In a nutshell ~ this is the story of a an ordinary gnome and the extraordinary adventure he took. Try it. You’ll like it. I promise.
I thought I’d do something a little different with this one. I’ve been going through lots of old photos and organizing them as part of our coronavirus stay at home isolation and found this series of pictures which I’d kind of forgotten about. I won’t ruin the story, as today’s offering tells it, but this felt good to turn music and pictures into a story and it because something more through the creation process.
For more info about this whole series, why don’t’cha visit:
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Original Music Release A Day #16 ~ The Meaning of Life
Part of the Small Craft Advisory collection of spoken word pieces
This piece has an interesting history ~ I distinctly remember writing the words as follow up from a particularly profound meditation, but I have absolutely no memory at all of playing and recording the music and then setting the words down as well into their sonic bed.
One of the themes that runs through many of these spoken word pieces is chosen nobility, or walking one’s path in life as upright and meaningfully as possible. By upright I don’t mean being straight and narrow, no, life is too short for that. I mean holding one’s head high and being able to look one another in the eye, taking responsibility for one’s self, and taking the time to appreciate and create beauty whenever possible. We can totally be noble and full of shenanigans, no worries there.
The Meaning of Life is offered as a meditation in the creation of meaning within one’s life, and a reminder of all the places where we encounter it. In this particular moment in time when we are all slowing down and taking stock of what’s important and what isn’t, it is my hope that we emerge from this time more aligned with our deeper selves and truly connected with friends and family.
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StirCrazyCabinFeverReliever ~ Original banjo & bass
Not much more to this tune than it’s now been two weeks we haven’t gone anywhere except the local woods and our backyard and it’s a rainy day and everyone is starting to get a little stir-crazy. Thought I’d take on a little recording project, because why not.
A couple of hours with a banjo, bass, drums, and a synth and I got so wrapped up in the project I forgot to hit record on the video camera.
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Part of The Small Craft Advisory collection of spoken word pieces.
In honor of the US District Court decision handed down yesterday in favor of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe of North Dakota, I humbly offer this spoken word prayer.
When the NODAPL protests began in August of 2016 I was aghast as it became increasingly clear that corporate interests were being represented by military force in the face of non-violent protests. As the protests grew, and the militarized police forces grew, it became clear that not much has changed in the generations since Wounded Knee ~ Americans take what they want, regardless of who or what is in the way, especially when it comes to people of color.
I was grateful this was getting the attention it got both nationally and internationally though it didn’t seem to faze the weaponized forces arrayed against unarmed men, woman, and children who were standing up for some basic and theoretically Constitutionally protected rights. But most importantly of all, First Peoples from all over the continent traveled to stand alongside the Standing Rock residents, and the long-prophesied Healing of the Nations began to be nurtured under the banners of Water is Life and NODAPL. From a historical and spiritual perspective, this is beyond significant.
On one of the particularly violent days, with images of high-pressure water cannons being fired directly at human beings during sub-freezing temperatures, this poem and setting it to music erupted through me in a matter of hours. I look at my editing logs and this piece emerged intact in a matter of an afternoon. That to me says this is the work of Spirit.
There is no arguing that Water is Life ~ it is fact no matter how you approach it.
I am releasing this piece in solidarity with everyone who stood up for their rights, for due process of law, and for the protection of clean water. This one goes out to Earth Warriors wherever you are, standing up for what is right, and never backing down.
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I am particularly attached to this piece as a zeitgeist for the age we live in. Beyond a doubt, whether we stand up collectively or not in relation to climate will not just define the rest of our lives, but that of our children, and whether they will even have any. The spirit of our times is decidedly polarized ~ people are either standing up and activating or sitting down and immersing in distractions. And I suspect that in our heart of hearts, each of us will come to face this decision sooner than later, as the spirit of our times becomes increasingly present or impossible to ignore.
We are seeing here and now with COVID-19 that people either get it and do their part, or people are downplaying the science and chalking it up to media hype, and this ends up being an in our face analogy for the climate crises. Informed observers readily acknowledges the ironies of perceived urgency with the coronovirus and wish the global populace felt that way about climate, but underlying this current crises is the hope that a newfound broader awareness of the interconnectedness of things forced upon us by coronovirus will parlay over to climate awareness as we move through this current challenge.
Wise observers have put forth that responses to a pandemic ahead of time will seem overblown, and afterwards inadequate, and here is another eerie parallel with the climate crises, though nothing seems overblown yet lacking the collective sense of urgency ~ that’s the subject of a previous Small Craft Advisory release, asking “What Will It Take?” for us to reach that point of urgency.
Either way, the Guardians of the Earth, those self identifying as Stewards of the Earth, Earth Warriors, Defenders, Eco-Activists, Extinction Rebellion members… we are waking up, standing up, rising to the occasion, and we will not be deterred from the task at hand. It is energizing to see people take to the streets all over the planet to call for greater awareness and action, and this global activation feels like just the beginning.
As the authors of The Dark Mountain Project wrote, Ecocide demands a response. This work is one of mine.
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Mid March 2020 ~ cooped up by the corononvirus stay at home protocols, I’ve set myself the challenge to release a piece of music a day for the foreseeable future, and have realized I need a central location to track it all. So here it is, a chronological list of each release and its direct link. For more detail about the project, visit the blog entry that started it all.
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So here’s the thing. I’ve got a lot up my sleeve, but none of this is planned out. I’m really flying by the seat of my pants having set myself up to do this release a day thing, and am taking it day by day and just trying to be open to what will be the best choices. I am feeling drawn to another upbeat and celebratory piece today for some reason, perhaps because yesterday’s piece was so well received, and lord knows I’ve got my fair share of intense and heavy pieces as well to share in the days and weeks to come.
New Beginnings was born a couple of years ago when moving into a new house and there was great acoustics in a very large room. I loved how this piece rang out and the waltz timing feels so fluid. It makes my wife smile every time she hears it, so I like it for that reason alone.
It’s also a great example of so much music that comes through me, where I sense that there is so much more going on in the composition than what I can actually play myself. I’ve tried to approximate what I hear with the strings, but approximate is the operative word. It’s what 90 minutes of creativity has afforded me today, and I’m happy enough with it to share, though it still feels like a sketch.
I hope it brings a smile to your face as well.
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I moved into a room once when I was in my mid 20’s and found an old banjo in the closet. It needed a lot of love, but of course I was intrigued. I nursed it into playing shape, bought new strings for it, asked a friend carve me a new bridge for it, and it became playable. I’ll never forget the first clear note that rang out from it, and that moment shaped my relationship with the banjo ever since. It made me think of so many other things than a banjo, and I resolved then and there to discover how to coax new life from this wild creature, figuring that there were enough banjo players in the world already, I wanted to do something different.
I’ve spent years exploring that path, and rarely have I ventured into territory where my banjo sounds like a bluegrass instrument, and I really like it that way.
This piece was born in the summer of 2019 in the backwoods of the Adirondacks of NY while on retreat with my family. I instantly fell in love with the vibe as I feel it captures the essence of a peaceful summer day.
On this first day of spring 2020 I thought I would offer something more in the spirit of the day as we welcome an uncertain spring with so much turmoil and challenge. I hope that this serves as a reminder of pleasant days both past and those to come. Perhaps this is my prayer for healthier days down the road for all of us…
The second in a series of Theatrical Sound Sculpture Spoken Word pieces by Eric Geoffrey, What Will It Take? is a plea for awakening.
I sincerely believe if each of us had to look a six year old in the eye who was asking us this question, and couldn’t leave until it was answered honestly, the world would be a completely different place.
I woke up one morning with this phrase on my tongue. In the face of so many global perils and issues and obstructions, I can’t help but wonder at what will it take to truly begin to address the myriad of challenges we collectively face. What is going to grab our collective attention powerfully enough to transcend vested economic and cultural interests?
Other people have said it before but it bears repeating ~ if we had an asteroid barreling straight towards us it would be a no-brainer that we would join forces globally and figure out how to avert disaster. A clear and present danger threatening all of us would unite our efforts and galvanize our minds like nothing else. Yet… it’s not happening. We are facing not just one asteroid but at least a handful heading straight at us, clear as day, and yet did you see the Knicks game last night? Oh right, you’re not into that, but there’s a sale at Walmart for thneads. And did you see what Rebel Wilson wore at the Oscars? Whoa!
Granted global climate and mass extinctions and pollinator population collapse are decidedly existential threats and not right in our face like an asteroid would be, or the Coronovirus is. But that doesn’t make them any less real or threatening. It could be argued it makes them even more threatening because we continue to let them get worse by not implementing comprehensive solutions. But just because these issues are not in the headlines day in and day out doesn’t make them go away or any less threatening.
So. What is it going to take?
Or are we going to wait until everything breaks?
If this resonates anything with you, please share, send the link to friends and family, tweet it, subscribe, whatever. I just love the conversation that this piece sparks and hope you explore it too.
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Our Story is the poem that sparked my explorations with spoken word expression set to music and started this whole Small Craft Advisory trajectory. It’s birth in 2016 is a remarkable example of a piece of creativity “coming through” as it was hand-written in one sitting with over three pages and there are no cross-outs. It just exploded into being in one fell swoosh, and my wife laughs about this because I had been telling her for at least a month prior to writing Our Story that I was feeling pent up and felt that I needed to be doing “something” in relation to global issues though I had no idea what.
Since then I’ve changed the phrasing of only one line as I feel it delivers better, and I still marvel at the process that brought this thing through. I shot the video in 2017, and though I was generally aware of climate issues, I wasn’t aware yet of the full extent of the problem and my general enthusiasm for the human story and our possible futures was still pretty high at the time. You can see that enthusiasm especially at the end with my “and I can’t wait to see what we’ll write next…” conclusion to the piece. I suspect if I was writing this now it would have a much different tone. However I am choosing to keep it intact as it was written because even though courage has rapidly replaced hope as the operative M.O. for woke folk, I do believe that the sheer amount of variables, especially regarding potential human responses, keeps an extremely cautious optimism in play though it is certainly not dominant.
Regardless, thinking about our story as a common thread binding humanity has a lot of power to it, and in this day and age the more connections we recognize and nurture between individuals, communities, and species, the greater the odds that we will have something of a fighting chance to not go down with the ship.
If this resonates anything with you, please share, send the link to friends and family, tweet it, whatever. I just love the conversation that this piece sparks and hope you explore it too.
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If you’ve been moved by your visit, please consider signing up for the occasional newsletter that features new releases, inspirations, and other Tales from the Shadow Gallery…
