Digital Disengagement
I'm confessing upfront that I don't know where this experiment will lead, but I do know that I must do it.
I have been spending too much time engaged with the Internet lately. Between my work (Digital Marketing Agency) and my personal 'play' in the realms of Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Four Square, I have been constantly engaged with the digital world. I enjoy all of the connections that this interactive world allows. I have people who I know and value only via the web and others who share with me in the flesh-and-blood world and enhance that sharing via the virtual world. I enjoy the pace of interactions, the laughter, the positive massages and the extension of myself that Digital allows me.
My work involves some measure of interaction on the web, as well. Yet, when I really analyze my work-related time (and I have this week), very little other than email and research is critical to my goals vocationally.
I do enjoy the digital world and its constantly changing and ever teaching environment keeps me stimulated and growing, but I am paying a price.
Here's the rub. I've noticed some changes in my life - more my experience and enjoyment of life - that just won't do. I will not go into the details here, but will generalize my concern thus: I am not a natural child of the digital world and to continue to process and engage at such an intense and constant level is tiring and is changing the way I think, process and most importantly the way I care for myself.
So, here's my confession. I will be backing away from the Internet. If you are a regular reader here, you will likely not notice a difference in my blogging frequency. Blogging, as I practice it, is less about frantic, quick thought and more about thinking, writing, and creating. I'll not stop blogging. I am backing off of Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn in terms of frequency of interactions. The same is true with my non-work related email interactions.
I will be blocking time (some of the 86,400 seconds of every day) for non-digital engagement, and limiting my online time with a timer. My commitment is to the next 21 days. Already, this weekend as refreshed my spirit as I have only spent 3 hours online and left my iPhone sitting by itself for hours at a time. I have spent the newly reclaimed time: hiking, reading, listening (just sitting and listening) to music and song lyrics, playing with my dogs, and talking face-to-face with family and friends. I like it.
Wish me success.
Photo taken October 2008, Appalachian Trail Hike
The hawks are really out and vocal today. We get this every Spring, a few days when they seem to defy their reputation of being elusive. They soar, gliding from one roost to another. Screaming and taunting each other. It is wonderful to watch.
I remember, as a child, always longing to see birds of prey. We didn't see many. Occasionally when we would travel to the mountains, or more inland areas I would see a large bird soaring in to sky, Too often it was a vulture or raven. Then, sometimes, it wouldn't be. Sometimes it would be a hawk, or a Sea Hawk - gliding on the currents, mastering the skies - waiting to deal death to some unsuspecting prey.
Today, my wife is fond of calling any sighting of a hawk "Hawk Medicine." Her sense of respectful coexistence with birds of prey is almost reverent.
Birds of prey (raptors) are wonderful creatures and often misunderstood. Interactions of almost any kind with humans is perilous to raptors. They are best observed from afar. If you want to learn more about the life and precarious existence of these regal birds, click over here to a brief essay, compliments of Stanford.
Bloggers' Words
words on my screen
tokens of life well lived
speaking of actions, attitudes
options for living
words of one's journey
signs, revealing and deep
challenging me to thrive, live
choose to grow
words launched into timeless space
floating in e-land, wandering
coming home and sinking deep
settling as my heart
sings
words from you, my friend.
Winter Music saved My Life
When I was a young adult, music saved my life in many dimensions. perhaps we can all say that music has saved our life, our sanity, our being at some point or another, and that is what I am saying. Today I am celebrating the music that educated me on the possibility to appreciate music as it occurs naturally in nature.
The Paul Winter Consort, founded in 1967 and lead by Paul Winter is an assembly of musicians with strong influences of Jazz and Blues. The group's work is still very much alive and won Grammys as recently as 2005, 2007. I first heard The Paul Winter Consort when he played at Wofford College in 1978 following the release of their album Common Ground. I still have the vinyl album with the group's autographs...somewhere.
The striking thing then and now about the music lead by Paul Winter is the incorporation of animal sounds, recorded in nature, into their music. I was able to hear the true music of the wolf and the whale and experience the gentle continuance of their song through the haunting rifts of saxophone and lumbering rhythms of percussion. It was through Winter's music that I began to develop an affinity with the planet and those with whom I share it.
If you can stop for a moment today, do yourself a favor and turn out the lights, turn up the sound and let this group take you on a journey into your very own world - lead by the voices of nature and the music of masterful musicians.
Wolf Eyes
Lullaby of Mother Whale
When I was a young adult, music saved my life in many dimensions. perhaps we can all say that music has saved our life, our sanity, our being at some point or another, and that is what I am saying. Today I am celebrating the music that educated me on the possibility to appreciate music as it occurs naturally in nature.
The Paul Winter Consort, founded in 1967 and lead by Paul Winter is an assembly of musicians with strong influences of Jazz and Blues. The group's work is still very much alive and won Grammys as recently as 2005, 2007. I first heard The Paul Winter Consort when he played at Wofford College in 1978 following the release of their album Common Ground. I still have the vinyl album with the group's autographs...somewhere.
The striking thing then and now about the music lead by Paul Winter is the incorporation of animal sounds, recorded in nature, into their music. I was able to hear the true music of the wolf and the whale and experience the gentle continuance of their song through the haunting rifts of saxophone and lumbering rhythms of percussion. It was through Winter's music that I began to develop an affinity with the planet and those with whom I share it.
If you can stop for a moment today, do yourself a favor and turn out the lights, turn up the sound and let this group take you on a journey into your very own world - lead by the voices of nature and the music of masterful musicians.
Wolf Eyes
Lullaby of Mother Whale
I am a committed believer that the right words work wonders and the wrong words go nowhere.
Just down the road from us is the local Hospice Care Center. Hospice is an amazing organization and I have the utmost respect for their work. I am even close personal friends with one of the early 'founders' of the organization, Elizabeth Callari.
To get to the Hospice Center near me, you turn off of a busy thoroughfare and onto a side street that ends just beyond the Center. I just heard a curious fact recently. Apparently, the city had to be persuaded to replace the DEAD END sign with a NO OUTLET sign at the entrance to the street.
Am I wrong for finding humor in this?
1976 Musical Memory for 2010
In 1976
and Peter Wood released a melodic song with a play time of over 6 minutes and that still managed to dominate the airwaves. Last Saturday, while mowing the lawn, my iPod shuffled to this song and lost in the magic of ear-bud land, I heard the lyrics as if for the first time. Some of them were familiar to me but as the music rolled on, I was smitten by their beauty. There is real poetry in this song, I tell you.
The simple interpretation of the song lyrics tell a story about a tourist who meets a hippie girl in an exotic market, stays the night with her, and thus misses his tour bus. The larger story is about how we can lose ourselves in someone else to the point that our intended destination is lost and the direction of our lives permanently altered.
Please accept my invitation to listen to or read some of the most romantic and enchanting lyrics from the 70's.
Hear the song here:
.
Lyrics below.
Year of the Cat - Al Stewart & Peter Wood
On a morning from a Bogart movie
In a country where they turn back time
You go strolling through the crowd like Peter Lorre
Contemplating a crime
She comes out of the sun in a silk dress running
Like a watercolour in the rain
Don't bother asking for explanations
She'll just tell you that she came
In the year of the cat
She doesn't give you time for questions
As she locks up your arm in hers
And you follow 'till your sense of which direction
Completely disappears
By the blue tiled walls near the market stalls
There's a hidden door she leads you to
These days, she says, I feel my life
Just like a river running through
The year of the cat
Well, she looks at you so cooly
And her eyes shine like the moon in the sea
She comes in incense and patchouli
So you take her, to find what's waiting inside
The year of the cat
Well, morning comes and you're still with her
And the bus and the tourists are gone
And you've thrown away the choice and lost your ticket
So you have to stay on
But the drum-beat strains of the night remain
In the rhythm of the new-born day
You know sometime you're bound to leave her
But for now you're going to stay
In the year of the cat.
I spent some time over at Wake Forest University this evening listening to Spike Lee deliver the keynote address for the Reynolda Film Festival here in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
His comments were passionate and targeted at encouraging young adults to find and pursue the thing(s) that make them happy and about which they are passionate. One poignant statement was when he was discussing how often the dreams and passions of young people don't fit with the expectations of their parents. Mr. Lee said, "Parents destroy more dreams than anyone else." Powerful words of warning and awareness.
I know my parents/grandparents did their best and I also know - in hind sight - that they did not encourage the best of my gifts. I am by talent and nature an entertainer. I love to act, write, and speak publicly. They just didn't have the vision to see how pursuing these arts would be helpful to me.
So, I'm wondering... did you have to swim upstream against the expectations of your parents in order to pursue a dream? did they destroy yours?
Note: Image courtesy of Free Digital Images
Change
Another second ticks past
Another moment that won’t last
Time again yields to nothing new
Leaves behind victories and youth
Those who thought one life could change
Our world from scandal and pain
Belief that hope and desire
Would cast water upon the fire
Yet failures and callused minds
Bind with broken promises finding
Brilliant victories heralding
Vanquished limits and proclaiming
Without giving merit to those
Whose lives already tried and lost
Upon the battlefields
Of soil and polices
Note: image courtesy of Free Digital Photos
Before the lightning flashes, clouds roll in bringing with them a promise of relief from the incessant heat and the potential of a light show over the sea. There is nothing so comforting as a summer evening thunder storm at the coast.
Their regular appearance with their own assembly of sound, light (amazing light) and a palpable embrace. It's the drop in barometric pressure, so they tell me, that creates the change in the air. the air seems to at once feel lighter and more dense with moisture as it brushes against you: an ascending wave of breeze upon breeze. The air smells of salt and sea just before the storm.
Perhaps the sensations are so powerful because of all bare skin; the taut, tanned skin of youthfulness, proclaiming would be eternal beauty and undaunted vigor, feeling every ray of sun, every grain of sand, every coming drop of rain.
Memory tells the story now... Here I felt the world, alive and full. I felt the storms. Here I would grab you by the hand and rush to the beach as the clouds darkened the sky and the breeze began to chase us. Sunbathers scattered for shelter and we would run against the current of people to the beach and scurry like sand fiddlers into the large wooden float box positioned with it's one open side facing the ocean. There we would settle in, giggling and shuffling into our place among the sandy floats, into each other's arms and wait for the show to begin.
Drops would fall, making small dimples in the sand and then give way to sheets of rain, blown sideways by the wind folding them like sheets - waving to us. The light would fade and burst in flashes. Then the moment would come when, framed by the window of our shelter we would see a jagged bolt of lightning descend in to the sea. We would shut our eyes and capture the image of that bolt now cut into the fabric of our souls as we felt the thunder - thunder into us. We would hold each other tightly as we shared the storm between us. I remember your bare back hot beneath my hands, the texture of your lips, and the taste of you.
Lightning flashes. Clouds roll in, bringing with them the promise of relief...
Note: image courtesy of Free Digital Photos