Casey James Back in Denver

Casey James waiting in Denver 6/09

Tonight's American Idol Live concert in Denver has brought Casey James back to where it all began for him -- a fact not lost on his many fans who have tweeted him about the significance of the circle closing.  While I may write about Casey, I do not assume to know what it feels like for him to return to the place where just nine months ago he came looking to find help in making his dreams come true.  Perhaps he'll do some press and share with us what it is like to remember that the last time he was in Denver he was a relatively unknown local musician long on talent, but short on the indicia of success.  This time, he comes into the city as someone known around the world, with legions of devoted fans and a contract with a major record company.

The Casey James story, however, did not begin in Denver.  It started more than a decade earlier when he developed a love of music, channeled it into a dedication to become the best guitarist he could be, and focused all his energy on becoming a multi-dimensional singer-songwriter-musician.  Denver was the magic key, the enchanted ring, the supernatural "something" that acted as the catalyst propelling him from working to make his dreams come true to actualizing his dreams.  Without Denver we might still not know who Casey James is, as there are hundreds of other talented musicians still toiling in obscurity as I type this.  He, like them, could still be getting up every day and making that decision -- do I keep trying or do I give up?  Do I continue to play in front of three drunk guys or do I prop my guitar up against the wall in my bedroom and go out and get a "real job?"

Casey has said at almost every stop along the tour, and in so many interviews along the way, that the fans who voted for him have made his dreams come true (as they did for the other Idols, he adds).  But he could go back and thank the judges who put him through, and the producers before them who sent him to the judges, and the other musicians who encouraged him in the local music scene, and the venue owners who booked him, and the occasional fans who actually listened and shared their appreciation, and his friends and family for supporting him in pursuing a career as a musician and himself for having the internal drive to keep going in the face of substantial evidence that his dreams may never be realized.

This caused me to think about those who chase their dreams like Casey did.  How long do you continue?  When do you give up?  I suppose it depends on how realistic the dream is and how much it really matters to you.  I wrote elsewhere about a man I had the pleasure of interviewing earlier this year, Donnie Vann, who wanted to be a baseball player when he was a kid but, after a diving accident left him a quadriplegic, he had to envision a new dream, one that he might attain and that had value to him.  Eventually, he found poker and realized his dream this year to play in the World Series of Poker.  He also added new dreams -- traveling cross-country with his entourage, visiting famous landmarks along the way, and blogging about it (http://dvann.blogspot.com/). 

For a musician, there are some different practicalities to consider in deciding how long to hold on to your dream.  How old is too old?  How many years of trying is too many?  Casey was 27 when he auditioned in Denver -- young to me, but not young to still be trying to break into music.  Not just because of Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus, and the Jonas Brothers, but music is a young person's industry.  When, if ever, do you decide you're too old to pursue your musical dreams?  That's, I suppose, where the second part of the equation comes into play.  How much does it matter to you? 

There is no one who watches Casey James perform who does not recognize just how crucial music is to him -- how it is (as I've said too many times) as important as breathing air to the rest of us.  Again, I may be repeating myself, but it is almost voyeuristic watching him play the guitar, it is such a personal, emotionally-charged experience.  The fact that Casey was able to fight back after nearly losing the ability to play and the fact that he continued to pursue music as year after year went by without tangible, financial success shows how single-minded he was in not giving up on this dream.  Was he right to continue?  You can't look at the results, necessarily, to decide in retrospect if something was the right thing to do.

But you can look at what people do to try and realize their dreams.  And what stood out in the Denver auditions was Casey's comment "I'm willing to do whatever I have to do."  That showed me then that this meant everything to him.  That his priorities were aligned correctly.  Music was number one, everything else was not on the list.  If you are going to pursue your dream, you can't do it half-heartedly, you need to commit.  Casey missed the Dallas audition because he was doing that -- taking whatever gig he could get and playing whatever kind of music was required.  And his leap of faith in listening to his momma's persistent urging that he try out is more evidence of someone who was willing to go full out to make his dreams come true.

So Denver is significant as the place where Casey finally took a step that propelled him much farther than any step he'd taken before.  It is that crucial piece of the puzzle that put it all together for everyone to see.  But as we focus so much on Denver, let's not forget all the years before then that led up to Casey being able to try out in Denver.  He had a realistic dream that was nurtured enough and important enough not to give up on.   He had prepared for years for that one moment and made the most of it.  Denver was where the dream started to become a reality.

We all have dreams which, if they're not unattainable and if they're important enough to us, we might realize if we work hard enough.  Go find your Denver.

______________________________________
ED: After tonight's concert, Casey gave us a hint at what today was like for him, tweeting this:

Source: http://burnthismedia.blogspot.com/2010/08/casey-james-back-in-denver.html

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Drawing Inspiration: David Hockney [α]

～PROFILE～

Painter / Printmaker / Fashion Plate

Friends with R.B. Kitaj and Andy Warhol

Enjoys the Brushes app for iPhone and iPad

Thinks the Old Masters probably cheated

Wikipedia Bio

[Drawing Inspiration is a portrait-and-profile feature highlighting the outstanding figures of the art world—and!—my monthly contribution to the art and design blog, Illustration Pages.]

Source: http://sugarfrostedgoodness.blogspot.com/2010/08/drawing-inspiration-david-hockney.html

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Dethroning the Imperial I

From this week's ToTheSource, comes Dinesh D'Souza:

We have witnessed a moral revolution since the 1960s that has altered our public understanding of morality and spurred the “culture wars” that continue to divide America. This moral change cannot be understood simply in terms of “urban values” (Blue America) versus “community values (Red America). Nor is it accurately described, as some Christians describe it, as a slide from morality to immorality.

Rather, the moral shift can be understood in this way. Until the 1950s, most Americans believed that there is a moral order in the universe that is external to us, and makes claims on us. Some might dispute the precise content of this moral order, but its general edicts—be faithful to your spouse, assume responsibility for your family, be honest in your business dealings, exercise the rights and responsibilities of citizenship—were widely accepted. This is not to say that everyone lived up to the shared moral code, but the code supplied a common standard against which personal conduct could be measured, both by the individual and by society.

Then something changed in the 1960s, and the change continues to reverberate in our lives today. What has changed is that the shared belief in an external moral order has eroded and dissipated. Many Americans (probably most of them Christians) continue, of course, to believe in a transcendent basis of morality. But this view no longer commands assent across the broad swath of society. One can no longer make a public appeal to the external moral code. The Clinton sex scandals were clear proof of this: some Americans considered his actions morally scandalous, but others thought it was no big deal.

The decline of belief in an external moral order has been accompanied by a rising belief in a new moral code. This may be termed the morality of the inner self. Today many people understand themselves as beings with inner depths. When they are faced with an important decision—what to become, who to love, what to believe—they decide not by following their parents, or their teachers, or their preachers, and perhaps not even God. They decide by digging deep within themselves, and following the direction of their inner compass to guide them infallibly in a given situation.

As the philosopher Charles Taylor argues, this morality of the inner self, what he calls the “ethic of authenticity,” emerged in resistance to a rival view, which held that morality is a matter of calculating costs and benefits. Against this utilitarian morality, leading thinkers like Rousseau insisted that morality could not be reduced to crass calculation. Rather, they said, morality means listening to the voice of nature within us. We gain access to this knowledge not primarily by thinking but by feeling

This idea has deep Christian roots. The church father Augustine would have agreed with Rousseau that the mode of moral understanding is inward. But for Augustine we dig within us in order to gain access to the divine voice that speaks through our inner conscience. Augustine contends that God is the lamp that illuminates the inner soul. Rousseau broke with Augustine by severing this connection between the inner voice and any external authority. For Rousseau the inner voice is the sovereign and final authority.

This is the moral code that we have inherited today. It didn’t come to us directly from Rousseau. Rather, it was first adopted by intellectuals and artists in England, France, and the United States. These elite groups, of the kind that dominated the Parisian café, the Bloomsbury society in England, and Greenwich Village in the United States, have been living according to the bohemian code for a long time. What changed in the 1960s is that these values, once confined to small enclaves in society, now became part of the social mainstream. Today the ethic of authenticity is widely popular in America, it is affirmed in countless movies and in the media, and it exercises an especially powerful appeal among the young.

We are wrong to dismiss this as a mere affirmation of selfishness, a rejection of morality. It is a massive shift in the source of morality—away from the external order, toward the inner self. Nor should the new code be understood as relativism or nihilism. It does not affirm that “anything goes.” It insists that the inner voice is morally authoritative and should be followed without question. This is the way that we can achieve Rousseau’s goal of being “true to ourselves.”

I do not believe that this new ethic of the Imperial Self can be completely uprooted, as some people who bemoan the decline of the old moral consensus would like to do. But I am also concerned with the moral danger of conceding final moral authority to the Imperial Self. Human nature is flawed and the “voice within” is sometimes unreliable and sometimes wrong. As Immanuel Kant warned, “Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.”

Perhaps a more practical goal is to contain, and perhaps to roll back, some of the excesses of the new ethic of authenticity. This involves a recovered sense of the moral sources that continue to inform our moral self-understanding, sources that can be found in our religious and ethical traditions but which have disappeared from our public debate. The urgent task at hand is to recognize the power of the new ethic of authenticity while steering it toward something higher, to ennoble the self by directing it toward the good.

Source: http://solanobilitasvirtus.blogspot.com/2010/08/dethroning-imperial-i.html

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Interesting websites to kill boredom

If you have nothing to do on a Saturday night, you can still entertain yourself by sitting back and being lazy in front of your computer, and now you don’t necessarily have to log on to Facebook or Twitter.

Some of us may have gotten lost on the web, browsing numerous sites before finally deciding to turn the computer off. You may be tired of the same old material offered on the net, but you also may be totally in the dark when searching for new information. If you feel like killing time, here are some worthwhile suggestions (but blame yourself if you eventually spend more time browsing).

The first suggestion is ItMadeMyDay.com (IMMD). With its full page layout of bright orange and blue colors, the site will “make your day”. IMMD allows us to share our own amusing, sentimental and wacky experiences. IMMD can draw us out of boredom with a little bit of that winning feeling — something joyful and capable of really making our day.

You can find stories like, “I was walking my 200-pound, 6-ft-long dog when she veered off the sidewalk. I looked around and saw a cat in a tree. My huge dog is afraid of cats!”

Another entry described “My 6-year-old daughter said she was playing house, so I asked how many kids she had. None, she replied. I just have a cane and I’m really sarcastic to sick people who lie.”

A website called FailBlog.org is one to enjoy and make us feel better about ourselves.

FailBlog.org is a burgeoning new website where “pictures that simply amuse us and make us laugh, whether it is captured on the street, on the way home, or wherever we see them.” Just like IMMD, FailBlog.org users can upload and post photos and descriptions.

For example, in one picture there is a roadside sign which reads “Pet Area”, but just above it stands a larger road sign saying “No Pets Allowed!”.

Another good site is MyParentsJoinedFacebook.com. From the name, you may presume something is not quite right. This site shows us snapshots of parents who have also contributed to Facebook pages.

One epic moment must be when we discover our parents have become active on Facebook. One of the “victims” says, “My mom asked who I was seeing. Not thinking anything bad would happen, I showed her the link to my boyfriend’s page. I was wrong. She sent him a message, and now I’m forever mortified.” You’ll find many similar stories on MyParentsJoinedFacebook.com.

Another great site is TotallyTop10.com, which lists just about anything. It has “Top 10 Best ‘Yo Mama’ Jokes”, “Top 10 Not Totally OK Ways We Remember Titanic”, “Top 10 Weirdest Looking Emo Kids” and many more. The site is arranged in the following categories: politics, global news, social, entertainment, gaming, music, boxing, fashion, food and drink, history, mobile and green. You will need plenty spare of time to visit them all.

Next, try LifeHacker.com — a blog that covers tips and tricks for streamlining our lives with technology. The blog says that a hacker “believes information-sharing is a powerful and positive tool, and that it’s a hacker’s duty to share expertise”. 

Creating a blog is a gesture of “good-will”. Updated several times daily, LifeHacker.com highlights software downloads, websites, do-it-yourself projects, how-to tutorials, shortcuts and tips for going beyond default settings and getting things done in the most clever, unexpected and efficient manner. 

The site helps us to save time with an infinite stream of great tricks leading to a tech-savvy lifestyle. The blog advertises itself as “self-help for power users”, and can be applied using Macintosh, Windows or Linux computers. LifeHacker.com is published by Gawker Media, a team which is also responsible for Gizmodo, Fleshbot and Gawker.

Finally, the last suggested site is Bored.com, which claims its mission is “to keep you from boredom” You’ll be equipped with facts, riddles, games, and other entertainment on the Bored blog. Users can access hundreds of free flash games (arcade, casino, dress-up, multiplayer, racing, sports) and videos on Bored.com. The blog also has hundreds of alternative links to stimulate the less sophicated part of your brain.

If you’re bored of games, click on the Image, fun, humor or quiz buttons. On the humor page, there are dull tips such as “Disposable razor: Do not use this product during an earthquake”, or a bumper stickers that read “It’s impolite to stare!” or “Don’t steal, the government hates competition!”, or excuses like “It’s against my religion to work on Mondays and Thursdays” and “I’ve got amnesia, who are you?”

Spend time visiting these websites, and have fun!

 

Source: http://monkeymascara.blogspot.com/2010/08/interesting-websites-to-kill-boredom.html

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