Overcoming Darkness

Gonna write something here

How do you overcome the darkness?
How do you keep your spirits up?
How do you stand when gravity presses?
Or sleep when the moving won’t stop?

How does one make it through January dry?
How does your fire not smolder and sigh?
How do you suffer the endless gray?
And the diminished winter day?

My next show is Thursday, February 13th with Joseph Pennell and Shay Carlucci at Chop Suey in Seattle. Get your tickets now.

February 3rd 1997 is the day I piled my belongings into my 1987 Subaru GL and moved to the northwest. I’ve been here 28 years. I still don’t know how to endure the winters. I haven’t figured out how to keep the darkness from invading. The older I get, the more the seasonal affect gets to me. This time of year, I go dark. My motivation hibernates. All I seem to want to do is watch movies and eat stew.

When I stopped working for churches, the weekend returned to me like a long lost friend. I had felt the absence of that freedom for years and when I finally found it I dove into the deep end. I rediscovered my love for skiing which I had abandoned sometime around February 3, 1997. Being in the mountains, breathing the Cascade air, chairlift conversations with friends and strangers, the smell of marijuana smoke from a few chairlifts ahead mingling with the spicy sweet smell of fresh snow, the jazz of skiing, starting at the top, heading for the bottom, improvising everything in between.

Have you ever experienced an inversion? Cold, wet, and gray in Seattle, but sunny in the mountains. Back at church some Sunday in April, maybe Easter, Dale once asked me with deep concern, "Is everything ok?" I hadn't been to church in weeks. I had been in the mountains and I felt amazing. Mountains, man. Nature's cathedrals. That's one way to overcome the darkness.

Singing in the darkness is an act of calling the light. We don't sing to entertain, we sing to get through. We sing to set our minds on the light. We sing because singing is one way to overcome. Doesn't matter if you're on stage or on the floor. It's about being there, opening your lungs, and raging against the darkness. We make eye contact and for a moment we sing together. I see the light in your eyes and you see it mine and the darkness flees.

So, my friends, come sing with me, Joseph Pennell, and Shay Carlucci. Let’s pack out Chop Suey and drive the dark back from whence it came. Let's sing our way to the light.

Get your tickets here.