Category: Blog

The Taboo Against (Healthy) Pleasure

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Why the Revolution Starts With You

life is art

“Life is grim.”

That was one of my late grandfather’s stock responses to my mother when my mom was a child and couldn’t have or do something she wanted.

His other chestnut was a paraphrase of one of Jesus’ sayings in the Sermon on the Mount: “Into each life some rain must fall.”

We all heard things like this when we were kids. Often delivered either in a tone of mocking humor that demonstrated – consciously or not – the parent’s contempt for our desires. Or laced with enough anger to shut us up and back us down. Continue reading →

Tales of a 4th Grade Cut-Up

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Kids Creating Music

4th Grade songwriters

The creative minds and voices behind Dangerous Panda.

This is the story of how 12 fourth-graders with a smart, creative teacher wrote and recorded a catchy pop anthem about danger, pandas, Olaf the snowman, and electrical engineers…all in less than an hour.

Read about our songwriting process and listen along as the song evolves here: Making Music in School: The Story of Dangerous Panda

Listen to the podcast:
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Scorpio Full Moon – Wednesday, May 10, 2017

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Reframing Your Life As The Story of You Finding Your Joy

mystery garden

Today’s Full Moon falls in the 21st degree of Scorpio, the sign in which the Moon is said to be in her fall. This is a traditional formulation that probably has more to do with the Moon being exalted in the opposite sign, Taurus, than it does with Scorpio itself.

However, the traditional cautions bear keeping in mind. The challenge with a Scorpio Moon boils down to Scorpio’s penchant for fixating emotionally on the object of its desire or fascination. As we’ll see in a moment, though, this can be a gift at today’s lunation. Continue reading →

Clearing Mental Clutter

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Making Room for the Big Idea

I’ve been working on a Big Idea for a while now. If I told you how long, I’d have to kill you. But let’s just say it has been percolating in my creative unconscious since at least 2014.

This past week, as Mercury stationed direct, I felt the gears starting to click into place. (There are a lot of moving parts here!)

My initial reaction was mild euphoria, followed immediately by suspicion: “Whoa! Can this really be it? After all this time? But what about…?” Continue reading →

Soul Mantra

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Positive Reinforcement

In times like these, I need frequent reminding that Life will take care of me if I listen to my soul and not to the voices of fear. This soul mantra is fun, upbeat and designed to hypnotize you into remembering that you are the center. May it lift your spirits and bring you back to what’s real.

Everything Is Perfectly Fine In This Moment

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This meditative piece that turns into a happy little song in the last minute came out of a dark moment. One of those days when I felt paralyzed, stuck in the mud of unhappy thoughts. The Mind Parasites had brought their A game and me…? I felt like a total loser.

One of those days where you tell yourself, “Just play up your damn guitar – five minutes – and you’ll feel better.” But you just stare at it, across the room, knowing you’re too much of a chump to walk over and even pick it up.

And then this thunderstorm rolled in. It was a clear summer day and suddenly the sky turned dark, the lightning crashed, the heavens opened up and the rain came down. And I got excited about trying to record the thunder and the rain on my iPhone. I ran outside under the front awning. I ran upstairs to the little back balcony. I trotted down the hall to my studio.

And I spent the next few hours in creative nirvana….

Unraveling the Dark Matrix: Venus, Saturn & the Galactic Center

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galactic center

The Galactic Center. Photo by NASA.

A Stream of Source EnergY Piercing the Veil of Illusion

The astrological weather in the next few days promises unusual levels of chaos. Most of us aren’t cheered to hear that a line of storms could be marching over the horizon. But what if you were a prisoner waiting for the ideal moment to spring yourself from jail? You might welcome physical weather akin to the astrology of the coming days.

First, the astrology of the next three days:

The Astrological Energy Systems in Play: April 6-10

If you want the technical astro-details, jump down to here and then come back. If you’re cool with a summary, read on.

  • Saturn stationed retrograde yesterday (April 6) in the same degree as the Galactic Center – the Great Central Sun or Source of consciousness in our galaxy. Saturn will remain in this degree for the next month. Venus, currently retrograde but exalted in the sign of Pisces, is aligned in a very close square angle to both Saturn and the G.C. and will remain in this angle through April 23.
  • Mercury stations retrograde on the Chiron Point (4 Taurus) on Monday, April 9 – we are already feeling the effects this weekend.
  • Monday night’s Libra Full Moon (Tuesday, April 10 at 1:07 am EDT) features the Moon conjunct Jupiter opposite the Sun conjunct Uranus and Eris – all square Pluto in Capricorn.

Continue reading →

Overcoming Fear of Rejection

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“Ocean Moon Undertow” – music for a recent podcast.

Why Do You Create?

As I was uploading the music I created for my last three podcasts to my Patreon site I noticed one of those little auto-fill messages you get on web forms. This one asked: “Why do you create?”

Narrowing my focus to: why do I create music for my podcasts, I came up with three answers.

1. If You Want to Do More of What You Love, Do More of What You Love

Continue reading →