The Mountain Told Me To Live will be out June 18 on streaming platforms and available on bandcamp. As I said in February, this work bridges processes of recovery, their cyclical nature, “and the variability within those cycles by which they can be overcome through being present, or living and accepting imperfection as a process of authenticity.” This thinking particularly applies to my experiences of complex PTSD, schizophrenia, and depression.

The track titles are

Orchid Loop 1

At The Tides, In The Fields, In The House

Filtered Light

From The River Into The Forest

Ghost Pipe

Folding In

In the works of Emerson, he refers to life as circles working within circles within circles. I see this as an open-loop cycle. In the first track, Orchid Loop 1, I sing of maps, baths, and being ‘weighed down by the sea of your cornerstone thoughts passing by on the street outside,’ I refer to living presently within spaces and internally being able to breathe and know the consequences, but also to feel peaceful, that inner peace can come from a place of separation. Being weighed down is a continual work in progress of how the gravity of several forces inter-plays with the reverberating rhythms and how choice can be a grounding of acceptance, or a bath, but also does not confine one to the unbreathable waters without technology. Rather, the space of acceptance can release the overwhelming. While one’s thoughts and others’ thoughts are elsewhere, perhaps like the lapping waves of an ocean passing by as city streets, in here, I am home, I am peaceful, the walls with the doors of recovery are stable and providing the security and access to the world.

For a time, the circles pass and leave through windows while focus attends interest or pressing matters of fear and responsibility, and then suddenly, it all feels that nothing is known and the mind begins to question, but we can learn from this and be aware to see as Socrates did that in all the knowledge of nothing, everywhere else is revealed.

The title does not come from thoughts of suicide, but from a place within this existential questioning and fearfulness to see that I am turning what should be a wonderful hike into a mood-altering taking of responsibility for what is on such a grand scale that I cannot be responsible for it all. It exists so far in the future that I in my capacity with what I have available, can continue to the ridge line or resign to turning back and descending the mountain. It would not be a complete suicide, and if I would not stop thinking about such things I would be at more risk of falling down the mountain and dying.

So the oft self reference of realization that I am in this world is at times very much its own gravity, but at times the liberating relaxation of a bath. I am a continual work in progress. Life is limited. So I strive for what can be found in these artistic spaces to be a release, attunement, acceptance, or whatever therapeutic bandage may ease some of the pain and suffering.

To put this in more philosophical ways, nihilism leads to realizing agency to awareness of others to finding motivation to creating experience. At least if we try to see roads between Nietzsche, Heidegger, Levinas, and Dewey. But this is not a closed loop cycle. There has to be space in between and it doesn’t have to be anguish, it can be peaceful. If these can be acknowledged then presence can be regained.

For the future, I will share an event later. The following collection will be titled ‘fragments.’ It is a work containing my thoughts and practices with the assistance of silence.