Sharing my awesomeness just a little bit at a time.

10 years ago tonight, I stuttered and fumbled my way through a first date with a beautiful, smart, and witty woman who had me floored, and I was the luckiest man in the world.  I quickly fell in love with her, and found safety in the beautiful fragile soul behind the boldness.  Things couldn’t last, I was a boy then, though we were friends when it didn’t hurt too much.  We didn’t talk for years.  Nine and a half months ago, our paths crossed again, and we found that as incomplete as we both still felt, we were ready to grow with each other.  And we have.

It won’t be long before I ask her to become my wife, to make us officially a family of our own choosing.

I love you, Leslie.  Ten years ago, my life changed, and the heartaches only make me more sure that you’re the one I want with me whatever the future may bring.

 Dan Roentsch shared this video from reason.tv today, about asserting your rights to refuse consent for a police search.

I find myself incredibly (using that word in it’s true meaning) frustrated with the excessively large portion of my countrymen who believe that broad search powers are warranted "if you’ve got nothing to hide".  As mentioned in the video, if you’ve got nothing to hide, you’re not helping the police by allowing them to search you or your property.  I wish that more folks could remember what Pastor Martin Neimöller had to say on a similar topic.

With the humility of one who recognizes when he stands on the shoulders of giants, I will borrow his words and form to illustrate what I perceive to be the danger of mindless consent.

First they searched the Arabs,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t an Arab.

Then they searched everyone for bombs,
and I didn’t refuse consent because I wasn’t a terrorist.

Then they searched everyone’s data for religion,
and I didn’t refuse consent because it wasn’t a crime to be atheist.

Then they searched everyone’s data for financial irregularities,
and I didn’t refuse consent because I can still use cash to pay for my vices.

Then they changed the law
and their searches were evidence before I could refuse consent.

It’s been 6 months since I began writing a song, and I put things on hold while I tried to find the sound in my head that went with the words with which I’d begun.

I put off trying to refine the lyrics because I felt like I needed to strengthen my ability to hear the music that would carry them.

On Friday night, I had a Linkin Park concert playing on TV, and I sat down to try to figure out the piano bit in In The End, and while it’s a simple pattern, I was happy to find that I could find the keys by ear, and was able to play it in a moment or two.  I don’t expect anyone to be impressed by that, but it was an indication to me that I was starting to make some progress matching what was in my ear with what was in my head, and ultimately with the piano keys.

It may not seem like much, but I also found that after I’d gotten the finger movements down for the bit of Brick I shared earlier, that mental practice (I was the guy on the subway “playing” his thigh) improved what came out the next time that I actually sat down at the keyboard.

I’m enjoying the feeling of learning music like a child, getting comfortable at the keyboard, and experimenting in a number of ways.

I’m not going to try recording myself singing yet, but here’s the verse

Like an actor playing me who didn’t get the part,
I wasn’t living my own life, not with all my heart.
Stopped getting wiser with my years, just started gettin’ old,
Tryin’ to figure what went wrong, I found I’d lost my soul.

And here, my friends, is how I’m hearing the music for it now… have a listen…