Author: ClemTheGreat

There is a Tibetan Buddhist meditation in which you remember a time you were wrongly accused. You bring up this feeling, and in doing so, you identify what is called the False Self, the egoic sense of self.

“How dare they.” With just that thought, it’s easy to feel this false self very strongly. How dare they think the worst of me; how dare they misunderstand, mistrust. How dare they hurt me? Me??

Once you dial in that feeling, then it becomes easy to question this false self. Who is this Me? What does it feel like to feel injured? What am I attached to that has built this solid sense of self so solidly? Who is it who is injured? What if I let that part that can be injured go? And most interesting: what is there that can never be injured? Continue reading “Viva La Revolucion”

Last Saturday, I drove 12 hours. The day started at 9AM. I drove for seven hours from Oregon to California, then five hours after an early show at a festival for marijuana growers in the center of the Emerald Triangle in Northern California.

On the drive, it occurred to me to do something I never do, which was to listen to some of my previous blog posts to see how they were hanging together, see what I could improve going forward. I committed to writing the posts weekly over a year ago, and I do my best to make it happen, even though I have missed a few weeks. The weeks when I have shows on either end are often the most challenging, but I try to find time in a restaurant or backstage, and then I wake on a weekday morning and force it to all come together. Continue reading “The Rock-Addled Brain Goes On Repeat”

We’ve been shut in all week, the pug and I, due to the terrible Northern California fires and the subsequent sinus infection from the air quality. It’s been harrowing, watching the notices come in about the beautiful areas overtaken by firestorm, and the neighborhoods burning daily. It is paralyzing, watching and not being able to help beyond donation. It feels callous to participate in life going on while so much suffering is so close at hand.

That is a heavy feeling, this guilt of being momentarily spared. Each of us are assured of suffering in life. Suffering is happening right now, all around us, possibly within us, or within the people we are sitting near as we read this. Maybe the suffering is not as tangible as that of a home burning down, or of losing loved ones in tragedy, but in the minds of many, the anguish is just as real. It is the human condition to suffer, as long as we identify with the ego and its preferences and emotions and attachments. As long as we are in duality, we suffer. Light has its opposite. Just by shining bright it deepens the darkness of shadow on the other side. It is the human condition to live in both light and darkness. We will live in both, that is unavoidable. Continue reading “Deeper Feeling”

One of my songwriting partners asked me to come into the recording studio for a couple of days and play drums on some songs that he’d been itching to get going. It’s been a while since I got to record anything but Zeppelin on the kit, so I was excited he asked.

The studio where we recorded is one of my favorite places in the world. I have been working there for 16 years, the whole time that I have lived in San Francisco. Nearly every project, every record I’ve made, it’s all come out of this place. The reason: Robert Preston, owner and engineer. He is my dear friend. I could never describe the depth of my delight in this human. Because of him, the studio is my happy place. Continue reading “Ten Ways to be an Awesome Studio Musician”

The band had three shows last weekend, ending in Olympia, Washington. On Sunday, I drove the gear back to San Francisco with a friend who flew into Portland. We dropped the van at 9PM, I caught a cab to SFO, and landed in Albany at 9:30AM Monday morning. Another cab ride to a little outpost of a Budget Rent-A-Car in a Sears lobby, another 45-minute drive, and I arrived to a workshop my mentor was giving in a 100-year old house filled with plants and stones and artwork from the Far East.

While I was sitting in this small group of women, tired but happy, I remembered A Wrinkle in Time, the book I loved as a child, and how much I loved the trio of the three witches: Mrs Who, Mrs Whatsit, Mrs Which. I loved that book. The misfit outsider narrator. The magic of uncovering secret knowledge. The idea of traveling through space and time. Saving all reality from darkness through the power of love. I loved that group of women. Continue reading “A Lonely Gong Bath and A Wrinkle in Time”

This birthday, there were four cakes.

The first was served Saturday before the actual date, in Tucson, with a friend who had the marvelous vegan delight specially made from lemons in his yard.

The second was the next day, in Southern California: a three-layer lemon perfection made by my sister, who understands the value of pudding as filling.

The third was on my actual birthday: a slice of magic sponge following a delicious paella at a sweet Spanish restaurant next to the cable car tracks.

The next day, on stage, the girls in the band presented me with a dense, princess-style berry-laden cake that I sampled at 4:30 in the morning when I finally got home. Continue reading “The Eternal Bliss of Birthday Cake”

Yesterday was another gorgeous San Francisco day. It was chilly, but I imagine my Midwestern friends would think it warm for January. The sky was blue, with little white clouds like lace catching the sunlight and adding dimension. The bay was reflecting the blue and the water was still and sparkly. I took a walk downtown and when I was coming back over the hill, the green of the palm trees gave me that old familiar tropical feeling and I filled with the gratitude for the beauty of all the vacations I have ever taken.

I stopped by Cafe Trieste and had a cappuccino, gazed at the photos on the wall of the poets and artists and went back in time for a while. Back in time to that first idealized past, when I was in high school and I dreamed of being On the Road, dreamed of living the life of an itinerant artist. Dreamed of uniting with my peers in common desire for a more perfect world. I sipped the coffee and lived in that old romanticism for a little while. Continue reading “The Fear of Fainting Goats”

This is not the way that I want to see the world. In fear of the political system, in hatred for the people who don’t see things as I do, in shame that I have never been able to make any great positive change in society, in grief that I can never find a way to help. I guess I have no idea how the world works.

But I know how I work. I know when I am compassionate and loving and open and fearless then my life fills with joy. I see clouds outside the window of the plane and I am forever connected to the eons of humans who were never able to see the clouds. I am connected to a majesty and magnificence in the moment. My eyes fill with the deep red light on the top of the cloud bank. I see for all those who never saw, and for those who have yet to see. Continue reading “Yet Another Plea Of Love”

I’m in Upstate New York this week, and the ground is wet, the sky silky and grey. Last night it rained, and we headed into a restaurant dodging the spouts of rainwater coming off the old buildings. Today, the morning is still and cold. I love how heavy the sky is here, like a blanket, muffling sound. Little brown birds are going crazy in the bare branches of the yard, and their movement flies incongruent with the stillness everywhere else. A fat red cardinal perches in a tall tree, reminding my rods and cones of their purpose. At 12:30, there will be a window of no rain, and I’ll walk into the little town, sneak glances into windows, maybe sit and have a cup of coffee and then head back to this cozy little house for a peaceful day of tea and kitties and my dear friend.

This Saturday at 2AM, we’ll board a bus to Washington, heading to the march there. Months ago, when it was announced, I knew I would attend. I grew up seeing images of the great civil rights marches of the 1960s, and saw how their power changed the world. When I see the footage of Martin Luther King speaking, I have always imagined that if I had been living at that time, I would have been there. How would I feel now if I had had the chance to participate in that moment of hope and hadn’t been there? When the Women’s March was announced, I imagined seeing it unfold on television, in San Francisco, and could feel how I would regret not being there. So I made plans to come out. Continue reading “To Washington, With Love”