markmathis

If you listen to npr, you have heard the following: “it does not make economic sense for spending to be cutback in a slowing economy”.  Bear with me, this will get worse before it gets better…..  It goes on to say that “economists” maintain that you and i must not shrink back from our duty of spending as our income dwindles…  

1. where is a rock?

2. where is an economist so that I can throw it at them

3. just kidding(perhaps i should throw a proverbial ’shoe’?)

I was musing on this and lightning struck my brain… Of course! It makes perfect sense! I am not suggesting that you go out and buy a bass boat, but consider this:

Our ‘capital’ – or money ,  is in fact our ideas and talents. it is also our time

So, in a time when there is not a lot going on, people are scared and new ideas are risky. That time is now. So, why not pursue a new idea or develop your talents?  It almost seems spiritual that in a time of darkness and gloom, we would have ‘capital’ to invest when everyone else is curled up in a fetal position and saying, “it hurts-it hurts”.

The economist is saying that people with resources should take advantage of the huge opportunity of spending those resources to gain the advantages that come with the total elimination of competition.  Artists of all kinds should use this time to do the same. It is an opportunity to grow an idea that has been on the back burner for a long time.  

I am trying to finish  my album, ‘Secret in this town’ right now with the time that i have. Sure, I wish I had a 20k budget, but I read something in a ‘wilco’ book that helped me. Jeff Tweedy said, “…the sooner i got over being embarrassed about what i had created, the sooner people we able to benefit from it…” I am going to overdraft my account and toe the line between risk and reward. don’t hoard it, people. let it go, there is a world that needs it.

I just finished reading my friend, John Mark’s bulletin about his new album, “the medicine”, and it has spurred some thoughts in me. He and I have been in a place for the past two years where the Lord HAS to come through for us.  Jessie, Jeremy, Luke and myself have been working at Public Radio really hard for the past year or so. My brother and sister in law have a camp in rock hill, “camp caanan” that is trying to get off the ground. My artist friends are all working, Patrick, Sarah, Eric, Chris, etc…  I am going in the studio in a week to record another album. There are so many people that are operating independently in their gifts in this geographical area that it blows me away. My friend, aswan, just signed his band,”papertongues” to a huge deal and tim scroggs is not too far behind. 

  John Mark mentioned “risk” in his blog. The Lord told me a long time ago that “without great risk there is no great reward”. He also said in the bible, “run in such a way to win”. I just want to say that I am proud of everyone that I mentioned and accidentally excluded – don’t lose heart. A big part of what I have been learning in this season has been figuring out how “big” or how “small” I am. Am I a platinum record seller or an independent couple thousand seller? Am I ok with either? Have I learned the secret of being content in the place that God has given me? Am I ok to work a job and still operate in the music that is mine – or am I too proud?

  I just watched a movie, “Basquiat” about one of the first graffiti artists and the first black painter to receive international attention. He had an extremely short run of it, he died of a heroin overdose at 28. He would not work a job that he felt was beneath him(depicted in the movie), he did not value his friends, and he had not battled his personal demons(turned to drugs).  I am not an expert on him or the visual arts for that matter, but I do know that if you want a longevity in the arts and life in general you can’t behave like this. It was a strong warning to me watching this movie. The gifts of God are irrevocable and he had them, regardless of how he lived. You have them too as do I, but we have to stay alive to use them – and we have to stay in a place of “risk”.

So apparently, the oregon trail was not neccesarily “in” oregon, but rather “to” oregon.  I am “in” oregon and noone knows anything about it. I find that hard to believe, doesn’t anyone have a facebook account? Didn’t anyone play the game on their ibm 286 or mac OS 3.x?

Unfortunately one of my party has been devoured by wolves as i chose to buy more provisions than firewood. They sneaked in last night and ate him after the fire died down. He was affectionately known as “bradical” to his friends and “brad tretola” to the ladies. Keep in touch for more from the trail….

All joking aside. Oregon has the best summer in the world. I’ve been a lot of places, but nothing is like this weather. It makes everything easier. We played the buffalo gap saloon last night with a guy named, “matthew kendall”. It was a lot of fun and gave us a chance to work some kinks out of our set. We devastated guitar center, or rather brad did. There was nothing but smoldering mexican headstocks after he finished playing a 17000 dollar SRV reissue through the 100 line 6 amp we bought…

I feel disoriented right now, I am not in a safe place. But who wants to be in a safe place anyways? When I catch myself feeling sorry for myself i slap it out. I give you all permission to slap me on a regular basis. What should we do if not our gifting? I am learning a lot about who I am and am learning to be ok with it if people don’t understand. So much of what I am doing here is learning to communicate. Communicate what is inside me – teach it to others, and let the simple truth of it grow. I think that I need to buy some more ammo, the apaches are coming – i can see their pixelated forms on the horizon… i love the oregon trail.

I have been in Israel playing music at a festival here in Jerusalem for the past week. I have been waiting for an epiphany to happen in which I feel about this city how all of the contemporary religious world does. Instead, I find myself saddened as Christ was when he said, “Jerusalem, how I have longed to gather you as a mother it’s children…”(loose translation).   Jerusalem only makes sense to me in brokenness. 

There are few authentic places still standing relevant to a Judao-christian faith and the ones that are have mosques built on them. You do feel a bit like a mother here visiting her son’s grave – only to find that it has been moved and you don’t know where it is. The frenzy of the crowds and their devotion to mary, jesus, mohammed is underscored by this uncertainty – you can see it behind the eyes of every pilgrim. The concrete that we all desire is not found in Jerusalem. 

    It seems like God, though. It is God. The contradiction of religion vs. love – I see it everywhere. The Jewish people are only interested in each other and it is a minor miracle if one speaks to you. They also live in the only posh side of town and given what I have seen on the west bank this is inexcusable. The Muslim population is just as reserved and does not allow any outsiders into their holy places. The Arab population has lived for centuries in this see-saw of power between the two strongmen and are ambivalent about any type of religion and consequently ‘right and wrong’ have no value to them. 

    I think that we have a chance to see into the future with Israel. A post apocalyptic view of what life could be like without so many of the things we in the western world have. I seriously was walking around the other day and felt like I was in a ‘mad max’ film. I have realized my own brokenness as I have been a visitor to the broken. I do feel like I have developed a compassion towards this city. I am not the one that will come back and be assimilated into the culture. I am the one that will pray that this city will go beyond its current state. I will pray for its healing – and be healed myself.

Listen to this song: christian schoolsDespite a rigorous homeschool experience for most of my academic life, I did go to a christian school. Charlotte,NC is a veritable hotspot for christian education and hosts a myriad of sports  teams aptly named “knights”,”crusaders”,”eagles”, etc…  I attended Charlotte Christian School for my kindergarden and 1st-grade years as did my brother until the school tuition proved too expensive. A personal “favor” allowed my dad to fix the school’s heating and air conditioning in exchange for a reduction in our tuition. I still remember rolling up to the drop off point for elementary school in our blue chevy nova – i was too young to appreciate the incomprehensible majesty of this vehicle. Why couldn’t we just have a minivan? Point is that a christian/private education is too expensive for most people and especially the ones that need it. I had great parents who wanted to give their kids the best education possible, but they just didn’t have the cash. I don’t have a chip on my shoulder personally about this, but I have observed something unsettling over the past decade. Big christian schools keep getting bigger and adding more and more bells and whistles. Consequently they get more and more expensive. The question begs to be asked: “who are these people trying to help?”  Is it the bank executive’s son who doesn’t want to be his dad and smokes a little pot – or, is it the inner city kid who doesn’t have a dad and who’s mom smokes crack?Face it. If you are building million dollar educational facilities on your church property to cater to an upper-class strata instead of “doing unto the least of these” – you are the goats and not the sheep. This is a big deal. That’s why I wrote the song and put it up in an unfinished form. That’s why I walked by a church-school addition yesterday with my wife and started thinking about this.I live in a mix of lower/middle class families and see the need every day. We need integration instead of segregation along class lines – didn’t we take care of that in the 60’s? Historically, the catholic church would go into places that no one else wanted and educate the people – for free and at risk to their lives. Many school administrators will ask – how will they pay for the facility, teacher salaries, books, etc…   I can offer some suggestions, but remind you that this is not the point. stop building new buildingsuse church funds to pay for kid’s tuitionget volunteers Lots of missionaries are doing the same thing today in foreign countries. How can we put peoples pictures on our refrigerators and not support the people in our own communities? Do work.mark   

   Last week I played one of my favorite shows ever… It was me with a guitar and piano at the muse and I got to do exactly what I wanted and the amazing part was that everyone let me. There is nothing like having a hushed room to play to – it is intense. I felt like I could breathe during that show and it honestly didn’t matter what people said to me about it, I was thrilled with it. I started with ’southern accent’ and did about 6 new songs to end with ‘when he returns’ by dylan. It’s been a week since the show, but I am still stoked on it.   I have always viewed ’starting over’ with a negative connotation. why not, right? I have started over for so long that it is depressing to think about. Here is one thing that I have learned recently from a mildly interesting eric clapton book I received for christmas. Clapton has started over musically dozens of times so far and I’m not even done with the book. He would drop a band, get a new one, go to rehab, marry, tour, relapse, drop a band, get a new band… He would never survive the cutthroat industry today where you get one chance if you are lucky AND good. But it did get me thinking in a different way as did the Tom Petty DVD. If you watch the ‘running down a dream’ series, you will see that despite the heartbreakers amazing success at staying together, Tom did a slew of other projects, cowrites, solo, and even a band(the travelin’ wilburys).  He was a complete bad a** with the record industry and stood on his principles. The doc does not go into his personal life either because it was in shambles or because tom did not want his family drug through the spotlight. We can safely assume that there were signifigant problems there as in most families. Here’s my point.Current industry thought is that you pick one thing and hit it as hard as you can – one song, one record big-wig, one million dollars. My friends, that is a recipe for failure and a short life span to put it mildly. You can transpose this to any key you would like, business world, sports, etc… To be fair, it is not that it is not a true statement, but that it is an impossible one that kills dreams. All of this is changing and there is so much great independent music out there right now, but even in that world people are too single-minded.      We were on tour with public radio and played an empty venue with a fairly popular indie band from Louisville. The band leader questioned me about how much we were touring and told me to sell everything and live on the road for 2 years because that is the only way we could make it. People will tell you things that they have done simply to validate themselves and not to help you at all. They don’t even realize they are doing it. I forgive him. The DIY mentality of ‘roughing’ it as strange sort of ritual for being allowed to pass into the ‘making it’ place is a spirituality that I do not embrace. It’s the same thing that monks did when they flayed themselves to bloody pulps to receive what they wanted from God – it doesn’t work. So what do we poor amalgamation of musicians/artists/people do to ‘make it’?    I am learning that ’success’ is built on single experiences spread throughout my life. One success was getting a job when I had been unemployed for over a year,another was getting married, and  another was the solo show I played last week. If I was waiting for success to come when I felt I had earned it – like about now – then I would have been oblivious to the other signifigant milestones of my life.I feel like I am going nowhere right now, and I am sure that a lot of artists feel the same. One thing that I have been doing is to ‘create’ without a prospective outlet at all. I am also learning to not be defined by what google or anyone else says about me. I am not disbanding ‘public radio’, but I have realized that us getting a good deal is not what will spell out success. The real test comes when our deal runs out and we still love music and  each other. My friend’s dad once said about my first band – “the hardest thing about being in a band is staying together”. Staying together means “starting over” together and it happens more than we know. 

Do you remember in ‘i heart huckabees’ when the main character utters a statement that drops the psychologists in their tracks and it gives him time to get away from them? It’s something like – “I’m not who I thought i was”. The other day I uttered the following: “If you want to see something new – you have to go somewhere you have never been before”. This statement threw off my internal psychologist just long enough for me to have an epiphany. You see, I have always been attracted to the mystical,dark, and supernatural. My wife and I watched all 9 seasons of the x-files in 6 months. As a Christian, I have never let myself do the things like ‘warcraft’, ‘magic’, ‘d&d’, etc…, but I have always had that nagging interest in things like it. I want to see something bigger,older,wiser, and more dangerous than myself – i want to be scared into belief.
So, when this statement came to my mind – I realized that I may have to take a walk at midnight through the woods or ride the bus through a sketchy part of town to see what I have been wanting to see. If I don’t put myself in a different environment, then why the heck do I expect to see something new? Last night we played at the milestone, a dark sketchball club with an awesome manager. We saw something different, both in ourselves and the kids that were there. Some of the emotions that showed up in my heart were good and some were not. Not many of our friends showed up, we played really sloppy, and i backed the trailer into a telephone pole. It was awesome, it was new.

Everyone:
We have the two new singles available for download through snocap: You can preview them in the player below AND purchase them. Here is some background on each tune.

good to your momma:
I recently have come to realize that I do not have to be nice to everyone on the planet. Not that I go out of my way to be mean, but I realize that I have a finite measure of human ‘niceness’ that only goes so far. This song is about trying to escape ‘niceness’ that clogs the passages of true dialogue. My mom called me and was upset with me about this song so I hope that she reads this and sees its meaning(hi mom!)
‘you gotta be good to the killers and the predators’. This is the other theme of the song and speaks of giving goodness to people that do not deserve any. This is strange thing that feels strangely right – even though I can’t tell you why. Maybe it’s because they are so far from grace that to deny it to them would be to deny the very reason that grace exists. So, ‘no’ I do not believe in the death penalty. As gandalf says in Lord of the rings(paraphrased), ‘many men deserve death and many deserve life, can you give it to them? do not be too hasty in dealing out death and judgement’.

I have been out on the road a lot this summer and have had a chance to read quite a bit. One afternoon I was perusing the book, ‘the war of art’ and came across an interesting section. The book is intended to help motivate artists to actually create instead of procrastinating. It breaks it down into a lot of real-life examples of this and one such passage was about inner healing. I will not try and quote this since the book is probably hopelessly lost in my RV or in Sedona,AZ where i last saw it. I will improvise and use a “mathis-quotation” – ‘*’ which will suffice for our uses.

*inner-healing is a form of resistance to creating true art*. His premise is that seeking inner-healing is a form of procrastination and a copout from walking in our purpose as artists. It seemed very harsh to me, but I liked it because I am all about cowboying up and getting over stuff. Like hank hill says, ‘louanne, just swallow your emotions everytime you feel like crying(when she breaks up with dudley)’. That appeals to me – just drive your sherman tank over that ridge and take it!

I let those words stay in my mind for a couple weeks and talked to some friends about it. I was kind of excited about it because it was the first thing that I had ever heard so abrasive about ‘inner-healing’. I run in circles that are very pro-talk, pro-counseling, pro-inner-healing. A lot of artists I know don’t do art. that frustrates me a lot. So, question: “is it ok to not do what you were made for because you need inner-healing?”

I read a quote by Bly that was the final piece of the jenga tower for me. He said that we are wounded in a place of strength to take us out – to keep us from creating. If I have to create my art from a place of brokeness and weakness it does not mean that there is anything wrong with it or me. My friends and I talked about this issue the other night about how the best creativity comes to the surface when we are broken and messed up. Josh explained it to me that cracks in our humanity just allow the supernatural to shine through.

Show me an artist that goes running every morning, keeps his schedule organized, washes his dishes, and creates his personal best art at the same time. My grandfather, Jackson, lived in an upstairs attic(ultra-cool) with hardly any light for decades. He had rooms full of paintings, overflowing ashtrays, books and records EVERYWHERE, but he was a successful painter – because he PAINTED.

I am not saying that counseling is bad or that conversations about our problems or strengths are meaningless. I would submit that if you are creative and talk about your inability to create more than you create – something is wrong. My friend, Eric, paints for several hours a DAY – and I know songwriters that write every day. Drive your sherman tank up to the top of your emotional hill and survey your next conquest, baby.

Recently I have come to accept that I do not have to be nice to people. I am a southern gentleman by nature and as kind and considerate as a lemon wedge in a glass of iced Luzianne – however, things are changing. This summer I was on the road for 7 weeks with 300 people doing music and came to a stunning realization. You cannot be nice to 300 people for 7 weeks. Sometimes we are relieved of burdens that we are carrying by a gentle voice and sometimes an inescapable landslide wipes us on our face and carries it away. My experience was the latter.
I had to ignore people. I had to run from people. I had to stop monologues that would not stop themselves. Thank God for text messages. Not only this, but I had to be confrontational with some. I had to track people down. I had to say some unpopular and hard things to kids and adults that needed to hear them. In short, I had to be a leader.
Coming home, I had to come out of a passive/aggressive style of leadership and into a genuine one. I have learned to avoid responsibility that is not mine. i have learned to say, ‘no’, and in saying it have found excellence in my real duties. I guess 27 is old enough to start learning this stuff, right? So what am i trying to say? i am not popular – or nice – i feel great.