Looking up or down. For divers it’s all the difference.
Committing means a lot and absence of truth or integrity is part of that. We’ve all been burned in our lives. Ambitions larger that ourselves. It’s grounding but we are reminded of the values of what is holding us up. Hands of love, patience and elder far beyond beauty that is empty.
At turns of my grandmothers brushes with death nurses aided her and I think of what that meant to her. The light that emulated from her being and what it means to be that person who sees that glow before it fades. Something in me wanted for so long capture this idea of respect for that moment before the light goes out in a beautiful capture of what would be absent soon after.
My grandmother was my world she always will be, nothing can change that.
Years follow her absence but I want to make work she aimed me towards. Be Bigger than you know. Challenge yourself and see beyond yourself but the good of others.
when XM radio was new I remember driving her around just so she could hear songs of her time. On one occasion though I turned the dial wrong and by chance it came onto this song.
Before the time you had ability to rewind or go back.
I drove her back home because I told her I met Chris Cornell once and she was so excited about it. I picked up my guitar and tried to figure it out. It was just a song, just a moment.
Little did I know that I would meet those people even in passing years later.
Far beyond that fire lit within me then I know that place.
I played a show at under the rail with my friends long ago feeling larger than life. My family in the audience and when I came back to them days later all they said was, we think you’re on drugs, which I wasn’t. I was so upset and let down but I connected to tattoo culture and friends I turned my back on music.
Years later I picked up my guitar in the studio and think of that time I met Cornell and how I wanted to howl like him. I’m reminded how I told my grandmother about Mark Arm and Lane Staley.
It made me a bigger person, the fact that she wanted to know a new song moved me forever. So when I landed in Tokyo to learn that Cornell offed himself this song came to mind knowing she’s gone, something I can never take back. I have to pick up these pieces. Know that these things that move you are far reaching.
I was reluctant to put my hand at brushes but it came to me this idea that if you can pick yourself up, you can dust yourself off and make a new.