Callin Off Today
Let's take a day off together. Enjoy the view of Downtown Los Angeles.
“Can you find some peace today?”
― Shellen Lubin
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I spent Thursday in DTLA doing my main hustle. Views like this restore my sense of perspective. My feet are on the ground, but it’s nice to look up.
I’ve been working at my other side hustle, mxdwn.com, lately, and now we have a collision of deadlines and due dates. If you have not checked out my work on that platform, today is your lucky day!
One of my current projects are an interview with the band Full Of Hell. When I first started interviewing musicians, I was intimidated. But as I’ve talked to more of them, I’ve developed an awe of their ability to hang on to humanity.
I ask all of them, as our discussion winds down, if they have any regrets or would advise someone else to do it differently. To a person, they have said no regrets. But to the next person, pay attention to the moment you’re living in.
The future you keep dreaming about is not promised. The present is here, for you to experience and react to. To live in. To fail in and to succeed in. But the time is now. Not the perfect dream you keep promising yourself.
Speaking of tomorrows never promised, the other project I’m working on is the Kent Sate shooting that occurred in 1970. Three well-known rockers were students on that day, and experienced the shooting, and watched friends bleed out.
Chrissy Hynde, Joe Walsh, and Gerald Casale point to that fateful day as a life-altering tragedy. Not just for them personally, for the world of rock music, it was a Big Bang moment.
As the events of that day unfolded, and keep unfolding, Gen-X found a voice for it’s angst and ant-authority attitudes. Many others followed the lead of those trailblazers, and the world is a better place because of them.
My favorite piece lately is the Axios bit about DeeJay-T and his Spotify playlist. The gist was that his song list tells us he will, indeed, become a Dictator. Well, I know music is powerful, and means many things to many minds, but a dictator?
Ok. Well, as the future leader of The Broken-Free-World, and in a act of complete transparency, I vow to release my complete Spotify playlist (as soon as I figure out how). I am concerned that my enjoyment of Madonna and Orville Peck will cast certain aspersions.
What about my glee for Gwar? Or my fondness for Five-Finger-Death-Punch? Well, you be the judge and I’ll live with the judgement.
Farewell for now, and enjoy the Sunday before you.
Ric
Rando playlists from the past three years. Enjoy.
Love the pics! They’re a great antidote for a bleak, rainy Wisconsin morning.
And I’m looking forward to checking out your piece on Kent State! I’ve heard Casale touch on it briefly, but didn’t know the other two were there.
Thoroughly enjoyable; read it with gusto