by grace we enter transformation

"Up, down, turn around; Please don't let me hit the ground; Tonight I think I'll walk alone; I'll find my soul as I go home"

Trainspotting was released in 1996, almost 20 years ago. I watched it alone at the Elmwood Theater on College Ave. in Berkeley when I was 19. Before the film I was driving around alone in a blue 1989 Nissan Sentra, crawling out my skin, desperately craving something different. In the film I found what I was looking for. A bizarre European indie film about heroin addiction, sex, teenage angst, violence, being Scottish--all things I strangely/not strangely related to. I loved the music. Songs from New Order, Underworld, Brian Eno, Lou Reed, Iggy Pop. I wanted to live in this music, foreign to me.

Today, I'm struggling in my professional life. I'm 37. I started a music business by myself two years ago. But lately I've become lost in relation to this work. I work three days a week at a nonprofit with first generation college students. I'm a career coach. I love this work, I love the students I work with, I'm grateful for the opportunity, humbled, and constantly learning from the students. But when you add up the pieces of my professional life, you get a number below 10, a number that is fuzzy, incomprehensible at the moment.

There are so many wonderful people and things in my life. I'm profoundly lucky to be married to a woman who is luminous, serene and grounded. We have a little boy. What a joy to have this little boy and his waves of feeling.

But in relation to my professional life I'm still that 19 year old crawling out his skin, confused. I dive back into New Order's "Temptation" and am transported.

I'm reminded that what's important is not what I've accomplished professionally. The goal is to simply live and let the judgements of good person/bad person, successful person/unsuccessful person dissolve. I'm alive, in this moment, living out energy, and soaking in energy.

If by grace we enter transformation, then the grace is the music, friends and family that allow me to transform my perspective. In this moment, just this moment, I'm no longer a slave to the ego concept, self-judgements of good/bad, successful/unsuccessful.

"oh you've got green eyes, oh you've got blue eyes, oh you've got grey eyes"

and they are all beautiful, so said the Lord,
Anthony

work

It seems as if the world is conspiring against me. I am angry, frustrated, tired, and incredibly sad. Feeling rage. I don’t know why. I know work has been difficult and time-consuming. I’ve put in a lot of energy to make things right, to make things work, to make things go well. And things have gone well. But I still feel something akin to rage. I feel rage. It’s in my stomach, in the shape of a molecule, a molecule that is twisted and rendered tight, tied in a knot. I’m listening to Bon Iver sing, “At once I knew, I was not magnificent.” Maybe that’s part of the problem. You work so fucking hard, and you’re not magnificent. Nobody really gives a shit. As long as you don’t create a catastrophe, people are ok with you. And they carry on, without saying shit to you. Maybe that’s the world we live in.

In art, I am magnificent, I am beautiful, I am capable of genius. At work I am none of those things, at least I haven’t been notified yet by any colleagues that this is the case. Maybe I’m part of a generation that needs to be patted on the back just for showing up. But I work hard. I put my heart on the line. I put my soul into the work. I am compensated fairly.

But this song is more beautiful than any of that stuff. I feel like I shouldn’t care about that bullshit. Here’s to you Bon Iver. A toast. A glass of champagne. A little start to a big evening of dancing and revelry. You, too, Bon iVer, you too are beautiful. “Christmas night, clutched the light, the hollow bright.” You, too, are magnificent. You, too, are beautiful. Like my sister and my family and my bride to be. The love I feel is beautiful and magnificent.

Any day now.  I shall be released.

with nothing (not in a bad way),
Anthony

Ladies and Gentleman, Nina Simone