Occupation

Among other things, an occupation is what you do to make a living. I've had many, but my true occupation is Artist. It has always been challenging to find a way to get by with this occupation, but there is nothing else that seems worthwhile to me.

In my years here in California, I've reached out a lot with free efforts to lend a hand and many times I've felt taken advantage of and under-appreciated. I've tried for decades to organize musicians and work together for support in a variety of ways. My most successful efforts in that vein have been Open Mic nights. I started, or helped start and maintain long-lasting open mics in San Diego, Ventura, Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo (that one was short-lived), and Santa Cruz. Twice I tried to put together record companies with a combination of volunteer and paid help. Neither of those came close to anything vaguely resembling a viable entity.

When I started traveling around the USA as a full-time musician, I finally found the support I needed to sustain myself as an artist. I've been full-time since September of 1997 and it has never been easy, but always better than previous employments. Somehow there's always been a way to make it work.

I've always found things easier in Europe, but also feel the pull of family, friends, the land and unfinished business back here in the fucked up United States of Generica. I first played professionally in Europe in 1985. It was on the island of Eivissa, or Ibiza in the off-season (they still had one) playing in bars and restaurants doing mostly covers. That was the last place I worked playing covers. I had been making half my living in California previous to that from 1980-1985 playing covers in restaurants and bars. I also washed windows, which started with me going door-to-door to get customers.

Oddly, I've never had more satisfying connections with people than as a vagabond roaming the North American continent playing music and hawking cds. I'm open to the world and a lot of it is open right back. Maybe people find me less threatening when I'm passing through. Maybe I find them less threatening.

I've always objected to blogging to build an audience for my musical work. I do some shuck and jive, but I try to steer clear of it as much as I can. I hope this blog's different. At least this blog has other purposes. I'm writing about stuff that has been important to me for 37 years. Leralee and I have received two grants to pay most of the production costs of a multimedia show we're creating for performance in early February. It's called, Occupied and is concerned with the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the occupation of American minds by forces that manufacture consent to atrocities perpetrated by the US military and government in general. The performance is Friday and Saturday nights, Feb. 6 & 7 at 418 Front Street in downtown Santa Cruz, CA, 95060.

Disguised Influence - Blatant Oppression

Occupied, busy, taken - like a table at a restaurant, or a sky full of clouds. Some things have cycles of being free and then busy. No one objects to the sky being occupied by clouds. The clouds blow in and later they are gone. No problems.

Other occupations are objected to because they cause suffering and unfairly benefit the few at the expense of the many. Identities, lifestyles, and values can be dictated to individuals strongly pressured to accept them without question. Abraham Maslow refers to the "authentic" person as one who has considered and chosen their own values and identity. Socrates suggested that the unexamined life is not worth living.

In a more obvious way, the military invasion of a sovereign nation and its subsequent occupation, disallow autonomous functioning of that government to choose for itself. Inevitably, military invasions are intended to benefit those affiliated with the invaders. They create suffering and oppression for those on the other side.

In the case of my own country, the USA, there are strong pressures on individuals that circumvent the authentic decision making of free people. These pressures create oprresion and suffering here and a citizenry that supports the take-over of other nations in the name of freedom and democracy.

For Real

Life is what you make it.

Never mind that you're born into all manner of constriction and surrounded by influences and blatant manipulations coming at you from all sides.

The power of positive thinking can overcome! Yes, it can.

Among the things it can overcome is an interest in truth. Truth... you know, that stuff that doesn't go away just because you don't believe it exists?

Let's talk about the two-fold path of American Enlightenment.

First there's, The Way of Marginalization: disempowerment, numbness, depression, and the exile to Oblivion

Then, The Way of The Rat Race: occupied with obsessions, trivialized by competition that reduces creativity and your entire life to lowest common denominator banality and sensationalism.

Is every individual in the USA forced to walk one of these two paths? Pushed ever onward by the credos of rugged individualism?

No. Most people are disempowered by soul-numbing occupations in addition to being pressurized by the requirements of mere survival in a society that not only casts us adrift alone, but also pits us against each other.

Maybe life is like an allotment of time in a public bathroom stall. You enter, locking the door behind you and all most people see as evidence that you exist is a little sign on the outside of the door that reads, OCCUPIED. There are, of course, the occasional accompanying sounds and smells. A few gifted others have the rare opportunity to witness your entry and exit to and from the stall.

Forced to live a bland, mostly meaningless existence bouncing between the rat race and marginalization, we are simultaneously exiled into oblivion and trivialized by the banal, but ruthless competition for our identities and mere survival.

Is this what God had in mind when concocting that special plan for your life?

There is something to be admired in the human spirit that won't give up the effort to create something worthwhile, something good, something beautiful.

Maybe the challenge is to assert that the glass is half-full while staring with eyes wide open at the atrocities of human society and the horrors of the human condition. I'm not talking about asserting it with a phoney, pollyanna sincerity masking deep dread. I mean for real, with a real passion.

Curious Doubt and the flame of Uncertainty

The manipulation of the many by the few was evident at the start of the United States. "We the people" was a sovereign to replace the King of the old monarchy, but it only included white, male, landowners in the 18th century. Elite groups with power sought to maintain control, but because people spoke up and made their voices heard, "We the people" eventually broadened to include all races, males, females, and poor people with no land ownership. The elites did not give up, nor have they lost much, if any ground. Maybe they've progressed...

Residents of the North American continent fell prey to occupation by various European countries, starting in the 16th century. England's colonization of the "new world" lost steam in the 18th century as the European colonists themselves revolted in favor of the United States of America, which then proceeded to take over a vast section of the continent. (Howard Zinn, "History is a Weapon")

The current occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan with their flimsy justifications are essentially the same brutal colonizations that Europeans practiced for thousands of years. While it's true that elite forces are still creating a lot of suffering in the world, it's also true that the rise of massive public opinion can reverse the tide of those efforts. Citizens support, ignore, or work against the various efforts of the elites. Today, new technologies and techniques of manufacturing public consent create opportunities that we must all pay some attention to, or become manipulated by, through our ignorance.
Noam Chomsky RSS feeds - The Imperial Presidency: Sovereignty, Terror and the "Second Superpower" Tracks

Stoking the flame of uncertainty and encouraging curious inspection of assumed truths and status quo versions of reality is the purpose of this tiny little blog. Socrates, Maslow, Watts, Krishnamurti and many others have advocated the individual pursuit of awareness and balance. It can function like an antibody in an immune system, fighting off harmful viruses.