Rihanna, Douglas Coupland and God

I love Rihanna's song "We Found Love" - not just the great groove but especially the sentiment "We found love in a hopeless place." I have been playing that song on my ipod a lot this week.
I just finished reading Douglas Coupland's book "Hey Nostradamus!" - I've been a fan since "Gen X" and I think "Nostradamus" is amazing. The main character Jason has difficulty connecting with anyone after he is part of a highschool shooting spree. He can't find love with his family and his world is hopeless. Then, in the most hopeless of all situations, he finds Heather. Although he is a doomed character, they share a connection, and a love, that forms the central section of this book. The final revelation of his father is astonishing.
So, all week I've been surrounded by this idea of finding love in hopeless situations and places. What place is more hopeless than the sinful world we live in - disconnected from God and each other - struggling valiantly to re-connect?
Jeremiah 31:3 keeps flashing through my head as I listen to Rihanna, read Coupland, and think about this world we live in. "I have loved you with an everlasting love." In the midst of this world's hopelessness, in the midst of dispair, when we could do nothing for ourselves - that is when Jesus died for us - when he displayed how much he loved, and still loves, us.

september

much has happened and nothing has happened....sometimes i wonder why we get so worked up about life when all it really amounts to is just a tiny little blip on the radar screen of existence...i don't want to get so caught up in the here and now that i miss the forever that i am really a part of....so i'm still working in las vegas, still becoming an appraiser, still volunteering, still writing songs and playing guitar...and it's all good...i just wish forever started today

the morning after

So Gene and I played at the Golden Nugget last night for the Las Vegas artist showcase. They asked us to come back next month and play again which was kind of cool. All the demo stuff I took was picked up by agents and scouts (if there really were any.....) or people who just liked our stuff. We were the only original artists in the whole thing. There were two Neil Diamond impersonators, a Tom Jones, a Rodney Dangerfield, the entire Rat Pack, a few things I'm still trying to classify, and then us. Everyone had backing tracks or full band or were stand up, and then Gene and I walk on, plug in two acoustic guitars and play original stuff. Very surreal and very fun.
When I got home this morning I saw a comment that was posted on my blog from annonymous who mentioned a book from the SDA book center or something like that. If the anonymous person doesn't mind answering a question, I was wondering if the author was SDA? I used to be an SDA minister and left the denomination so I don't put any stock in SDA writers. I thought it was either a very strange coincidence that a person who knows about SDA's wrote to me, a survivor of that cult, or this person knows I used to be SDA and is trying to 'influence' me back in. (Being an ex-SDA makes a person a little paranoid....it comes with all the 'theology' they try to teach you).
Anyway, it is the morning after and I'm sitting down to study again. For anyone interested in seeing us perform again, it is June 21 at the Golden Nugget showroom in 'beautiful' downtown Las Vegas. Chow.

school sucks

o.k. i'm in school...appraisal school....every evening until 10 p.m. all day i'm at home studying and then all evening i'm in school. i'm learning all about 'delayed gratification' through this process however. i'm learning that i have to finish this school thing in order to actually start making some serious money. so, for any of you who know me and wonder where i have been or why you haven't seen me for a while.....you probably won't for a while longer, unless you come to the golden nugget tonight at midnight and watch Gene and I play at the Las Vegas musicians showcase.

the player

I saw an old t-shirt today in a whole new way. It was the old shirt that read 'don't hate the player, hate the game'.
Wouldn't that be a great way to live life, hating the evil and corruption and politics and lies of our world, and not hating the people?

Temptation

I can reach out and feel it all around me
In the silence and every spoken word
In the writing tattooed across this subway
In the lyrics to every song I've heard

When I'm hiding it knows just where to find me
When I'm sleeping, it's drawing in my head
When I'm talking, it is the words inside me
And the images that float above my bed

It is sewn in the fabric of existence
It is part of a jaded history
I have loved it and it has left me empty
Why I still return remains a mystery

-these are the lyrics to a new song I'm working on called 'temptation'. I guess lately I'm feeling tempted to hate. Hate is such a solitary emotion that it can eat you alive inside and no one around you will ever know. The problem is that when you surrender to hate, it makes you feel really great for about 10 minutes. Maybe for some it's longer, but in the end it is always empty.

graduation

I graduated from rehab today. They tell me I'm no longer a danger to society. I think that's a good thing. I am now officially part of the clean and sober side of society, which they tell me, is more than half of the world's population. I certainly don't feel like I'm suddenly part of the majority. In fact, if anything, I feel like I'm part of a tiny subset that meets every day in smoke filled, widowless, rooms to talk about the lives they used to live and how if I'm going to make it and not kill myself I have to take one day at a time.
I made it today and I'll make it tomorrow.