress in the summer (at least in my small universe growing up in Pittsburgh, PA) for folks my age consists of two things: Ocean Pacific shirts and Jams shorts. (It was awesome and why oh why did we ever change?) Well like all great ideas…Op eventually got bought out by the “man.” And now the man sells Op shirts at Wal-Mart for $13. So I picked myself up a sweet striped Op shirt and beamed with pride as I wore it last night. Long live Op! I might try to find some Jams now so I can thoroughly embarrass my wife with my retro wardrobe.
• I’m kicking around the idea of launching my own podcast later this month. It would be about 20 mins long and run twice a month throughout the summer. It would consist of conversations with folks I know (a lot of them are very interesting artists, producers, engineers, theologians, musicians, poets and thinkers) so I thought it would make for a great listen. What do you think? Would that be interesting to you or not? Just fishin’.
• Kierstin and I visited the Frist Museum to see the exhibit Monet-Dali. It was wonderful. They had works by Renoir, Picasso, Van Gogh and others. We stood close to them and studied the canvasses. You get close enough and you can see the craft– the math of things. You stand back and the sum is magical. I want to read up on Renoir and Van Gogh to get a sense of what their lives were like and what made them tick. Having Kierstin there with me helped a lot because she knows so much about the works overall. Very inspiring.
• I’ve been writing and working on new songs. They are focused in on themes of true freedom, beauty and a whole lot of joy. I love how they make me feel. Joy is something I’m really trying to wrap my mind around and inject into the veins of my music. There’s an electricity to it that is undeniable and impossible to fabricate. It’s either there or it’s not. Or maybe I am the elusive one. There are so many colors out there that I’m seeing now and writing songs feels like painting these days. I feel the total freedom to jump and trust the process. Faith is the parachute.