January 28th, 2010 by Luke
Bob Dylan along with many other great artists through time have said that once they finally released the CD they seldom if ever really listened to it again. I am understanding this right. No matter how much I listen to this thing I am probably never gonna be happy. I just want to finish it completely so I don’t HAVE to listen to it anymore.
You guys, however, get to listen to it all the time. Enjoy. It’s good, I just hate hearing MYSELF.
January 26th, 2010 by Luke
There is something attractive about an older woman who drinks and cusses and discusses the early days when she saw Dylan or The Temptations at a house party. Not Attractive like, “I would have sex with this lady,” but attractive like, “I would have HAD sex with this lady…when she was my age. Of course, that would have thrown things off because I wouldn’t have been born yet. The math is off…but she’s still cool as hell…
January 23rd, 2010 by Luke
I have been in an incredible funk for a very long time. One of my longest if not the longest one of my life. It is a weird cycle that I fall into when this happens. I don’t know if anyone has actually paid attention, but I haven’t written a new song in two years. I haven’t updated my webpage in a really long time as well. I am learning things about myself during this time though. I have felt drunk for almost this whole time. My head gets cloudy when I don’t write and I start forgetting everything which makes me appear rather flaky…
I get depressed and feel like everything I write is worthless. That’s a bad place to put yourself. I’m in a good mood today.
March 1st, 2008 by Luke
You want a reason for how morality exists outside of the standard tradition and ideas of religion? Because what goes around comes around. I don’t mean Karma. I don’t mean that what you do negatively to the universe is going to have to balance itself out. I mean that when you treat people a certain way, it eventually comes back around to you. Sometimes you ruin inroads you could have had. Sometimes you fully traumatize a situation so irreparably that you can’t go back.
I had someone find my blog when they searched for “You can’t step in the same stream Twice.” That phrase wasn’t actually anywhere in the blog entry that they ended up reading, though, which made me laugh a little. Anyway, that phrase is a philosophical thought first posed by a classical philosopher named Hericlitus: it refers to the idea that the water is moving and so even though you may step in the stream bed, you can’t step in the stream itself again.
That makes me wonder about stepping into old relationships. Allow me to give you a hypothetical example:
Hypothetically, I’m in love with a girl and have been for a long time. Hypothetically, this is someone that I already destroyed an even longer time ago. Hypothetically, I know I’m in love because I over-analyze everything and came to realize that she was a litmus test I’d been using against other girls. Hypothetically, she’s been to hell and back in relationships since then. Hypothetically, sometimes I’m very worried that given a second chance, this whole thing would blow up in my face this time.
Hypothetical enough? Good. My point being I can step into that relationship again, but the girl that was in love with me so long ago may have already moved down the river. Maybe she just doesn’t know it.
February 26th, 2008 by Luke
I understand this guy. Here’s a man that recognizes how the world turns. I don’t mean the actual revolutions of this giant rock, but the day to day shit that we have to deal with. I have said for a long time that I am going to have to live in a big city or an hour from civilization, up in the mountains where my closest neighbor is miles away. With every day that passes, I’d rather be up in the mountains. I still like the city just fine. But everyday I feel little bit more like not wanting to be around people. Too much to worry about. Too much to screw up. Too much to want.
February 24th, 2008 by Luke
There was a Chevy commercial that ran during the Grammys I believe. Here’s where you can watch that video:
http://www.josephkosinski.com/projects/movs/BABY_640×360.mp4
That incredible song in the background is by a guy named Oren Lavie. It’s called Her Morning Elegance. I was listening to that song after figuring out who it was. Then, as I usually do, I decided to listen to the rest of the tracks on Oren’s Myspace page. I wasn’t nearly as impressed. Not that it was bad, it’s just that Oren isn’t my cup of tea. The funny thing was that earlier that day my brother and I were having a discussion about music and Sara Bareilles came up. If you aren’t familiar with Sara Bareilles, then you should check her out in the links at the end of this post.
Anyway, my brother was saying how he only really liked her single (Love Song), and didn’t care for anything else of hers really. So this is where art gets murky. The debate over subjectivity and objectivity. I will always argue that when it comes to art, it’s not completely subjective. I think there is a great amount of objectivity in deciding what is good when it comes to art. In other words, I don’t think art should be left up to everyone’s opinion. That’s stupid and wishy-washy.
In our culture today, though, all we preach is tolerance. We’ve preached it so much that most people don’t even know what they believe anymore. there’s no conviction because you don’t want to offend anyone. That’s a conversation for a different day though.
It’s because of this, I believe, that so many people think music is completely about the listener: Whether or not it’s good is up to each individual listener. Bullshit. For one, my music is about me. I’m glad that you like it, but I don’t write songs so that you will like them. And two, I’ll pass all the judgment I want on trash that masquerades for art in the music world. Why? Because it is awful. You can’t listen to Tom Waits, The Wall Flowers, and Britney Spears and not hear the digression as you go along.
Pay attention when you’re listening. This is why things are critical successes but not commercial successes; because the casual listener takes whatever they are told to listen to. If you aren’t proactive about what is fed you, that can be a very dangerous thing: physically, emotionally, politically, and spiritually.
-L
For music mentioned:
February 18th, 2008 by Luke
I went through a spell a little while back where I was honestly trying to figure out how much music did indeed mean to me. It wasn’t an integral part of my life at the time and I wasn’t really known as a musician/songwriter first and foremost in my friend’s minds. So I sat down to figure out what I would do if music didn’t take off (which there was no danger of since I wasn’t exactly putting a lot of work into it).
I realized eventually, that music is more important to me than I had realized. I hate to be cliche and talk about how music is a form of expression and blah blah blah, but it is. What’s more is that I realized that it’s not just expression: it’s a release valve. If you have read the Relationships 101 blog, then you are hip to something that happened recently with me. Well, writing a song about that situation allowed me to just shut it down. Mostly, because the song was not a pining-for-a-past-love song, but more of a putting-this-behind-me-and-realizing-it-was-wrong song.
It just shut it off. Like magic. The problem is that it takes me too long to have to write those songs. I have to wait until I have gathered a fair amount of perspective on the subject, like a dam waiting until the water is a certain level and then releasing the water making way for new water (in my case I would, of course, be making more room for future potential problems and annoyances).
February 9th, 2008 by Luke
They’re bullshit. Alright I am only angry. They can be good…I’m told; however, when I look back on them all, I only remember all the crap. Except for that time when I was curled up on the couch watching Love Actually 4 days before Christmas, and I thought, “Damn, sure would be nice if someone else were here.” We’ll keep that between us, though, and pretend I was actually watching Love Actually by myself (it was on cable…and I swear there wasn’t anything on).
Regardless, the one thing you need to understand in order to make any sense of this blog, is that I recently sort of started dating and then un-dating a friend of mine. It really moved that quick. It was like 0-15 MPH then back to zero again…in a month. I’m mostly annoyed though because anyone who has known me for any length of time knows that prior to this I had taken sabbatical from dating altogether. So to get pulled off furlough in order to deal with a half-assed excuse for “seeing someone” is silly. What it ended up doing was causing me to realize that it’s a pain in the ass being a cynical romantic.
That’s not an oxymoron, by the way. You see, deep down, I have hope that things work out while at the same time knowing they won’t. I’m pretty much only like this when it comes to romance and politics though. I guess I got a great song out of the whole mess (at least there’s that). It’s a duet. I haven’t ever written one of those before. I’ll be giving it a grand reveal at my show in a couple days. The lovely Misty Boyce will be helping out with this one.
February 8th, 2008 by Luke
I did a radio show for Break Thru Radio for a show called Live Studio. It was awesome. I want to really thank Jeff Kuprycz for having found me and brought me in. The Show sounds awesome and you can listen to it here:
I’ll soon be posting tracks on my myspace from the show, but if you go and listen to the show you can hear the whole show as well as a ten minute interview with me Ryan Vaughn, and Chris anderson.
January 29th, 2008 by Luke
I think the secret to being happy in life is knowing from the get-go that life is never going to be as good as you want it or need it to be. We’re constantly having to cut things out of our life that please us. And if you are a hopeless hedonist, then you create other problems with backlash. So, you should recognize this now.
Maybe it’s not enough to know it, actually, maybe you have to be able to accept it. That’s the problem. On one end of the spectrum, you have people that are too stupid to realize any problems. They’re happy. On the other end of the spectrum you have the people that recognize the sad reality of life and accept it. They make the best of it. They’re happy. Somewhere between the extremes is the rest of us, with varying degrees of acceptance and denial. We also have varying degrees of happiness.
I think about all the shit I need to deal with on a daily basis, and wonder Why in God’s name do other people need to make my life more difficult? I know, I know, I do it to myself. I can’t always see it coming though, not always. I know that when I finish writing this blog, I am going to go outside and smoke a cigarette and make a phone call to someone who is annoying the shit out of me…
I need to quit smoking and possibly pare down my group of friends. Instead of having a giant bunch that includes some real leeches, maybe I should just have like two. The two I know for sure don’t suck. And I’ll just stop returning the phone calls of the rest. The very act of doing that means I have to cut out two things I enjoy: smoking and hanging out with lots of people. Something’s gotta give.
