Not too much posting this month...

As you can see, I have not spent much time blogging in the new year. That is because I have been busying up my spare time, primarily with Japanese study and music. The music busyness is largely in response to some inspiring words from Jen, who said something in an email a while back that reminded me about motives for the music we do. She basically pointed out that first and foremost it's not about the promoting and the success/failure ratios that we can get so used to measuring ourselves by. She reminded me that we do it because we love it, because we just simply desire to express ourselves that way creatively, whether anyone is listening or not. And I think I had been forgetting that, dwelling too much on my space in life and the fact that any sort of typical musician's life just does not fit very well with a 30 year old, and a wife and two young kids, etc etc. But fact is, I still love writing songs and trying to express myself in music.

Songs can be kind of a riddle in which you try to communicate something that you wouldn't say otherwise. It's an interesting comparison with writing a blog, because it is such a different form of communication. I find it really hard to be too open on a blog, but in a song I can reveal things that I would never otherwise tell; though I guess I always make the really important stuff vague enough that I always leave myself space for full deniability...

But even so, once in while I will get an email where someone has heard one of the songs, and really connected with it, and there is no greater high than that. Once a lady phoned me crying and saying, "Thank you so much for writing that, and I want you to know I understand, I so understand what you are saying." The funny part of it is that, who knows, who knows what she understood or if it had anything to do with what I was trying to communicate. But really, who cares. I just loved the fact that it moved her, and that something that came out of me connected so deeply with something in her. I was high for weeks.

So we are going to try some more stuff, keep making music. We are practicing for some gigs around the city, and a friend in LA is working on a mix of one of the songs that has not yet been recorded. Oh yes, it will be an exclusive Herban Sprawl internet release, and of course I am positive I-tunes will be clamoring to add it to their collection. Probably release a special edition i-pod just for this song.

And more inspiration from jen (she's quite inspiring). She put on the trail of video blogging, which I have been finding quite fascinating. It seems that bandwidth could really limit such a thing, but I would like to give it a try. So I will be making a few video blog posts, if I can get over my fear of talking into a camera. Try it some time. You feel pretty dumb sitting there by yourself, looking into a camera, and trying to think of something to say. But maybe we will just sing you a few songs or something. Anyway...