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A Chat With Brian Charette

I went to see – well, to check out – a jam session in Studio City tonight. It was at one of the oldest clubs, and the oldest jazz club, in LA: The Baked Potato (I got the ham, corn and pineapple potato).

I went ahead and signed my name on the sign-up sheet. I was the first name on the list. I went outside and introduced myself to the keyboard player. His name was Brian. He lives in New York. He was very kind and approachable.

Brian turned out to be one of Keyboard Magazine’s top four… well, keyboardists. You can read an article he just wrote  (that I literally just found) here. He was one of these laid-back geniuses who seem totally avuncular – until they melt your face off.

As I was picking up my face from off the bar counter, I asked him some questions about practicing, about getting better.

“Well, what do you want to work on?” he asked me.

“Consistency,” I said.

“Ah, that’s big. It’s all in your body, and how you carry your body.

“Read the Tao De Ching,” he told me. “It’s all in there. That’s the Way. It teaches how you have to do all of these things with passion, but to forget about what you’ll get from them. That’s the thing – letting go of attachment.”

Yeah, letting go of attachment. Of course. How many times had I heard that one before?

“Getting better,” he concluded, “is not an adding-to. It’s a stripping away.”

Ah.

Now there’s something to ponder.

It makes sense. There’s a True Musician inside, a True Person even. And we all just want to get to it. So that’s what we’re learning. How to get to what’s already there.

“Just relax, man,” he said. “You’ll be fine. I can tell you, you’ll be fine.”

Well, Brian, OK. If you say so! Now, off to find a copy of the Tao.

And figure out this body thing.

 

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Appreciation, or the Absurdity of Predestination

This started out as a journal entry, but I decided to post it as a blog post because I felt inspired to do so. This is my first blog post in a few months! It starts out a bit personal, but that’s a risk I’m willing to take in this day and age of transparency. I hope it encourages some fresh new thinking. Please keep in mind that this was all written by hand in a fevered rush of authenticity, and that it’s not to be seen as an essay or a manifesto – simply a glimpse into a Feeling. As such, I would ask that you take nothing here as my true, lasting beliefs, opinions, or convictions.

When I was dating [a certain young woman], it always seemed as though I kept having a certain perception of her – even viewing the circumstances surrounding us as only temporary and fleeting. I would often remind her, and myself, of this temporary feeling, almost as if the things that were happening between us were simply “interim” events.

I now see the folly in this, and how deeply I wronged her. For to see any experience as nothing more than a forerunner of a future anticipated experience is insanity. [This same young woman] is but one example of the countless times I have been guilty of this. I have, in fact, treated my entire life, up to this point, as a means to an end – always looking toward something better ahead, something more “me”, a time and a place that is my “destination”, where the current time and place is an inconvenient means to that end.

How much life have I missed in this way of seeing the world! I’m not condemning my hopes and dreams for a brighter future, or an authentic desire to go somewhere I’ve never been. But to think that all of this is just a transition, a pre-requisite, that is the cause of discontent. And while there may be something noble about a sense of adventure, a longing to see what’s out there, there is nothing noble about discontent. After all, my free-wheeling has led me here, has it not?! And how can I expect that I shall find more of a sense of rightness, of belonging, anywhere else I may wander?

The only way I can ever hope to find this Home Sense is by having a greater appreciation for all the moments that are NOW.

I am certain that predestination is a myth. For I was surely given an abundance of Free Will. I’ve had everything – I acquired so many opportunities, so many gifts, [with the aid of] my free will. I once stumbled upon the entire volumes of the memoirs of Casanova, front to back, for just twenty bucks! Those volumes – were they predetermined to fall into my hands? It would seem so, but due to some mistakes I made in the following months (all of my own free will), those volumes fell out again, and were lost. How can I say that I was meant to find Casanova’s memoirs, only to lose them again? No – I found them, call it luck, call it God – and then made a choice that caused them to be lost. And so, the WILL is the cause of Destiny, the WILL determines what will come next. For at any moment, I can change the sequence of events with a wave of my hand. Something that I may have been “meant” to have, according to those predestinationists, can be taken away by my own self with just one simple choice. Where, then, is the meaning in that? There is too much chaos in life for predestination.

All the more reason, then, why we should soak up each moment, not as if it is our last, but as if it is our only. We should drink up each experience with such gratitude, grasp at it with such greed that Bacchus himself would look at us with envy. Even the shitty ones – especially the the shitty ones. For they are none other than our Life. They are slipping away, oh, so stealthily. We’ll never get them back again. Let me say it again – we’ll never get them back again! So, live large, speak grandly, be extravagant! Say and do all of the things you haven’t said or done for fear that you would be scolded, ridiculed, or politely dismissed. Let them dismiss! Be nothing more, or less, than Yourself, with your bold ideas and your absurd wisdom, your insane sense of humor, and your irreverent lust for life. Let them taunt you, let them ignore you, let them thrash you, let them hate you. For only then will you find your true kindred souls.

Above all, honor this place, this time. Live it as a Gift, for that’s what it is. It’s not a bridge to somewhere else – it IS the somewhere else! You’re here! You’ve arrived! This is it! Be glad of it!

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The Map Is Not The Road

Yesterday I was driving home from one of my all-time favorite places, Denny’s, and I was using my Garmin, as I am in the habit of doing when I go almost anywhere whose route I don’t know by heart, and it struck me that I did know where I was going, but I was still intently using my Garmin.

I knew that if I just continued down the road I was on, in a couple of miles I would make a right turn onto the road that would take me home, but I was so used to using GPS that I forgot that I had my own internal GPS.

This got me thinking about Life in general. Sometimes we just don’t know when or where the next turn will be, so we look to somebody else’s compass to guide our own way. We get caught in a one-dimensional view of reality (like the screen on the Garmin) rather than take a look around and get our bearings. Ironically, we lose touch with the real reality in favor of a map that’s designed to represent it.

Maps and Garmins are useful, but they are by no means the real reality – they are by no means the road we are traversing. Sometimes the most useful means of navigation is the one inside.

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Practice is not always necessary.

If I am perfectly happy with my skills I already have, and am confident I can retain them without practicing, there is no need for me to practice.

If I find more joy resonating in what I’ve already accumulated, then the more important thing for me and for the world might be for me to start “being myself.”

I can “be myself” (innovate) purely and truly only if I am 100% OK with the skills and the information I have at hand. What this means is that I have an Inner Life that is at such a high vibration that whatever it is that I normally practice (piano, Portuguese, parasailing) resonates with that vibration.

Frequently, to be maintained, this Inner Life requires more than just the vibration. It also requires engaging with Life and with Higher Consciousness on many different levels and in many different areas. These could be anything from practicing yoga to eating blueberry pancakes.

So, as it turns out, “being myself” requires, for most of us, more than just “being.” It requires “acting.” It requires conscious and deliberate steps towards the things that makes us tick. Sometimes part of this is Practice, and sometimes it isn’t.

If we Act in the right way, we can start get closer to who we really are and what we can offer the world.

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What Meaning Means

The difference between a meaningful life and a meaningless life is Action. Action being taken, specifically, towards a connection with something greater than ourselves.

If, in the moment, no particular Action is being taken to experience “higher consciousness” or “state of Grace” or “God” or whatever you’d like to call it, Life is without meaning.

Actually, life is always having meaning. It’s just not so obvious when the person living it is not taking Action towards something greater than his or her self.

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The Cure For Negative Thinking

Anger is almost always a useless resort. It really has nothing to do with the person(s) or circumstance(s) to whom it’s directed, and much more to do with thoughts going on inside of the victim’s own head.

Once this is realized, Anger subsides somewhat. It’s pointless to be mad, because whatever the person or circumstance is doing is what they’re doing, regardless. They’re over there, and the angry person is over here.

At this point it becomes a game to see how long the Anger can be watched, or watched for. we are the only species on the planet, as far as we know, that can watch for our own emotions. When we do, interestingly enough, the emotion loses a lot, if not all, of its strength.

At least, this seems to be true for negative emotions. Not so much positive emotions. I’ve noticed I’ve been happy before, but once I did, the emotion of happiness did not seem to grow weaker.

This is good news because it means that the cure for any negative emotion is simply observation. We can observe all of our emotions, and once we do, once we “watch for” them, we can, if I’m not mistaken, start to feel good more of the time, and to feel bad less of the time.

Which must be what everyone wants.

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Information vs. Innovation

Real innovation comes from having the courage to sound like yourself. There’s a catch, though. Part of sounding like yourself is knowing what “you” sounds like. And you can’t know that until you listen to a few Others who already know what they sound like.

I’ve always been kind of envious of those who seem to be really good at assimilating bits and pieces of these Others. I guess that’s mostly because I always run into cats who seem to have more of a knack for assimilating than I do.

I’ve done a bit of assimilating, and I’m sure I’ll do more. But right now what intrigues me is the idea of working with what I’ve got. In other words, sounding more like myself.

It can be all too easy to have a hard time finding out what you sound like because you’re so concerned with properly sounding like someone else. As far as I can see, the only antidote for that is stopping acquiring more information – getting back to a Space inside of us that is uniquely ours.

I imagine it would go in a Cycle: Learn, Forget, Learn, Forget, Learn, Forget. The more complex the task, the more there is to learn – and therefore, of course, the more there is to forget.

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Money Or Time?

A friend told me about a study done showing that most Americans have next to nothing in their savings accounts.

The actual statistic: 69% have less than $1,000 and 34% have no savings at all.

In other words, if your savings account has more than a grand in it, you fall into the unbelievably small 21%.

This got me wondering, is this really all about unwise financial decisions? Or could it have something to do with the actual ability to save? Having worked my share of odd jobs myself (TV salesman, cashier, waiter, dishwasher), I know something about how challenging it can be, having certain levels of income, to actually save money.

Saving money is not just the act of putting money into a savings account. As far as I’ve seen, there is really one major factor: Time.

Though I can’t cite statistics, I know that car payments, rent, mortgage payments, food, fuel, utilities, and insurance of all kinds, are facts. Never mind any expenses that do not fall into insurance, or recreational expenses of any kind. In order to account for all of these things, it seems safe to conclude that every American below a certain income level must devote a fair amount of Time to, well, Working. (And unless you’re very lucky, your job is not perfectly aligned with your creative or Artistic talents or Vision.)

Ironically, some of the very activities needed to save money (cooking at home, minimizing travel, designing and keeping to a budget) can be hard-pressed to fit into Time that’s already spent Working.

Maybe these far-out numbers reflect a deeper problem than poor spending habits.

Source: Yahoo!: “Here’s how much Americans at every age have in their savings accounts” by Kathleen Elkins

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Why Intimacy Is More Important Than Music

There is a lot of Music, but not a lot of true human connection, in the world.

Open a streaming app, like Spotify or Pandora, or an online media store, like iTunes. Go to a hub for independent music artists, like SoundCloud or Bandcamp. Visit any sites or services (and there are hundreds) where music, new or old, is simply a click away.

Now walk down the street. Go to a coffee shop. Peruse the aisles of a grocery store, or even a bookstore. Grab a bite at your favorite restaurant. Go to a public park. Go to work. How much actual relating is happening?

I think you’ll notice that what you’ll be hard pressed to find is two or more humans interacting in an authentic, vulnerable way. What you’ll easily find, however, is a lot of smart phones, a lot of laptops, a lot of “blinder vision”.

Of course, smaller towns might elicit more familiarity, but that doesn’t necessarily imply connection, relating, or what I like to call “Intimacy”. Cities or areas with a more expansive urban or cultural sprawl might be more likely to host venues or spaces where people with like minds can meet to share interests, but such places are also known for large amounts of loneliness or isolation in spite of, or indeed because of, the sheer amount of people residing there.

Deep, honest Intimacy – and I’m not just talking about bedroom Intimacy – is rare. Of course, that’s what makes it special. But does it have to be rare to be special? Music is easy to dive into; there’s obviously no shortage of music or musicians. Anyone can put their headphones on – but can anyone venture out of the bubble and start to engage on a deeper level with another human being?

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Should You Quit Your Job?

In Cal Newport’s So Good They Can’t Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest For Work You Love, he provides an algorithm to be used in order to find out whether you should quit your job. I’m quoting from memory:

There are three criteria:

  1. You really hate the people you work with.
  2. You feel that the job is not helping people or doing anything good for the world.
  3. There is no room for innovation.

The first criterion is more or less black and white – you either do or you don’t hate the people you work with. The second two are far more subjective. Who’s to say if the world is being made a better place? And as far as innovation goes, are we talking within the confines of the job itself, or innovation outside of the workplace as well?

Most people aren’t interested in the second two criteria. They’re most likely already good at their job, or they don’t have any other source of income on which to fall back. But for those of us who are, it might benefit us to contemplate them if we’re not entirely certain that our current jobs will hold much promise in the long run.