Spring Cleaning

My mind is a little like a dusty attic. There’s a lot of cool stuff up there that I don’t want to get rid of, but there’s also junk. Knowing which is which isn’t always easy, but that’s a skill that improves with practice. That’s usually the case for anything that’s worth learning.

The thing about junk in the attic is that it’s not just taking up space and collecting dust, it can have a negative effect on the floors below. Imagine that an old chair gets wet from a roof leak and becomes infected with black mold. Then, every time the attic door opens, spores are stirred up. Some of them drift downstairs and end up in the basement, walls, or AC system. Now, instead of just having a bunch of useless stuff, you’ve got a serious problem. That junk needs to go, and somebody’s going to have to remediate the infection.

I’ve been digging around in my attic a lot lately. To be honest, I’ve been pleased with some of what I’ve found. Sometimes I feel like Clark Griswold sitting in the dark watching old home movies. Forgotten skills, random bits of information, and lost emotional experiences are all buried up there. If I wanted to be really ruthless about the process, I’d probably try to let more things go. But if they’re not hurting me or anyone else, I’m good with leaving things alone till I need the space. Not everything up there is harmless, though.

We all pack on beliefs and impressions as we move through life. We have experiences and form habits before we have a good idea about their long-term usefulness. That’s fine because it’s how our brains work, and it’s not a bad system. It’s crucial, actually. If a belief or behavior was useful once, then it might be useful again, right? So your brain remembers it, and when a relevant situation comes up again, it emerges. And so the story goes.

The thing is, by the time we’ve gone around the sun a couple of dozen times, we’ve acquired a mountain of beliefs, habits, and impressions, and it’s not clear how many of them are true, or whether they’re still working for us.

Maybe we experienced some traumatic events when we were young and buried them. Maybe our response to those events led to changes in our personality, or beliefs about our competence, worthiness, intelligence, or whatever the case may be. Maybe those changes weren’t unjustified. Maybe they were flat-out wrong. But on and on they’ll run unless we do something about it.

So I’m doing a lot of cleaning these days. I’m looking around, assessing my stuff, seeing what’s cool enough to keep and what might be causing problems. It’s kind of fun, actually, though it’s certainly not easy. But things that are easy to do tend to be common, and let’s be honest, who really wants to be common?

Now for a few words about music:

I’m working on 3 main projects right now. One is “Momentum.” It looks like it’ll be part of an EP that includes 3 versions of the song: A club/dance version, a studio mix with some really interesting production elements (completed), and what I call the “Spirit Version”, which is the form that’s closest to what I originally heard - the spirit in which it was given, so to speak. I also have an idea for an orchestral version floating around me, but that will come later.

The second project is “Mm Hmm - Lyrical Version.” That one is just a matter of scheduling, since an excellent singer and friend from another state will be recording vocals live in Muscle Shoals.

The third project is still hush-hush, but I’ll have more to share in the next blog.

That’s all for now. Check your attic.

Much love.

See you in the future.