Shelter

This is one of those words that, when first heard, suggests a place of refuge, retreat, and safety, but immediately we begin to dig into the complexity of it as being something more.

My life at home is physically cold. I live in an actual near-cave, so that probably has a lot to do with that, but it is shelter. It can get almost warm on the most brutal of days, but I’m never looking in the window’s reflection without a hoodie – long sleeve shirt with a hat was an awesome idea! These are the days where the length of the Sun’s time grows, but like a vacuum drawing up the fibers of space and with it the downdrafts of Earth does the cold come. We are sheltered from the heat. I am sheltered from the heat.

I expected something mild, I suppose. Something easy. Being on the road is easy. Nothing is close. All of my problems, or that mass gathering of them, live in a place called, home. It’s different there. When a problem occurs out there it doesn’t belong to the catalog of itemized agenda-based problems that live at home. Problems that breathe and grow and yield the most colorful variety of fruits. Watch out for the seeds; don’t break your tooth on one of those.

When I got home with my lively, all is well, life is but a project that I’m happy to invest in attitude, I was ready in one way, but not another. The dark cycle always comes – that is a truth for many of us. What got me was not the list of things in disrepair, but the growing list of things in disrepair; that was hard. The most hard thing wasn’t even that the list was growing, it was that the only best thing to do was watch. Tormenting the face at the window and the hands that attempt the repairs that are now also afraid of the heat because it burns as much as the cold – cold has, for the moment, become the friend that gives.

I have been sheltering my hardships and keeping private while holding my stress close and measuring the distances from what is known of what is to come if what is happening doesn’t change. Spring, I need you to come. Please come soon. Wu.

From where we came

To look back over a short interval of time suggests something similar to an eternity has past. What madness it this I wonder? The time has indeed gone quickly on tour, but to feel as though the beginning was years ago and coupling that with the rapidity of the journey, some strange conflicts of perception permeate the mind’s connections to reality. We are speeding ever more into the next moments. Inside these moments we develop expectations, hopes, fulfillments of what has been dreamt, sorcery of the kind that changes our bodies and our minds to become the most best parts of what we wish to be. That is a grand form of sorcery, indeed.

My gear has shown me on this tour just how much it has aged. The wear marks are ever deepening. The bumps on my ‘f’ and ‘j’ keys are worn flat. The connections are loose and even still they send the signals on their rightful paths. At times they give off some hesitation to do so, but with a little fidgeting and coercing, the find it well enough.

We are today nearly home. For the first time in 3 weeks we see mountains. We are mountain people. That is clearly present in every moment we see them and amplified when we see them for the first time in a long stretch. We will be within less distance to our homes for the next two night, than the distance we have traveled after most of our shows, but still we do not go home. We carry on. We play this music that must be shared. We carry on doing what it is that we are driven to do, and for that I am grateful. I am grateful for what’s been given – for what’s been taught so that I might honor what’s been given the best. Thank you, Moah – thank you for the blessings and the life we get to live. Be safe out there you travelers.

Brothers

Having been partitioned from the whole mass of all potential – this being not an absolute but a relevant trajectory of focussed efforts – I have known before community. Once again I know the essence and physical boundaries of a ‘new’ community. It is a brotherhood – a band-hood. We move through the motions of learning behavioral patterns, intentions, skills, language, and proximities as we work our way across the country to perform our talents and dream-minded hopes of music composition and presentation to the listening ears.

They are sometimes, and most often, unsuspecting. We do not have fans where we are – and the same waits for us where we go – but one by one we compress the available waveforms toward our will with our music to pull and tug at the attention of the people. We work together to make this our life’s priority and purpose. To set it as a certain form of daily opportunity to do what we are drawn to do – music. We do this in strength together. Each holding a place in the community that comes before the stage, demonstrates it skill of unity on the stage, and then works after to make each cycle tighter, better, and more applicable to the outcomes we wish for ourselves to have as our own.

Of course

Our path can stream so many different alternatives and at any point at zero. That means in any instance any number of things can come about. Five months ago I sat down and began the process to work out the details of my life. Since then it’s been one emotive spinning turbulent bubbling motion that forced all possibilities out into the open. Well, most possibilities out. Some are too deep, or too expressive, or too unthought of to be known or thought possible and they are in a group of outliers. What’s more is that all the possible ‘nexts’ are in that same group. So to be ‘of course’ is to be a person that makes the greatest effort to get to the goal set while allowing the journey there to remain free to roam.

Sleeping on couches and floors – two hardwood floors this tour already – has turned the beacon of my desired outcome in no other way but where it was first set. Using strange showers, dissolving our great need for privacy, expanding our comforts to include discomfort – these are the things we are learning how to master. We belong here because it is part of the journey to there. For this knowledge along I am grateful. For knowing that this is the course gives us power over the carrying on. We always get to choose the carrying on anyhow, but to carry the knowledge that we are on the course, although it might be hard and diminishing, lets us have some sense of certainty. Even if that might change it gives the allusion of a mooring – an anchor point.

I do hope you are both free in your decision to remove yourself from all courses and place yourself in all courses – that your own mooring, your own anchoring, will keep you tethered to the flow. Brava.

To Bear

There comes a time when the wait represents the weight. Heavy upon our shoulders we carry uncertainty and that always expanding principal of the unknowns in all their possible outcomes. Perhaps, just like that, as if it were a walk up a hill, the journey enters a clearing. This place where it opens up, the burden set for the legs to know and the lungs to supply has been brought back to a balanced and comfortable state. That I suppose is part of the rise. It’s also where I like to use extra commas.

Moah [form creator of everything] has pushed our journey into a blessed state – that state is rest. We have come to a place where we are, for a moments collection of time where it is pooling and reserving itself, set free to explore the greater depths of rest. Comfortable and spacious. To be clear, we are guests in a cabin home that is directly on a lake. The cabin is beautifully decorated with carvings from a local carver of woods – and they are incredibly magnificent. So many of the carvings and paintings are of bears.

This is a reminder to me to keep the Mozzy’s Cart in motion…

Debate

Our consciousness gives us the ability to debate. It also gives us the ability to be the kind of righteous that is not the proper and good kind of righteous. Being righteous and virtuous is what we should all strive for. This opens up the idea that many threads make the most colorful fabric. We can always find another way and a greater spreading of the mind. Walk steady, listen carefully, and learn about gratitude.

I am sitting now on the floor in a hotel room in Superior, WI. The trio worked at a venue, The Barrel Room, in Duluth last night, and it was a little bit of fantastic. The hotel room was much appreciated after spending our first sub-zero [non mortal combat reference] night in Minot, ND in the van – The Great White Buffalophus. We are now loading out and it is not yet above zero. That is a happy kind of cold that is such a brilliant assault that it forms these pretty great memories. Here we go.