Well, it’s time to pop out another CD. Today is the first day of work with the band, and we are rehearsing at Oarfin studios in Minneapolis. It’s a seven hour session, and we go through Swim, Surfaces, Babies, Ladder, and Dive. Some songs, like Dive, work well right away. Others, like Surfaces are a damn ordeal. Surfaces, by far, requires the most time and attention to get working. It’s a pretty crappy song when we begin, and surprisingly it gets even crappier as one of our first experiments is to do is with a disco beat. Yes, a disco beat. As we all try to keep open minds and entertain all the possibilities, this disco thing is a serious miscarriage. After some time, we go back to another beat and then, when Dirk (guitarist) comes up with a really cool lick, the song suddenly takes shape and we all get excited. It doesn’t take much to get me excited at this point, as I’ve had four tall Lattes and haven’t eaten yet. Yes, I know, watch out for your ascetic tendencies, etc. It’s just that I forgot to eat. So, I get a sandwich.

Anyway, there’s a new song “Babies” which is only a couple days old, that we work on as well. I’m pretty jazzed about it, but I’m not sure if it’s good, since I’ve not been able to play it in front of people. It’s a synthesis of spooky and soothing.

I’m trying to write and include some shallow songs on this CD, and I wrote Rock Stars and Models and Surfaces expressly toward this end. I feel that after Bright Apocalypse, I needed a more integrated, balanced record, as BA was entirely interiors, all esoteric spiritual songs. So, this time around I’ve decided to try and reflect the spectrum of human experience, the shallows and the depths, the inner and outer, above and below, light and dark. How successful the album is in doing this is for others to judge, but I’m hoping to make a more integral pop album.

The pillars of the CD are three songs, called Swim, Dive, and Drown. These pieces serve as the legs which the rest of the songs stand on. Water is a metaphor for God on this CD, and those three songs tell the story of a soul going back home, of the droplet returning to the ocean. All three of the songs are largely inspired by the book Grace and Grit, and Treya has been a huge presence in my writing since I read the book.

As in the yin yang symbol, I am deeply taken with art that reflects the unity of opposites. There is light in the dark, there is dark in the light. And I know some will listen to this CD, as people have done after so many of my shows, and email me, saying how I’m confused, or a hypocrite, or weird, because how can you have a song like Rock Stars and Models on the same album as Invincible?, and how can you have a song like Dresden on the same album Nothing In Between?, etc etc. How can I sing love songs about God one minute and then sing about S&M sex with a hooker the next?

First, just because a person writes in first person, it does NOT mean a song is autobiographical. I’m stating the obvious, but I’m surprised some people think all these songs are about me. Human beings can occupy an enormous range of states and perspectives, and an artist (or anyone) may access wildly divergent states to study them from the inside. The reason I wrote Ani I Adore, for instance, was not because I want to sexually abuse someone, or to glamorize it, or endorse it. Any reasonable person wishes to alleviate the suffering of others, not increase it. But if we simply write songs saying “sex abuse is bad”, who are we going to reach, who will be transformed by that message? It’s preaching to the choir. I really didn’t see the point in writing a song about sex abuse if I was just going to say that it’s bad, we all know that already. I wanted to understand its source, to look deeply into the dark. To transform the dark dimensions of humanity, of ourselves, I think we need to go right into them. If we fearlessly examine our dark dimensions, we can disarm them, often simply by unflinchingly witnessing the shadow. I have felt strongly about this for a long time, that it’s crucial to crawl inside the dark rooms of the haunted house. You can’t just stand outside house and wave a flashlight around. So, with Ani I Adore, for instance, I went inside the head of the sex abuser, and wrote from his perspective. This is what is behind songs like Dresden, Ani, Doppelganger, Rock Stars and Models, etc, and of course my own shadow is in there somewhere too.

My point is simply this: Reality not divisible. It’s not merely some spiritual maxim. I don’t experience God as something that has categories, ‘this is God, that’s not, God is in this, God is not in that’. God IS. That Reality includes Ramana Maharshi, George W. Bush, and Pamela Anderson, hurricanes and rainbows, fresh spring water and toxic bile, holy scriptures and pornography. Some people say that God shines light on the good and the bad, that It provides for both without preference. But really, God IS both ~ who knows why, but the Mystery is playing a game of hide and seek with Itself. Spirit loses Itself, seeks Itself, and finds Itself. It seeks itself endlessly, but is never really lost. How can you lose what has no ‘other’? God didn’t just become white light and angels~ but has also assumed the forms of nazis, tornadoes, dung beetles, and cancer cells. (I remember the character in Thin Red Line who spoke “Who are You to assume so many forms?”).

So, why do I sing as a murderer in one breath and divine Love in the next?, a lecherous egomaniac in one song and a Bodhisattva in another? Which one is me? Neither? Both?

What is my identity- Artist, Seeker, Man, Human, etc? All those identities are impermanent. They are real, but only in the relative sense, they all come and go eventually. Is there something that never comes or goes, that was never born and never dies? What is it that is aware of experiences, but is not an experience itself? What is not reducible to any one identity, but hides inside each of them?

There is a lot of disturbing material in my music, I know. I’m a public student performing an experiment; How can I help illuminate a haunted house? By finding the light inside me, then going inside that house. How can I transform the demons in that house? By being present in Love. Why would I want to go into a haunted house? Because my loved ones are in there! Because I have BEEN a demon in that house, and loved ones have come for me again and again, showing me love until I snapped out of it. Heaven and hell are in the same place. The haunted house is the mansion of heaven. Angels wander from room to room, seeing the perfect light radiating from and through everything. They also see insane angels, hallucinating their hell. When they find them, they can only sit with them in love, until maybe they wake up to what already IS. We are in the same mansion, we are each other's saviors. I have gone crazy so many times, and you keep finding me, staying with me until I wake up. What would I do without you? Will you promise to keep finding me, to go into every room for as long as it takes? I promise to keep finding you, in every room, as long as it takes.

Friend

I am with you when you cry
closer to your face
than the water in your eyes

Cry
those tears become my own
I know that you are homesick
even though you’re home

I whisper in your ear
“You are already free”
Soon you will laugh
and remember that you’re me
You were never lost
the Heart was always full
the Heart is all there is
Invincible

Friend
I am with you when you weep
when both your eyes are closed
and you don’t know you’re asleep

Dream
at night you dream of harm
You dream that you are lost
but you’re sleeping in my arms

I whisper in your ear
“You are already free”
Soon you will wake up
and remember that you’re me
You were never lost
the Heart was always full
the Heart is all there is
Invincible