Sum of my actions…

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.

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Howard Hughes

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.

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consistently good…

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:

Oren Lavie

Sarah Bareilles

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music 101

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).

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Relationships 101

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.

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Break Thru Radio

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:

Break Thru Radio

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.

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Something’s Gotta Give

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.

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Dreams

January 28th, 2008 by Luke

I don’t remember my dreams very often. Up until just a few weeks ago, I could probably count the number of dreams I remembered on my two hands. It just doesn’t happen very often. The dreams I remembered were generally pretty cracked out versions of life too. For instance I once had a dream in the sixth grade that went like this:

I was having a party in my parents front yard and everyone from school was there (probably 30 or 40 kids). My older brother Jacob and my dad were walking through the crowd and sticking pins on all of my friends’ shirts, and the moment they did, my friends would turn evil. Soon enough, they were all evil and they started chasing me down the street. I kept tripping, but they still couldn’t catch me (like a bad horror flick). Finally, I got to the other end of the street and climbed up on a house. As I stood on the peak of the roof, they would charge up at me and I would tear their pin off and then toss them off the roof (tearing the pin off rendered them non-evil, so I am not really sure why I felt the need to be pushing them off the roof also). Finally it was just down to my brother and my dad and I made a break for it. There was a big greyhound bus parked on the street (which is strange because that kind of vehicle is never even driving down an out-of-the-way residential neighborhood street). I got into the greyhound bus, and it was full to the brim with logs cut into fire wood. I sat down into the driver seat, and then I noticed there was no ignition, but there was a gaping hole where my feet would go. I was going to have to run start the bus a la The Flintstones. I did and eventually pulled into a supermarket. At this point my brother comes riding up on his ten speed bike and reaches in the window and grabs the keys, turning the ignition (that wasn’t there before) off. I woke up.

Lately I have been remembering dreams a lot though. What worries me is that they are all relatively normal. Last night I had a dream that I couldn’t find my jacket which is where my cigarettes were, so that I could smoke. Two nights I ago I dreamed that two of my friends that hadn’t talked since the one moved away from the city, had finally talked. Last week I had a dream about a friend who moved to L.A. Now he was back in NYC and he had a hair cut and he was a total ladies’ man.

I don’t mind not remembering my dreams that often, but what the hell does it mean when you start having normal dreams and they are still dreams that stress you out? All of these dreams are causing an anxiety that persists well after I wake up. Any ideas?

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Break Thru Radio #2

January 24th, 2008 by Luke

So the Radio show went very well. We did a forty minute set and then interviews afterward. I felt like we killed the interviews, and the performance was the best we’d done yet. I was exhausted, though, because I was up late for work the night before and only got a few hours of sleep before I had to wake up to do the show. So I came home afterward and crashed on the couch for awhile.

When I woke up, I headed into Rockwood Music Hall to catch a couple of acts. I saw Zach Williams and Old Springs Pike. They are both really incredible, and if you get the chance you should check them out.

That’s all, I’ll let you guys know when the radio show will air…which should be in a week or two.

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One of those weeks

January 22nd, 2008 by Luke

So, I am doing a 40 minute set with radio interviews tomorrow for an online radio station called Break Thru Radio (you can find them here). I am excited while at the same time hesitant.

I am excited for all the obvious reasons: it’s exposure, they found me and that’s pretty cool, and it’s something I’ve never done before. I am hesitant for all the right reasons: I have to actually play un-fucked-up versions of my songs, it’s at noon and I hope my voice is warmed up, and it’s something I’ve never done before. Cheers to me playing a good set, eh?

In other news, My friends have known for a long time that I decided to take a furlough away from the world of dating a few years ago. Some of my songs have even chronicled this feeling, i.e. Fool’s Gold. I recently decided to come out of retirement and delved into something with a friend of mine. What did I learn? On Furlough is a good place to be because it never really is what you think it could be.

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