“It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s a potential album cover!” – Neuron.Dreamtime.Entertainment & Managment.Committee.Llc

There have been many moments like this one, right now. A moment framed by realizing how much time has passed since the last time I made a post on this site. This time it’s been 2 years. Back when the collaboration with my ol’ buddy Dave Miller dropped, Moth to Flame.

When writing these posts I try to strike a balance between three things: the music (or art), my mental state (journaling), and a general exercise in writing (poetry, prose, ponderings, iteration, etc). But sometimes, most of the time, I do not finish the writing in one sitting so I save it as a draft where it sits to collect a decimal of digital dust. Then one day, months later, I go back to read what I wrote, then promptly delete it. Rinse and repeat.

The first draft of this post in particular was in March (2026). Right now it is a week into the last week of August. In just a couple months weeks the leaves will start to change (news flash, they already are), Summer will wave goodbye and Autumn will give way to Winter. Rinse and repeat. But I digress. Or do I?

Committing to the bit, while listening to this latest version of the unreleased and still very much in-progress Neuron Dreamtime album I feel it’s closer than it’s ever been to being finished. In many ways it still carries the theme I had intended when it all started to coalesce under the weight of the creative process, albeit at this point in time it is much more personal. It’s really very important to me now and I cannot wait to share it with the world and finally stop listening to it myself. Rinse and repeat.

Apart from this seemingly Sisyphus-style of creative method (see: insanity), the work does continue, even when nothing is being done and I slide down the hill holding back the weight of all that makes me, Me, as I memeify and continue to change as I age. The feedback loop I put myself through at this stage of ‘putting an album together’ (see: insanity) is tedious and unrewarding at times but maybe, just maybe, it makes some sort of difference to the art. There are nights where, just before bed, I don the headphones and listen to the latest version of whatever mixes the album may consist. A playlist of works-in-progress that I try to let go of and just listen to as an observer and not as a progenitor. An experience that lingers on into my dreams where the melodies and rhythms plant themselves under a new light in my waking consciousness…

Then I start to hum new parts at breakfast, rearrange the track-list during coffee/poops and by evening… well, rinse and repeat.

This is the way it is because this is the way it is.

Rinse and repeat.
Ok, I’ll stop now.

‘Til next time

Much love
-L

Here it is in all it’s glory!

This album was recorded in bathrooms and closets, nurseries and bedrooms. Within these digitized wave-forms are the sounds of our surroundings, our families and our lives. Music imbued with our humanity, our fear and our hope.

Reminder that purchase of the album on Bandcamp gets you two bonus songs.

The second single from the Moth To Flame project was let loose upon the internet on Wednesday. “Cinder” is one of our favorite tracks on the album. It has an eerie quality to it that took over early in the process. Dave has his own meaning for the lyrics he wrote and I have my own interpretation of what the song is about as well. We hope the listener finds their own meaning.

This whole album has been an experiment of sorts. We both just wanted to create something together, something that was unequivocally ours by melding our sensibilities together. It’s certainly not perfect like a AAA studio album and we knew that’d be the case from the start. We did our best to not chase the perfect take, although a couple songs did elicit that from us towards the end.

Mixing and mastering. To me they are almost one in the same. I think a really good mix probably doesn’t need to be “mastered” per se. I just try to keep an eye on clipping and watching my frequencies so that everything that’s in the song has a nice little spot to sit in the spectrum. Sounds easy I guess but sometimes I get so full of doubt about my ability that I start to overthink and run in circles. But I think I’ve leveled up with this project as I’ve modified my workflow within FLStudio to be more efficient. I made it a mantra to “don’t get it perfect, get it done”.

Album out this Monday, July 22nd @ https://moth-to-flame.bandcamp.com/album/moth-to-flame

Debut self-titled album coming July 22, 2024!

Hello again you lot. It has been, what? A year and a half since my last post here. Well what can I say, life has me busy and exhausted but it’s all good. The kid is growing and learning at an exponential rate. It’s incredible. Neuron Dreamtime music is at a standstill but it’s all good. Instead, I spent what free time I had during the last year recording music with a lifelong friend, David Miller. We learned to play guitar together, we’re still neighbors to this day and we are super excited for this project that we’ve titled ‘Moth To Flame’. It’s all good.


(Scroll to the bottom for a visualization video for the first track “Healing Winds“)
(Visit Bandcamp to preorder a pysical or digital copy)

It is a six track self-titled album with a runtime of 26 minutes. It all started in the spring of ’23 when David and I reconnected with our old past time of jamming acoustic guitars on the porch. Soon he picked up on using Audacity to record and Google Drive to share tracks. Then it was off to the races. And it was all good.

Once we had the songs we wanted I would then spend a few months mixing and mastering and driving myself insane to the best of my current ability. Let’s be honest, we are both very much aware that this album is not perfect, that was never the goal, we just did what we did with what we had in the allotted time we have as family men. The building blocks for some of the songs date back to our late teens. We must be finally mature enough in both mind and spirit to put something cohesive like this together. These songs will forever have a special place in my heart. The whole process was cathartic to say the least. It was all good.

Anyway, I’ve rambled on enough. I will be updating the site once ‘Moth To Flame’ releases by embedding the Bandcamp player into the “Collaborations” page.

Here is a visualization video for “Healing Winds”.

Thanks for stopping by and reading and listening and allowing us into your lives.
-LM

The following is the blog post turned script for episode 3 of Mind Overrun.

To start, as I alluded to in the first episode, I have a sort of fear of public speaking, good old fashion stage fright. This podcast is an exercise at confronting that fear.

Second, I am to be a father next year. With my wife and I expecting our first. I find myself in an introspective space. A place of vulnerability and potential. And I ask myself the questions I’m sure most first time fathers ask themselves. What will I teach our child? Will I succeed in being a parent and raise an intelligent and thoughtful individual? Will I be a cool Dad? 

So with these audio recordings I think about our child growing up and the probability of them becoming curious about what I “do” or what the possibilities are and in a realistic sense if I were to be struck down tomorrow or fifty years from now, at least there’s a small remnant of me left behind. In a way these episodes are for the kid, like lore notes or journal entries in a post apocalyptic video game. Because I know one thing for sure, all of our time is limited on this planet and you never know when your number might be up. There is no such thing as time to waste, nor time to throw away. And these words and the words I share with friends are here for posterity’s sake. For as long as there is a way to store and retrieve it. For the sake of always being able to hear my voice or read my words and feel the love. For however long that may last. Impermanence rules all but the chain of life runs forever.

I hope to continue creating after the initial months of our beloved newborn noob. I know I will lack sleep and have very little free time but as time passes I’m sure I’ll find new ways and adopt a newly evolved process. 

Time is the most valuable thing and love is the most precious. And with those two things you can find peace. Whatever I may find myself doing I will do so with the same love and attention. So, sure, not everything ever goes as planned but everything happens anyway and time ticks and our hearts beat the countdown to our final exhale. And as we ride the spiral we still share and relate. We still bond and create. We can still give meaning to everything close to us.

My process is one of play and exploration. One of mining the depths of improvisation and synchronicity in an attempt to capture or at least imitate the magic that is found. Iterations often follow, as a brief change in perspective can open other doors. So try things in different ways. Play but pay attention. And always hold sincere intentions.

To create is to wield the power of the divine. Harness the universal expansion to bring novelty and meaning into existence where there was nothing before. When I paint, or produce music, I feel as if I am part conduit and part conductor. A receiver of consciousness that translates into movement, the coding of life, of experience. Conjuring islands to sprout in the sea of impermanence.

Now that our greatest collaboration is on its way, I can’t help but feel that I now have more confidence in my choices, in my identity, in my power of will. Doubt and mistakes will never go away but my relationship to them has changed. My perspective has been altered. And with it, so too will my creative process adapt and survey new lands.

Check out Mind Overrun on Anchor.fm and Spotify. You can also find it through the Google Podcasts app and in a couple other places. Still working on getting it as wide a release as possible. On the podcast I talk with friends and people I know about interesting topics concerning inspiration, motivation and the occasional weird or funny things that float into our minds. It’s all a work in progress and I hope it finds its audience.

-L

Forging ahead on a forgotten path, nothing is guaranteed except nothing will last.
Perception changing like the sun crossing the sky, we can know how and we can ask why.
Our steps fade as do our laughs, in every fleeting moment its all we have.
Unity bound by cosmic rule, divided by time, combined in true.

Finally finding time to coalesce some photography, video, audio, words and ideas into their respective places. My poor back has suffered for a week due to my poor posture on the flight home from Florida. I just had to look out the window for nearly the entire trip. Watching the Earth below go from light reflecting waves of ocean and swamp into the rolling hills and hollows of home, as the clouds meandered and shrouded as they pleased. The evening job hasn’t helped much, but the coworkers have. I work with some wonderful people who can always make me laugh.

The new album has been growing into something really special. I’d say it’s somewhere near half complete. Most of the mixes are in a comfortable place and I’ll be coaxing out some vocals within the next couple months. Then it’s off to mastering, then out to the world.

As for art, there are some small things that have manifested, a couple paintings and drawings connected to the short horror story (Flayed In Exile) that I was lucky enough to have published last year in audio/podcast form for Hawk and Cleaver’s “The Other Stories”. While the short is only just a chapter in a larger story that lay dormant currently, the images reinforce the direction I’m going and hint at twists and turns I have plotted out, so I don’t know when or if they will be shared.

Other things that are bubbling to the surface as I begin to block out time for Spring weather activities and personal goals. Including a podcast of my own. Probably free-form format with smaller bits breaking up a fifteen to twenty minute conversation or monologue. Still bouncing ideas off friends and family. Still incubating.

There. I did it. First post this year updating visitors new and old about the connectivity sparking behind the scenes. It can be difficult sometimes to find a reason to update or blog, especially when I purposefully shy away from social media because I know how much of a brain-hacking time-suck it can be to me with little to no benefit. It’s hooked me before and can do it again. Instead I choose to give attention to that which I want to grow.

I try to limit my “scrolling” to no more than an hour a day, which distances me from the FOMO and other traps of an engineered algorithm tuned to keep the dopamine loops rolling for as long as possible. But sometimes with that distance comes a quelling of the urge to share things on here, my own little nook on the internet.

Till next time (which will probably be when the album is done), remember to give attention toward that which you want to grow. Cultivate discipline which will pollinate motivation and bloom as inspiration. If you fall out of it, rise again like the sun.

I am still. I am here.
–L

To do creative work one must not wait for inspiration or motivation, one must do the work. To do the work is to appease the Muses. They cater to the devotion of the attempt, to the ritual of respect. For example, sitting your butt in the chair with fingers at attention upon the keys and wading through whatever viscosity your imagination may be at the time, just getting it OUT of your head and INTO this world is the first step.

Sandstone walls and oily sludge ideas will move you forward or hinder you, stuff that cannot hold will crumble or burn away. From this crumbling, this immolation, this failure, persistence will reveal ores, gems and artifacts. But most of the time these precious ideas are raw or fragile. They need to be refined after being mined. That takes care and deliberate function. Trust the process.

Not so fast. Do not rush. For if you focus on the finish line you’ll miss the hurdle. Dare not hurry to the next thing. Take a moment to be in the moment and maybe even allow boredom to set in. Alone, with your thoughts and senses. In this realm of momentary moment-ism you may find it scary or unsettling, fear not for this is normal. Fear bubbles from uncertainty, uncertainty bubbles from the unknown. We are learning that reality is a direct result of consciousness and the nervous system is a conduit of consciousness, not an originator. You and I. Us and them. Underneath it all, we are One.

But not so fast. You are an infinitely unique aspect of an unfathomable greater whole. Capital “C” Consciousness. No matter what beliefs you may hold or mock, it is undeniable that life, as we live it, is strange, mysterious, loving and hostile but suspected to be cyclical in nature and eternal. Our origins may be so far out there that the only possible thing that could express it is a mythology. Or a poem. But no matter the past, because its gone from our grasp. Not so fast… where to go from here? Now?

“finis coronat opus”

With the soft-launch of the Patreon page, the Estate, out of the way and as I pour more focus into my trilogy of short stories with NaNoWriMo in progress, I feel that I am in new form. I’m trying to change habits and double down on what I love to do. Allocating time and forcing myself to put in the hours even if I don’t feel “inspired”. I’ve multiple outlets for my creativity so sometimes focus is fleeting.

Some site updates:

-The inner workings of the site have been cleaned up, there were a few unused pages that needed deleted.

-The main menu now includes the “Collaborations” page with links to each of the collaborative myself or Neuron Dreamtime have contributed to.

-Site is connected to Google Analytics, so I’m just now learning this, it’s a little overwhelming. It’s something I should have done a while ago.

In moving forward, I plan to start a mailing list as an author in the future once the book is closer to being finished. I should probably do the same for ND sometime soon. Just trying to grow the audience with inter-connective art and gain those “1000 true fans”.

All of this as I try to zero in on what works for a small multimedia art business and what doesn’t. For a few months now I’ve been regularly tuning into and exploring the backlog of the podcast “The Creative Penn with Joanna Penn”. Her show about being an indie author and the journeys of independent publishing and story writing and creativity is absolutely what I was looking for when I went searching for podcast with information rich content and a motivational push. She has suggested amazing non-fiction for motivation and talks proper establishment of brand and goes in depth into the marketing behind the movement as an independent. I cannot praise her enough in helping to light the fire under my ass that will light my way into the future, the fire I so desperately wish to ignite. Not to be famous, but to come into one’s own, so to speak.

My hope is that those reading this, and that follow what I do, are at least somewhat inspire to pursue the things that bring them joy and explore the possibilities. Everyone is a conduit of creativity.

“As the gates open to a roundabout encircling a great fountain, strange songs can be heard from an indiscernible location. The skeletal forms of the architecture appear bare but are interestingly not. The deeper you look into it you begin to recognize fractal forms engaged in a subtle tachykinesic movement. Every surface appears to be alive.”

Become a Patron!

It’s spent months in the making and incubation but now it’s at a mature enough state to be open to the public. The subscription is based on per creation, or “Exhibit” (i.e. a paid post). I went with that method instead of a monthly subscription because I doubt my ability to keep up with my own expectations. This way I can *attempt* to get a monthly schedule going to the point I feel confident enough to switch the method to recurring monthly subscription. Patreon is still relatively new to me and it will take some time to learn the ropes in building a community of supporters.

When creating art, even with an established plan, I lose myself in the possibilities and struggle with self doubt. When I look at a blank canvas I see the infinite. Miraculously, once an idea is set upon, infinity splinters into a new infinity. The painting, or the song, or the story can go in any direction. But as time is traveled and space is identified, what becomes is a cross section of many infinities, captured or frozen in time. That’s the fun part and what I revel in. And where I get lost. But I eventually find my way back. Decisions are made. Paint is brushed, notes are played and words are written.

“Finis coronat opus.”