Before I discovered prayer I used to have crazy panic attacks—I would think I was dying. I would go crazy. I thought I was having a heart attack. It’s the worst! I couldn’t even leave my house.

I would look at airplanes and have an anxiety attack. I knew I’d have to be in a plane at times in my life. I always thought, how would I escape this claustrophobic feeling? I had doctors telling me I should take Xanax and Prozac. I started to seek this other lifestyle: prayer and meditation.

I had a life changing moment the first time I flew to Australia. Goldfinger had been together for around four years. I had been suffering anxiety attacks. I knew I had to do an eighteen hour flight. I was like, how am I going to do it? Halfway through the flight -I had this little meditation CD -I had this sense that everything was going to be OK that I was going to be taken care of. It was a really life changing thing for me because I had to do so many flights after that to play shows. Ever since then I’ve been rid of anxiety attacks. It was a spiritual awakening to a certain extent. It wasn’t a big white light or anything but just a sense of comfort and ease.

I’ve done a lot of other work on myself too. I started running every day to get the physical stuff going. I stopped caffeine and sugar. I started meditating. Even after all that work though, it comes back to that moment on the airplane where I realised that everything will be OK. I still get an anxious feeling sometimes, but it has never been a full blown panic attack since then.

…When I pray, whatever it is that I’m praying to, the universe, whatever—to imagine a human God to me is ridiculous—I just look up to the stars and think, “What the hell is going on here?” When I pray I guess that’s what I’m praying to—the Universe, nature.

(Taken from a forthcoming issue of Conversations with Punx)

John is the frontman for band, Goldfinger. He is also a passionate vegan, father, animal & human rights activist, A&R rep and producer—working with bands such as The Used, Panic! At The Disco, Good Charlotte, The Veronicas and more!

Make each day count!

*Photo: courtesy of John’s Facebook.

I listened to an interview with you recently where you commented ‘Year by year in my life, I always encounter something that drastically changes me.’ I wanted to start by asking, have you encountered anything this year so far that has drastically changed you?

BEN STEWART: [Laughs] Oh my god, have I! This year is probably leaps and bounds more profound than any year of my life. It would stand to reason, understanding astrology and understanding my natal chart, being ruled by Saturn and this being my Saturn Return. As soon as 2011 hit I was in the studio with the band (Hierosonic) and as soon as we got out, things just started coming up: this Australian tour; a world tour at the end of the year; basically this film being finished but also, that’s just the physical material stuff that’s been shaping and forming in my life. A lot has been happening just on an energetic and conscious, emotional and psychological level.

I understand that when you were ten years old you got into Taoism?

BS: Yes. Basically it was my brother that handed me the Tao Te Ching. That was really my first introduction to anything along those lines. I was raised Catholic and it seemed to not really make sense to me until after I had been reading a lot of the eastern philosophy. It was pretty wild.

When you moved to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania at fifteen you ‘rediscovered’ Taoism?

BS: When I moved here to Harrisburg basically – I can’t even count, it was maybe the tenth to the fifteenth time I’d moved in my life – when I arrived here, it was quite a bit of a different energy. My entire life to that point had been making friends, leaving friends, making friends, leaving friends, making them, leaving them over and over again—when I would move I wouldn’t just move down the street or across town it was across the country, out of the country, across the world, different hemispheres, just all over the world. Finally, when I realised that this was going to be my home base for the remaining years of me being in school (because I was still in Junior High when I moved here) that was when I decided that I was going to learn to be in the best company by myself. Realising the fluidity of friends coming in and out of my life, some sticking there but also friends changing in their lives and molding and shaping on their own independently of me, I realised that the only thing stable in my life was within me. That was what got me back into reading the Tao Te Ching.

What was it about eastern philosophies that attracted you more so than western?

BS: I would say that there is nothing that I could really verbalize or put dialogue to in anyway because it was really just… I don’t look at one or the other being more correct or more true; there’s just a certain energetic stance that it had that really resonated with me. With the Tao Te Ching you can read one line and ponder it for months, that’s what I liked about it. It wasn’t this vast volume such as the Hindu Vedas. It was really just short, simple and poetic.

I was more interested in how to visualize or recognize the impossible rather than the very simple rational logical. It’s always made more sense to me, to look into those things such as some of the allegories and some of the things that they say you really need to put yourself into—nature being perfect if you try to hold it, it will be destroyed in your hand. It’s more or less this flow that you enter into, rather than something that you acquire. That’s me paraphrasing obviously. When I started pondering these things, I started to realise that that is where I felt more actual learning, actual wisdom; knowledge coming in, rather than reading a scientific or a geographical book or one of the text books from school. It required my conscious active participation. It required me to challenge myself, for me to look into it quite a bit more than reading a text book. I just didn’t find that interesting which is why from Esoteric Agenda, I moved closer to where I was with Kymatica which is far more arcane in its approach. I decided for those that are going to be watching, for those that like to enter themselves into this type of research, it’s better for them to balance a lot of that intellectual material with something that you can energetically attach yourself too or emotionally attach yourself to in some way shape or form. If you don’t have a relationship with the information that is coming in then to me, it’s kind of pointless to have it a part of your life. It’s like extra luggage and extra baggage; like furniture that you never intend on using for its function or purpose, you just have it.

When it comes to the eastern philosophies like the Tao Te Ching, it was something that there were only short little phrases. It would take me months to conceptualize and comprehend what they mean to me. When I would discover one of those lines in the Tao Te Ching within, in me or within my life, as something that I can feel or actually experience, that was a billion times more valuable to me than any bit of information I could read in any other book. That’s where my interest in eastern philosophies came from—they required me to actually be conscious and aware.

(continues over page)

Anthony Bozza is one of my favourite music writers. He started his career as an intern at Rolling Stone magazine. Remember how good Rolling Stone was in the ’90s? Remember the in-depth, revealing, insightful artist interviews? More than likely what you were reading was Bozza—he wrote many cover stories for them including a defining portrait on rapper Eminem for his debut release, as well as many other features and countless articles for the magazine. He went on to be a contributing editor affording him the freedom to work out of the office. The time away from office politics giving him the space to pursue writing his first book, Whatever You Say I Am: The Life and Times of Eminem which became an international bestseller. Since, Bozza hasn’t looked back going on to co-write books with Motley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee (Tommyland), Guns N Roses guitarist Slash (Slash), comedian Artie Lange (Too Fat Too Fish)—all bestsellers! He has also written books, Why AC/DC Matters, a book on INXS, I Am the New Black, the autobiography of 30 Rock and SNL star Tracy Morgan and has a book with Wyclef Jean of The Fugees fame set for release. Bozza has written for Spin, The New York Times, Maxim, The Guardian/Observer, Q, Mojo, Paper, Nylon, Blender and Radar and is co-founder of Igniter Literary Group with best-selling author Neil Strauss. If all that wasn’t enough Anthony is about to sit down with notorious rocker and celebrity Courtney Love next month to start interviews for her memoir!

It was so amazing to be able to chat to Anthony about all he does. It meant so much to me to be able to speak to another writer that loves interviewing as much as I do and someone who is an incredible success making it on their own terms, following their own path and creating some of the raddest work out there on entertainment icons of our time. Anthony Bozza I salute you. Thank you for being so darn awesome!

ANTHONY BOZZA: I went and saw [The Who's] Roger Daltery do ‘Tommy’ [a rock opera] last night. I have a friend that’s working on the tour. That was pretty fun, except I have to say – I’m going to put this on my Facebook page too – whoever got paid to do the animation during Tommy needs to realise that animation has progressed since 1990. It was really bad. It was like pathetic bad. It was weird, it looked like some student project. Maybe it was. I’m going to find out. It was excessively simple and bad. They should have just shown stills from the film [laughs]. Other than that it was an excellent show.

Thank you for speaking with me, I have a huge respect for your work. It’s so nice to be able to finally talk to someone who cares about interviewing as much as I do.

AB: Thank you. I really like interviewing, it’s definitely always a challenge, each one is definitely different. It’s great. It’s really cool to talk to people and try to figure things out about them and to figure out how to get them to talk about stuff [laughs]—that’s the challenge that I like.

How do you go about interviewing? Do you do a lot of research? How do you go about trying to get people to talk about things?

AB: I don’t have any regular thing I do. Every single person is different. The one thing that I always do is tons of research that’s for sure! I try to ask things that might be a little different. If you can think of something that you haven’t seen discussed in an interview I would go for that. Know your subject inside and out and that’s really about it. I don’t have the one question that always works. People ask me ‘what’s your secret question?’ or ‘what is the one thing you always ask that works?’ and I don’t have one. It depends on the scenario, it depends on where the subject is at in their career or in their mind – you have to be very present when you interview. You have to pay attention to all the cues.

I find for me it is a very intuitive thing as well. I find, as you were saying, you have to be really present. So many times I’ve read, watched or heard interviews where the artist touches on something and then the interviewer doesn’t pick up on it and goes straight on to the next question. They totally miss some amazing opportunities because they’re not present, they don’t recognise something when it’s handed to them.

AB: Oh, I totally agree. A lot of times I find that people talk too much. That’s one thing I’ve found when I see other transcripts and people don’t realise that they’ve talked over what could have been something that was great. Like you were saying there’s windows of opportunity people miss.

I also find with a lot of artists they tend to repeat themselves when answering questions. They’ll say the same thing in multiple ways.

AB: So in other words they’re not just moving on to another topic [laughs]; they’re just giving you the same stuff and you’ve got to find a way to keep them for doing that.

Ah ha, that’s it!  What first interested you in interviewing?

AB: I didn’t really set out with that particularly in mind. I got an internship at Rolling Stone when Kurt Cobain killed himself. I’d missed the deadline to work at the magazine as an intern but after his suicide the book division obviously needed to get a memorial book out quickly so they pretty much took the people that would have got selected. They grabbed the resumes of the people that had just missed the deadline and I was one of those. I worked on that tribute book and I worked in the Rolling Stone book department as an unpaid intern for a whole summer. A few months after that once or twice a week I was working in a bar. I was a history major so I really got into research, it’s in my nature and I really enjoy it. I started working on the Encyclopaedia of Rock N Roll – it was the updated edition 10 years later. For a lot of those entries they didn’t know how to find some of the people, they needed help updating some of the entries – this was before Wikipedia [laughs]. It was 1994 so there was a lot of phone calls and stuff. They just let me do a lot of them. They asked me ‘Do you want to try and track down Giorgio Moroder?’ He was the famous disco producer who produced Call Me by Blondie and all of these amazing songs. I was like, hell yeah! I found his office in Italy and was talking to him in broken English. I got on the phone to some really legendary people and when I did that I really, really dug that – I thought this is really cool!

I pretty much had my eye on getting into the magazine. I started working in the Rolling Stone research library. I started doing record reviews for other magazines for free and then Rolling Stone started letting me interview people. I was into the Smashing Pumpkins, I went to school in Chicago and they were my local band, they were just starting when I was there. I got to interview James Iha! It was really funny because the dude barely speaks. It was a hilarious interview because he was just like ‘Yeah. No. Yeah.’ one of those kinds of interviews!  I just started to do the interview thing whenever I possibly could because it was really fun, that’s kind of it. There was an opening for an assistant in the music department so I pretty much jumped on it and never left… well I mean obviously I did leave but you know I stuck in there until I got to do what I want which is write cover stories [laughs].

 When was it that you decided to leave?

AB: I wanted to write my book about Eminem. I pretty much had set out to do everything I wanted to do there. I was there for eight years and I had written seven cover stories. I was at the point where I didn’t want to become a higher up editor because I didn’t want to deal with the politics of the magazine and all the other stuff an editor has to deal with, I wanted to write. I asked to be a contributing editor which would basically be a contact where I’d owe them a certain amount of stories, a certain amount of assignments per year but in return I’m not in the office anymore and I can work on outside things but I can’t write for Spin or something. That’s the way I went, I didn’t want to have to deal with going to a million staff meetings [laughs].

In the year that I was a contributing editor I came up with my proposal for my Eminem book and sold that and never looked back!

That gives me so much hope, it really does. I get so frustrated with some of the publications that I write for because I feel limited in what they want me to do, I feel like it’s always about selling something. I love nothing more than being able to do the in-depth interview and really show different sides of my subject and that they’re so much more than whatever they’re promoting.

AB: Yeah definitely. That’s so good.

Do you ever get nervous interviewing?

AB: Not really, not at all. A lot of what I do now is co-writing with people so it’s a different relationship altogether. It’s like jumping the fence to the artist’s side in a way. If I’m co-writing with someone I’m kind of already on their team, I have to make them look good so it is a different relationship. I don’t really get nervous anymore, I guess there is people that would get me nervous. The actual act of doing it doesn’t fluster me at all.

It was just announced a couple of weeks ago that you’re writing a book with Courtney Love?

(continues over page)

I spent this morning watching a live stream of a conversation with Def Jam Recordings founders Russell Simmons and Rick Rubin presented by the New York Public Library and facilitated by Paul Holdengraber the library’s Director of Public Programs. They were there to chat about 25 years of Def Jam and to support the release of book, Def Jam Recordings: The First 25 Years of the Last Great Record Label. Holdengraber praised the impressive tome – a comprehensive history of the label – as “utterly magnificent” and “absolutely outstanding” before adding that he believed the book to be “produced in the most exquisite way… the level of passion… the power of the writers.”

Rick and Russell were introduced to the sold out audience using seven words of their own choosing. Russell offered a haiku: Def Jam showed me power of faith. Rick chose: Rick Rubin is a fan of music—both introductions simple and humble, yet powerful; an apt reflection of both men who have “led the way in transforming hip hop culture from a projects-based art form to a popular phenomenon.”

Proceedings kicked off with (a shoeless) Rick Rubin requesting that they begin in a certain way – he asked that everyone in attendance, including himself and Russell, close their eyes for 3 minutes and focus on breathing – inhaling and exhaling, to focus on the breath – a meditation of sorts. He said that the goal of this exercise was to bring everyone together and to give thanks, to create a space in the room for something new. After the 3 minutes silence was up, there was a big collective breath and stretching, Russell asking the audience “isn’t that much better than angel dust?” continuing by explaining how Rick was the first person he ever meditated with adding, “20 minutes twice a day makes you high as hell.” Rick enlightened that, “there’s a power when a big group meditate together.” They have both been meditation practitioners for well over a decade. You can read Russell’s thoughts on meditation here: Why I Meditate.

“Music is one of the most transformative things in terms of happiness… it awakens,” Russell commented, “…it’s powerful, it brings you to the present – like music…meditation is to see the world unfolding in miracles.” Holdengraber admitted he struggled with the exercise and even “peeked” a few times opening his eyes. “The more difficult it is for you, the more you need it,” Rick advised. Russell adding, “Creative people need to be awake.”

Holdengraber ushered the conversation into gear referencing Rick’s high school yearbook quote which read: I want to be loud. I want to be heard. I don’t want to be one of the herd. From there Rick and Russell describe their first experiences of hip hop. Rick recalling his first ever experience was at a reggae club called Negril the “first place I found that you could find hip hop live anywhere… [it was] a whole different world I hadn’t seen before… it moved to The Roxy when it got bigger… there the first night 50 of us were in The Roxy… slowly each week more people came and more people came, it happened organically… the whole scene rooted in word of mouth – I got swept up in it.” Rick noted that Russell was already “in it” with his first experience of hip hop around 1976 at 125^th Street – Charles’ Gallery – on Tuesday nights via DJ Eddie Cheeba—“he was playing music that wasn’t on the radio” says Russell, “The Hip hop explosion was people that didn’t want to join the mainstream…that weren’t accepted.”

To Rick hip hop is and was “about street culture…the closest parallel is punk rock… not being educated in music but really, really just loving the music… to me Def Jam was an outgrowth of punk rock expressed through black music.” Rick himself played in a punk rock band called Hose that went on to record Def Jam’s release #1, 45rpm 7 inch vinyl single that came in a brown paper bag.

Both are surprised that music ended up being their job. “It didn’t matter if I slept on the floor in Rick’s dorm for the rest of my life,” Russell pointed out – Rick’s dormitory at NYU where he studied philosophy and later switched to film and television because “all my friends were in it and it felt more fun” became Def Jam’s first home. Rick describing it as a “9 foot by 12 foot cinder block room… with a full p.a. system.”  Eventually boxes of 1,000 of records would be shipped in and out of the dorm as Def Jam grew.

The chat continued winding its way through Def Jams colourful history punctuated with audio snippets of important jams – LL Cool J’s I Need A Beat, Public Enemy’s Fight The Power and more – in the Def music back catalog and Rick and Russell’s insight and thoughts about each. Russell described Rick – who produced the early Def Jam recordings – as a “musical genius.”  “Def Jam was about purity in intention… our inexperience and innocence let us make music that went beyond the norm,” Rick said.

Also covered in the hour and a half long conversation was their decade’s long friendship – the two met according to Russell through mutual friend DJ Jazzy Jay; according to Rubin after a show Graffiti Rock at a loft party – which Rick cited as playing a big part for them going their own (business) ways in 1988 when Rick left Def Jam. “Our friendship was so strong… our business grew very big very fast and I don’t think that either of us knew how to handle this… to protect our friendship… because of our love for each other it would be better for us to do things separately.” They both went on to have highly successful careers – Rubin went on to produce albums for heavier rock acts such as Slayer, Danzig, Masters of Reality and more as well as artists that run the gamut of the entire musical spectrum from Johnny Cash to Neil Diamond to Green Day. And, Russell went on to become one of hip hop’s most influential entrepreneurs with clothing lines, television shows, magazines etc.

As the conversation winded down with talk of how the music industry is currently going? Rick explained “I just focus on music and help artists make the best possible music …our job is to make great art… the focus has always been purely on the art and luckily everything has worked itself out.” Russell concluding that he just feels blessed and lucky to be surrounded by talented people, “I’m lucky enough to get on the ride.”

All in all it was a wonderful insight into the Def Jam story and of two friends that had a big dream that through hard work, determination, creative hearts and the best of intentions realised that dream.

You can preview parts of the book and purchase it here. For more info try here. You may also be interested in an in-depth conversation (also facilitated by New York Public Library) with Jay-Z about his book Decoded.

CREATE FOREVER!

My in-depth conversation with Olympia-based musician-singer-songwriter Kimya Dawson has gone live over at my favourite music port Collapse Board… Her new record Thunder Thighs is really beautiful and honest (just like Kimya)… here’s a little sample of our chat:

I went to a retreat. I have a good friend and fellow musician called Pablo Das who is on the Thunder Thighs album who teaches Buddhist meditation and mindfulness. I went to a retreat he was leading and it was very helpful. I’ve always had books on my periphery or in my collection on Buddhism and I’d read them a little. I’m not a diehard, I don’t meditate every day but I do try to stay in the moment. It’s easy to slip out of that. It’s been helpful for me to have those ideas in my mind even though I’m not a full-on practitioner of those practices. When I’m doing some things I really look at where I’m at and what is in my immediate surroundings and what I am responding to. Am I staying present? It helps me be not as quite reactionary. I tend to be very … I can have something that can trigger me to freak out but then I realise that I’m responding to shit that happened 20 years ago and I feel like what is happening now can go the way of that. I’m not even reacting to something that’s actually happening. I try to stay in what’s going on and to allow myself to find some quiet and to be really forgiving to myself — that was one of the biggest things from the retreat that was most helpful to me. We did a self-forgiveness meditation and I was like ‘whoa!’.

To read the complete interview please click here.

The lovely folks at Australian Hysteria not only get me to chat to some of your and my favourite punkers they’re also kind enough to chat to me about Conversations With Punx.

[Interview extract]

AUSTRALIAN HYSTERIA: What inspired you to explore ‘spirituality’ in the punk community?

BIANCA: I’ve grown up within the punk and hardcore community, it’s what I know. So, it’s natural for me to choose to explore something in a setting that’s familiar. Over the years punk music/lyrics and interviews I have read with my favourite artists has helped educate me on everything from politics to social issues to nutrition etc. Many of my core beliefs and values have been influenced by information and experiences from my involvement in the worldwide punk community. I’ve always been that punk kid questioning ‘why?’ and with spirituality it’s the same.

When I started to engage in a lot of self-reflection and things like meditation and yoga I had a yearning to discuss and share what I was experiencing with my others, Unfortunately not too many of my punk rock friends were into chatting about the deeper things in life so I started to ask those I interviewed about spirituality. I guess you could say that I was searching for my truth.

To read more get the latest Hysteria…
Photo by: Mischa Photography

The above ad also features in the debut issue of Hysteria. It’s been created from a Jhonny Hobo photomontage.

Create forever!

I’ve only really started using mantras on a regular basis over the past year. My astrologer Vic DiCara (he also plays in hardcore punk band 108*) drew up my astrological chart using Vedic Astrology last year. After interrupting it he decided to prescribe a certain mantra that would help in manifesting my dreams to reality. You’re probably going ‘what the hell is a mantra?’ Let me explain:

Mantra is a practice that involves the repetition of a word or a phrase of words. At first it may feel mechanical but once you get into it you start to (hopefully) embody the quality or essence you are trying to invoke. You should try to be sincere when saying your mantra.

My friend Vic described the usefulness of mantras by telling me, “Practice the mantra with a given intention and need and you will find that need, will be addressed… the power of mantra is to open your mind and free it from habit. So doing the mantra enables you to learn the lessons of the planets as quickly and painlessly as possible, even enjoyably and blissfully in fact.”

Art by Abhi Ryan

I have found that putting both meditation and chanting a mantra (along with yoga) into my daily routine has helped give me a grounding and solid base in which to start my day in.

Mantra are used across many cultures (it’s not just an Eastern exotic thing), faith and philosophies. I have found that they help to give me clarity and boost my energy.
For more on mantras check out: The Power of Mantra, Gently Returning and History & Info on Mantra.

A song from the album Mantra by one of my favourite hardcore punk bands Shelter.

*108 trivia – 108 is a semi-permanent number; malas have 108 beads for use when reciting mantras; according to Ayurveda there are 108 pressure points in the body…

Art by Chainsaw Panda

Om mani padme hum…
With Metta,

[comment]

“Spirituality to me is the everyday practice of realising, reaffirming and getting in touch with why we’re on the planet, why we exist and what we’re supposed to do. Prayer, meditation, reflection, being involved with your community and spending time with your family and loved ones—it’s all spirituality. Everything we do is really spiritually based because everything we do comes from thought and intention, the material world comes secondary to that, those things come first they create the material world. Everything we do is in some way spiritual.”

~extract from my next book project in process… details soon lovelies!

A thought for your day: Rock For Light!

Love…Rosy B

[comment]

“Be yourself, don’t take anyone’s shit, and never let them take you alive.” ~Gerard Way

“Well there is that common misconception that punk was this negative nihilistic thing, but that was never what it was about. It was about empowerment, individuality and some kind of “politicalisation.” I’m not talking about the politics that people see on the TV; I’m talking about a global politics. Trying to be in touch with the planet, to me, is my kind of politics. There’s a trend towards this passive consumerism these days whereby most people are emotionally detached from the planet. Obviously that’s going to lead us nowhere.” ~Don Letts (excerpt from Conversations With Punx)

You my new friend (and of course my long-standing friends that read this) are one of a kind. You are unique. You see life in your own special one of its kind way. No one else can ever do things the way you do them, you bring your own unique style & flavour to the party. And, what a party that is! Magnificent, divine and full of life!

Even if someone else was given the exact same information as you, we all translate it differently and put our own twist on things depending on our past experiences, upbringing, beliefs, outlook so we can only really do things our own way.

“Individuality is very important for a full human life” ~HH the 14th Dalai Lama

A big part of ‘doing you’ is knowing who you are and what you stand for and staying true to that—not allowing yourself to be swayed by your friends, family, group pressure or trends. A huge part of me has learnt so much about myself and who I am thanks to punk rock and hip hop music, culture and those that contribute positively to it. And although music is one of my favourite things in the whole Universe, I make sure I don’t let it define me.

Many years ago (6 actually, at the beginning of my book project)… I found myself having been involved with punk rock for over a decade. I had written fanzines, put on shows, manned merch booths, been a publicist, music critic, and activist; I had interviewed hundreds of bands, attended countless live shows, had a mail order, and been a noise maker in various bands that never made it out of the garage. My social life revolved around shows and I had met all of my friends at gigs. I was in deep. After a while it all started to feel uninspiring. Nothing excited me or provoked me to think. I had to get drunk and be surrounded by my tightly knit social clique for shows to be fun. I was in a punk rock bubble and the bubble become very cloudy.

I had always attributed punk (and hip hop) as contributing to my personal growth. I began to feel my growth as a person stall and become stagnant. Punk had always been a platform from which I could explore and find myself. The platform had seemed to become limited. I thought, “Is this it? Is this who I am?” I realised that my whole life was sadly based around a music scene, which in the grand scheme of things is minute. I had lived, breathed, and consumed punk, until it had begun to consume me. My perspective started to shift. There had to be something more, something beyond punk. I started to disconnect from what was going on around me. For the first time, I was alone in my punk rock world. I started to turn inward.

For me this was a really confusing time, I really had to focus on me and who I thought I was, who I was, and who I wanted to become. My journey through that is in part my book projects. Meditation & my Morning Page rituals really helped me during this time of self-exploration.

Advice from amazing people also helped! Exene Cervenka the remarkable front lady of Los Angeles punk band X chatted with me for my book and had the following to say… which I felt was really spot on in relation to Doing You!

Exene: I’m trying to take care of that stuff. It’s complicated because as you get older you have a lot of stuff you’ve been through and you look back on it all and you get an image of yourself. It’s not always the best image. Maintaining a healthy self-image and really loving yourself is something that’s really important to me. People let life get to them too much and they get beaten down by it. They become cynical and jaded. It’s really important for me not to become like that. When I look back and say I want to love myself it’s not because I’m running from my past, it’s because I’m learning to accept who I am with flaws.

Being yourself isn’t always going to be easy (with so many distractions out there and people & things trying to influence you and your choices)… a big tip I can give you though on the road to Doing You! is: stop caring what others think about you. If you’re constantly fretting about what this person or that thinks about you, it’ll be impossible to be yourself.

In my experience, any lasting thing in life is built rooted in truth. Ask yourself, what’s your truth?

“If I’m going to sing like someone else, then I don’t need to sing at all.” ~Billie Holiday

“Cherish forever what makes you unique, ‘cause you’re really a yawn if it goes.” ~Bette Midler

And don’t forget one of the biggest truths of all: you’re unique just like everybody else! (he, he :))

The King of ‘Do You!’ Russell Simmons

So are you going to take the challenge to Do You!? I dare you to.
More magic all the time,

[comment]

Photo by Silvère Teutsch

“The first Noble Truth is of the truth of suffering and the injustice and oppression that causes greed and suffering in our world and internally within the individual. The Buddha and Buddhists take it to another level of really investigating, asking, “What’s the cause? What’s the solution to this injustice, greed, hatred and confusion?” Punks for the most part don’t get there. Maybe they start saying, “Here’s the cause. We’ll become activists externally in some way.” It seems pretty rare for punks to really take on an inner practice of ridding themselves from the judgments, greed and hatred that cause suffering.” ~Noah Levine (an excerpt from my book).

A not negotiable in my life is meditation. Whether it’s my morning meditations, writing meditations, walking meditation or even just being mindful and aware of what’s going on around me and how I’m contributing to that energy and situation. It helps to keep me balanced, centred and to not get too much into my own head. It helps me to get in touch with myself. It helps me to be present in the moment.
A wonderful friend Noah Levine author of the books Dharma Punx & Against The Stream and founder of the Against The Stream Meditation Society has some helpful meditation MP3s here which could help get you started. The simplest advice he could give me when I asked about meditation tips is:

Awareness of the breath. There is a pretty pervasive misunderstanding of meditation. Most people think that if you are meditating correctly you don’t have any thoughts in your mind at all, that meditation is turning your mind off. Really, the foundation of mindfulness of breath is that thoughts are still happening, you’re just not paying attention to them. You’re not putting all of your attention or awareness in the mind, you’re redirecting it to the body and the experience of the breath. If the attention gets drawn to the thoughts you bring the attention back to the breath over and over—that’s meditation practice. It really works, but it takes a bit of effort. Eventually it gets a bit easier.

Thanks must go to a dear new friend that inspired this post without even knowing it. Connecting with others always gives me things to think about in my life. Maybe when interacting with others throughout your day today ask yourself, what am I learning from this person? There’s a lesson in all situations be them good or bad, we just need to stop and listen.

Love & light,

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