The Beautiful Ones Vol. I & Vol. II

I personally grew up loving to listen to albums as a whole experience and not just as a list of individual songs. So this is how I constructed and produced these recordings. And this is my first record that I wrote from an entirely autobiographical voice. There are no characters here, and it represents at least some of the styles of music that raised me. The first set of songs centers more around my earlier life where I really struggled emotionally. The second set is more about an awakening that came from that struggle. I am not claiming a spiritual enlightenment here, but I do think we are all capable of touching it at moments. I still love to write and perform in classic country and swing. But I wanted to put together a more personal record, something more meaningful for these dicey times and with some of the music that shaped me. There is a benefit to dicey times, by the way. It tends to make things move more quickly than the slow, steady approach. Change through loving kindness is the most powerful method I believe. But if that isn’t happening then pain will come in and hopefully do the job fast. And our timeline for evolution is getting limited, so the heat is on... literally. Now if you are one of our angels, it’s time to lace up your combat boots and get to work.
Thank you for letting me share my music with you. My greatest desire in life is to put more hope and love into this world.

Vol. 1
Don’t You Know Who Your Are?

The first song is kind of like an overture or preamble of sorts. As someone who spent many years battling depression and post-traumatic stress, it feels almost natural to sit in a state of separation from life where it feels “safe.” The world often feels cold and uncaring. I wrote this song to all of us during the first few days of the Covid-19 lockdown. That time is also where the realization that my mother, my biggest champion in the world and the one who loves me the most, was falling away into dementia. Even now this song makes me feel better when I am frightened and sad. I was not raised with religion. I like to say I am Catholic once removed... all the guilt but none of the doctrine. But in my lifetime I have had some very profound experiences that set me in a direction of seeking an ultimate meaning as the primary goal. This song comes from a deeper, more comforting voice that has carried me from about the age of 5 after an otherworldly dream I had of a transcendent garden.

The Beautiful Ones

I sometimes call this song, Smells Like Teen Beauty for the tribute to this sound that influenced me as a teen and young adult. These years were very difficult. I had a few secrets that kept me very lonely and afraid. I know why queer kids often kill themselves. I didn’t recognize the effects of abuse and depression that made me often questioned if life was worth living. And coming from mostly loving people, I really didn’t understand these little monsters that roamed the school hallways. Imagine what would happen if substance blew away superficiality? Poor monsters.

Nothing’s Gonna Bring Me Down

My earliest memories include crawling along the floor and looking at Beatles albums. I sometimes refer to this song as Strawberry Fields For Not Much Longer. I wrote this song after I had my first Michigan winter where there was never any snow on the ground.

Bluebird

The reviews back in 1940 for the Shirley Temple movie, The Bluebird, which was intended as 20th Century Fox's answer to MGM’s The Wizard of Oz from the year before, said it was a lot like The Wizard of Oz, but more depressing. So of course it was one of my very favorite movies as a small child. Our intense search for happiness seems to often make us miss it. There’s no place like home, and home can be everywhere when we are truly connected to the deepest places within ourselves.

Pushin’ It Up That Hill

I bought a Gretsch guitar because I wanted to be Poison Ivy from The Cramps. I sometimes call this song A Date with Sisyphus. This isn’t just a Blues tune, it’s a major depression tune.

Somewhere On My Own

Navigating a love relationship is like an intricate waltz. This one is for Johnny. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for understanding like no other. I needed that far more than anything else at the time. Still do.

Loneliness

This is probably the biggest problem in our culture. It underlies all the bad things we do. When we cannot know our true nature, we disconnect from everything all around us and can then do some pretty horrible things to each other and the planet. We cease to see ourselves in one another. Being alone can feel wonderful if connected to the world around us. Being lonely feels a little like a painful death, especially for a child who recognizes they cannot survive alone.

I’ll Wash You Clean

Listening. Validating. Healing. That’s what we can do for each other. This is our job. Some of us make it our day job. Still wish being a psychotherapist paid better for me so survival wasn’t always on the table. But the upside is always being reminded that, “But for the grace of ‘whatever’ go I,” when observing the plight of others. That keeps me feeling authentic and grateful. I once wanted my night job to be as a Blues guitar player... old-time and early electric, like John Lee Hooker or Hubert Sumlin & Howlin’ Wolf. (I’m a bit pale, I know.) Cultural appropriation is one opinion. But this is real human music to me. It isn’t in your head. It’s in other places. It comes from struggle and pain. But then I got tendonitis, speaking of pain. It broke my heart so deeply at the time. I felt like I found my passion just to have it taken away. (I now giggle at the saying, “I wouldn’t believe in God if he didn’t hate me so much.”) The art of the reframe tells me that’s why I started focusing on writing songs which saved my life. I also started playing with Johnny as a result . Lemonade, man... and don’t get me started about the kiddo that came along.

I’ll Just Whisper Your Name

Speaking of the kiddo, I wrote this song to my daughter, Stella. And it’s a lullaby for me too now that I am slowly losing my own mother in this world. Consciousness is energy, and energy doesn’t disappear. It just changes. I’m pretty sure of this.

The Deeper Part

I love sixties fuzz guitar sounds. Guess I’m a hippie at heart. So I know it is very important for us to validate and understand others’ experiences and the struggles involved, especially with epic injustices. It’s important to right wrongs if possible. It’s also important to work hard and have dreams and goals to achieve and hopefully make our lives better and more meaningful. And it may be important to find group identities for ourselves for belonging, especially as young people. Our egos love that conceptual identity stuff. But I seemed to have naturally focused more on the essence of people, something deeper that goes on even beyond character, possibly beyond lifetimes. Again, "But for the grace of ‘whatever’ go I.” I guess this is why I can still love people with whom I very much disagree when I feel solid. It really is the only way to build bridges if we want true change. We are not our beliefs. We are not how we add up all our pieces and make current conclusions about things. We haven't walked in others' shoes. But this modern world can be so maddening and overwhelming. And it’s getting worse at a faster pace. Will we evolve toward materially resilient or “the fittest” automatrons (or be replaced by AI instead)? Or will we realize that we are all connected and need to balance ourselves in more of our compassion and an ability to “be” in each moment where we can begin to feel profound love for everything and every one? There we can see the beauty all around us, even when we are doing what needs to get done... the balance of doing and being.

In the Arms of Angels

Life has always been hard for everyone and every living thing. It’s supposed to be this way I think for the sake of learning. But now we have the capability to completely destroy life for all living beings. These times are existentially frightening, and we are all feeling that in one way or another.
When I was ten years old I had another otherworldly dream, the most profound experience to date with maybe the exception of an out-of-body experience in my early 30s. I thought these dreams were just that... dreams. But years later after studying the vast research about Near Death Experiences and the like (there is growing literature on both NDEs and more recently, similar experiences while under duress without technically dying), I realized it was something else entirely. I had no preconceived notion of anything like this as a child. But when I hear people describe being in a place where a most amazing and brightest light embraces and does not hurt your eyes, the most intense and otherworldly feeling of a love far beyond any ever felt in this life, the vivid colors beyond any seen on this Earth, the serene and perfect gardens, the deep heaviness of returning to the body, the ability to recite and remember the experience as if just happening and, in my case, love from a being of light that looked like no angel I ever saw in books or art, I recognized what I experienced. (Research indicates children during NDEs almost always see beings of light vs. dead relatives like many adults do. Children often don’t have a lot of known dead relatives yet who would feel comforting.) Still I wasn’t physically dead. My grandfather was dying, so I think the veil was perhaps thinner. But like I said, the field is reconsidering this pre-requisite. So the song is metaphoric if you wish. But for me it is literal.
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Vol. 2
Beautiful

Then there was a beginning of awakening in my mid 20s after years of intense pain and a very experiential graduate program. I became a performer and a psychologist at the same time afterward. This song is another preamble of sorts. Words are never able to describe the experience of touching something transcendent following deep conflict. I like comparing it to the imperfection of gravity and the universal particles in our own creation following the Big Bang. An imperfect gravitational pull had to exist to pull matter together, violently colliding to create galaxies and life. Otherwise all matter would have been held in perfect suspension and never touched, never becoming anything other than isolated particles.
I used to walk around Ann Arbor at dusk marveling at how beautiful the world is. Musically I was a huge R.E.M. fan in my teens and early 20s. Their harmonies drew me into old-time music and connecting to my North Carolina family roots later on. The harmonies felt like Home. I sometimes call this song “Radio Free Beauty.”

A Glorious Better Day

I wrote this for my Western swing-influenced band, Jo Serrapere & the LaFawndas. It didn’t really fit the slightly more traditional feel of the rest of our set, but it may end up on our record as well. I wrote this song during the pandemic and our country’s insanity of electing a malignant narcissist for a president. It was hard to have studied history and psychology and then watch this insanity unfold. But like I said, there is a benefit to tragic times. We don’t have the luxury of a slow, steady human evolution out of our adolescent phase where ego is glorified. We can destroy the planet for living organisms rather completely now. We are seriously in that process environmentally. So pain and trauma can be quicker. Evolution just happens one way or another. It’s the blueprint of spirit. I just hope we can get there in time before we destroy ourselves. Just remember to sometimes grab your marshmallows for a respite while it’s burning. We all will need our rest and to kick up our heels whenever possible for resilience.

With Your Eyes Closed

I have written a couple tunes I call my “spiritual envy” songs. Like I said... no enlightenment here. Life is still a struggle for me. This song is not about having blind faith. It is about having trust by researching, analyzing and intuiting deeper principles, often beyond what you initially see and first believe to be there. It is about trusting in the world. The amazing Via Mardot added theremin and musical saw to make this song otherworldly.

This American Dream

I want a new American Dream... one that fits in with a global and universal dream. Patriotism is barbaric outside of a playful game. I lost mine years ago. And I very much love my country. I just can love other people’s countries too. We still think consumerism and fame will make and keep us happy. Maybe for a moment. Then what? And for some, no matter how hard we work, our work is not valued the same nor are our resources, and moving out of poverty is nearly impossible.

Let Your Dirty Ride

Now this is the lesson, right? We spend so much of our lives trying to live up to an unattainable standard that steals our life force. Many people make good livings in service of this fallacy. And the more we deny our truer, imperfect selves, the more removed we feel from the beauty of this life and each other. Courageous vulnerability is needed to bring ourselves out into the light where we can be seen and transform vs. staying hidden, stuck and away from true connection. The process is brutal, but I think it is exquisitely beautiful. And I think it’s the bravest path of all. I like to remind everyone that perfection is really boring and actually doesn’t exist in a material universe. Imperfection ignites creative evolution. Just look at the stars and galaxies. I am not that interested in current pop music... too perfect and laminated for me. And “perfect” people are pretty boring too. I actually think our issues make us kind of cute... you know, when they aren’t killing us or the ones we love.

So Blue Am I

I wrote this song in my 20s shortly after graduate school when I started to make music. I was raised in a time when “girl power” was not a thing and the “Me Too” movement didn't exist. I assumed sexualization and assault was just a fact of life for girls. I experienced femininity as ultimately weak. And I thought romantic love had broken me. This was the beginning of learning about the life-art of balance. We are evolving out of this human gender binary thinking a bit. I think it is kind of interesting how it is showing itself these days, especially in our kids. I think it’s cool. I was raised by a transgender parent who has been one of the most loving and validating forces in my life. I am pretty certain we are not our bodies nor our plumbing. And energy has amazing properties across the spectrum we all need to explore to make us whole. The most powerful energy for growth is in our opposite energy, our shadow. First get solid in how you are, then courageously face your shadow. The growth is stunning.

Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark

This is not about giving in to base reactions of our fight, flight, freeze limbic system. Nor is this about joining a satanic cult. This is about recognizing wisdom in all places, even the most painful. This can open us to the most profound changes where we don’t have to be so afraid any more. Pain can help us to let go of what needs to pass on so we can move forward.

This World is Gonna Break Your Heart

I try to remember none of us are getting out of this world alive. Impermanence sucks. But it also makes everything more precious. Things come to us and then fall away. One of my earliest eye-opening “a-ha” moments was when reading Kahlil Gibran’s poem, On Joy and Sorrow in the book, The Prophet. It gave me hope that my pain and depression was not a hopeless sentence. Here is a short excerpt:

“Your joy is your sorrow unmasked. And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears. And how else can it be? The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.”

Wait It All Away

My band members from Stella! (Jen Sygit and Julianna Wilson) joined me for this one. I still fall into an avoiding and waiting state, especially when overwhelmed. These years have been especially overwhelming for everyone. And for so much of my life I would wait to do something I dreamed of doing, waiting for that right moment. Every moment I suspect is the right moment if we can truly be in it.

Thank You For Your Time
Just that.

Life and All

It’s all so beautiful, isn’t it? And I’m grateful for the lovely voice of Sophia Hanifi (Hoodang, Map of the World) who joins me on this song. I thought this song summed it all up. I wrote it after a very painful experience a few years back when my father cut me out of his life for reasons only he understands. It took a while to get here, but even this heartbreak makes me who I am. I wish for all of us that we can always see the beauty of living and fight to keep it evolving toward love and hope for our children and grandchildren, the next Beautiful Ones.