tonight in san francisco, and some other stuff about my internal process and growth as an artist.

I’m playing tonight with Doc at Remedy in San Francisco. Eric Sharpe is opening up at my invitation, and I agred to play the middle set. Everyone I know is included, and it looks like it’s gonna be a great show. I’m excited, pacing around my flat fussing. Time to get up and get out and save some of this energy for the show itself. It’s not fear really, it’s excitement and anticipation. Interesting, as I meditate and feel the morning sun on my face, how similar those two emotions can appear without some reflection.

Doc and his wife got to town last night and we went to a late dinner and talked, listening to music and enjoying each other until quite late. I love my friend Doc. The irony of the full circle we’ve shared is restorative, and inspiring to me. I just love sitting on my red exercise ball (how I sit in my studio to save my lower back) listening to his amazing music, saying things like “Man, I gotta remix this!” and loving every single song he plays me, loving his wife’s voice, wanting copies of the music so I can play them in my DJ sets, and enjoying the beautiful development he’s undergone in the last ten years.

I produce music, but with much less urgency than I used to. I make music for me now. I love to re edit, and re mix, and sing, and embellish, but the purpose has changed. Rather than feeling like I have to prove something to anyone, the chip on my shoulder is all but dissolved, and ambition is replaced with dreams, tones, and the desire to reach well beyond the familliar places of excitement, and approval. For me, mixing records is more inspiring than enything else. The new process I’m investigating, re looping, re editing, improvising, and just forging through sounds and emotions is where I’m at.

I said “I think I’m done yelling at people.” and I meant it. It’s a huge piece of what I came to in the middle of my set a couple weeks ago in DC. This idea that the past is gone, and yelling is really uncalled for. Doc and Lily laughed and smiled at me. I felt myself get a little defensive for a second and then let it go. I said it. They didn’t. My friends simply agree with me. It’s time to whisper, and sing. It’s time to demonstrate, not preach or speak. Though speaking, rather, spoken word, is a huge part of who I am as a performer, perhaps to be more subtle, more mantra-like is what we really need right now. Emolliants, balms, salve, these are the things which are more attractive, and most powerful.

I also said that I have a note to myself on my desktop to “stop singing about love.” This produced a gasp, and two friends toegazing. Yes, love is the message. It is. But love is what we do, it’s just not what we say, or what we need right now. I mean to say that my love is bigger than a simple love song. I want to reach beyond these naiive metaphors, and say something else entirely. I suppose it’s to be expected that this path would lead further away from stomping dance floor filling tunes, as always the power is in the application, the moment, it is harder to grock from the outside, or streaming over the inter-web. You have to be there. I want you to be there. When we are there together, and the music is moving, surging in the speakers, I am liberated and free to sift through the crowd, tossing out the superficial, the drunk, the lame, and embrace the lonely, the lovely, the thirsty, and the beautiful. When we break into a simple arpeggiate, and take the frequency down, until nothing is happening but a throb of bass, and you are there with me, that is the love I am talking about.

I have to be fearless, and clear. I am working very hard and enjoying the process of moving myself almost entirely out of the way.

See you there.