- so feed yourself – ,

But you know what I need instead?

My hand to my heart and a gun to my head,

No fear, just a rumble growing louder,
In the tunnel of my belly,

Kick-starting the engine into gear,
Fist to cuff, I roll up my sleeves,
Wipe the beads of sweat from my dry mouth,

There’s trouble in my brain this time,
I induce vomiting,

Calmly journaling,
No longer flying high.

What a relief. And how wonderful, how brilliantly wonderful!

For the last several weeks my wife and I have been on the edge of our seats every Sunday night as we waited with baited breathe to see if our friend’s wife would make it through each round. And week after week we nearly exploded from anxiety. The show was so much easier to watch when we didn’t have a connection to any of the contestants. If she won it meant my friend and her would have a great opportunity that would change their lives for ever and in so doing – they prove that anything is possible.

When I first met her husband, Brendan McNamara, it was on the set of our web series “and Boris” (he plays a recurring character on the show) and as I got to know Brendan not only was I blown away by his genuine warmth and generosity but was thrilled to find that he was also part of a husband and wife producing team. Aarti and Brendan have been shooting her web series “Aarti Paarti” since 2009 and their perseverance and faith has paid off. For those of us who are chasing our own dreams, it’s inspiring to see success is possible.

Wonderful!

* * * * * * * * * *

Whole worlds gone mad

Today I just have a quick thought on reluctance and its negative effect on music. More specifically, two of my friends and I have discussed being a three person for literally years. We’ve tried different to name the band before starting the band, we’ve had websites for bands for the three of us that never occurred, and so on. The one issue that has held us back the most is organization of instrumentation. We’ve been an electric guitar, bass and drumkit blues trio, we’ve been a five piece where I played a uke and a drummer and keyboardist joined us…. More or less we’ve tried way too hard for way too long to figure our band out before we were a band.

Amidst our busy weeks and hectic lives, the three of us always just end up jamming acoustically (Alex and Ben are both great guitar players, and I switch between hand drums and uke), and up until recently, we looked at raw, honest acoustic jamming simply as a palet upon which we could build songs for another format. However, Ben recently came to Alex and I and posed a great point. All he basically had to say was “why don’t we just be exactly what we are, and just play already?!”

With that in mind, the three of us played open mic night at Founder’s brewing Co last night with no setlist, no predetermined setup, not even an idea of what it might sound like. The result was actually a ridiculous amount of fun on our end, and a shockingly large applause on the end of the beer swelling patrons.

I guess the point of this isn’t to glorify an experience of mine or even to say “look out for my new band!” It’s more along the lines of this: Worrying about what art will be, before the art actually IS, can only hurt art. This goes for all modes and genres, and other areas of life as well. Just get it all out there, put all of your heart into something and if it sounds/looks/tastes/feels like mush, then its mush. However, the more we do it, the better it becomes. So, long story short, just jam!

Here’s a real fortune I got out of a fortune cookie my sophmore year of college: “Stop wasting time stringing and tuning your instruments… start making music now!” My response was “Touche, universe. Touche.”

* * * * * * * * * *

Adjoa Skinner, singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, and Summer 2010 Avocado Jungle Artist In Residence.

Our music blogger, Dan Rickabus, had a great interview with one of these special people: singer-songwriter (and Avocado Jungle Artist In Residence) Adjoa Skinner. Adjoa is filled with the kind of genuine exuberance and drive and spirit you’d like to bottle and sell because it would make millions. And while she can’t bottle her energy, she can record her music, and it wouldn’t be at all surprising if that made her millions one day, too—although she talks about her life as if she’s already won the lottery.

Born in Lancaster, New York (near Buffalo), Adjoa grew up in an extremely musical family. Her mother and stepfather were in a band together that played weddings and other events. Her father’s family wasn’t made up of professional musicians, but they sang in four-part harmony at family events. They were, as Adjoa tells it, “kind of like the Partridge Family without money.” She jumped right into “the biz,” making her first on-stage appearance as a baby in the musical Oliver at the age of two and auditioning for her first session work (a commercial voiceover) a seven.

Now, at twenty-eight, it is clear she has lived and breathed this stuff all her life. She compares her sound to contemporaries like Regina Spektor and Sarah Bareilles, but says she’s a big fan of Sting and Peter Gabriel. An agile and soulful singer, a multi-instrumentalist, and a songwriter—in her own words a “jazz soul singer songwriter”—her influences and tastes make lots of sense when you hear the control, the style, and the maturity of her voice. Her step-dad used to make her mix CDs with Joni Mitchell, The Beatles, Ricky Lee Jones, Jeff Buckley, Elton John… not your typical listening material for a girl who went to middle school in the nineties. But Adjoa ate it up, and now these classic sounds are part of the foundation for her songwriting, and for that pervasive note of wisdom in her voice.

A few of my favorite quotes from Adjoa in this interview:

“I listen to people having conversations, and I start to rhyme their conversations in my head. So… I’m kind of a big nerd.”

“The greatest thing that I get back from listening back to all of the recordings [I make], for me, is remembering the moments that I shared with these people that I really love and am so honored to work with.”

“My Mom is so fun to watch. I think one of the greatest things that I hope I get from her is her joy, the way that she makes people feel so comfortable.”

There’s plenty more to hear in this interview—conducted by the ever-amiable Dan Rickabus—including Adjoa’s profound answer to the deep closing question, “What are you searching for?” (I won’t spoil that one. You’ll just have to listen for yourself.) The two seem to enjoy their conversation a lot, and we at the Avocado Jungle are glad to give you the opportunity to enjoy it as well.

* * * * * * * * * *

Listen to a song from Adjoa’s EP, Nothin’ More To Say: Never.

Visit adjoaskinner.com.

Now my heart stumbles on things I don\’t know.

The theme here in the butter-pear wilderness this week is success. I’ve discovered, through the combination of deep ponderings and being a recent college graduate, that success is one of the strangest concepts to ever come 0ut of a human mind. I’m sure others have had the same uncertain relationship with this slippery expectation. In terms of music, success typically means that someone is paying you big bucks to make your music, and you can buy your record at Best Buy. However, being the emotional-honesty-purist and societal skeptic that I am, I would beg to differ.

I’m of the mind that musicians should seek only personal creative success, which can be defined through experiences. These can be as simple as hearing back something you’ve done and truly realizing that you would buy your record if you were not you. Is that simple? I don’t know, I’m too simple-minded to figure… or maybe that is generally complicated. Can you actually endure an out of body experience and listen to your own work without a tainted ear? I guess the problem there is that you will always know that it’s you you’re listening to. Regardless, I digress… the feeling of true personal creative success is a step above satisfaction. You can be satisfied, but not happy. You can also be happy but not satisfied.

I recently had a conversation with my father while home for the fourth about this very thing. While he was working hard and pushing on more than needed, someone had said to him, “you’re never happy with your work, are you?” My dad replied “I’m happy, I’m just not satisfied.” At the end of our conversation, though, Dad and I decided that the proper way to phrase his thinking was “I’m usually happy with my work, and I’m often satisfied with my work, I’m just not done working.”

There is a strange assumption that comes along with “success” that you’re done. For example, in music, you have a long career of riches and romping, and then your record label asks you to make a “greatest hits” record. I’m sure many famous musicians have met that request with a big “Woah! Woah! Hold on! I’m not that old!” The thing is though, I don’t think success as an outside standard for an artist can really be achieved… only personal creative success can be achieved: you can be happy and satisfied with your own music, and damn does that feel great. However, if you’re done, then why did you start in the first place? Art is not a means to an end, it’s art. I just recently read a great quote from an author that Incubus’ Brandon Boyd utilized in a letter to fans about his new unexpected solo album, it says:

“Art, like love, is what makes the world fresh and new. However, this revitalization cannot be said to be art’s purpose. Art revitalizes precisely because it has no purpose except to engage our senses. The emancipating jounce of inspired uselessness.”

To top this article off, I will turn to the genius of Alan Watts. In one of my favorite speeches of Alan’s he first makes the statement that the best composers in music are the ones who create the most beauty, not the ones who conduct the fastest and are the first to reach the end of their piece. He then describes the system of success that Western culture has created: You’re in middle school with the intention of making it to high school, high school with the intention of going to college, college with the intention to get a better job and make more money for stuff, etc. He discusses how this process is seemingly a race to an end, when that’s not what life is. In fact, racing through life, moving up and up in “status” until you retire is precisely the opposite of what we should be worrying about in life. Talking of reaching the end of this race (retirement) he says, “but then you realize that it was all a musical thing… and you should have been singing and dancing along the whole time.”

Some more of your time,

Coolly executing your cute,
Quippy, smooth revenge,
Avenging you, payback,
Playing back the things,

Plotting the right move,

Put me in my place,
Elegant and smart,
And lofty and dark,
And sentimental,
Eerie and disarming,
Alarming and strange,
Regal and gallant,
Swift and polished.