All You Can, From Where You Are

Journal:

Thursday, February 11, 6:38 PM, Tennis Channel, Hayden Studios, Culver City, CA

This week I have been working on compact disk artwork for a friend of mine. It’s for a CD that I happened to play bass on as well on around 10 tunes.

The Winter Olympics start tomorrow and I will play a small, small…  small, small small role in them here at Tennis Channel. I will serve as engineer for a number of the Spanish language rebroadcasts that Direct TV sends to their Central and South American markets. This is a studio and we rent the studio space out to a number of other productions having nothing to do with Tennis. For example, today “Tosh.0” is taping on our main green screen stage. As I type, I can hear the occasional laughter/applause from the studio audience out on stage.

Saturday, February 13, 5:57:03 PM, Tennis Channel.

There was some excitement here about an hour ago. We lost power off the grid. It's not even as exciting as one might think though as we are on seemless battery and diesel UPS. Still, it was something out of the ordinary, especially since I was flying solo as an engineer; something else that's relatively new.

I am proud of the fact that I have been posting this blog every Saturday for fourteen weeks now without missing one. That may seem a simple task but for me that’s a great accomplishment. Consistency is not my hallmark by a long shot. That’s one of the big reasons I am having a hard time getting my album done. It’s something I need to be better at.

The mode of song writing is over and the actually work of recording, editing and mixing the album. I already have more songs that I can fit on two CDs, yet new songs keep coming to me. I have had to painfully ‘pinch off’ that flow while I work to package the songs already written. After that: administration and promotion. Now there’s some finger-painting paste-eating kindergarten creativity for ya!

Hold the coffee, pass the Ritalin.

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All You Can From Where You Are

Sometimes when I get discouraged I remember a quote from Nkosi Johnson, an African child who died of AIDS at the age of twelve, but not before significantly changing perceptions of HIV/AIDS in Africa and elsewhere:

“Do all that you can, with the time you have, from where you are”.

I think that is beautiful. It’s powerful, even if it didn’t come from a child who knew he was dying.

To are credit or detriment, we are today where we are, as a result our actions, inactions and circumstances.

Love it, hate it, doesn’t matter. It also doesn’t matter what those actions, inactions and circumstances were, they're done! All they can offer us now is some lessons on what might and might not work in the future.

Ah there it is: The future.

No matter how we strain our eyes and shine our flashlights ahead into the inky abyss of the unknown, all we can make out are illusions. Featureless shapes that shift and morph freely from our expectations and best guesses to the unexpected realities they suddenly become as the razor’s edge of the present passes over them turning them to stone.

We also don’t know how long that future will keep coming at us, in this life anyway.

Our lives’ are a gift. That’s how I try to see it. I’m pretty sure that’s how Nkosi saw his twelve-year life. “…In the time you have,” does not mean life’s a race to the finish line. It simply means life’s a gift, whether we use it that way or not.

The most powerful part of Nkosi’s statement is the first part: "Do all that you can."

To me that means don’t hold back, the old “Don’t die with your music in you” saying that has always hit home pretty hard with me. Whatever you have to give, give it; whether it’s good works, love, art, or professional scab collecting, do it, and do it well. Play your instrument as though there is always a master listening.

What it also means is that not everything is within our power. We shouldn't spend any time on what we can’t.

A great deal of what it will take to make our dreams come true and make us happy in life are simple things within our power that we are already capable of.

We just have to decide what we want from life, do the simple things that bring us closer to that end and keep doing those simple things when it gets hard, boring or unpopular.

 “Do all that you can, with the time you have, from where you are”.

Nkosi Johnson