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Monday- Family Time

After recording two new songs with a DC producer, Unknown, I went up to my Aunt and Uncle’s house in Maryland to spend the night. We talked life, split a few beers and I got a chance to play with my little cousins (not in that order). The boys are starting to get really good at lacrosse… but they still can’t get past Leighton.

Tuesday- Connecting the Dots

I spent most of the day relaxing in a cloud of a bed. A few hours before I left Maryland to volunteer as an ESL teacher in NW DC I got a call from work with good news. We won a project that will give me 8 months of full-time coverage being a designer and producer of an audio program that will teach English as a foreign language to all of Latin America. As I walked around the classroom later that night helping fifteen adults properly pronounce numbers I began to see the bigger picture. Following your interests and being confident enough to wait for the right opportunities has been my recipe for the real world so far.

Wednesday- When In Texas

After my first day on the job I went out to a bar in Georgetown with about 15 people from work to take advantage of some happy hour specials. Once the food and beer went back to normal prices we headed to a salsa club downtown. On the walk to the bar we ran into a girl who one of my friends knew. She told us the tale of a hotel party down the road with an open bar, free food and live music. The stumbling woman outside the metro station guided us to a formal event for the people of Laredo, Texas. Luckily, I come equip with a southern accent and good manners so I put on my imaginary cowboy hat and started getting down with the mariachi band. Yehaw, never miss an opportunity to see a handle-bar mustache.

Thursday- Sweat It Out

Once a week I play basketball with the homeboy Ron at a gym behind the pentagon. In between listening to high school and college kids argue about fouls we actually get about five or six games in. I’ll be that old guy at the YMCA in 20 years with knee-high socks… ball so hard!

The Weekend- Got Game?

I spent the weekend grilling out with some friends from high school…

playing frisbee golf…

and kicking the soccer ball around on the national mall.

I also spent a considerate amount of money on celebratory activities at different bars around town,watched a lot of the ACC tournament, went to a house party called Canadian Tuxedo Ball (a denim themed event) and wrote four new verses. I’m loving DC and can’t wait for the summer to come.

Today I played basketball with my little cousins, did a few hours of work from a very comfortable bed, got an email with two new songs I did with my best friends in Colombia, took a nap after a free lunch, volunteered at Sacred Heart as an ESL teacher to basic level students and won a proposal that will give me 8 months of full-time work doing something I love.

It was so nice to get back into a classroom and work with people who are enthusiastic about learning. It made me really miss my old students. I love teaching but don’t see myself doing it until much later in life. The contract we won today is for producing another audio program that teaches English as a second language. We will get to create a curriculum, produce songs and chants, develop a story that is entertaining and educational and travel to Latin America to train teachers and implement the program. Imagine if your favorite show could teach you another language… that’s what I’m hoping to create.

I got a lot to figure out but even more to look forward to. Times are hard but life is great.

Yesterday was the last day of carnivals in Barranquilla. This week of parades and parties is actually just the grand finale of music and colors to an entire month of festivities. Being in Quilla for these celebrations was a memory I will never forget. The following is a song that these carnivals birthed and some pictures to go a long with it.

La Luna is a song about a party in Colombia that I went to on top of a mountain right outside of the city. Everyone was 100 percent in the moment, enjoying each other and the setting the world provided. Abandoning all self-consciousness and surrendering to the now is a natural high that has no parallel. When you feel like this the moon is your dancing partner and the clouds are the floor you slide on. We danced on those clouds to Cumbia, a traditional Colombian music, the entire night. This was the first chorus I wrote in spanish and translates roughly to:

The moon, the moon, it’s only the moon and I

The clouds are my cradle, dancing to this beautiful cumbia

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Imagine if the thing that could calm you in the middle of Armageddon was the same thing that could stress you out on a Sunday morning when you’re wrapped up in blankets with your dog next to your bed and nothing to do all day; if the thing that pushed you forward when life’s hurricane was coming right at you was the same thing that pulled you back when you were one step away from untroubledville. You might have this type of dysfunctional relationship with a drug or a woman, I have recently developed it with Music.

The process of making an album is one of my favorite things in the world but as I expect more from my music the whole thing becomes increasingly more complicated. In order to improve the quality of my sound I have reached out to the people I’m closest to and respect the most. In turn I have partially lost control of the thing that controls me. While I know this is essential to my growth as an artist it is still hard to come to terms with.

Where is Smoothie? Didn’t you have an album release party for it six months ago? Is this going to turn into Detox?

I would be lying if I said I hadn’t thought about quitting. Every night when I’m in that self-searching place between comparing the darkness of the room to the darkness of my closed eyes I think about this album. I think about what is missing, how I’m going to promote it, how I’m going to make the money I spent on it back, and if it will live up to what it is in my mind. I think about how I can motivate the people I’m depending on to finish it. I wish I had enough money to make my project their priority. I hate bugging people who are doing me favors.

I also think about the stories behind the songs. I think about how fun each one was to make and how talented each person that contributed is. I envision people listening to it in their car while they drive to work on a cold day and in their earphones as they breakthrough clouds flying to whatever place waits for them. I think about my friends calling and writing to tell me how much they enjoy it and strangers shaking my hand after a show. I love hip hop so much.

I just spent over a year in Colombia making music for a living and a month after getting back to the states have already been asked to do the same in Rwanda. I could create music and see the world… it’s what I always wanted. At the same time I can’t help but feel like I’m giving up by abandoning the almighty quest to become famous. Is this where my yellow brick road has been heading all along? Thoughts bounce across the walls of my mind until I finally drift into the sleep I have been patiently waiting for.

Love it or hate it, the reality is I’m addicted to it. So you can go back to living your life and I’ll return to being pinky and the brain for however many nights it takes to finish this. Once the album comes out I’ll live carefree for a few months and then I’ll start the whole thing over again. Sounds crazy doesn’t it? It absolutely is

but God I love it.

Most people tried to sprint there I took the scenic, and learned the man who knows he knows nothing is the genius.

Join our Addictive Nature fb page: http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Addictive-Nature/111638225522127

Lights shine through the darkness like stars, leading up a tree that once was believed to be sacred because it could live through the winter, to one larger star at the top. A family that usually watches TV every night now sits around this tree, in a room they rarely go into, reminiscing while flipping through old pictures. The radio sings Christmas songs and even though we can’t stand the cheesy monologs from the radio host Delilah, we listen and make fun of her… every year. The world doesn’t reach past our living room tonight. This is what we do, there is nothing to question, yet this year I find myself picking this tranquility apart.

Where did these traditions come from, what do they symbolize, and why do I find myself so attached to them? Do traditions become such because they have meaning or do we assign the meaning to them?

Tradition: the transmission of customs or beliefs from generation to generation

I have found various stories about the origins of the holiday traditions we follow. The most commonly accepted documentation puts the birth of the Christmas tree in Germany around the 15^th century. People would put apples on trees to represent the tree of knowledge in the Garden of Eden and wafers to represent the body of Christ. Later candles were used to decorate trees to represent the spirit of Christ. The type of evergreen used was selected because of its shape; the triangle was viewed as a representation of the trinity. An evergreen, being a tree that can live through the winter, also represented life. One can see the connection between the selection of this tree and the meaning of the holiday.

I think the simple answer to why the traditions of Christmas are so important to ME is that they all involve the gathering of family. To dig deeper, I think it involves the desire to make my parents happy. As the holiday approaches the excitement from them can fill a room. They want to see us hang ornaments on the tree, stockings from the fireplace, and wake up with an eagerness to see what’s under the tree. It could be because their families instilled the importance of carrying on these traditions, but I think it has more to do with our family staying the same; A way to freeze time in a world that spins too fast too often. The dynamic of our family has changed over the years. Family vacations now involve planning around four people’s schedules instead of two. Doing the things that came natural when we were younger now involve a great deal of planning and sacrifice, however, we all know that when Christmas comes we will be together and happy.

As the years go on and we start our own families we will most likely not be able to spend every holiday together. The desire to make my parents happy will be replaced by the desire to make my children happy. The tradition of being together, no matter how it is executed, will be carried on.

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Charles Elmore Myers, my grandfather, is a natural storyteller. He is the type of person that will make friends with anyone, and given enough time, share his life story with great detail. So I decided to point a camera at him and give you the opportunity to virtually share a room with one of the most prominent male figures in my life. In this first chapter he describes being born and growing up on a farm in the depression with five siblings and a father who fell victim to the misfortune of dire times.

“We were dirt poor people but my father had a good profession, it’s just that things weren’t working out for him right away.”

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPsMO74VOgE&list=UUgzATdvfWHzH14eytNfpDiw&index=1&feature=plcp]

As Christmas approaches and we go out to buy gifts for the ones we love, he describes how his family came together to make the holiday possible.

“It might have been when I was 4 or 5… my brothers went out through garbage cans scavenging for broken toys and things like that. They came back, painted them, repaired them and whatnot, and that’s where Christmas came from for sis and I… our older brothers got it out of garbage cans, and that wasn’t too uncommon.”

The next chapter will start with the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the impact it had on the family.

I hope people play my new album, when we finally put it out, like I have been playing L’Orange’s new project Old Soul. Every song on this instrumental tape samples Billie Holiday, one of LO’s biggest influences. The more I get to know him the more I see that influence.

“I hate straight singing. I have to change a tune to my own way of doing it. That’s all I know.” -Billie Holiday

LO is different. He has a lane of his own, a style of his own, and a control over his craft that is rare. He and I talked frequently on skype while I was in Barranquilla, sharing music and bouncing ideas off each other. I didn’t understand every beat he sent me, or every reference he made, but that’s why I enjoy talking to him and listening to his music. He is constantly challenging me.

“No two people on earth are alike, and it’s got to be that way in music or it isn’t music.” -Billie Holiday

Like it because it’s great, respect it because it’s unique, download it because your ears deserve something new… plus it’s free and today is his birthday! Download Old Soul here–> http://lorange.bandcamp.com/album/old-soul

Life is different now. It’s not better, it’s not worse, it’s just different. Things here in Chapel Hill are comfortable. My neighborhood is quiet, my bed is soft, and my friends still have the same numbers. My cat still can’t hear and my car still makes noises it shouldn’t. Nothing changed, and yet everything has.

The things that took months to adjust to when I first moved to Colombia are now strange to live without. The farmers riding past my window early every morning sitting on a cart pulled by a donkey and yelling avocado have been replaced by deer tiptoeing through my wooded backyard. The faint sound of the neighborhood watchman’s whistle as he patrolled the streets with his old dog every night has been replaced by ESPN highlights I already saw twice that day. Not better or worse, just different.    

I hope I don’t get any more used to packing up and leaving things behind as I already am. I have done it three times now in my adult life. I seem to get so wrapped up in the things I am doing at the moment I rarely miss something to the point it gets me sad. Writing can be dangerous because it makes that impossible, which is why I have avoided doing this until now.

Having said that, I am cherishing the time I am spending with my family right now. My mom, dad, brother and I are going to the gym, playing tennis, and going out to dinner together multiple times a week. I think our relationship is rare and extraordinary. I’m sure I will look back at this transitional phase of my life with a smile.

“Musical training is a more potent instrument than any other, because rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul, on which they mightily fasten… making the soul of him who is rightly educated graceful.” –Plato

My plan is to go back to graduate school and build off my experience of making music for educational purposes. I’m sitting here at a coffee shop across from my old elementary school with a stack of GRE vocabulary flash cards realizing… it’s okay that I didn’t master Spanish in the last year; I still got a lot of English to learn!  

I moved to another country, to a city where I knew no one, and built a life that was as rewarding as it was fun. Then, as fast as everything seemed to happen, I was gone. I hope my friends know that I will never lose contact with them, and I will come back to visit as often as I can. To all my musician friends, know that I didn’t bug you about making music all the time for personal gain. Pictures capture memories, songs do much more. A chapter written, a new chapter to write… characters that will live on forever.

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This week I had the chance to see my first two international soccer games- Colombia vs. Venezuela & Colombia vs. Argentina. The stadium was a sea of yellow jerseys, honking horns, and people eager to see their team take down two of their most disliked rivals. The crowd got pretty routy… beers were only 3 mil (1.50 USD)!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jf3bQvtW7ho&feature=youtube_gdata]

For the first game against Venezuela I sat up in the higher level by myself. I quickly made friends with the old, drunk guys sitting beside me. While I feel like my spanish has improved to a point I can understand and communicate fairly well, these guys humbled me. They would say a bunch of stuff in an unhappy tone, look at me and say “SI O QUE?!” Whenever I heard that I would throw my arms up and say “SI!” That got me through the game without anyone knowing I had no idea what they were saying. We went into halftime up 1-0, but gave away a goal in the second half to tie… a loss to the people in Colombia, and along with the rain enough reason to cancel the cumbia festival later that night.

I had second row seats for the second game against Argentina, giving me a great opportunity to see just how short Messi is. I was sitting right next to the team mascots, reporters, and a youth soccer team fully dressed and ready to get called in to the game. We once again went into half time up 1-0, and then let the lead slip away and ended up losing 1-2. Messi looked like he was giving 50% throughout the game, but still had a number of fancy foot moves, assists, and almost scored on a one on one break away with the keeper. After the game a reporter from Fox Sports came up to the Sarmiento brothers and I and interviewed us. I didn’t say anything but I was behind the mascot cheesing and chanting Co-lom-bia, Co-lom-bia!

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If you ever find yourself at a Colombian soccer game there are three expressions that you will need to know: errrrrdddaaaa, nojoddaaaaa, and hijueputa. Use them carefully!