"My Heart Bleeds... Literally..." 5/9/07

Sorry I haven't been blogging lately, folks. The Digital Café Tour has become a 'real business,' of late. We are sort of acknowledged as having the 'best audio and video quality of any live concert Web 2.0 company on Broadband,' loosely translated from our thankfully growing and glowing reviews. And in leading the charge of this thing, Friday's Child has become the de facto head of the DCT spear, and I am really proud of what we've been able to do for the other acts involved in our growing video collective. Everyone of them is vitally important to our model.

I've been very candid about my personal bought with CNS Lyme and legacy of Relapsing Remitting Multiple Sclerosis it has left me. Originally, I avoided telling people too much about it. Then, a major national newspaper got hold of my underlying story before a festival we played in 2005, and it published a frontpage article about my fight with illness and the resurrection of my career. Cat was out of the proverbial bag, and I found myself the toast of the insurance Podcasting world for a year straight.

When I was first hit with a serious setback from this in 2003, I flat out couldn't play. My fingers couldn't find where they were going. It took my will to live, because I literally eat, sleep, and breath my guitar. Also, I love martial arts. I teach and train. That wasn't working out very well, either. 2003 passed on. My marriage ended. The original Friday's Child disbanded. Life was over...

Not really. In the end, if you train in martial arts enough, you realize that there are no half-measures. You either choose to live, or you can choose not to live. "You either Karate do, Daniel-san, or you Karate no do!" to quote good, old Mister Miyagi.

You can't stay in a depressive limbo state until you finally push up the daisies. My mentor in martial arts, Master Don Edwards, reinforced that for me and pushed me to train my way out of my problems. And train I have. Five days a week. Twice a day. Martial Arts, Tai Chi, running, weight training, kick boxing, pull ups, combat conditioning... The list goes on. The result... my strength has returned and I will be testing for my Black Belt in Filipino Martial Arts this coming June under Sifu Don, and his teacher, Grand Master Dong Cueste.

I have other martial arts teaching certifications, of one form or another, but this one really means a lot to me. If you told me I would get back to that in '03, I would have bitterly laughed at you.

Then, there's the guitar. How do you take a bad signal from your brain/spinal cord and push it through to hands that somedays feel like I have a novacaine glove on each one? It's like an English to Spanish translation for non-native Spanish speakers. Work on the flow of the mental translation fast enough as to be seamless to the listener. That's what I did with my hands. I went back to Bach, Joe Pass, Miles Davis, Zappa, The Beatles... all the stuff that made me want to play in the first place. I went back and I relived every fingering until I could play well again.

Flat out , I just want to play. What's the fallout of that? Prior to the MS thing, I was on a mission to take over the music world with Friday's Child. Now, I'm just happy I can get up and do what I love to do. The latter is healthier, and I think audiences respond to the more easy going vibe better. Ironically, the trademark of Friday's Child has never been more ubiquitous than it is now. Go figure!

Since 2004, when I started working with Laura Dodd as her guitarist, co-writer and co-producer, Laura has involved me in many events for VSA Arts, an incredible organization, founded by Jeanne Kennedy Smith, that promotes artists with disabilities. Through VSA's influence, I have had the privilege to see the depths of human courage communicated through a single-minded pursuit of the arts, no matter what the physical obstacles. I have seen a 12-year-old boy with Autism play jazz piano with a trio that honestly made me question whether I had just seen the reincarnation of the great Vince Guaraldi (Charlie Brown folks!). I have seen a blind piano player take the stage at the Ryman Auditorium and stood, awe-struck, in the wings of the stage while she channeled Jerry Lee into her grand piano. I've seen children with all manner of disbabilities that have left them mostly unable to move, wheelchair-bound, painting beautiful paintings with their mouths, feet or a few fingers.

Laura also had a role in "The Goal," a movie that chonicles the lives of Quadraplegic Rugby Players. I have met a few of our Olympic Quad Rugby Team members, including Jason Rigiere,who was also in "Murder Ball." Here is a real hero. Traumatic spinal cord injury leaves him a quadraplegic. What does he do? He becomes a super athlete.

It has been an awakening for me. Anytime I feel I have a road to hoe, I just think about the VSA artist community and Jason Rigiere, and I am humbled. I don't really feel I have much right to complain about my inconveniences. That's all they really are.s

I played in front of several thousand people a few weeks ago in my role as guitarist for Laura Dodd, in Alabama, opening for Country star, Doug Stone. Been flying twice a month for business, playing gigs, building DCT, etc. Ran myself down. Got a nice numb right arm and leg out of the bargain for a few weeks. Punchline... I played the show and didn't drop a note. Why? Because I love playing so much that I have had to come up with way to offset the temporary hiccups this stupid inconvenience injects into my Central Nervous System.

Lots of backstory, I know, and what's the point.

This is the point. MS has given me a very small window into being part of a community of people defined as 'disabled.' I am on the extreme periphery of that community, but every so often, I am reminded of my frailty and the tenuous line I walk every day. I has caused me to radically change my world view, really. For example, these are the things I am striving to do and not do, before they cremate me:

1. Succumb to road rage or other meaningless anger outbursts that signify nothing and solve nothing. I was big on screaming at my windshield for a while. I've all but stopped. It's a waste of energy.

2. Fighting in general, verbal or otherwise, is a waste of time. Self defense is a different set of rules.

3. Worrying about being sick or dying too soon is a waste of time. Certain things are beyond our control. This is one of them. Once you cross over, you can't do anything about it, so why sweat it?

4. I really want to take all the many and sundry mistakes I have made in my life and career and help other people benefit from them. Hence the bleeding heart comment.

5. Sun Tzu said, "Know your enemy. Know yourself. Choose the battlefield." I try to live by these three tenets.

Now, the long, drawn-out point. I used to be a very judgmental... possibly even a moral absolutist at times. Times change. I realize that human frailty is inevitable, and sometimes unavoidable. I have experienced things, both personally and vicariously, that have shown me the depth of human pain an subsequent perseverance. I have bent so many of my own rules to accommodate my own struggles that I cannot, without being a hypocrite, judge others for what they do or don't do.

And my heart bleeds for people who have it worse than me. Period. No apologies, and I don't much like people who tell homeless people to 'get a job' or honk at old people on walkers in crosswalks.

I can only be a liberal at this stage of life. If you want to look at the great religious leaders of all time... Jesus, Buddha, The Dali Lama... They only have or had distaste for two types of people... hypocrites and people who prey on the weak and disenfranchised. Amen. They were huggers, really. Hugging is better.

Check out DCT's overriding mission statement for corporate operations:

"We empower, educate and unite independent music communities by capturing and distributing the intimate, live concert experience for interactive, broadband and mobile viewers."

I have been involved in the Indie Music thing for well over a decade. I have made lots of friends and extended family through music, like Laura Dodd, Chris McElroy from Secret Gossip , the indefatiguable, Dan Gore, of DDGear, Kevin Jahoda formerly of Surrey Lane and now, much to my joy, a part of Friday's Child. Let's not ever forget Richie, Prof. Don and Rob G. of the big FC.. Brian Jude, Steve Maio or Rob McNeely of DCT. Then, there're Cliff Castle and Phil Garfinkel of Audix, Lou Vito at Gibson, Bob Borbonus and Robin Stoudte at Taylor, or our other family at Sabian, Firth, Furman and QSC. There's also our financial and charity friends at MVK, like Michael Fields, who is out making a difference in the lives of inner city kids every day.

These folks just love life and life in art. It inspires me. It has inspired our mission statement. It is our expressed goal at DCT to pull the rich reaches of the Indie music community in all a genres into an on-line juggernaut that, through our connect-the-dots marketing plan.

The vast machine has taken the soul out of most 'popular music.' Barring Bono, Sting, Peter Gabriel, Cheryl Crow and Paul Simon, very few artists seem to have a true calling to social activism and taken hard stances on things like a failing medical insurance system, a stuttering environment, and really questionable voting machines. The Indies Aggregated might be our onlu hope. Either that or "Obi Wan Kenobi" might be our only hope.

When DCT has achieved the financial markers necessary, it is my expressed goal to set up an a charitable insurance fund for the uninsurable. People with spinal cord injuries who have so stay on medicaid and be forced into taking disability. People who have had cancer in states with no continuous coverage laws. The list goes on. These people need real help. Real empowerment. I feel bound and obligated, as someone whose medical insurance premum is well over half his mortgage payment, to take this quest on and see it through.

That would be something I could feel good about.

Was this a little free-form? Sure. But, I suppose everyone is entitled to ramble a bit.

Ciao for now.