Transcript Of This Recording:

“We have all heard the saying ‘There’s a light at the end of the tunnel.’

But is there?

Or is there just a big tunnel containing a series of events that asks us to try to cope with random or, for my spiritual folk, karmic circumstances to the best of our ability.

And though we want to believe that there will be some favorable outcome, the truth is that we don’t always get what we want.

We don’t always get what we need.

Sometimes Life happens and it can be pretty crummy.

Sometimes Life happens and it’s just heartbreaking.

Sometimes Life happens and it is unbearable.

And yet all the ironic financially stable gurus who are published by the finest publishers sell their theories of this or that new age trend.

Oh yeah….”and that through our suffering, we find the path to enlightenment”.

Am I guilty of that?

Probably.

Actually, yes I am.

Oh God, I just ate a piece of humble pie.

I have been known to try to alchemize reality to somehow see a silver lining…

To convince myself and others that there is some transformative code and within that magical transmutation of difficult circumstances, there is a remedy for the common good.

And sometimes there is.

Sometimes people make it through the most heinous of circumstances, and are blessed with a very special knowledge to help the collective achieve the transformation it is seeking.

But sometimes there is not.

And that is a hard pill to swallow, isn’t it?

Sometimes we see and/or are given information that we don’t want to see or know.

And sometimes we just need to get real about the state of things.

Life is not always a fairytale and 99% of the roles we will ever play will be about an individual doing all he or she can to improve his or her circumstances.

This is a fact of the human condition that we, as artists, must be open and willing to reveal about the struggles of the human experience which unfortunately includes human suffering.

Sometimes we need to blow out the candles, snuff out the incense, throw away the sage, chuck the oracle cards at the wall and really look, with our hearts, at tangible reality.

Sometimes the cards people are dealt are nowhere near the full house they had hoped.

Sometimes there is no house at all but a tunnel that echoes thoughts and questions in an earnest quest for Life’s greatest mysteries thus stimulating the creative process to express and hopefully come to terms with the human experience.

The artist must face unanswerable questions to suffering, greed, poverty, war, disease, trauma, lovelessness, abuse, darkness, addiction, evil, and even the newest pan epidemic, ‘narcism’?

Do I have the answers to any of these questions?

Hell no!

Not at all!

What do I know?…

I just work here.

But we have to be willing see the questions because they are there all around.

We have to be aware of them if we genuinely care about the state of humanity.

We cannot be scared to ask and confront these questions because it is the job that we signed up for.

Yet, no matter how much we may try…

No matter how hard we may dig…

We have to be willing to accept that there will always be unanswerable questions.

Life will always be in a state of flux and there will always be suffering somewhere in the world.

And you are probably reading this looking for some statement that illuminates the promised light at the end of the tunnel.

But that is just my point.

Sometimes there just isn’t and we, the artists, have to do our part in revealing the struggles humans go through in order to help bring awareness to these unanswered circumstances.

Otherwise it is just a tunnel and we are walking or even running through not knowing where it leads or what the meaning of all ‘it’ is.

The facts are…

Sometimes we are here with people who are good.

And sometimes we are here with people who are not so good.

Sometimes we are here with people living through compassion.

And sometimes we are here with people living through agenda.

Sometimes we walk with people who use troubling circumstances to help the greater good.

And sometimes we walk with people who choose to bank on it.

Sometimes we walk with trust.

And sometimes we have to walk with cautious discernment.

Sometimes people will walk with us to wherever the tunnel leads.

And sometimes they’ll just fade away.

Sometimes it will bring treasures.

And sometimes it will bring trauma.

Sometimes it will please.

And sometimes it will disappoint.

And within all those circumstances, the answer is…there is no answer.

It is what it is.

We don’t know why but we know it happens.

And while we live in a filtered world, creating the prettiest most perfected selfie, that hides any inkling of a ‘flaw’ sharing our abs and show biz smiles for some validation in the form of ‘likes’ on social media, we are ignoring the fact that we are not OK with what is.

We are not OK with the questions because we don’t want to face the answers.

We’re scared of the answers because we are not OK with anything that threatens the perfect little pretty picture that manufactures an artificial boost of dopamine or serotonin.

In fact, we don’t want to face the answers because we are not even OK with asking the questions anymore.

So we hold onto that theory of a light at the end of the tunnel without paying attention to the chaos that’s begging to be noticed.

We skip the most important step!

We are too busy numbing ourselves with artificial affirmations that prevent us from actually dealing with what is going on here and now.

We HAVE to be willing to face the reality of things, no matter how scary, no matter how unpleasant, no matter how dark.

This is our job as artists.

To see what others are not willing to see.

To face what others are not willing to face.

To step into the trenches and face the human condition, head on, mask free, in all its grit and glory.

Because that is what Life is.

A series of moments defined by grit and glory.

And if we are lucky, sometimes we will find ourselves somewhere in the middle.

I guess it’s just about allowing the questions and being OK with the answers whether they come with favorable or unfavorable echoes of a response…or even not at all.

Whatever the case, I encourage you to walk through this beautifully complicated Life tunnel without any expectations but with awareness and compassion.

Allow yourself the willingness to experience it for what it is in all its authenticity and then be willing to share that beautifully complicated authenticity through your work.”