Entries from July 2008 ↓

Today I remembered. It’s not all about me. 

Remembered.

Kinda thought that it was important to put this out there before I drifted off into the dream land.

Progress perhaps.

Charlie, I’m so blessed to know you, to be your father, to have this privilege.

You are a sunny day, even when dark storms roll in. May this spirit lift you through your whole life.

Love Dad

Shannon, my love, gave me an audio book chapter to listen to from Elizabeth Gilbert’s book Eat, Pray, Love. It is chapter 17 on her depression. I listened to chapters 17 through 20 on my walk with my dogs this morning along the South Flagler Intracoastal waterway here in West Palm Beach. She made some observations that I connected with and others there are not of my experience. I enjoyed her words none the less.

A few minutes later I set out on my run, a practice I’ve mostly given up from the physical pain it causes my two ruptured or herniated discs in my neck. Despite this pain my running has been calling me back lately. It is an undeniable part of me.

I just returned from that run on this hot summer day in South Florida. It is July 27, 2008. I listened to the Foo Fighters song Come Alive, off their latest album Echoes, Silence, Patience and Grace. I played that song for the 45 minutes of my run. It is a song about finding yourself through the help of love, in the form of an outside agent – a person, a lover, an angel.

I have remembered that I love running not because of the runner’s high, but because it is the only place outside of music where I find great insight. This run was more insightful than most.

I realized that I have a life long addiction to materialism. By materialism I mean an outright reliance and addiciton to the outside world. This manifests most strongly in a desire for things and food which leads to trouble with money, weight, and spiritual health. These are the major symptoms of my addiction to materialism.

I realized I must let go of that addiction if I am to become whole.

I realized that I already have everything I need to become whole.

This includes a memory of love and compassion for myself, my love for Shannon, my children, my family, and my friends.

This includes belief.

I realized for me now, in this time, in this place, that what I am searching for cannot be sought. It will only present itself through great listening in mind, body, and spirit. I have reached the place where listening must eschew searching. This is my mantra now. ‘It’ is already here. ‘It’ will be realized, not discovered. ‘It’ will come, or ‘It’ won’t. I accept this.

I realized that my whole life I have slayed my addiction and my depression with a sword. I have killed it over and over. I have fought bravely. I have fought with honor. But I cannot win this way. I have known this for a number of years. I put down my sword.  It has left me defenseless. I have been killed over and over by my demons in this time. They have rejoiced in dancing on my spilled innards as I have lay bleeding and dying. They have cackled in delight at my death for taking so many of them with my sword.

I fight a compulsion to pick up my sword and kill them all. To vanquish them. But I know now that once the last of the demons falls to the floor, new ones will enter the room from doorways in the shadows that I have envisioned. I cannot rid these demons with my sword. I must heal myself. I must listen to what these demons are trying to teach me. I must stop fighting ‘it’.

Today, I relinquish my materialism.

Shannon and I made our annual two night pilgrimage to see Dave Matthews Band over the past two evenings at West Palm Beach’s Cruzan Amphitheater. I’ll cover the Dave stuff first and then end with a roundup of our family news and attendees for these shows.

Review

Rating for Friday’s performance: 4 out of 5

Here’s a little homemade YouTube video from a fellow fan from Friday’s show.

Rating for Saturday’s performance 4 out of 5

Highlights: All the cover songs they performed: Peter Gabriel’s Sledgehammer, Sly and the Family Stone’s Thank You, Pink Floyd’s Money and The Beatles’ Money (these were played back to back).

Dave introducing Old Dirt Hill (Bring that Beat Back) during his set on Saturday night. He recounted a story about a reporter asking him if this song was about him and that he had replied that the song was not about him. After the interview he thought about it more and realized that Old Dirt Hill WAS about him.

Cover songs: Even though I had read about these cover songs it was something else to see and hear them. I was really amazed to hear how Dave sounded singing them. The band appeared to really enjoy playing some different material as well. Dave’s dancing on Thank You (for letting me by myself) during night two’s encore was especially lively as he performed his uniquely goofy dancing much to the appreciation of everyone present.

The other highlights included Tim Reynolds playing AMAZING GUITAR on a number of electric guitars through the entire set. He wheeled out a Red Fender Stratocaster (Tim’s go-to guitar) for much of the evening but also played a Gibson Flying V for many tunes and busted out a Gibson Les Paul for a couple of songs as well. Especially great was his slide guitar that he played on two tunes. This and his playing overall really added texture and edge to the Band’s performance. The interplay between him and the regular band were really additive to the show. While it was great to hear him solo, I was also impressed with how he slipped right into Dave’s sound playing rhythm guitar to the point where, if you weren’t paying attention, you wouldn’t be thinking there was any difference to Dave’s normal sound.

It was strange without Butch Taylor playing piano and keyboards and even more so without sax player LeRoi Moore, who is out for the summer tour since his ATV accident of a few weeks ago. You can leave LeRoi a get well e-card at his hospital’s web site. Dave actually played piano on one song on Friday night’s performance. We’d like to see more of this Dave!

Jeff Coffin, who normally plays sax for Bela Fleck and The Flecktones filled in brilliantly for LeRoi. Shannon and I were blown away that he could play each of the songs so fluidly. I shouldn’t be surprised, he’s such an accomplished musician and he’s played pretty extensively over the last twelve years with Dave and the crew. But it’s still something to see someone drop into a brilliant live band like DMB and actually keep up. Amazing.

It was a blast as always. I’m sorry that my over appreciation for Tequila spoiled the first night (sorry everyone!). That’s all I’ve got to say on that score. That, and I think I’m making a pledge to just not drink at any more Dave concerts from here on out so I don’t make anyone miss any of his songs!

Here’s the set list from Saturday’s show.

I have one omission on song six and let’s face it, even sober I might have made an error on the rest. I’ll wait for another poster to fill in the blank on six and to double check my set list accuracy.

Regular Set

1. Don’t Drink The Water
2. Dreaming Tree
3. One Sweet World
4. Rhyme and Reason
5. Crash
6. Blank! Will add later.
7. Cover: Pink Floyd’s Money
8. Cover: The Beatles Money
9. Pay for what you Get
10. Crush
11. Old Dirt Hill (Bring that beat back)
12. Louisiana Bayou
13. Grave Digger
14. Ee Hee
15. So Much To Say
16. Too Much
17. Tripping Billies

18. Encore: Rapunzel

19. Encore: Cover: Sly and The Family Stone’s Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin

Our Family Dave Stuff

Shannon being the oldest of 5 kids was the instigator in her family of their mutual appreciation for Dave Matthews Band. All of her siblings ranging from her baby sister Brittany (18) to her second oldest sis Kristen (25) are all fans that try to make it to see DMB every year. This year Brittany went with her boyfriend Alex and also in tow were Shan’s brother Michael, her sis Jenna and her boyfriend Will (who cites DMB as his favorite band).

On Friday’s show we also snagged an extra seat for my 12 year old Charlie so he could come with us. It was Charlie’s second concert (way too few for a 12 YO!). His first was a DMB concert we attended at Shoreline Amphitheater in the San Francisco Bay Area when Shannon and I lived in Los Gatos (near San Jose). On that occasion we went with my dad Lorenz and my oldest sons Max and Charlie. They all loved that first Dave concert but Charlie was much older for this one and as of three weeks ago has started to learn guitar. These things combined to make it much more interesting for him. Especially with Dave’s great acoustic playing and guitar pro Tim Reynolds playing in the band this summer – and playing electric for the entire set. More on that later. It was great fun for everyone on the first night. On Saturday just Shannon and I went and we got to hear the band play ‘our song’ – Crush, which was perfect!

On a closing note I’ve got to cop to the fact that I’ve now missed meeting up with TWO Miami friends at Dave Concerts. Three years ago I was supposed to hook up with Juan Monch and didn’t, and this Friday I was supposed to see my friend Carlos Villanueva. Somehow both of us managed to not text each other Friday! So sorry to have missed you Carlos!

Are you ready for the next Jesus Phone?

Doors opened today at 8AM all across the U.S. at both Apple and AT&T Stores. Doors opened ALL around the world in fact. I’ve followed the iPhone 3G launch right down to the very last RSS feed on sites like iPhoneAlley, Boy Genius Report and Engadget Mobile – just to name 3 of my dozen or so mobile phone RSS feeds. I was planning on getting my own iPhone 3G (in white) today but a quick scan of my mental budget says that would be quite a bad idea.

So, hopefully very soon. My gadget addiction is mostly in check these days but my financial management skills remain somewhat dismal so this beaut cartoon below from The Joy of Tech made my day.

And a ‘thank you’ Hat tip to Get Rich Slowly for their article today iPhone or Millionaire that pointed me to this cartoon and also reminded me of the great benefit of NOT spending money on toys.

While viewing my Plurk timeline (oh, you haven’t see plurk yet) this evening I found a link to an interesting blog post. Not only did I enjoy learning about the new open source Twitter client called identi.ca from my Plurk friend Bwana, I also couldn’t help but notice his very useful site plug-in that let me see definitions of words in Wikipedia.

Four months ago I went searching for just such a WordPress plug-in so that I could add custom and general definitions to my small business marketing site LocalNa8ion. After finding little of value in the WordPress plug-in arena I ended up using the tried and true HTML acronym tag. How does the acronym tag work in HTML? The acronym tag places …… under the tagged word, and when you mouse over the word your mouse cursor turns into a question mark with a pointer – a universal computer symbol for help. The acronym tag is particularly useful to site visitors when you’re knee deep in technical and industry terms that you would otherwise have to stop and write about just to gain understanding for less expert readers. Rather than putting everyone through a long written description the acronym tag has allowed me to speak to experts and newbies alike in less time. Yes, this is a bastardized use of the acronym tag. I’m bad bad bad. Technically, the acronym tag should just be used for acronyms and nothing else, but hey, it gets the job done for real people in the real world.

So Apture can address this need for me on Local Na8ion. But it does SO VERY MUCH MORE. In fact, I haven’t been this excited about a plug-in since I started using WordPress in 2004 and found out there were things called plug-ins.

Tools like Apture could change the web – radically.

See for yourself on the short video below and be sure to experience Apture. Subscribe to Apture’s blog while you’re at it.