Pebbles in the Bucket

 CLICK HERE to download an empty Pebbles log for your own creative project.

I'm making a new watercolor version of this for my Institute of Sound students- (you can download one too, at my link above!) It's one of the tools I created for teaching and quickly realized it was something I had been needing all along for myself. How easily can I think the playing isn't progressing, but my log shows the facts: How I spent my week, where to keep  carving instead of traipsing around. Whether or not I actually spaced out completely (like the week of Oct 9!) My hero Austin Kleon (of Steal Like an Artist) calls them logbooks, like we're on a ship logging its progress over what seems like an undifferentiated sea of process. This summer I started a digital version of this that's shared with one of my teachers, Moorea Dickason - a fantastic way to turn up the heat a bit on following through on my goal of playing 2 hours a day, 5 days a week.

Who we really are PT 2

I also wanted to share a piece I found profoundly moving - the first three minutes of this Radiolab episode on the eclipse. I just plain cried while hearing this, I think because it was a moment showing me that we don't need a disaster to each other, and our wider definition as small members of a greater cosmos.

Who We Really Are - Eclipses & Hurricanes

I dusted this song off from being in the attic for a few years, a piece I wrote after NYC's Hurricane Sandy.WATCH VIDEO HERE

Listening these past weeks to the news - a compilation of water, fire and further government meltdown - felt a bit like the beginning of a disaster movie, missing only an asteroid or two. But I can't help but point with glee that we humans are showing ourselves to be way more than those movies ever allow us to be, way more than cut-throat-only-the-strong-survive, way more that what I was taught in history class. Like Rebecca Solnit explores in her book A Paradise Built in Hell, we are "falling together." These disasters bring forth a generosity and commitment to contribution unlike anything else, filling a need to serve one another that maybe some didn't even know they had. (Seriously, read that article!)

So our question is - how do we get there, stay there, without having to go through a disaster?

I believe there is no greater call for the artist in these times, to create work that connects the dots, work that brings the human heart to deeper listening, and the mind to new wider questions. Art to support us to stay AWAKE with one another.

On October 29th, I'm curating a night of writers at the Hotel Utah that do just that, in their stories and songs. Kin, Carl Oser, Motaz Attalla - I love them. More info here.