I wonder how many posts I titled Monday Morning since 1994…
Click here for the answer.
The sky was spectacular as I set out on my four mile walk this morning. I listened to the new album in the sequence of tracks I had settled on and loved everything I heard. Well, except for one little thing that I will investigate today. Today I will pick imagery for the album cover. Because this version of vision 2020 will be called the Lockdown Version I searched my catalog of about 25,000 photographs for images that looked through windows at the outside. I also came across a photo of a birdcage that I felt was very poignant.
Regardless of the title and the time this music was created in, I find that it is upbeat and hopeful. How did Roshi Joan put it?
I am not an optimist nor a pessimist. I am hopeful.
And now I will have breakfast:
we are not free nor are we caged – EVER
Thank you for that Koan-like comment, Y. I get the idea that we are neither free nor caged, but the all-caps EVER eludes me.
This album was created during a pandemic and for part of the time there was a lockdown in effect here in Santa Fe. Therefore the music was created by Jon and myself via Dropbox. We didn’t actually ever meet while working on this album. While staying at home I nevertheless felt free. Perhaps that is part of the paradox you are referring to.
We do not have the freedom we think we have. I cannot decide what I will next think or intend until a thought or intention arises. Where do thoughts/intentions arise from ? It’s a mystery !
What a beautiful picture of the morning sky.
Each morning we are born again. What we do today matters most. – Buddha
Y’s comment goes deep. It is vibrating through my being. I can feel the cage of my personality, but my real being feels itself soaring in that beautiful sky. For a moment, I left the cage of body. I came right back though.
Ottmar, I love a man who creates something – an album of music – and when he listens later he truly loves what he has done! Great concert this morning (Tuesday 9/1). Those smoldering eyes looking into the camera took my breath!
I like the distinction between optimism/pessimism and hope.
“Hope can be a powerful force. Maybe there’s no actual magic in it, but when you know what you hope for most and hold it like a light within you, you can make things happen, almost like magic.”
― Laini Taylor,
Ottmar, I loved the photo from your dressing room window at the Aztec theater, San Antonio, last November.