Bliss And Drumming: The Slow Enlightenment Of The Hard Rock Drummer

From the blog www.blissanddrumming.com, Clementine reads this piece. *** When I first arrived 18 years ago I saw pretty clearly that one day the little town would become a quaint art community in the middle of suburban sprawl, and that’s what is happening, as Omaha has annexed its Western edge and development is razing the 20 miles of cornfield that used to separate the city from country. I could predict the future because this has happened in my life before, in my childhood Orange County, as orange groves made way for sprawling housing developments. It’s a dim glory, being proven right this way. It used to torment me, the way ‘progress’ happens. In my hometown, the gorgeous country road on which we would rattle along back to Trabuco Canyon is now a two-lane bike path next to a six-lane highway. In Omaha, cornfields fall to yet another mini mall, or box store, yet more blandly unappealing industry.

From the blog www.blissanddrumming.com, Clementine reads this piece: http://blissanddrumming.com/2018/06/awakening-the-cosmic-joke/. *** Music provides a great illustration of this. I am on stage, playing drums in front of an audience. My thoughts float through as I play the song: the stick in my hands, the flutter of worry about something tricky coming up, the way the other instruments are playing , the sound or lack of it coming through the monitor. I feel these things rise; I allow the twinge of worry, the irritation with the monitor, the doubt or focus. Rather than obsess or lose my place in the song, however, I fall into that open awareness, allow everything to rise and fall, while remaining fully present in the song. When I play this way, I connect with each moment, each melody, while I am still aware of my technical being, and the other ears in the room hearing the song, and where I am in it. I am fully then in the center of the moment, experiencing it all and letting the song play me. I can rest in

From the blog www.blissanddrumming.com, Clementine reads this piece: *** Of course, as I experienced Cuba and this different way of seeing the world, I realized that everything I see, I see through my own history and DNA and bias, and that nothing I see exists the way I think it does. I am a political moron, a humanity-lover and a cosmic idealist. It was interesting to see my egoic self, and then practice what Robert Adams speaks of. I fall beneath this bias, this ego, this Clementine. I ask, to whom do these thoughts come? To whom does this experience come? What is solid here at all? I am a collection of molecules on a plane flying over the Yucatan peninsula, a little drunk on wine and looking forward to being in bed with a dog who smells like my childhood stuffed animals. I have been heartbroken and am coming out of a period in which I questioned my sanity and my motives and my choices in this life and yet here in my heart I can sit in stillness for long empty moments and trust that truth I find there

From the blog www.blissanddrumming.com, Clementine reads this post: http://blissanddrumming.com/2017/11/rock-addled-brain-goes-repeat/. She also mentions www.awakeningthetrueself.com *** Years ago, I spent some time meditating on on my inner critic, and an image of a woman in a gray suit and a tight bun on her head emerged. I have no idea where the image comes from, but it’s been helpful to put a face on her. When I asked her what she needed from me, she said she didn’t want me to fail. This is why she was so incessantly belligerent, and why she thought it would be a good idea to just not ever produce any work for which I would be so vulnerable. After a while of sitting with her, we made a deal. I promised that I would work as hard as I could on anything I produced, and she said she would shut the hell up and let me work.

From the blog www.blissanddrumming.com, this post: http://blissanddrumming.com/2017/10/deeper-feeling/ is read by Clementine. She also references www.awakeningthetrueself.com. *** This week I wrote a treatise on this idea, of finding the field of bliss energy beneath all the light and dark, but really, the discussion of bearing suffering feels trivial in the face of current events. So I will do what is required of all beings on the planet, in this moment, and then in this one. I will just keep breathing. I will move to where I am called. The band will play on. This week was the week I was to release the first music video for my new project with Adrian Conner, Beaux Cheveux. As luck would have it, it was a terrible week to release such a lighthearted and joyful tune. Hurricanes, fires, shootings: the last two weeks have brought with them a litany of misery and it felt like the best response should be to stay in bed and hit the crying emoji on every Facebook post encountered.

From the blog www.blissanddrumming.com, this post http://blissanddrumming.com/2017/10/ten-ways-awesome-studio-musician/ ‎ is read by Clementine. *** As someone hired for the session, the primary thing that matters to me is that I get in and get out as quickly as possible. In most sessions with Rob, there is a feeling of celebration. The studio is hallowed place in which each person gets to bring a lifetime of work and all of their creative energy and let it shine for an afternoon, or a few days, or however long you are gifted with studio time. In this time, the culmination of your creative voice is laid down on something that stands to be heard by the world. So there is a tendency to want to milk it, to bathe in the connection with the other musicians, drink a beer when your part is over, hang out and see how the rest of the recording goes down. That’s not your role, though.

From the blog www.blissanddrumming.com, read by Clementine. She also refers to www.awakeningthetrueself.com. *** Who is the Clementine who gets sad and lonely? Just a fabrication, a ball of DNA and energy and an ever-changing mass of molecules that rearranges millisecond to millisecond. Somehow, I have woken in this plane of existence in which I believe this body is a solid thing when really it is 99% space and energy. Who is there to be lonely? Who is there to be sad? What is there but the energy of love that keeps it all together? How can pure, infinite awareness get lonely?

This is a 30-Minute meditation for you to enjoy. From Clementine at www.awakeningthetrueself.com and www.blissanddrumming.com

From the blog www.blissanddrumming.com, read by Clementine. *** When I fall into the true self, that infinite stillness that I find in the center of my being, it is just that, infinite. I don’t have to be in meditation to experience it, sitting on my little bench, wrapped up the corner of my room with a singing bowl in front of me and my Buddhist monk pug noisily meditating beside me. All it takes to find that place is to remember to find it, all day long, driving in the car, walking down the street, sitting backstage, in the middle of a song, when I become a part of the song and no longer merely a player. It is as simple as remembering, and falling my awareness to the center of my heart.

From the blog www.blissanddrumming.com, read by Clementine. *** When I’m sitting in meditation and an emotion rises up out of nowhere, out of no thought or story, it’s as if a storm is passing through my body. Maybe first my stomach feels heavy, and I’ll watch as the heaviness starts to spread. I can usually name it: “Oh, here’s sorrow. Let me invite it in. Let me feel it fully.” It can shorten my breath to experience these things; tears come, and I fight to not fidget. I’ll watch the mind try to come up with stories, with reasons for pain. The only thing to do is keep falling into that still place, that quiet that lies beneath, and just observe. If I react, the emotions dig in. If I just observe, they rise up like storms that demand attention, that sway the trees and crash the jetties, and then leave behind the clear single note of an infinite bell.

From the blog www.blissanddrumming.com, read by Clementine. *** Fear is such a funny thing. I don’t mean funny-strange. I mean funny- ha-ha. When I am in a hole, I forget that I have tools to get myself out of the wallowing. I guess that’s one definition of being in a hole, that you forget that you are actually able to crawl out. When I remember that I have all the power to change things, that is the first thing that makes me laugh. Then, what is really funny is when I let fear in. I invite it in, let it fill me up. I don’t tell myself a story about it, I just feel the sensation of it. First, my chest feels heavy, like I can’t breathe right. My limbs get heavy, and my whole body feels weighted down as if something is preventing me from moving. When I feel this way, I see that the way my body reacts in fear is just like a mouse, like a rodent, or like one of those fainting goats. I just go stock still, weighted with fear. The thought is a little funny. Then, I bring the fear into the mind, and think of the

From the blog www.blissanddrumming.com, read by Clementine. *** I am going to accept that you will believe what you want to believe and I’m going to say, you are right. I don’t know anything. I don’t know what is best for people, except that I know in my soul that compassion and empathy and love is what makes my whole body sing. It’s what makes my life beautiful and I love to believe that each person can find this beauty. It’s what makes me look at the sky and the clouds and the trees and the earth and think, this is all here for me and there is no me. We are all living light of God. This moment you see is the dream you are dreaming. Let go of the fear! Let go of the hate! Let go of the blind acceptance of people who speak only of separatism and hate and fear and realize, you can run, but you can’t hide. We are all here together, and we have all, in the future, or in the past or in some great cosmic understanding of no-time, come out the other side and found that it is all one vibration of love. I am a hippi

From the blog www.blissanddrumming.com, read by Clementine. *** It should be pretty apparent by now, if you have been reading or listening to these blogs of mine, that I believe we are all One. Connected by one consciousness, a unifying energy of love. I have spent my life on a kind of spiritual path, following a deep intuition that my goal is to open to love more, to widen compassion to an infinite degree, and thereby do my part to change the world, one interaction at a time. I have not been successful in this, the unenlightened being that I am, but I recognize this as my challenge and my path. As I move forward however, my belief grows stronger that each human shares this potential for enlightenment. At the base of the true self, each human is already enlightened. The Buddha knew that he could not achieve real enlightenment until each being, past, present and future, was also enlightened. Which means that he saw into the future, to the time when each person was there, living in eternal compassion and ligh

From the blog www.blissanddrumming.com, read by Clementine. *** I love the quiet. I guess I’m in the minority, judging from how there are screens speaking to me pretty much as soon as I go outside: TVs in cabs and elevators and restaurants. I went into a beautiful restaurant over the holiday, and sat at a bar that was made of pale golden marble, lit magically from within. The back bar glowed blue between the bottles, and soft jazz played in the background. It was gorgeous, or I guess it was, when I could forget about the six plasma screens stretched above us, each of them playing something different. My brain doesn’t handle that well. I find myself absently staring at the moving images without recognizing what it is I’m watching, but forgetting where I am. Yes, I’m in the minority. Anyway, I do love getting lost in an afternoon of story. Not only that, but I was connected with my best friend on and off all weekend, and we were trading recommendations of what we were reading, forwarding snippets to each othe

A post from the blog www.blissanddrumming.com, read by Clementine. *** I have traveled and played music in every state but one (Alaska). I have slept on floors and been cared for by music fans. I have been invited into strangers’ homes and hung out with people from every walk of life, united by music. I do not believe that our divisions are stronger than our connections. I do not believe that one-on-one, I can not find common ground with nearly everyone I come into contact with. I believe that every single person I have met in my life deserves all of the advantages that I have been given. I do not believe that if I give others an advantage, it lessens mine. I believe to strengthen one person in a family strengthens the family. The person is afraid to speak the truth is lifted up by the other members, and finds her way to love and lets go of fear. This is the gospel, this is the truth. We are One. I will continue working on letting go of the fear of speaking the truth. I will work to be as open as possible t