Category: rambling

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

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?