The songs on this album are rooted in a creative process that allowed for and encouraged a more subconsciously led approach than I’d ever quite experienced before. I’ve always tried to come from as deep a place as possible, but on this album, I let go in a new way. I would begin creating and even writing lyrics sometimes before I knew what exactly I was saying and why… Just following and trusting that as long as there was an instinct driving the choices, that hidden within that instinct was a truth that needed to come out. I let whatever was there emerge, and resisted the urge to control or judge it for as long as possible. Without fail, meaning and intent would reveal itself.

"BLOOM" began with the recording of that low mellotron cello drone and grew from there… with melodies and lyrics dripping out one after the other… once I’m in a zone… hot the trail... I tend to get amnesia about what actually happened, but I remember bits and pieces… I attribute this to a sweet-spot in the creative process where no part of me is watching myself… so I have 100% of myself actually doing the creating rather than say, 80% creating and 20% watching, critiquing and judging. This is where we all wanna be… I guess it’s called being "in the moment".

I’m pretty sure I started recording the vocal on this before I’d written the second verse. Capturing the moment of composition within the recording is one of my favorite ways to work… once I was up to verse 2, I wrote it, then recorded it and in between it all, I was building the track whenever I heard something that needed to go down…. so it’s all being written and performed/recorded in one united process… jumping back and forth between instruments… mixing… singing… writing… listening (to the song and to my own head & heart). This usually all happens in the course of a single day, often straight through with no breaks. I’ll get 90% through it, and then maybe take fresh look on another day and add a fresh perspective to it for the last 20%… that’s right: givin' 110%! ha.

So, with this way of working, the meaning of this song was revealing itself to me as it was taking shape… creating the sonic landscape as really a hugely important element in this song…. the choice of a stereo ribbon microphone on the vocals drums and piano the older sounding spring and cathedral reverbs… the American Indian tribal drums mixed with a drum kit and African percussion… And it’s meaning has never quite been all the way clear to me until now, as I’m writing about it.

Here’s a theory of mine that to some degree informed the lyric... As human beings I’ve noticed we (or at least I), tend to differentiate and define ourselves by what we like, what we love and what we hate… this begins when we’re toddlers and learn the word “NO!”, and just gets more intense as we enter our teen years and crash into our 20s… these things become givens in our 30s as we use them to make our place in the world… and though I’m not in my 40s yet, I’ve noticed that in that decade many seem to forget that so much of our self-image and belief systems are rooted in these early choices that we begin to think that’s “just the way things are” or “the way I am” and we start that decline into that almost silly close-mindedness that especially older dudes can sometimes tend to have: the over-confident-crotchety-old-man-syndrome! And by the time we’re in our 60s and 70s, if we make it that far, we stop listening to other peoples ideas and opinions and just enjoy downloading our thoughts into anyone within earshot… it’s output only!… what’s nice is that if we make it to our 80s and 90s, a common trend is that some of us regress back to being childlike… I don’t know if that’s sad or awesome. Maybe both?

Of course, I could be wrong about all of this. But, it’s not even about being right or wrong… maybe it’s more of an observation wrapped in a question: how do I avoid these pitfalls?

There are of course, other ways this can play out… and at this point in my life, I’m searching for my own WAY (OUT!)…. and it’s how we (or I) see and experience the world (i.e. our unique perspective) that most often defines how we interact with it. One of my favorite ways is through art/music and creativity in general.

How we GROW (bloom!) and how we decay, is colored by our beliefs and instincts… what attracts us… what repels us… what propels us... some of us grow in the sunshine… some of us grow in the dark…. some things make sense… some things don’t…. what’s important, I think, is that we BLOOM in a way that means something… in a way that leads us toward becoming more than we were… better. Ever-Better.

So, all that to say: in these verses, I was expressing these things that I like (via thinly, or heavily veiled metaphors) that seem sort of paradoxical and defining… like in the first line:

“I like to watch flowers die in reverse”

I tend to see things from their opposite… I think about living, and I see it from the perspective of dying.

I think about inner peace and see it from the perspective of inner-war or turmoil… “One line in my peace sign is a rocket”……… and birth is a beautiful thing—the beginning of life—yet it’s bloody and painful… “I like to watch pain hurt like a birth”...

And in the line:

“I like dead cities and the wild”

It’s in reference to the fact that I’m attracted to the beauty in decay and the danger and reality of nature and the circle of life that’s at play there… In fact, if you guys recall the photos that are behind all the WAY OUT lyrics (in that PDF.), those are ones I took of the Salton Sea… a place that’s desolate, stinks like hell, yet has an undeniable and stark beauty… it’s a dead city surrounding a dead lake… but from a certain perspective all the millions of dead fish and birds have created a place of gritty allure… a location half dead that is home to some of the most epic birds (massive flocks of huge pelicans are everywhere flying inches from the water with wingspans sometimes well over over 6 feet)…

“BLOOM" feels ominous… you might say dark… but that's a feeling I like swimming in. I think of it more like warmth than darkness…. a womb like warmth… again, it feels like growth… growing pains… ‘cause growing doesn’t always feel good… quite the opposite actually…. but it’s a good thing (or can be!). To bloom is to become…. to expand… because, though it’s a backwards way to say it (as in the first lyric of the song), dying in reverse, is of course, living in the right direction—from now forward— sure we’re heading toward death, but nothing is more dead and gone than the past. One second ago might as well be just as long ago as a million years… our inability to touch it or re-experience it is the same.

So for me, as I look at life in a way that feels true to myself… it’s from a ground zero of self acceptance, awareness and understanding that I plant my seeds… stab my roots… grow and eventually BLOOM… every life has it’s blooming times… in some ways, each song I write and especially each album I release is representative of a time of blooming… and in between are the seeds/roots/growth periods… and right before the bloom, is this feeling of pent up energy… like planting your feet, turning your hips and loading up for a big right hook to the jaw of my fears and the baggage of my life. Growing is a fight, blooming is a celebration of victory.