"Di-Verse"

"Live in the contradiction"; "start the day with a full cup"; "a bird sings, not for an answer, but because it has a song". Those are just a sample of some of the random things I wrote from this Willow Creek Arts Conference that I just attended. Great stuff. I won't get into all the details, I'm sure you can go to their site and get stuff online. What it did for me is provide some great insight and self evaluation. It was very good. One thing I wrote was, very simply, "don't be afraid of reality". For whatever reason, it made me think of where I was with my gift of music - specifically, playing guitar. You see, I have been feeling quite a bit frustrated over that part of my life. It seemed like much was about completing tasks and not having room for creativity. That is hard for a musician like me. It's funny, until a couple weeks ago, I have played the instrument a lot in the past few months. However, it was more for teaching or for charting or for simply going through the motions of learning something for the weekend. It became tough. The last couple weeks I really haven't played much. Not really feeling like it. That is not so alarming because I have gone through this kind of phase before - it usually ends up in becoming a very healthy thing. So how do I move on from this point? I need to get back to a more creative phase or it simply becomes a job. I don't like jobs. I love making up stuff like solo riffs; writing new songs; learning other songs just because I can - not for a purpose.



Well, at the conference there were many things that were brought up that kind of told me to find my way back to that. I really need to get there. The artist in me needs that. Artistically it can be hard for me to stay on the same thing for any length of time.

One of the more weird moments at the conference was a musical number that repeated this: "Di -Verse". It was puzzling then but after a few days something came to me. I have been contemplating getting in some kind of secular band. Diversity is part of what I crave, musically. Too much of one thing can get to be stale. I look at all the bands I was in for the past 25 years and almost all never had me in them past maybe 2 years. Perhaps this will help me becoming a better artist. I am not sure about it yet. I need to see what God is telling me.