100, Mental Health, Playlists, Poetry, Stigma Fighters

Let’s keep this machine goin’!

Hey! How are all of you doin’ today? I know (again) it’s been awhile…but I’ve been busy, and I’ve got the receipts to prove it!

Just a couple days ago, I wrote an article about my dealings with Fibromyalgia for Stigma Fighters that’s received an excellent response so far, My Roadmap To Fibromyalgia: Everything or Nothing; and sometimes both. Please take a look-see and feel free to share it with anyone else who’s living with this…spreading and sharing information is one of the best ways we have right now to not only combat this, but feel comfort.

Yesterday, I recorded a short promo clip for Eliezer Tristan Publishing in the hopes that they can find sponsors for our launch party in September, as well as investors to take the company to the next level and signal boost the messages to a bigger, wider audience. I just wanted to bang it out in one take, but as I started talking and saying what I really wanted to say, I looked down at the timer on my laptop’s recorder and I was well over 30 seconds yet halfway through the whole thing I’d been playing over in my head for hours. I guess not only do I think too much and babble on sometimes when I write, but I also take too long to say what needs to be said (especially under the duress of a timer).

And today, I took the bold step of adding two more videos to the ever-growing cult of 100…the first is a combination of two poems that really mean a lot to me. They were written shortly after my brother’s suicide at the age of 39, almost two years ago. I’ve written more about it since, but Sinspiration and Cometosis were a couple of the first I was able to do while still processing the grief and helping out mom handle his affairs, left-behinds, and the overall overwhelmingness of it all. It honestly took me some time before I was able to start processing it, let alone get the ability to start writing about it.

Unsure of what I wanted to record next (because I was totally into the mindset of recording), I flipped around and found one of the first ones I truly liked as I was beginning to get fully involved in the process of writing this “Give It 100” project. Not only was it one of my early favorites, but it was fairly well-received when I added it to my portfolio on Writing.com as part of the project. It’s called Major Bomb, and I remember entering it in my local library’s “National Poetry Month” contest…it lost to a very blah, cheerleading “yay America” flag piece that I guess the townsfolk here are all up into instead of my antithesis of that. But I’m not bitter about it…wellllll…no, I’m not. I’ve already gotten my validation several times over.

So that’s where I’ve been lately, friends and lovers and haters and everyone in-between. Once I get the motor runnin’ it doesn’t stop til I drop. Whaddya say we dip into a machine-oriented playlist, in hopes of keepin’ the gears turnin’ through my West Coast jaunt? And if you want me to show up in your city, drop a line…I’m still in the planning phase and and after the ETP launch party and my Seattle visit, I’m open!

  1. Rage Against The Machine, “Bulls On Parade”
  2. Pink Floyd, “Welcome To The Machine”
  3. The Tragically Hip, “Man Machine Poem”
  4. The Beatles, “The Long And Winding Road”
  5. Sponge, “Miles”
  6. Queens of the Stone Age, “…Like Clockwork”
  7. Soundgarden, “Never The Machine Forever”
  8. Regina Spektor, “Riot Gear”
  9. Bush, “Warm Machine”
  10. Radiohead, “Paranoid Android”
  11. Pixies, “Bone Machine”
  12. Our Lady Peace, “In Repair”

Alright y’all…you’re flush with my life up to today. Hope it makes you as happy as it’s made me over the course of a long time coming. Thanks for listenin’, and don’t forget to listen to others and take care of yourselves. Peace!

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