Category: Politics, Philosophy, Learning and living.

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Settling into Solitude.

It is easier than people think for you to have an opinion when people are listening; contrary to the modern proverb “You can’t even have an opinion anymore.”

I know this because I wanted to be heard for years.

I had been glossed over. I had been forgotten. I had been passed over.

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10154434587539536&id=643959535

For about 5 or so recent years though I was performing live very regular as performing artist/ musician and in what could be considered a pendulum between a new entertainment extroversion to never before experienced levels and on the flip side semi extreme hermitism.

Then in comes the pandemic and I assume the role of a stay at home dad, the multimillion dollar company that used to pump posts about the show I leaded was no longer boosting my content with consistent and gratuitous amounts of ad revenue and that even in cahoots with some of my personal accounts.

The connection of my activity to Facebook translated mysteriously into my person seemingly having value to said algorithm (even if I wasn’t by any means even close to making the type of money the company I worked for was). To all possible intellectualization I could make out however, that the algorithm believed I was famous whether I was much at all. I was noticed somewhat. I was heard. I wasn’t so passed over.

Let me give you one lesson though. Facebook is not censoring you because they do not like you. Facebook just isn’t ‘boosting you’ because you aren’t making them money. At that time I was but now the algorithm believes I am noone, caput, basically a nobody.

This is the sad value testimony of human value in our crapitalist society. Nothing is usually popular in the way it was in ancient Athens.. back when intellectual values, philosophy of ideas and metaphysics were valuable of their own accord and merely for the fact of having mused upon them and nursed them into schools of thought. Now even that value is worthless unless it’s ready to pay the piper. I wonder how much money Facebook wastes not investing in these ideas. But I guess every time a toilet flushes at Walmart a tax deduction angel gets its wings!

So I’m settling in to a more long lasting version of my hermitage but I would be lying if I said that my depression has been totally at bay.

And yet still I’m doing something that some in the medicine/ science only crowd might think muddies the waters into dangerous hippy sentimentalist territory. I’m taking alot of walks in nature, exercising, taking my cbd, eating better, avoiding excessive alcohol or cussing at puppies and of course writing my blog as one part of my weekly healing process.

And you know what .. it helps; because sometimes even after a good helping of protein rich organic peanut butter pancakes.. on a rainy day, when your mind is racing and the sleep disorder demons have clocked out, they need someone to pick up a shift and of course the depression demons are ready and rearing to go. Even so when I write it out it has been transmitted from the realm of thoughts to the realm of words and in my subjective pseudoscientific opinion it seems to help.

I always knew I was an ‘ideas person’. I was always desperate to be stuck in a college academia library studying theology, philosophy, science, physics, social theory (EVERYTHING)!

I have always been mad that whatever secret branch of the government that hires for think tanks hasn’t broke their silence and reached out to me yet. But patience is a virtue after all! Le-sigh.

Re-sign. That’s my miraculous auto predict shake out of writers block! And that’s precisely what I’m getting to now.

The first step to embracing and truly enjoying solitude is getting past the loneliness and just because I’m married doesn’t mean I don’t get lonely when it’s just me and my daughter during the day. Yes.. even with my daughter there I get lonely sometimes and that’s ok even if her just being there really really helps!

You see loneliness is no respecter of persons. And yet perhaps its more helpful and comfortable to be all St. Francis like and call her Sister Loneliness.

Loneliness is like engaging a Jericho wall and sometimes you just got to blast a trumpet in your heart and shake yourself up a little to get past the false barriers it suggests and remember somehow, right now, life is still being lived.

You also must be humble if your’e more the type to be desirous of the hermit lifestyle because whether Pentupium Introvert 5.0 or not you just have to face the music that people aren’t always terrible and in many ways many of them are much better than you… and that’s ok! After all you have your own strengths and weaknesses too!

Most saints probably don’t mantra on that word too much or at the least they think it means something different than most people think it means.

So also a healthy hermit has to be humble and it is as intriguingly intricate as this idiomatic tongue twister.

The healthy hermit is the balance of ones needs and “the Others” needs.. whichever other or Other that may be.

Healthy solitude is a gift for a heart that is healing. It is the opposite of the crusted bitterness of undealt with trauma. The deep irony for he, she or they that seek solitude is this.. one can only seek solitude well as they find a supporting cast.

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I’m late but I’m early.

You never realise how important it is to get where your’e trying to go when the train is gone and yet sometimes that is a false despair.

I listened to a Ted talk once about Procrastination once. It is common that procrastination is for many people a sign of mere laziness or a sign that they are just throwing in the towel. For others like the gentleman in the talk it was a ‘cogitational’ style.

Imagine farmer Brown says to the cow he would like him to help him plow the field and the cow whilst chewing grass said “Let me chew it over!” To which farmer Brown says “I don’t got all day!”

It’s in a nutshell a humorous way to see how the world sees the tortoise vs the haire (or for sake of our example farmer Brown and the cogitating cow). They say “The squeaky wheel gets the grease.” and yet they blithely apply that to their stated cogitational norms as they appear on the outside and rarely apply this to what’s going on upstairs in different cogitational persons.

To be fair I’m not advocating for procrastination per se. I’m just saying in some situations it writes better books.

A wisdom nugget hit my ears one time. I don’t remember if from another author or from my self so anonymously “The rust of time tempers wisdom.” Sometimes the only thing that can stop that writer’s block or finalize that concierto is some good old life experiences. But how else can that crucible be lit that flames the gold of human invention other than the gold of human invention surviving the fires of human experience?

With all your might do your best to focus! Try, try, try but never be ashamed to rely, rely, rely.

Sometimes the old saying “wax on, wax off.” is very pertinent to us humans. We are far too sure we have the tools necessary to neatly categorize and forcibly guarantee that life follows only the path we desire.

For this I think pathological procrastinators should show themselves grace. Perhaps your’e only going to find out how to overcome your procrastination when you find out you need to accept it and for your inner Sherlock to investigate what it is trying to do in you… and around you.

Perhaps you might find the gears have been turning much faster than anyone could imagine but ‘internally’. The grease is good in you but the outer appreciation has little grease. Results do matter..but maybe you visualize better results than others.

To give you peace I have reconstructed the Serenity Prayer for procrastinators.

G-d give me the Serenity to accept the things I haven’t done yet.

Courage and power to do the things I can.

And the wisdom, trusting your timing, to know the difference.

There is something G-d-like about looking at time as something to organize like other things. Time is valuable and in a way ephemeral. Coming, going and overall a participation in a sacred cosmological dance of creation.

Through time we live and move and yet it is a transcendent act not always to try to extrude every amount of oil for the moment for one particular obsession. It’s not because our worldly pursuits are vain of themselves but rather because they are temporary and many of them are farcically positioned on the latter of importance due to skewed value systems.

There is a holy procrastination that treats certain goals like the squirrel treats the acorn. “Save it for another time. “

To learn to do this with grace is a divine way to gain more balance in life.

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True Vs. Toxic Masculinity

In the wake of the hideous, evil and racially motivated shootings of Asian women that we have all seen in the news these past weeks I have an important message not about sex addiction and not solely about the primary issue here of racism (both important and necessary subjects to discuss but nonetheless) I am here to write about toxic masculinity vs true masculinity.

As my sources are eclectic and draw from many sources per usual I would like to talk about how the sexist and insecurity based instincts of toxic masculinity are opposed to genuine masculinity from a variety of sources both sacred and secular, how they feed into sexual neuroses and how they even feed into racism throughout history.

Toxic masculinity is proof in the pudding for where St. Peter in the Bible warned that certain passages of Paul the unstable of mind could contort, wrend and distort to their own destruction.

Toxic masculinity is easy to see.

How many times in a tragic southern gothic did the abusive alcoholic husband demand unflinching loyalty from his wife out of the piecemeal interpretation of “Wives submit yourselves unto your husband. ” and entirely did that character also ‘ignore’ “Husbands love your wives even as Christ loved the Church giving Himself up for her. “?

How many times in history did we hear of the southern plantation owner who was already treating humans like cattle also treating the women as his objects of sexual gratification as well?

People like to try and neatly separate different qualities of moral/ ethical or phenomenological experience as if all causality is referential and scientific. There may be reason for deep thinking about this but existentially one must learn to discern the difference of good will and corrupted or bad will.

To explain I might say it simply. I believe the shootings were racially motivated that happened recently.

However some opposite my opinion might object that the person “was not right in the head”, “sexually addicted” and “deranged”.

Ok well I’d respond that I think every person who is racist IS deranged but I don’t think everyone who mentally has difficulties or perhaps even who struggles with ‘sexual compulsive behavior disorder’ is of a necessity a bad person or even deranged for that matter. Many people of good will fight imbalanced and excessive sexual urges and impulses or negative thought patterns without murdering people or sexually harassing others..the difference shouldn’t be too hard to highlight.

Where are you going on with this sir?

~To the roots.~

In my opinion racism and even much of the problems of sexual addiction can be traced to wounded or toxic masculinity.

The stigma towards those struggling with mental illness or merely experiencing non neurotypical wiring is already too overkill. In the experience of many kind nonneurotypical people the excuse of insanity is used far too many times by someone who shot a bunch of innocent people while the usual person with mental struggles is struggling with decision making, sensory issues and inhibitions to executive function in the negative or obsessively applying their mind to a project, special skill, radically excessive moralization or special interest in the positive. The average neurodiverse person or the person with mental illnesses is usually actually a person with ‘exacting’ fortitude of moral will. That is why so many of us don’t easily buy it when someone with much premeditation uses their will to breathe terror upon the innocent.

Racism is often a generational curse. It’s passed down through effigies, epithets, tits for tats, nic nacs, this and thats ‘and all that’s and I’ve rarely seen racism come without toxic masculinity.

{Photo: “Could there be Earth” by me James Dillon Broxson all rights reserved. Email shastat78@gmail.com for more info. }

“I’ve rarely seen racism come without toxic masculinity. “

What could be more toxic than seeing your ethnic conception of being a man as the absolute center in a universe/ potential multiverse so vast? David the Jewish king and prophet said it well “What is man that you think of him or the Son of Man that you pay him mind?” and continuing on paying homage to the Hebraic conception of angelic beings he states that man ‘one of whom he is’ is a little lower than they.

So here is David, extremely imperfect man that he is who had indeed also participated in intertribal wars and adultery and who handed more hides to the men that owned them than Gaston.. and yet even he at the depths when confronted with a holy G-d realizes that he is not all that matters. Far from it David the sexual deviant, patriarch and saint realises a truth that not only desecrates the mores of tribe central religious nationalism but even attacks man’s inherent speciestic religious bias.

Respect, for those who tread litely in this life so subsists in treating the other as a messenger of God and even perhaps other creatures like Balaams donkey or even as much as to be healed by a serpent on a pole.

How much more must we then intrepidly, as if we were communicating with ultra powerful spiritual beings be reverent and still in the presence of other humans of the many beautiful and varied ethnicities and cultures!?

And yet still many go astray. They ignore that the scriptures were written for our instruction so that we may not sin like our fathers did.

And of course many, falsely construing respect for their fathers as ignoring their fathers sin have decided not to shake that which underpins toxic streams in life which perhaps Source, ergo G-d would be willing to shake. Wrongly covering others sins often is equivalent to hiding a spiritual cancer diagnosis.

Jesus my Hebrew messiah as I believe Him to be was admittedly anti racist and I would definitely say He came to destroy toxic masculinity at its depths.

In Christ we see a tender father son relationship.. one that many men only crave and think is untenable if not contradictory to the faux masculinity hazing they received from their fathers

In Christ the celibate male preacher, Prophet and Teacher we see one so solidly rooted in his identity and intimacy with His Father that he was intellectually, emotionally and sensitively fulfilled, satiated and centered in righteous masculinity as opposed to toxic masculinity.

Me and my daughter.

In my life the pandemic turning me into a full time stay at home dad has felt like putting me on the frontlines in the war on toxic masculinity. Though the stigma of being the stay at home dad is lessening compared to 8 to 10 years ago it still exists and many men are made to feel less than masculine because they are not the ordinary bread winner or because they embody qualities that traditional mysogony see as feminine estate (kindness, compassion, child rearing and teaching etc). I would be lying if my personal encounter/ battle with the subliminal messages of the surrounding culture of said toxic masculinity has never been mentally draining. It takes a lot of security to be secure in your self and having your security based in Christ like virtues of mercy and compassion rather than might makes right and subsequent rejoicing in social darwinism.

During this Lenten season whether you are Christian or not or even perhaps a secular minded person, please join in with me in eschewing evil paths that toxic masculinity plows. It is not the path to the cultivation of manhood! It is not the sacred initiatory rites which our souls rightfully crave! Toxic masculinity is a vicious cycle that supports racism, objectification of women and others in general. If we want to truly make a better world as men we need to stake our masculinity in the Christ like virtues of compassion and mercy and listen to the words of Mary and ” Do whatever He tells you.”

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Facebook Contemplation

Sometimes it takes an inspiring Facebook post to springboard my own Blog post writers block out of commision that unavoidably I will have to post onto my own blog.

I saw a post contrasting the differences between neurotypical communication and ~I’ll just call us~ “Spectrumites!”

It described the difference been an autistics sharing of literal statements (and taking thereof) and the neurotypical tendency to analyze all of this through metadata to which us Spectrumites are not usually privvy.

I would like to mention that though at the age of 32 I went to an autism center for children and was tested and was not then afforded a diagnosis of ASD.. I did however come out with a diagnosis of STPD and only ‘further questions’.

Though I do plan on eventually getting another (and more in depth) testing done at a facility that specializes in late diagnoses of adults, after 2 years of grueling thoughts on the matter I have essentially comfortably settled into autistic self identification.

Some might say “What’s the point?” but for me it is a lifestyle medication that ‘does the magic’ even though I don’t necessarily disagree with the diagnosis traits given in the ‘positive’ but only what I feel was overlooked.

I know many who are quite sure that they are on the spectrum. Some eventually get a diagnosis from a professional. Others forego that route and self identify perpetually. I’m sort of in the middle myself. However here is what I said in response to the Facebook post as my personal commentary.. but likewise one out of a myriad things that makes sense of my experiences of existing as me. But first an awkward picture..

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10158996870859536&id=643959535

“Even though I am left in the arena of “self identification” in this subject.. this is a good description of one of my primary communication issues. Though I will say it makes me good at puns and good as a helper because of hyperliteralism.

As a strength on the other hand it also makes me pretty good at steamrolling through opposition on a pioneering path because I can see templates and figurative blueprints, ‘as it were’ almost like the casting process for a theatrical production and take action for results without immediate respect to risks or without considering the obstacles ahead of time.

However as I have grown up and faced various obstacles the obstacles themselves became invariably like bosses in a video game and semirobotically by instinctual irascible desire for serotonin and for the fulfillment of a hypothesis I banged my head into mushy ‘virtually digital walls’ until I defeated them.

I acted like a consultant and a hole filler because I realised boats sink not always starting with big holes but by a few small or very many smaller holes. This also effects communication. I’m good at telling jokes all day. I am terrible at receiving them unless we already share a very similar sense of humor, another commodity that my version thereof doesn’t always normally have a match.

This is actually good. I have had to use things that I enjoy to help me enjoy things I don’t. I have had to use acting (perhaps a more fun manner of ‘masking’ per se) to enter into some of the results world of the everyday world..

a world that teaches and takes incessantly for granted that results happen and that’s all there is to it.

One time in Italy on a mission trip a homeless man told me “You think too much. “. At the time I took it as some life thwarting, esoteric entrapment of an omen.

Now I just realise that it is a harmless reality of my being and existence. It is not a curse. It is a blessing with challenges though.

Computers do think too much.. that’s what they do. I’m not afraid of that and by mercy I too believe I might be grasped by the Mind of Christ.”

I hope you can be inspired to be the captain of your ship as God is also teaching me. Take Care, The Picture Frame Conversationalist.

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MOTIVATION AND TRIALS.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Buddha-Looks-Upon-The-Bathing-Woman-Original-Black-And-White-Dark-Room-/274762378505?_trksid=p2349624.m46890.l49286

We all have days where we want to give up.

In 2020 those days seem even more prevalent. It’s pretty ironic when you feel so dry you want to throw in the towel and all the while in this desert whetting ones appetite for one’s passions seems like a misnomer..as if doing what you were seemingly created to do is a mistake.

Of course to a mind on the mend such negativity seems pointless; such musings seem fruitless. But hear me out in my musings on executive dysfunction. When you have expended yourself in so many directions and you know you have skills but the outlets haven’t listened.. what IS one to think?

Your’e just a plug and they’re just an outlet and the frustration of what is seemingly made for the other is when ‘it is’ according to external appearances of design but not by internal technicalities or by full undertakings to comprehend such an investments stability.

There are those systems one chooses that seems like a fit and then there is that system that even when seeming on the brink of failure shows it’s strength in the storm.

The system that wins and that appreciates you is by wisdom and apparent providential matchmaking ‘that which is attenuated to you even when it seems about to fail. “

It is a system that sees the you fallen and in vulnerability and realizes in you ‘the you of hidden strength’.

There it holds up the mirror revealing your liberty. Freedom is a hard task to navigate in this world. It is a hard thing to learn to find and yet the wise intuitions upon which freedom is found is easily accessible. It just only can be accessed by the peaceful and calm confidence of ‘the mind of a child. ‘.

ABOUT James Dillon Broxson

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When God Holds Your Hand Badly.

If 2020 (all flowery philosophical and faith based sentimentality put aside)..

was an easy year for you then you might be a masochist or if you were not at all stretched by this year you might just already be perfect.

This is not to say one is a masochist if one has legitimately experienced new life blessings this year (We received our first baby girl into the world this year).

It is also not to say that faith based sentimentality is not often anchored in solid reasoning beyond mere emotion and thus… ‘a wash’.

What it does boil down to is a confession that the ‘perfect man’ sleeps through the storm and the imperfect man cries out in terror “Lord, we perish!”

There is a type of restful contented waiting that weighs heavier than any storm. They say that the “little ones” have the kingdom of God and I believe I have proof. This year I got to witness that contentment and peace first hand or rather ‘hand in hand’.

I named my daughter Eliza to be a female version of Elijah the prophet.

Well in her first year of life not only has she gone through the Coronavirus Pandemic and global economic upheaval but as of recent time, here on the Alabama, Gulf Coast she has gone through hurricane Sally (The most contrivedly and ill undermeasured Cat3 I’ve ever been through in my opinion).

Interestingly enough my wife and mother in law who are both from Venezuela had never been through a hurricane so while we sheltered at my parents home I had plenty of snuggles with my wife that easily matched that of a couple watching a horror film. My wife was a little spooked by the whole ordeal obviously.

Now on the other hand our daughter Eliza was definitely a little preacher by her actions. She like Elijah lived through the whirlwind and like Jesus slept through the storm! Thats right she slept through ALL of the worst hours of the storm where all the damage happened!

I know this amazed my wife but it personally deeply inspired me. Our little prophet weathered and slept through the storm and all throughout this year has never ceased to be the little chonk of joy she was.

So for the title of this blog post I want to explain it a little more because it was another little precious way my daughter deeply inspired me just by being her and that was by one of my favorite little encounters with her.

In the age of smart phones alot of us become dummies from time to time. I think my baby intuitively knows this and she returns my wife and I back to the human. Yes sometimes in the hodrum of everyday life and exhaustion even we can veg out on our phone. My baby on the other hand as a fresh human straight out of the oven won’t have it! If we are on a phone in her presence she will protest..she will return us to the now. The most precious example of that is if I am feeding her with bottle and putting her to sleep. If I have a phone she will get frustrated.

Just like God my baby innocently and purely demands my total attention.

When I feed her it’s all or nothing. It’s daddy and daughter time. It’s ‘contigo’. But the funny thing is though she demands that I look right at her little face and just be present with her she also demands that she can play with my hand while I feed her. She wants to hold my hand but she doesn’t always do so with consistency.

Sometimes she has a death grip and other times I feel like a goldfish is slapping me! But I have learned a very deep 2020 lesson from this encounter of love and relationship with our precious daughter. In these moments of connection and relationship building I have learned something splendidly transcendant!

I have learned that sometimes we might be inclined to impugn guilt on God for seemingly sleeping through our often stormy lives. I have learned it is easy to be jealous of those for whom storms seem to not shake their easy restfulness of spirit but with a shift of perspective one can be inspired by it! I have learned that God demands our attention with crystaline and 2020 vision (hindsight is 2020 and all that..) and I have learned that it is the connection that matters the most and that it is better to hold God’s hand even if like a little child He ‘holds our hand badly.’

(James Dillon Broxson born and raised in Alabama likes dark bold letters because why not? But seriously they really are much better right?! James is a father of one beautiful baby girl named Eliza born in 2020 and married to an amazing lady from Venezuela named Carolina.)

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On Narcolepsy, Motivation and Global Pandemics.

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Imagine that you were just getting things settled. You had your challenges and you had your pages well written. You weren’t perfect but life was by no means even close to bad. Things were going pretty well.

Yet somewhere lingering in the back of your mind was your desire to make a career change, to stand up for yourself.

You wondered when might life give you “a break”.

You do things a certain way all the time and the rythm of what you do is rythmic like praying on prayer beads or speaking in tongues. Even the things you loathe that pay the bills are the things that ironically give you time to connect to and to protect that same heart.

Then right when you are gearing towards having your first child with your wife you waited 31 years of your life to find and are beginning to find stablilizing routines, a Global Pandemic strikes.

You aren’t ‘entirely unhealthy’ but youv’e almost died of 2 viruses at once, had spinal meningitis, presently have various stomach and digestive maladies, and have had sinusitus since youth.

Youv’e underwent years of anxiety, depression and OCD. You had the secret wonder that maybe you were on the autistic spectrum for many years.

You recently found out why you were so cripplingly tired all the time and that you have narcolepsy and sleep apnea..with it’s happy symptom of insomnia.. Cherry on top ‘amirite’?

Youv’e been prepared for this test for it was the very first one.

Time to be a man. Time to survive whatever comes. You don’t complain for food shortages at the bum rushed super market…your fight or flight is too strong for that. Neither do you have a reductionistic view of surviving crises periods of history that only thinks about the obvious, trying to save money, trying to make more money.

You realise if push came to shove you can’t eat money.

You buy seeds along with your normal grocery. You save every seed from the refuse. You begin to compost and trial and error on learning to grow from seed.

You don’t think about comfort first. You are essentially reverted to your caveman effigy and your title is if you win war with the Mastodon.

However the Mastodon in this scenario is smaller than the angel dancing on a needle tip.

You wanted to learn coding for years and work from home for years and you also have immunocompromised possibilities, a new baby with similar, or some of the same, narcolepsy in one hand, anxiety coming from too much stimulation in the other leave you to figure out balance along with the false attributions you put on yourself out of false masculinity “You’re not a man if your staying at home with the baby right now!”. “Your were forced to be on unemployment right ..why isn’t that blog thing making money yet?!”

Time takes time from you with dividends. And for whatever you earn off of time the taxman likes to knock on the door.

Yes I don’t want a stranger watching my brand new baby during a global pandemic thank you very much and yes I am going to do everything I can to put life first.

If a rich man with a corporation has a bottom line so do I.

If a poor man can inherit the kingdom of God well so can I.

If the poor are close to God and the Kingdom of God is within the poor in spirit it seems pretty obvious that in the poor exists riches beyond comprehension.. hence the royalty and riches of a “kingdom” of the incomprehensibly glorious “God”.

Life keeps going and I keep on ‘recalcitrantly surviving’ in defiant joyful spite of if some think my life is expendable.

I do not ask them.

If they question me I can submit their questions to THE MANAGEMENT.

I am working on my project and I will succeed. Every once in a blue moon a memorandum should be made.

Every once in a while the Magna Carta written up, the ‘Terms and Conditions’ renewed.

They may change at any time mind you. Its a two way street this communication thing.

I am trying to keep motivated. I am going to make these dreams come true. And really I don’t know how to do any different. The subconscious is sandboxing. The Wiki is leaked. I am not afraid anymore.

I am tired but I have lost my edge. I am tired but I am not tired anymore.

I am growing. I am a warrior. I am motivated.

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Finding your Supporting Cast.

Around ten years ago or so I was going through my own “Love Supreme” conversion.

I had touched a darkness in my life that I didn’t know I could touch and I contacted a vital life inside of myself that I didn’t know I could contact.

Contrast. Light and Dark. The Logos that fills all things.

And yes I was truly jiving to some Coltrane as was I also giving Christ control again through the subtle and perhaps unwitting spiritual leadership of the mixtapes of my good friend Jonni Greth.

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Having a taste for the Avant Garde, Jonni being raised in a very EVANGELICAL background had embraced Christ deeply but almost seemingly in spite of the spiritual milieu and atmosphere about himself. This I always respected and even if he didn’t know it it often made me receive helpful wisdom from him almost as if he were some closed off Jedi hermit.. Which for a hermitic like soul like mine made for an attractive candidate.

If that had not been enough he also had the gifting to express those life experiences of the ‘solitudinal’ heart through song.

Even hermits extrovert sometimes.

Photo by W W on Pexels.com

Jonni Greth introduced me to Daniel Johnston and copious amounts of outsider art and music, the depth in the like which I was clearly hungry for and yet through all of this our friendship showed me a sense of desire to nurture the artist in me, something I often felt very few people in the world tried to nurture.

But in the years around 2009 existential miracles happened in my life. Some precipitated by a life fallen away from my faith at the time, being caught up with by youthful indecisions and the untimely wreckedness of far too much imbibing (of various substance); the God of my youth began to become something and better yet someone to me again.. the presence of an old long lost friend.

Somewhere between breakups with people I didn’t honestly date but merely had deep emo college infatuations with and the sentiment that some sort of Aspergian colored cloud contrasting between genius possibilities and social catastrophes was my plight, I would finally, somehow, gain a notch in my proverbial life belt.

All of my fellow musician friends knew me as ‘that dude who would probably never get ahead or make anything worthwhile happen with music’ but slowly, somehow, like the slow tick of the oil drip leaving my white Chevrolet Astro van dry, a dry artist through experience and near caveman from primordial goo level emerging, I came seemingly out of nothing into existence for the first time.

“I had a panic attack in psychology class but with the guitar on my back no confidence lacked.” (Excerpt from a song I’m working on.)

But indeed it was true. One day a college infatuation of mine, whom I had been sitting behind in psychology class on the first day of class, having a panic attack when the teacher merely called for me to introduce myself, would be the girl I got the confidence to sing my song I wrote for her in the parking lot there at Pensacola Community College (as they used to call it).

She said “How is it that you have panic attacks to introduce yourself but behind a guitar your so confident?!”

A song Hosea was born. Next was Bay Leaves. Next “crap!”.. one day in my inner battle to remain atheist I had my secular humanism lead me back to Jesus (we’ll save that one for another blog. Hyperlink will be updated!)

Then another day walking through the mall like an anthropologist studying people and buying nothing as I often did, I walked into a Ross Dress for Less and stumbled upon a fortune cookie paper that read as follows…

“You will make a name for yourself in the field of entertainment.”

Things slowly got weird. My car almost broke drown one day on the way to a fund raiser for a Church Hippy Coffee Shop known as the Ole Mug at the Genesis barn in Foley, Alabama but I was all out of money “bless my heart!”

So I stopped by a Tom Thumb right down the road from ‘Flora Bama Bar and Grill’ remembering my guitar in the back of my on-e Chevy Astro Van that was sitting in the seat of my road side salvaged, leather lazy boy for easy back seat sleeping (if I so desired) and with a glint of proverbial providence and road magic went inside and made my pitch to the manager.

I said “sir I am out of gas and I have no money but I have a guitar in the back of my van and I would be more than willing to buy gas if I made some money out on the curb.”

Finding this a different kind of request and looking somewhat amused he accepted my request. I played my heart out in the middle of that summer day and by the end of an hour or so I made 35$! I bought some gas and got at least half a tank and saved the rest for Taco Bell and some as a momento. The fund raiser was over by the time I got to Foley {Isn’t it Ironic}.

The one time event turned into my semi regular gigs on the Gas Station circuit round playing at any gas station or public place I could until one day I thought I might take a chance..again.

I walked into the City Grille in Gulf Shores, Alabama that was newly opened and asked if they ever had live music. They said that they had been looking into doing it but had not booked anyone yet and then asked me if I would like to be one of their first. I WAS IN!

My job was music! One gig turned to 2 turned to I’m playing all week and I was finally good at something..something before that among my friends I was the worst at. Friends had moved away to different parts of the country but even as far as Salt Lake City Utah the word was out that Dillon was writing music and somehow it didn’t suck! What a novel thought!

As time would go by (around 11 years or so now) I have seen my song writers hermit syndrome go way way deep.

That first year and a half or so on the Gulf Coast and I was quickly finding myself drained.

Notwithstanding the facts of my lifelong undiagnosed sleep disorders and other maladies of which I only knew so much.

I was an originals artist in a world ruled by cover singers and it mystified folks how I even got out there as an originals artist ‘gettin gigs’

in the first place.

Though my song writing instincts are deep and most definitely instinctual and though my songwriters hermit syndrome is even deeper I could only say succinctly that I never could have begun getting out there without ‘finding my supporting cast’.

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I have been working really hard to tell stories that stir heart and brain into a frenzy that says...perhaps there is more to all of this!? Here is the grimey fun part! Blogging, writing, music and art are not only my passion but they are also how I am seeking to make my living. Any donation big or small is greatly appreciated. For any one dollar donation I will send you a download code for one of my songs! 12$ donation and up and you qualify for my 1 year premium subscription which includes access to premium content, previews to comics, novels, freebies and more! Any support is greatly appreciated! Thanks!

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James Dillon broxson is an artist, musician and content creator. He is married to his wonderful wife Carolina originally from Venezuela and has a beautiful baby girl with her named Eliza. For enquiries email shastat78@gmail.com

Categories
Poetry Politics, Philosophy, Learning and living. Uncategorized

The People we Might Be.

Photo by Richard Verbeek on Pexels.com

 

I find it important to never quit learning. I often like to imagine the future and to imagine becoming proficient in a skill not generally associated with my public persona.

One such imagining is that of becoming a scientist.

I could see myself pouring obsessively, lost musing over medical mysteries and biological quandaries as my mind often obsessively does.

I could see myself as a mathematician pouring over formulae as if they were nature’s immutable song, an indivisible unifier to inherent non-divisible truths.

As a long time musician I have often dreamt of being a classical composer, of sharpening the higher faculties of my mind with the beautiful truth of song, expressing mathematical facts through the medium of tangible felt beauty.

Sometimes I imagine being a lawyer, an advocate, a public defender..knowing the law well so as to subvert it’s misuse by evil people in high places eager to destroy others life for a buck.
I imagine protecting the innocent against those who would use the law against ‘they’ who are innocently unknowing of their schemes and to condemn those falsely accused with unfair and unjust punishments.
I often imagine saving people through diligent study and erudition.

Sometimes I wonder about these things because I am sure that vocation isn’t the full description of who I am and yet I can’t help but think these desires of my soul describe some ineffable inner truth about myself.

What are some things you’ve dreamed about your life?

 

 

 

 

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Any donation one dollar or above and I will send you a music download from my personal website. Music and blogging/ content creation are my passion and I am seeking to be full time at these endeavors! If you like my writing and other content please share or donate today. Any donation of 12$ or more and your automatically enrolled if you wish and with no extra charge into my yearly premium subscription for a dollar a month which will give you immediate access to premium content including but not limited to previews of novel writing projects, comics, new song releases and much more! Premium subscription lasts for 1 calendar year and can be renewed annually.

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Categories
depression, mental health, love, kindness, golden rule, religion Politics, Philosophy, Learning and living.

On Hermitage, Connection And Social Responsibility.

It probably wasn’t long ago for many of us that we were “making plans and holding hands.” as the late and great Daniel Johnston once said in one of my favorite songs of his, “I save Cigarette Butts”.

Or as it says in that great literary and spiritual Masterpiece the Bible;

“But as the day of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the son of man be.

For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark,

And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be.” Matt 24:37- 39 KJV

(Yes I’m Catholic but I have my respects for a lil KJV!)

For all practical appearances it would seem that the Son of Man has indeed come and with considerable shaking of things that seem unshakable. This is not to say all natural disasters are directly from God or something as much as that all natural disasters prove we ‘need’ nature’s God. That need is the ‘final judgement’.

Judgement is a trite title to linchpin culture with just as much as it backfires on those who judge it an effective resort for affairs of cultural exchange.

Personally I would know because I am better at judging most people ‘better’ than most people I know.. at least that’s ‘my judgement’ on the matter.

And so I sit here like a hermit on a hill. I always was one even in my most social of times but that should never be confused with malice or hatred of humanity.

Sure, to the man who is confounded and confused by society it also could be possible to become negatively personally affected. It is not because such an one sees nothing in society as much as sees too much promise wasted in society.

The idealist hermit sits on the hill top judging not because he hates but because he knows the art pieces potential and to the degree he judges in purity rather then in strife he gathers a glimmer of truth if only he would judge with a correct, loving and disaffected judgement.

Looking into the fire makes darkness for the eyes. It doesn’t matter if a fire burns bright. It is easier to see when escaping a fire. Its much easier to see a fire once one is away from it.

Hermits get a bad wrap for evading social responsibility and that is not entirely without rationale. Many hermit temperament people ‘do’ hate society and even for those who don’t the temptation lies at hand.

This is not a value judgement for such individuals. Introversion runs too thick to cheapen it with run of the mill stereotypes. Everyone has their cross to bear. Introverts can be good people but not all introverts are hermits. The hermit might seem related to introversion in many respects and that is a perfectly natural conclusion..

Yet a true hermit is not one because of introversion.

A true hermit is one because of people..for people.

Like a man with a mote in ones eye a man with judgments whether good and bad may just be a man with an artists eye.

The judgments hurt the man with an artists eye because an artists eye can also comprehend beauty in the ugliness just as he sees beauty and ugliness in himself. Thus when you judge the speck in spite of the mote you judge yourself in the process. Somehow miraculously even in spite of the sin grace interrupts. Thank God for interruptions!

The hermit is a benevolent soul if he decides to live his call. He is a leader by serving, though perhaps by a false sense of absence in immature consciousness, whether in himself or according to the perceptions of others.

A man who is trained by a more solitary life must not throw in the towel or merely relax or enjoy the affairs of his solitude.

If anyone would wish to be a hermit I guarantee the universe will crowd them with thoughts. Their silence will be interrupted whether internally or externally.

{The only ‘true’ reason that the hermit may be is because he sees something good in you and in me.}

He doesn’t just sit there hating the Who’s.

https://youtu.be/OlEdv2ZPJq4

Donation

Any donation one dollar or above and I will send you a music download from my personal website. Music and blogging/ content creation are my passion and I am seeking to be full time at these endeavors! If you like my writing and other content please share or donate today. Any donation of 12$ or more and your automatically enrolled if you wish and with no extra charge into my yearly premium subscription for a dollar a month which will give you immediate access to premium content including but not limited to previews of novel writing projects, comics, new song releases and much more! Premium subscription lasts for 1 calendar year and can be renewed annually.

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