It's my birthday

January 14 is my alternate birthday. Why? Here is a story ...

Here is my story

Pretty - Ugly

 
Ugly is a word we use to think of ourselves  frequently. We also use "fat", "old", "stupid", and "dumb". We hear those words when we wake up, when we arrange our hair, when we brush our teeth, our friends use it, even we use it about our self,  its why we don't try to make a friend and it's what we are thinking about as we fall into sleep.

Semi-tragically, we can't all be ugly, fat, old, stupid and dumb. That is as impossible as all of being above average. Just doesn't work that way. ugly, fat, old, stupid and dumb are all relative ideas. It really has do with being "more ugly than him/her", there is no pure ugly.

Not much help? We have changed from plain ugly to "uglier than _______". Big deal!

No, it helps, really. Let's think about the scale from ugly to beautiful, or fat to skinny, or young to old, or stupid to smart. Who makes these scales? We can't go to the bureau of standards and find the beauty-ugly scale in a box. It's really just a judgement call, an opinion.

When it comes to opinions there just two: mine and somebody else's. If we spend our life reacting to somebody else's opinions we'll just go crazy. It's easy for someone to make judgements about you, it costs them nothing. We bear the consequences, not them. Generally, it's just a bad idea to give the opinions of others the power to control our choices.

 Ask yourself, "Am I ugly?" Whats the answer? Remember there is no pure ugly so your answer has to be "no".  So maybe its just that you're uglier than Angelina Jolie?

What about "I'm uglier than Angelina"? How do you know? Better hair? Straighter nose? Taller? Slimmer? Isn't that just wishing you are something which you are not? That's not beautiful or gracious. What is inherently uglier about a rounded nose versus a long straight one? Is tall and slim always more beautiful than short and fat? (look at Rubens' portraits of women. He thought they had great beauty and they are a bit fat by today's standards)


Was he wrong?

So its all relative, nobody knows and its all a fraud. You are beautiful, strong, smart and graceful; just act the way you want to be and be the way you act.

What do you think?

You're only pretty as you feel
Only pretty as you feel inside
You're only pretty as you feel
Just as pretty as you feel inside

When you wake up in the morning
Comb your hair
Rub some sleep from your eye
Look inside your mirror
Don't give vanity a second chance
No, no, no
Beauty's only skin deep
It goes just so far 'cause
You're only pretty as you feel
Just as pretty as you feel inside
You're only pretty as you feel inside

Now you're feelin' good
Now you're feelin' pretty
Now you're feelin' good
Now you're ready to face the world girl
Go out there 'n' knock 'em silly girl
Go out there 'n' show 'em how to thrill
'Cause you're only pretty as you feel
Only pretty as you feel

Beauty isn't merely pretty, or perfect, or attractive. It includes harmony, grace, dignity, confidence and the love that shines from inside you to light your world. We can't fix our nose (rhinoplasty hurts, a lot), grow six inches taller or even do much about our shape (you can lose weight and tone muscle but your genes determine where the fat comes off first and last, which may not agree with your plan, so if you're 38-38-42 you might get to 35-34-38, but not to 36- 30-36). You can however become more confident, dignified, and loving. Work on what you can improve.

Take some risks.

Find your skin.

Looking into the pit

I have stage fright. I didn't think I still did. I thought I had left it behind with the girls I never asked out, the journeys not taken and the paths never chosen. Nope.

Some of you know I've been taking weekly music lessons, the over-the-top gift from mdw, who undoubtedly was as frustrated with my directionless hours with guitar as I was. So now, I've got direction but at a cost. My teacher (above) tells me the next step is public performance. Really public. Not invite the family and close friends but a real public venue. Scary. Stand-up with a band and play scary.


I am a mixed up bag of talents: comfortable in harmony or music theory, no songs memorized, quick to learn progressions, still struggling with finger position: I can reach four frets at the low end of the neck (I need five) but with fingers too fat at the bridge end. Kind of like skating in gravel.

I'm not feeling ready but I want to do it. Really, I've had enough practice playing the fool, looking silly should be no challenge. My goal is to do it about a month from now. Maybe something bluesy.

Trouble in Mind

D7 D7 D7 A7 D7 A7 Trouble in mind, Lord I'm blue D7 G7 But I won't be blue al-ways D7 B7 E7 A7 D7 The sun is gonna shine in my door, shine in my back door someday    D7 lick (G G# A7) I'm gonna lay, lay my head On that lonesome railroad line And let the 2:19 train ease my troubled mind Trouble in mind, well Lord I'm blue now I won't be blue al-ways The sun is gonna shine in my door, shine in my back door someday    instrumental break I'm going down, goin' down to the river I'm going to bring some wine that I can share And if these blues don't leave me, Lord, I'll have to ride away from here Trouble in mind, trouble in mind I'm blue now But I won't be blue always And that sun's gonna shine in my, lord, shine in my back door someday I'm all alone - I'm alone at midnight And the lamp is burning low I've never had so much trouble, in my whole life ever before Trouble in mind, Lord I'm blue now But I won't be blue always And that wind's gonna come - it's gonna blow my blues away...

Chords: D7 G7 B7 E7 A7 G#7 D lick (G)(G#)A7 e |-5--3--7--7--5---4------------------------ B |-7--3--7--9--5---4------------------------ G |-5--4--8--7--6---5----7---7---7----------- D |-7--3--7--9--5---4---7-7-6-6-5-5-4-------- A |-5--5--9--7--7---6------------------------ E |----3--7-----5---4-----------------3-4-5--

[to be continued]

Folk-rock

It's pretty much a dead genre now. That's kind of inevitable since the songs are all traditional, non-copywrited, or public stuff. No producer wants to spend much recording or publishing them. It wasn't that way in the middle 60s. There was huge cadre of folk trained musicians that had a chance to go from starving folkie to wealthy rocker, based on performance pay. It's one of the hidden reasons that this was such a creative, productive period in American music: the performers got the cash.

In my musical journey this is where I started.

Let Me In http://youtu.be/9-WB-Ip_37c  this version didn't make it past the censors, can you tell me why?

Let Me In Live performance, censors no longer cared, http://youtu.be/DiGq22ZnF0Y  a year later

Questions, http://youtu.http://youtu.be/zDjmmCvTH7obe/zDjmmCvTH7o

Spanish Harlem http://youtu.be/szvM7xJ6ql4

Folk rock was a happy blend of socially conscious protest and a good back beat. Folk music could be awfully whiny and even distressing, but folk-rock at least had a good rhythm and often more interesting harmony than the back-country arrangements that folk used. Finally though its hybrid nature killed it: the folk purists hated its musical innovations and the rock purists hadn't listened to the word as a message anyway.

Music - the seduction

I thought I was pretty much normal when I was in fifth and sixth grade. I listened to top forty music on the radio. That was 61/62 the music was Chubby Checker, Del Shannon, Everly Brothers,.
 
Runaway  was a favorite,

as was Locomotion (Little Eva)  - strong backbeat I-IV-V stuff. I learned the Twist.

Green Onions  and  

 
Telstar  the next year. Typical.1963 was more of same for seventh grade.

Louie, Louie ,

Surf City 

and Surfing USA     I didn't think so but it was all music made by a formula. It's purpose was to make money. Content didn't matter as long as the censors didn't flip-out. Fun stuff but it's hard to be passionate about.

Eighth grade was a little better starting with  

I Want to Hold Your Hand  and  

Twist and Shout , familiar songs but the performance was better. Then at the end of the year

it started with the Kinks, You Really Got Me   This was a raw performance, harmonically interesting, if predictable in content. (love sick boy)

Next year much better.

 
The Beatles were good, but the Stones played real music. Here's a sample there was real depth that year  . So far, I found out commercial rock wasn't rock and roll at all.

66-67 (14-16)








Started hearing something really different at at church dances (we had live music every other month in those days, mostly high school kids in a band). Got to know some of them. They were talking about other bands performing in the area but getting no radio time. I started buying vinyl.

Great Society

Great Society  (you get a star if you knew the song title without looking before the halfway break)

Steve Miller

 








Jefferson Airplane

Country Joe & The Fish

I snuck out to a few performances that summer

Sons of Champlin 

Frumious Bandersnatch

The Golliwogs

Santana Blues Band First seen in a store parking lot on a semi-trailer! (this recording is 2 years later)

That was it I was hooked

Fear of success

The fear of success has a name: procrastination. We are conditioned to think that success brings us power. We're not comfortable with power. We all know stories of people who become intoxicated with power, bringing pain and suffering to those around them and ultimately destroying themselves. It is this theme that runs through the stories of Macbeth, Oedipus or Frankenstein in which power destroys those that have it.

What power does success have that is so fearsome? I think it is that successes stand on their own: when we succeed we are the vanguard. We've gone where we haven't before. We know more about where we are than anyone else. We are the expert. There is nobody else to ask what to do next. That shakes our confidence. What if we are wrong? Do the same rules apply here as do in that comfortable place we came from? Maybe we have gone beyond the limits without knowing that we have. Everything will change.

Few people are fearless. Few people have endless confidence. They usually die early. Those feelings of fear have a purpose and that is to keep us alive and functioning. In that principle is our key. The fears are there to maximize our chance of evolutionary success. What is evolutionary success? Adequate food, water, air and making babies. That is a very limited field in which the fears have a positive functional purpose. Everything else is adoptive behavior. Those fear patterns are easily applied to social interactions, career choices, creative work, etc. However, that is not what they were made for, we might be using a hammer to drive a screw or open a jar: it can work, but its not well suited to the task.

Recognizing that fear is a eight pound sledge hammer is the first step. Succumbing to your fears may work, but it is not necessarily the best way.

Our life is not a changeless stasis, like a rock. Our life is homeostasis, a balancing act between a changing environment and basic needs. We stop changing when we are dead. Life is change, change is life. Life is not about a steady progress toward a goal, it is extracting the greatest joy from what we do today while being moved by age, circumstance and opportunity to our future self. We can look back as our lifeboat is swept down stream in horror and dismay, or we can turn forward to enjoy the ride down the river, bringing new sights and experiences.

"I've become so used to who i  am i don't know if i could be someone else, even if that was the person i really wanted to be. " [sic]

If we are lucky, we're comfortable, or nearly so, with our present selves. Becoming somebody new can be frightening. We have to leave that comfortable, if confining, world. Perhaps our skeleton grew faster than our muscles and we're a bit clumsy, can't quite dance right or haven't developed a graceful carriage yet (if ever). Perhaps we're a bit overweight because food is just too seductively rewarding. Perhaps we have desires to develop in ways that we don't have natural talents. If we have a desire to be a graceful dancer, walk with a confident air, adopt a slimmer healthy body form, or act, sing, make music, write stories or challenge our mind; that involves change and change means risk. Learning to sing means making a sound: it may not be a good sound. Diet and exercise are work, we may despair and give up. We might not even look better when skinnier: it's a risk.

Maybe our friends will be jealous or intimidated by our new beautiful, skinny, graceful and talented self. Our success might be seen as their put-down. Maybe we'll lose all those friends. Or, all those changes just won't mean a thing. Maybe nobody cares.

Give up now, avoid the last minute rush.

OR

If smothering your future with your comfortable pillow isn't what you want, take a risk. Instead of risk avoidance try risk management. Learn to gauge the dangerous changes and take measures to reduce the dangers of failure. Be incremental, sneak up on the big change.

The cure for stifling fear is not bravery, it's courage. A brave man does a dangerous thing without thinking of the risks, a courageous woman knows the risks and does it anyway for greater reward.

Every one of us has a dark, slimy place deep down and well hidden in our souls that is so very familiar. This is the place where we are worthless, ugly, failures, talentless and unnoticed. We go there all the time. We're afraid others might get a peek at this place and find who we really are. BUT, it's not who we are and we want more.Choose to be the idle sleepwalker or crazy dreamer? Those are the only choices in life. Joy comes from acting, doing, trying, loving, singing, dancing, in short risking. Fear is from hiding, avoiding, limiting, in short, leting all the good things pass by.

BAD CHOICES

What is the worst that can happen? What if what you really want is bad? Maybe you want to live as a surf bum. Maybe you want to hook up with your boy/girlfriend/multiple friends. Maybe you want to abuse drugs. Maybe you want to pierce or tattoo the places that your momma is never going to see.

I'll tell you it won't be much fun after a while, you will lose good friends and people will make you suffer for it.

My advice is try not to make your choices the really bad ones: they're "bad" because enough people have tried them and gotten hurt. Try not to follow stupid examples. Stupid hurts.

GOOD CHOICES

You've got a plan. You're going to be everything that's good and admirable and desirable. Secret #1: you won't have it all; Secret #2, what you sacrifice will be worth it; Secret #3, there is no rule or plan that will get you to ecstatic joy; Secret #4, no plan survives the first struggle; Secret #5, obedience to a plan or set of rules will fail; Secret #6, understanding the principles of what gives you joy will make joy possible.

A few suggested principles:
A. Be kind to those you meet
B. Love them all
C. Be who you want to be
D. Be honest with yourself and others
E. Be nice
F. Find God
G. Be God
H. Never fear failure
I. Learn why you failed, don't do that again
J. Be curious
K. Seek intelligence
L. Ask why, a hundred time a day if you need to.
M. Ignore others' standards
N. Have and keep your own standards
O. People matter
P. Money and things don't matter
Q. No fear can survive your strength
R. Be happy
S. Tell yourself "I'm beautiful" every day
T. Life is a song: dance and sing
U. There is no purpose to life other than your lasting joy, find it
V. Happy people make us happy: make them happy.

Phoebe

I know a woman who I'll call "Phoebe". Phoebe has a challenge. It effects every minute of her life, it limits what she can achieve, it makes it hard for her to fully benefit from her faith, it even makes her opinions about herself suspect.

Phoebe doesn't look afflicted with problems, in fact she uses her energy to make up for her lack of inner enthusiasm..Most people think she is the positive "energizer bunny" type. She has achieved many worthwhile things. Phoebe is talented, charming and well behaved. But Phoebe has a secret.

She hopes nobody notices that she doesn't take any risks.

Life hasn't been easy for her. She is acutely aware of her failures but hopes we overlook them behind her "get on with it" attitude. She feels that just keeping up a good front is all she can do. By defining herself that way, she makes it certain that it is all she can do. She wants us all to treat her as if she had succeeded where she has not.

Phoebe is Phoebe's own worst enemy. She doesn't understand that everyone loves Phoebe, that all her efforts to keep up appearances just wear her out and don't do much to improve her standing with us. It's hard to improve your standing when everyone who knows you thinks you are amazing already. But she keeps at it, running feverishly just to stay in place. What's really wrong?

Fear.

Phoebe is afraid of failing. She is afraid we'll find out she is a complete fraud. She's afraid she just doesn't have "it". Her character in her opinion is just a list of "not enoughs". She looks in the mirror and past the beauty there, counting every wrinkle and blemish since she thinks she is plain or ugly. She doesn't show her brilliance, instead settles for the lesser degree of achievement which she is sure to reach. She substitutes order for creativity. She substitutes obedience for principle. She substitutes elaborate planning for organic growth. She lives by the rules rather than risk the struggle.

The Bible asks us "Why are ye so fearful? how is it that ye have no faith?", [Mark 4:40] and tells us "For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind." [I Timothy 1:7]. Fear gives way to faith, but we have to banish our fears to make a place for faith to work its miracles.

Phoebe knows fear, it is a long time companion. Her upbringing was in a tradition that used fear and guilt to exert power. Phoebe doesn't like fear but it is familiar, there are no risks clinging to fear. She is trying to fill herself with loads of faith but doesn't see that she must exile fear or faith will not have the ability to make itself a home.

Fear is hopelessness and powerlessness, faith is hope and power. Faith requires risk, great faith requires risking all. Faith is not built up by following rules or by obeying without understanding. Faith without actions is dead.