Hello! I am alive and well and have been trying to get a post out forever now it seems. I finished my europe trip and am safe and sound here at home again. The trip shook me up and I have been buried in thought since my return.

The reason for the non posting is because my laptop decided to stop working for me half way through my trip and although I have this computer I am writing on now (mac mini) I am still not all the way settled into this and probably wont be as I see myself getting another laptop early next year after we see what macworld may bring us.

In other quick news, I have decided that twistedsun.net will be going through some changes in the new year. In fact, I have something totally different in store. Ok, not that different but more simplistic for me to use and post to. The goal is to make it as effortless as possible to post new desktops and news and musings on life. It will most likely take the form of a new site all together which I had other plans for but have decided to simplify for the sake of getting something new rolling along.

Don't worry, I have countless images for desktops and when the new site is functional you will hear all about it here and hopefully the transition will go as smoothly as possible and the future is bright.

Thats all I have to mention here in this post, just a quick hello and see you soon. In the mean time you can check out my flickr page, or my photo blog, or my twitter, or my tumblr blog. See you again soon!

Still exploring this never ending city. You can see many other photos on my flickr page which I might update nightly assuming I have internet access in other places I visit. I will expand sometime soon on my thoughts and whatnot for those interested so it tight!

Its been three nights here in London now and waking up today I could be excited. I could be nervous. I could be lonely already. Im not really sure what it is that is stirring in my mind but I am getting ready to head out to central london again to see what I can find today. The last two days have been filled with people, art, and sound as I walked and walked... and walked around the city in various areas. Taking whatever random turns seemed to look interesting. I figure with all the trains around its hard to really get lost because I can always catch one back somewhere familiar. London has been interesting, familiar but distant when I choose to really pay attention to the people around me. Its strange though because I feel at home but also far away. I feel like I have always existed here and I am simply walking though some distant, forgotten memory. Im curious to see what kind of differences I come across as I visit other countries and break away from the comfort of everyone around me speaking english. Im wondering how I will react to everything I encounter.

Anyway, as time goes on and the jetlag finally leaves my blurry mind I will try and write more here in this space as well as get some desktops up perhaps. I just have not had the free time to commit to doing it. I am traveling so all I have is free time but I feel like I should be using that time for exploring and doing what I came to do which is to get lost in the flutter of local life. So thanks for reading and check back sometime soon, plenty more to come...

Well, this month was a crazy one full of work and planing and more work. There has been a serious lack of activity here on the site and Im sorry for that, I have just been that busy this month. It was all for one reason and that is because I am traveling to europe. I mentioned this before on the site a while back and the time has come. I leave for London tomorrow! It's strange, it doesn't feel like I am about to leave on a month long trek through Europe. Im just sitting here surrounded by all of the things I am taking which turned out to be a surprisingly small amount of stuff. Just the basics really. Sorry, my mind is kind of fragmented at the moment after this month. There is so much on my mind!

OK, on to the details. I will be starting in London/England (arriving on the 23rd) and I will be leaving on the 31st for Paris where I will stay for 6 nights. After Paris I will be heading south to Italy to a village called Vernazza which is part of the Cinque Terre and I will stay in that area for 6 nights. After this I will head to Nice/Menton for a couple of days hopefully but this depends on weather or not I can arrange a night train from Nice to my next destination, Barcelona. If all goes according to plan I hope to be able to go directly from barcelona to a city nearby called Girona. At the moment I am booked there for two nights in an amazing little B&B and I may extend my time there depending on how I like it.

From here I will head to Granada or somewhere in that area of Spain and then make my way up to Madrid on the 21st and fly out of Madrid on the 22nd.

Sounds simple enough right? Well, all in all I am fairly calm about it all and I am hoping that it all goes smoothly enough. If you are in any of the areas I will be traveling feel free to send along an email and maybe we can get together.

Stay tuned to this space for updates and desktops along the way. I will post photos on flickr (and here some) the occasional text message to twitter (the hi-fi to the right) and maybe a photo from my phone on my tumblr page when I find hot spots around which I have no idea what to expect really.

So wish me luck and the next time you hear from me I will hopefully be safe and sound in London!

P.S - posted a couple new desktops...

At least I hope to be going. In October/November. SOON! Im not sure how it happened but the time of the year that I promised myself I would travel in is quickly approaching and I am starting to get a bit more serious about plans for the trip. I have been trying to get used to the idea that I will be throwing myself in an area I don't know much of anything about. It's both exciting and greatly intimidating. I am working on making it work financially and logistically and so I am writing here for a call on advice/ suggestions.

I know there are plenty of readers around europe or have traveled there in the past and it would be greatly appreciated if you could take a moment and suggest some places to visit, and maybe just some general advice about traveling there.

At the moment I am thinking of starting off in Spain or somewhere in southern France, heading up through France, and ending up over in England. At least thats the vague overall idea. It will be just me and my backpack for the most part and I hope to do a good amount of camping to save on money spent on Inn's. In fact, thats the number one concern is working out what I can expect as far as where to sleep and how much its going to cost to do so. I hope to have the overall layout of places to travel to before I leave so I can work out train tickets and transportation while I am there.

Hopefully I will be able to pull something off and enjoy myself, meet some new people, take a few zillion photos and have a great time exploring the area.

Feel free to mail me at john(at)twistedsun.net or leave a comment here on this post with suggestions, advice, or lend a floor to sleep on or just tell me I am crazy for trying to toss together a trip like this in under a month on a shoestring budget. Thanks!

P.S- new desktops soon!

This past weekend was a crazy one that had me driving all over Virginia working shows, all country acts that I have never heard of. Thats one genera that I dont really get, modern country. Its really strange! The audio engineer with one of the bands wanted a TON of low end so i brought out some extra subs and he did not really seem to know what he was doing and still could not get what he wanted out of the mix so it was kind of a mess for a while. One of those engineers obsessed with compressors and gates and making live mixing WAY more complicated than it should be. I have become a firm believer in a more simplistic approach to setting up and mixing bands. I wont get into it here because im sure there are not to many people reading the blog here that would care or know what I am talking about and me rambling on to much about it would probably bore 90 percent of you to tears. Well, maybe not to tears, at least I would hope not. Eeeesh... now I'm imagining visitors to my site sobbing uncontrollably as they read what I write here... moving along...



On saturday, however, I skipped out of a show which was just south of DC and drove up there to perform at a show in the city with my friend matt as A Drop In Silence, the electronic music group I am involved in. The event was called simply X. Not simply X but just X. Not just X but X. Get it? Right. Well the show was all about art really and there were three graphic designers (as you can see in the bottom blurry part of the photo above) which were sitting there designing a poster for the event and all of their work was being projected onto the wall to the right there so anyone could watch the thought process behind their designing. Then there were photographers damn near EVERYWHERE running about taking photos of everything you could imagine. I also saw a few videographers milling about with video cameras, one of which was broadcasting the video live to his blog or something like that. And if that was not enough art interaction for you there was a live painter and a BELLY DANCER that was on stage for parts of the night. Oh, and then there was the music. In my mind it was a strange show to perform in some ways because the music was clearly not the focus. I felt that the musicians performing were up there and just kind of faded into the circus of media which in retrospect was pretty fun in a way to be part of this machine that was supposed to be fueled by all of the other creative things happening around the room. But looking back I find that most of the artists were totally in their own world during this event. Not a bad thing but can illustrate even when crammed in a room to create for people live artists can end up being a bit inward moving if that makes any sense.


(this was during our set)

But dont get me wrong, we had a great time performing, it was a really amazing event all in all and I am really happy that we were asked to play. I cant remember performing an event that was documented so well. During our long long long TWO HOUR set we had a constant stream of photographers and video cameras right there behind us nearly the whole time which I did my best to ignore and just do what I do when performing. We ended up playing mostly improvised music for the bulk of the night which was a lot of fun and something we have not done very often live and although the curators encouraged us to keep the music low key we did end up cranking up the volume and getting pretty crazy for a couple songs which they were clearly a little aggravated by but its something that we do and we were performing a show after all and want to represent who we are as artists just the same as everyone else so getting a little crazy here and there is something that is bound to happen.



So later in the night after we performed we drove a few blocks down the street to catch a couple of friends of ours perform down the street at another club. It really was just a huge coincidence that we were performing the same city the same night which was pretty cool I thought. It was great to see them perform as always and a nice way to end the evening with some glitch beat madness from Doofgoblin which performed one of the best sets I have ever heard him perform actually, and MachineDrums non stop dance party set that never disappoints.



After a couple of hours sleep we made the 6 hour drive back home so I could work another show on sunday which nearly killed me after all the other work and performing and driving and whew.... quite a weekend. I have at least two desktops I am getting ready to add but I just don't have time to add them just yet. Soon! Hopefully later today in fact. So stay tuned for more soon and thanks for being patient in these busy months.

It's been a busy month in my life and the site is feeling it. I have plans on posting some info on my new lens and the iphone if I can ever get my act together and sit down to make a write up and take some photos for it. Its just so hard to find free moments for these simple things. C'est la vie.

Anyways, should I make this image into a desktop? What do you think? I also have been posting images pretty regularly over on my new photoblog light.twistedsun.net which has kind of a busted rss feed at the moment but I hope to remedy that as soon as I get a chance to have a chat with my personal coding geek helper over in the Netherlands. (ahem... dave, are you listening?)

Speaking of code, Id like to get this little twitter updater script to NOT add those stupid looking tabbed over dots and just get it more list like. Any suggestions?

Hope to get back to regular posting one of these days, thanks for being patient!

I have launched a new mini-site and I was going to wait a few more days to announce it officially but I have decided that I want to go ahead and get it out there and make it known to everyone here. The site is a photoblog that I will hopefully be updating once each day. The time of day that I actually get around to posting will change depending on my day so don't try and set your clock to the update cycle or anything but I do hope to get a new photo up each day.

I had an older site that I had set up for friends and family where I posted photos that I may not have normally shared publicly. Mostly snapshots from my every day life, at work, traveling, sitting around, anything really. I liked to post a little comment or story or thought with each set of new photos and I really enjoyed doing it. The system I used to update it was very flawed however and so I stopped using it not to long after I had started it. Ever since I have wanted to get a simple photo blog going. Something for those shots I mentioned a moment ago, the everyday ones that I may not want to devote a whole post to here or may not want to post as a desktop for whatever reason.

in the new site you will hopefully see mostly recent photos but I will throw in the occasional older photo if I don't have something new to share. I am using a great bit of web software called pixel post to organize and do all the thinking for me so all I have to do to post is press a couple of buttons and type out a description. Simple is a good thing for a project like this and I am more than excited to announce it to all of you.

On the page you can leave comments on photos which I welcome you do, in fact, i encourage it! If you read something in a comment I have made about the image feel free to start a discussion with your thoughts on the subject. I would love to see it get some feedback and spark some ideas or something of the sort. For instance, if you see an image that you are just dying to see made into a desktop then please speak up and leave a comment and I will see what I can do.

The navigation is very simple I think, there is the home page with the newest photo and on each photo page you can click either the comments link above the image of the "photo info & comments link below the image to call forth the image description and comment field. There is a link there below the image notes to close that area should you not want to post anything but would like to read what I have written about a photo. You can navigate forwards and backwards through photos by either clicking the current image to go back or simply use the previous/next links in the white area below the image. There is also a browse page link at the top where you can see thumbnails of all photos posted and an about page which im sure you can figure out.

So that's that, my newest project is online and ready to go. I have two more in the pipeline that I can not wait to announce and get moving on but you will just have to wait for that time to come. So till next time, enjoy the photoblog and I will see you again here soon!

The new sites address is light.twistedsun.net

Yes, this is another one of those annoying posts where I talk about not posting. I think its best to look at it as a post where I can talk about what I have been up to as of late. Well, I have been busy working shows for a long while but this week has slowed quite a bit and has given me a chance to get caught up with a couple of things that I needed to do like some other web projects and relaxing a bit and other such lonely escapades. Any of you remember that trip I took out to Utah and the South Western US? Remember how my car was broken into in San Fransisco? Well, the insurance money has finally come in from that stolen camera gear, camping equipment, clothing, and plenty of other things that I miss having around. So I am in the process of buying back a couple of camera things and camping stuff that I will post about sometime because I like to share the things that I get because I put so much time researching products before I buy them that It makes sense to share what I have learned through all that research. Anyways, it will be good to have some of my stolen things back in place in my life.

So, John, what about your photography, what the hell happened here? Where are all the beautiful desktops and the like?? Well I have been cameraless for a couple of weeks after letting my brother borrow my 5d for a trip to an island somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico but its back in my hands and ready to shoot for me again. Funny how much I missed having it around. So I will start shooting again here soon and get some new desktops up. Also, I will be starting a new photo blog soon. Something I started to do a while back for friends and family but I think that this time I am going to make it public. Should be fun I think. And then there is the other web project I still have all the intentions in the world of getting on its feet one of these days so who knows when that might pop into existence.

Well, thats all for now, ill talk to everyone again soon.

Surely most of you know that I love music and some of you may know that I host a radio show on a local collage station and I thought I would give it a little write up here for anyone interested. My show is on Tuesdays from 1-3pm Eastern US Time, not sure which time zone that is technically is but post in the comments if you know. You can access the radio stations live stream by visiting www.wuag.net or just click here to download the stream file to your streaming radio app of choice...

It is a standard rotation show which means I choose 8 songs each hour from a pre selected group of about 100 new cds that get regularly played during the daytime hours at the station. So 8 songs an hour I am a bit restricted but it gets more fun when I break away from those boundaries a bit and play some things I bring along with me to play.

If you do listen in to hear me make a silly fool of myself on the radio leave a comment here and let me know what you thought!

Well, I got my laptop back and its working good as new. I went ahead and stuck a 100gb 7200 speed drive in here to replace the tiny 60gb drive that came in it and filled out the ram to a full 2 gb as well. Hopefully that will be equal to some more speed and easier work for me. I am running the full version of the new rapidweaver without any serious issues to speak of, I will just have to keep messing with it to see how these neat new features work. In other news, the reason I have not been posting much is because, as always these days, I have been so busy with work and travel. Last week i was in nashville for a couple days working sound at a show featuring an elvis impersonator which was pretty interesting to say the least. So now I can tell people that I have done sound for both Elvis, AND the Beatles. Impressive, no?

It feels like I have been anywhere but here updating for all of you loyal readers and I hope to see that change as, once again, I am streamlining the site to try and make updates go easier and quicker for me. One of the things I have decided to change for now is to remove the podcast. I just have not had time to get them put together and released and its just sitting there dead in the water so until I have time again to put them together I am putting that on hold and removing it from the site. I will, however make all of the episodes available, just not in a fancy rss feed or anything. Eventually I am going to re-brand the show and start it up again under a new name but until then just browse through and check out the 10 zillion or so other ones out there.

I dont want to go on for to long here seeing as there are only a handful of you really interested in any of this kind of personal blah blah blah. So I will hopefully get this site moving along better again but how many times have I made THAT promise on these pages? aaahhhh life...

also, what do you think of the new slight design changes like bigger text here, a darker outer shell, archive by year, and new header. I decided to stop using that crazy script to cycle through images for now.

Well, after waiting till the last possible minute to do it, I finally took my macbook in for repairs. There were a bunch of odd little things wrong with it that have needed attention for quite some time now and although it will be nice to get it fixed up, I am now without my laptop which has stealthy become a vital part of my everyday life. It was my communication, my PDA, my music, my tool for everything I do so it wil be missed while it is off to the repair shop. Meanwhile I will be here on a mac mini that I have set up as my temporary home, I have all the basics up and going so I can still get along well enough. Just chained to this desk is all, no more late night computing in bed.. ha, maybe thats a good thing right?! right. Not to sure why I am posting about this although im sure there must be some of you out there at least mildly interested. So wish my macbook good luck on its trip to the repair shop...

Last month this site managed to pull in 20,000 visits some how. I wanted to say thanks to all of you who have stuck around through this period of less activity around here. I find that I have many nice looking photos that I would love to get posted as desktops but I never seem to be near my photo drive when I am posting something here. Maybe tonight I will try and get a couple of new ones going for everyone. Anyone at all out there curious about what my plans are this year? Yes? No? Wait, you over there in the corner, what was that? You could care less? hmmm.. Well I will fill you in anyway. Im working off debt on my credit card that I found while on that trip out west adn then I will imediatly start saving for a trip to europe. Yep, you heard it here first. I'm going to Europe in a few months. Nothing to specific planned yet, just putting the information out there and you can do what you will with it.

As always, in the back of my mind I have full intentions of getting some more prints for sale on the site here and as always I am looking to get my new desktop site project underway in the future. I think I may have the money to spare to get it up and running sometime shortly but I cant promise anything! I just know that when it does manage to poke its head out into the light of the day that its going to be a lot of fun for anyone that loves photography and the world around you.

Sometimes I wish this blog was more personal so I could rant on and on about my life but I dont feel that its the place to do that. Gotta keep this thing pretty straightforward because you never know who is looking over your shoulder with these things. In other news, I do have some music for a podcast and maybe sometime soon I will put another one out. It seems like it has been forever has it not? Well, im off to start a new hi-fi post. Stay happy readers, your future depends on it! ta.

Wow, what a weekend. 3 days of very little sleep, lots of heavy lifting, and performing wore me out! I know a few different people took photos of when I was performing so I will try and get some up sometime for anyone curious. Im not sure what else to say without writing a long elaborate story about each night. I just wanted to hop on and mention it was a great time and post a few photos from the show. Enjoy! On a side note, i have a few desktops that I am getting ready to post, finally!

The CD's are in after a month of work and they are looking and sounding great. For those of you who don't know I am half of an electronic music duo called A Drop In Silence. About a month ago we decided to work on a split release with a frind of ours Doofgoblin and release it at a festival that we will be performing at this weekend in Chapel Hill, NC called Signal Festival. The cd's will be officially available at the show and then online afer that. We only made 250 copies for sale on this first limited edition run so get 'em while they are hot.

Im sure some of you are wondering, what does it sound like? Well... thats a good question and it is often hard to explain to people. Some of it is danceable, some of it is somewhat agressive, some of it is more relaxed. It's sound, its music, what more do you need to know? We will be putting together an ep sampler mix with a little from each song soon and I will try and remember to link to it here for those interested. Sound good? Good.

Good question! I think I have gotten a bit pre occupied with my life recently and have not had as much time to post to the site. I hope to have a handful of new desktops up in the coming week for all of you craving some new desktops (and I know you are out there) In other news I will be doing some maintenance/server clearing to the site soon so you may see a day of downtime at some point in the next week or two. Also, thanks to all of my visitors to the site. I noticed that my numbers are right around 18,000 visits a month these days which is strange to think about that many people coming to the site but its fun and I hope you all enjoy it!

Also, I am still craving donations to help get my new desktop project underway. MANY thanks to David and Fabian, a couple regulars around here for their help in this department.

Well, thats all for now so until next time, have a good one... Au Revoir.

Remember a while back I posted about a cool new product from korg, the Kaos Pad 3? Well, I finally got my hands on one. Actually, I bought one of these as well as a Microkontrol midi controller for all of my midi controlling needs. I was already familiar with the microkontrol so the real surprise here is the KP3... Man this thing is fun. I have it set up so this is chained together with my older KP2 so I can layer effects and cuts and samples together with them both and now that I have started to get the hang of it I have been having a lot of fun messing with it. I will record something to give you an idea of what i am doing with it. Mostly chopping up songs and pretty much remixing them on the fly. The new KP3 sounds much better than the older ones, has much nicer sampling capabilities, has a higher resolution of control on the touch pad, and many other great improvements. I can not wait to take this thing out to play life sometime! the day can not come soon enough... actually its not to far away, my next show is at this years Signal Festival in the Chapel Hill area in NC. Here is a link for more info, if you are in the area and you enjoy dance, idm, hip-hop, electro, indie rock, or pretty much any other genera that involves electronic music then you should some out to the festival, its going to be GREAT...

For those of you who follow this page rather than the desktop page (which I prefer because then I know my rambling gets read by at least someone), there is a new desktop up that you can see above of the stairs. A nice one I thought. In other news I never do this and try to remain pretty low key about it usually but Id like to open up the floor for donations. Any extra money I can get right now will go straight into my new desktop site project which will be a collective of like minded photographers The will be posting desktops via a blog with stories/thoughts about the photos. I am looking to get people involved from all around the world so it should be fun for everyone that loves a good desktop and good quality photography.

I just need to gather 100 or so dollars for the hosting to get all se up and then within a week or two I hope to have it up and running in its early stages of existence. Frequent readers know that I have been planing this for quite some time now and I am all set to get it up and running so every little bit helps! So THANK YOU for your consideration and even if you cant give anything right know you can look forward to the new site in the next month or two. It should be a lot of fun.

Also, I have jumped on board with the Twitter phenomenon and I am working out the kinks but you will notice the latest update on the side bar there and I will be using it as a way to share what I have been listening to in a quick and easy way. Anyways, thanks for reading and ill talk to you again soon.

When I was younger my grandmother owned a farm and on that farm there was a nice big barn and in that barn a scene was filmed in a movie called Billy Bathgate. So during the filming I was to young to really remember much of anything but I do have a couple of photos I thought I would share here just for the heck of it. Kinda funny if you ask me!

First up we have Dustin Hoffman, my mom, my brother (in Dustin's arm) and myself (looking really pissed off for some reason?)



And then we have the funny one here which is a photo of my brother and I sitting in the doorway of a trailer but look who is holding the door open for us.. friggin Steve Buscemi!



Maybe this is only funny to me, who knows...

The past couple of days have been full of piecing together songs for a split release with another musician. For those of you who may not know, I am one half of an electronic music group called 'a drop in silence' and we have been playing together for nearly 6 or so years now. The other artist on this cd is a super nice guy and a great musician named Doofgoblin. It will be released at the end of april and I am really excited about it. Im sure I will share more details when there are more to share but for now, here is a press shot we took yesterday because we have nothing for press use.

Also, a new hi-fi is about half done and will be posted soon, some great music on it to check out so look here again soon for that. Till then have a good one everyone!

(or Daemon... whatever)

Tell me, am I the only one that imagines a little red deamon sitting in some cave somewhere with mail piled up to the celieng around him when I get a mail bounced back to me from an address that does not exist? I cant help but imagine this deamon endlessly going through mail that has no home to go to and typing up these replies to everyone. Always a little different but always unusually personal and nice in the way they were written.

Maybe my head is on the moon today or something, who knows.

No, I don't know french. Just putting my translation widget to use and soemtimes english gets old. So anyway, I spent a few hours out at a lake today and took some photos for the first time in a while. It was nice to break out the camera again. I need to get back into the swing of the shutter. There is something really calming about that click. So anyways, enjoy these shots and the couple of desktops from the afternoon.







Read More...

So what have I been up to lately? Well, working all I can work on a few web projects, working on audio installs around town, getting ready for a busy spring of audio production/ shows. outside of work I am getting ready for a few performances with A Drop In Silence in april as well as getting together music to put out an EP with that project which is going to be a lot of fun and I am sure I will write more about that sometime soon. I have almost gotten all of my notes together for my new web project and will be buying up some new server space and domain name for that soon which is exciting to me. It will be a desktop/ photography blog that will (if all goes according to plan) feature photographers from around the world. I have talked about doing this for a long long time now so it is nice to be so close to announcing it officially! I would also like to get a couple new episodes of the podcast up. I have a new soundscape from my west trip and some more life music. Yep.

The title of this post is the name of a book that I just read by a japanese author by the name Haruki Murakami that I just finished reading. All in all its one of the best books I have read in a long long time. In the book he seems to have a way of wording things that are hard to put into words. It is a very simple story of a mans life, more specifically, the romantic side of this life from birth to 'current day' when the narrator is telling the story. I dont know what to say about it beyond this. I just really admired the simplicity in the writing and would recommend it to anyone looking for a good read. Also, I have recently read another book by the same author called "The Wind Up Bird Chronicle " which was much longer and much more involved and brought in some fantasy like elements into the story but was also a great read.

I think the next book I will be reading is one that I have read before but it has been years and years since I have read it so I have decided to revisit it, its called 'The Solitaire Mystery'. Anyone else heard of it? Great book... Its nice to be reading again.

Ok, till next time then... I think it will be a HI-Fi...

A day at the beach for FBD version 3.0



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Well I have been back home for a good couple of weeks now and looking back on my recent trip really does feel like looking back on a story that I read. I am still convincing myself that It really happened. I have gotten right back to work and I am currently juggling 4 different web projects. One of them is my upcoming desktop site which will not only have my new desktops but other photographers as well. I will be drawing up invites and working out the details in the coming month and hopefully be online by the end of March.

Let's see, what else. I have posted a couple of random desktops that I have been meaning to post for a while now so you can head over and check those out if you are interested. Also, I wanted to ask if anyone reads my music posts? It would be nice to know that some of you read them and check out the artists I talk about. Music is such a big part of who I am and I love to share it with others. But I'm sure I have already mentioned this a thousand or so times before so I apologize for sounding like a broken record on the matter.

Anyone else seen the movie Pan's Labyrinth? I saw it for the second time today and I find it to be such a fascinating movie. Really really violent which was interesting because I cant remember seeing a fantasy film like this one that was so violent. I thought that the time period that it took place in with the civil war and whatnot added a lot to the violence but the director made it work so well within the movie. I usually don't have all that high of a tolerance for really violent movies but I think that as long as it it is in place to invoke something in you to relate to the characters and story line then I can stand to watch.

Thats all for now, I just wanted to get an update in while I had a minute here. Talk to you guys again soon!

Well, here I am, back home and looking back at what now feels like an elaborate dream of some sort. Its feels like each day I was on my trip felt so long and full and wonderful and complete but in retrospect I feel as though the whole experience was nothing but a book I read or a collection of memories to wonderful to be my own. Surely I just imagined the whole thing in my mind. Then I look back over the hundreds of photos I took along the way to mark the journey, to offer some sort of proof that it really happened and the feelings come dripping back into my mind as though making a pot of drip coffee. The ground up beans are the photos, and I am the water, as the water pours over the beans it slowly becomes whole. Ha... maybe I'm just thinking of this silly analogy because I am sitting in a coffee shop. Who knows.

Here is a random bit from my journal about one of the last mornings I had out in the desert of the western US...

"...chasing the sun rising this morning i could not help but be reminded of sun set with its layers of light taking over the earth in front of me. i felt as though i was driving time backwards like my car and myself were sitting still in the universe yet the earth spun backwards around me like i was winding it up for night to arrive all over again through another beautiful sunset but then the sun was not fading into night, it was welcoming me to a new day..."

So with that new day I found myself driving back east. A long long drive turns out. I ended up driving nearly 24 hours straight only stopping for about an hour of that time for gas and food. It was such a long blur of a drive, I drifted through states as though I was simply skipping through the country. Im not sure why but I just kept driving and driving until I found myself in Memphis in front of my brothers apartment. I remember how disorienting it was to watch the sun rising again after driving through the night. I looked up into the sky and noticed birds migrating, hundreds of them almost filling the morning sky with V shaped patterns of birds soaring through the sky like a huge magic carpet. I couldnt help but feel a connection to their travels and I think that was the point in which I realized that I had to keep traveling. I knew that this was just the beginning. Then at that moment I felt resolved to get back home and start working towards my next adventure right away.

This lead my mind to think of being home and all of the work I needed to catch up on and how many projects I want to get going and I felt both excited for the future and a little nervous and I felt my life at home weighing down onto my shoulders and I felt the weight of my life coming back to me. I figure the Nada Surf song, Do it Again held some interesting advice for this feeling in the verse, "Maybe this weight is a gift.."

So at any rate, I'm back home in one piece and I am getting my thoughts together for the next few months of my life. I have a number of web projects to work on, audio production work to get back into, music to be written and played with matt and A Drop In Silence (my 'band'), stories to read, things to clean, insurance claims to be filed (from the robbery), prints to finally mail (from my christmas contest), photos to go through, a life to get back in the swing of living, and countless other odds and ends of things to jump into the middle of.

As for this site, I will get back to my regular postings and desktop additions, after all of these stories and things I am thinking I may continue to write about life and living from time to time because it has been nice writing like this. I will also be getting my new site rolling in a month or so when I get all of the details worked out. It is going to be great and I cant wait to tell you all of the details so stay tuned for more...


Songs of the moment: "Waiting For My Real Life To Begin" by Collin Hay and

"Woolly Mammoth's Mighty Absence" by The Microphones... below are the words to this song...


Quickly forgetting was the way I lived my life.
Try telling me your name or try telling me "don't worry".
Everything I knew would quickly wither and die
All echoes would be buried in the sound of living,
The sound of feet slapping sidewalk
That was me - treasure hunting, I would bury what I found
That was me - the gold digger, underground
Quickly forgotten was this forgetful way of life
When I left home, when I lived as if I'd died.
Sitting on a rock and doing nothing, alone for so long
In the dark I found my sight
There you name was, written large in letters bright!
And there my faith was!
"Worry not" declared the night.
In the great void of my life, I could feel the shape of what was missing
Like the way the Woolly Mammoth stands so tall and bold in our minds
I was shaking at the size of my cry
And the true love it described.
I know a new day is dawning now and so ends my holy night.
It's back to the world I go, back to little girls and shows,
and their worldly woes, all unfurling clothes.
Will I carry myself slowly enough to remember?
I sit on a dark rock doing nothing, still just crowded in.
There's the love in flesh and bones.

Here are some more photos so you guys can get your fix. Today I am starting my long winding journey back home and I will write more about this sometime soon. Don't forget to read down into the previous posts, there are a couple good stories down there...

Arches...






Read More...

you have to remind yourself from time to time that there is a life outside of the internet, cell phones, and fashion..

This afternoon around 4:30 or so I made my way out to a perfect spot on a rock out on the rim of the grand overlook here in the Island In The Sky. The land below this cliffs edge had already begun to transform as the sun sank into the western horizon. Bit by bit each layer of this wonderful place began to be overtaken by shadow and every peak lit itself up as if taking one las nice big stretch before climbing into bed and the canyons all seemed so peaceful at that moment.

Before I knew it the sun was hidden totally behind the farthest reach of the horizon in the distance and the highest points on the highest canyon rims before me were glowing red and then quickly fell to a more pale shade of pink. At this point the landscape began a second transformation and this time there were still layers of light yet to pass their way through the canyons below. Even darker shadows began to take over areas and then looking toward where the sun once was I could see that last gasp of orange light stretching its self across the horizon and finally moved onto wake the eastern world from its slumber.

During this sunset something else was happening as well, the moon was there all along as if waiting for its chance to shine its light on the world below. Looking up to the moon I thought to myself how the moon is nothing but a mirror reflecting the light of the sun as though the sun was teaming up with the moon to give the gift of light at night. At one point there in between the day and the night I found that I had two shadows which is something that I have never seen happen before. One cast off into the distance with its orange glow and the other laying almost directly from overhead with a blueish tint. It was a wonderful feeling there at that moment like I was trapped between night and day.

Also as the sun set, the last of the other visitors left and went along on their way and from what the rangers told me earlier in the day I was the only person staying the night out there in the park and this left me to realize that I had this whole island to myself. The entirety of this wonderful moon lit landscape was mine for the night. Along with this realization came that I was totally alone there sitting in the cold of the night on the edge of the rim of this great canyon. I started to feel lonely and as time went by I came to find that I could not remember a time in my life when I had felt so alone in the world. I imagined each time the cold night breeze brushed against my face that a ghost was there making its presence known to me. I felt the cold stone beneath me and felt that I could connect with the spirit of this place at that moment and knew that it would take care of me. It calmed me to think of this and I felt at ease there looking out into the landscape of the night. What was once brilliant orange was now beautiful shades of grey and blue and as I looked out into the night It hit me that this is why I had come out here to this area. To feel the force of the planet, to feel the presence of the seemingly never ending world and feel humbled by its greatness.

And in that moment I felt so alive it was hard to bare, in that moment of total awareness and in the black cold of a winters night I felt free and ready to move on and discover the rest of my life somehow transformed by the great unknown of this land as it spoke to me and in this moment I felt peace.



Great Ghosts, pt. 2... later that evening after shooting a handful of photos...

As I was out shooting I heard a sound in the near distance, close yet far and I thought it to be a crow seeing as I had seen them around so often. After a few moments of hearing it It hit me that it was not the sound of a crow at all, it was some sort of mammal but what? I wisked my flashlight around to the direction of the sound and the beam of light caught a flicker of something among the giant rocks of the canyon. I could swear the flicker were eyes. As quickly as they were there I shone my light back to where the flicker was but they were gone. Then moments later the sound came again and again I shone my light over in the direction of the sound and I found that flicker of light again and again I saw eyes and this time it was obvious. Two yellow eyes staring right at me. I decided that I was not welcome there anymore, besides, I was the intruder here, not whomever those eyes belonged to.

So I gathered my camera and my book and stepped back to the trail when once again I heard the sound of whatever animal was out there creeping around in the shadows of the moon, calling out into the void only this time the sound was closer to me and I turned my flashlight back on and once again locked into a staring match with those two yellow eyes. This time I found that they were obviously right there on the path of the trail that I had to take to get out of there and to the right of me was a huge cliff and to the left of me was another cliff of sorts that I could not get around easily. The trail was my only way to get back to my car which rested a half a mile or so away. So I sat there and stared into these eyes for what felt like forever as I ran through my mind what to do next. I decided that I had to keep moving so I figured I needed to try and scare whatever this thing was off so first I flickered my flashlight in its direction and made some sort of odd sound to try and spook it. As I flickered the light its direction the eyes vanished from sight and I had no idea where it disappeared to. I did not hear any movement at all which made me nervous. No rocks or sand shifting, no rustle of plants, nothing. The eyes just vanished as quickly as they appeared and I no longer heard its calling.

Funny thing was while this was happening to me, all the while something repeated in my head that I had heard from a silly little campfire story time type thing led by a ranger the last time I was out in this area. The ranger talked for a while about animals in the area and there was one phrase that stuck in my head repeating as if trying to make my heart race any faster than it already was. That phrase was "...eyes in the front, likes to hunt. Eyes to the side, likes to hide." The yellow eyes that I had stared into were definitely to the front, no question about it.

So heart racing I left my light on and stomped slowly forward down the trail toward where I had encountered the eyes and made myself look as big and menacing as possible stomping and ever so slowly marching forward on the trail. I continued to shine my light around into the shadows and through the brush and trees but thankfully I did not come across those eyes again. As I made it up to the main overlook where the sidewalk began I heard the animal calling yet again but this time in the distance. A couple of photos later I was back in my car heading towards my camp site thankful but oh so very curious what I had come in contact with out there...


Song of the moment, "Great Ghosts" as performed by The Microphones on their live in Japan album. It's the first track on there and one of the most wonderful songs ever written. I promise.

(strange choice of exposure no?)

How could you not feel humbled to the point where your heart aches and your eyes sting while looking out into this beautiful landscape? You cant help but want to throw your arms out into the air like a birds wings, get a good running start, kick off the ledge of the cliff and soar through the landscape like one of these lucky crows that seem to be everywhere I go.

It's hard to believe that some people come through here, get out of their cars, walk the hundred or so feet to the overlook only to turn back around not 1 minute later to hop back in their car and drive off. I hear them say things like, "oh honey, this is just like a grand canyon type overlook, thats all... hm... ok well lets go, I want to get to arches before the end of the day..." Oddly enough, this happened at around 4pm which was only a bout an hour before sunset and arches was a good 30 minute drive at least... I think Edward Abbey, a well known writer from this area said it right when he said these words about this area in the introduction to his book Desert Solitare...

"Do not jump into your automobile next June and rush out to the Canyon country hoping to see some of that which I have attempted to evoke in these pages. In the first place you can't see anything from a car; you've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk, better yet crawl, on hands and knees, over the sandstone and through the thornbush and cactus. When traces of blood begin to mark your trail you'll see something, maybe..." -Edward Abbey from the introduction to his book Desert Solitare

I can't say that even I have seen this place as he describes it but I like to get as close to that description as I can and I can only hope that I will be back here again to crawl through these rocks and canyons. Smiling, sweating, bleeding, and taking in the whole of the land around me once again. At any rate, walking up to the edge of the rim of the huge outermost shell of these canyons I welcomed myself to this Island in the Sky...

My legs are just starting to calm themselves down and stop aching now that I have had a chance to set up camp and eat some dinner. I went on a long 12ish mile hike today which was wonderful and as I mentioned before, this place is simply amazing to hike through. The fact that it was covered in snow in a lot of places was the icing on the cake (kind of almost literally if you think about it...). Although some of the passes between canyons were a little more difficult to traverse while covered in slippery snow or some of the straight ways sticky with thick mud, I still found the hike to be wonderful. My only wish was that I could have set up came and stayed the night out there. I was jealous of another hiker that I came across a few times in the past couple days which turns out was also from NC. He was on a three day stay out in the canyons. For years it seems I have dreamed of coming out here during the winter when the crowds were gone and I always hoped that I would see these beautiful canyons covered in a blanket of snow. I always imagined it to be such a contradictory thing , snow in the desert that is. Now that I am here and living that dream it is nearly exactly as I thought it might be. Although I am here a couple weeks after the snow fall there was still an ample amount of snow covering the more shadowy areas of the canyon. The white mixing in with the red and the browns was just as great as I always daydreamed about.

Tomorrow will be the last morning spent in this area, after this I will be heading north to the northern part of Canyonlands National Park, The Island In The Sky. Which is named all to well. The towering view of the whole of the area is nothing short of stunning and I can't wait to get up there. So with that, I am going to get some sleep and I will talk to you again sometime soon.

(I will post this entry and the one previous in the morning on my way through Moab but I am afraid you will have to wait another day or so for photos because I want to get a move on, my trip is drawing to its last few days which is both exciting and really depressing but I will get to that another day...)

There is something really incredible about being so far away from a city at night. I believe I spoke of just how dense the blanket of stars can be at night but now the moon has come out as well and it is like an entire different world out here when the moon is out. Even now, it's only half full yet it lights up the ground and landscape around me. It is easy to walk about with no flashlight and everything has a beautiful subtlety to it that is like being on another world all together. It's just so amazing to see and exist within moonlight like this. As I walk I actually find that I have a shadow cast at my feet at night. With the night, however, also comes the cold air which swallows any warmth the sun managed to muster up during the day almost instantly. By the time morning comes everything, the rocks, the plants, even the sand is covered by a thin blanket of frost. I just cant get over this idea because I have always remembered it being so unbearably hot out here...

I was hoping to be out backpacking while here in Canyonlands which is where I am at the moment but due to the br