Last Outpost

Growing up in the Christian faith I’ve always felt conflicted, as so many do.  Trying to wrap my head around a faith and a God that felt detached from the real, everyday world we live in.  Trying to hang on to my salvation while wondering if I ever really had it.  Wondering if I had enough “faith” to be saved.  Feeling as though I was unworthy - guilty for being human and born in the free world.  Never penitent enough.  Never worshipful enough of a God I’ve never met.  Trying to reconcile all the questions swirling in the back of my mind.   Finally, I’ve reached a point this last decade or so where I’m comfortable with no longer labeling myself as a Christian, because I suppose I’m not.  I fall firmly into the camp of religious agnosticism.  I still lapse into some of the old habits.  I still have doubts one way or another.  But as a human being with a functional mind capable of critical thinking, I can’t keep running in ...

OK, so the title is slightly misleading.  I made an album of western, country & surf music, which will never be pressed into a vinyl record and will most likely exist only as a series of 1’s and 0’s on a handful of hard drives and on the mystical, magical cloud that is bandcamp.com.  Over the past six months I've been feverishly writing, arranging, recording and finally mixing & mastering a short LP of tunes all by myself in my free time.  Why?  Good question - one that I asked myself often during the process. Although the bands I've been a part of have usually been some combination of shoegaze, ambient, punk, emo or ska, I consider myself a fan of almost all  types of music.  In particular, the rustic sentimental part of me that takes pride in having lived in Texas and now Nevada has a particular fondness for western music and what I would consider real country music (or what Nashville music lovers would refer to as outlaw/Texas country and ...

It suddenly hit me why I was walking swiftly and directly back to my car after snapping a few photos:  shame.  Like so many others, I was making the most of my visit to Detroit by roaming the inner city neighborhoods and documenting the ruins.  "Documenting” might be an inaccurate term.  It’s not as if  Detroit ’s continuing fall hasn’t already been photographed and recorded thousands of times over by proper journalists.  No, these snapshots were for my personal collection.  Why you ask?  To make myself feel like an actual photo-journalist?  To prove I was there?  Sure, why not…  But really, let’s admit it was at least partly morbid curiosity.  “Ruin porn.”  Hence the occasional shame, and why I found myself avoiding eye contact with local residents and walking directly back to my car after being spotted depressing the shutter button.  Imagining yourself taking these pictures and actually doing it are two differ...