When I was a little boy my mom and dad would sing this song at Woodville Baptist Church (near Westfield NC).

“Sweet Beulah Land” by Squire Parsons.

I remember the woman who often babysat me on Sunday afternoons and was my trusted source for Hubba Bubba, Hazel Norman (who also carried me into the church for the first time after I was born), would request it all the time.

A dear friend of ours, Anna Smith, recently asked me if I knew the song. She wanted to play it for her mother, Frances. My mom’s name is also Anna, and my grandma’s name is Frances, too. We were meant to be family.

So I found the chords and gave it a shot. Playing through it the first few times brought a tear or seven. Amazing how indelible these early memories are. “Precious memories,” as another hymn says. Grateful to be from these North Carolina hills and hollers.

Here you go, Anna Smith. Love you.

Here is a simple setting I wrote of the Magnificat.

I love this quote. One of my favorite writers, Madeleine L’Engle, and one of my favorite books, Walking on Water:

The last post I wrote (ahem, in January. Joops) I talked about going slow to go fast. By that I meant that we all need to slow our respective rolls so that we can take time to remember what is important before we go all headless-chicken putting out fires that aren’t going to burn anything up anyway.

It’s May, and I still need to learn this lesson. Even as I type, I’m a little frantic about it. That might be the coffee. So delicious.

But I, like you, have this heaping pile of stuff that needs to get did, and it likes to tap me on the shoulder and and say, “look here!”…”No, here!” I think it’s an octopus, my pile of stuff. Several tentacles tap my shoulders all at the same time.

When I listen to the task pile, I get crazy. And then I don’t practice my singing, I don’t write, I’m not a good teacher, and I don’t build anything that I’m passionate about creatively.

It reminds me of my sweet Grandmother Edith when I’d take the bus to her house from school. It seemed almost every day she didn’t get anything accomplished that she wanted to. She and my Grandpa were deeply impacted by the Great Depression, and their home and outbuildings exhibited that residual need to hold on to things in case they may need them one day. The things became overwhelming to her eventually, and she didn’t know where to begin to restore some order for herself.

We do the same thing. It might not be physical objects, but we collect obligations and projects because if we say no to something, that might be the opportunity that leads to our big break, and look, see? We missed it.

It all stems from the same root: We scared. Just like we hold on to physical things to protect ourselves from impending lack, we also hoard projects, professional connections, and all kinds of obligations because we don’t want to miss out on something. We don’t trust.

But what is there to trust? I’m just going to share with you my personal belief on this. It helps me out. In fact, it holds me up. I hope it helps you out too. I believe in God. I believe He put us here on this planet for lots of great and fun purposes, and I believe He loves us more than we can begin to wrap our little human brains around. I believe He’s weaving a masterpiece with our lives.

And here’s the deal with weaving. Have you ever seen the back side of a tapestry? It looks like a…say it with me…a hot mess. You can check this link from the Metropolitan Museum or just plug it into the Google machine for yourself and see. And that’s often what our lives look like when terrible crap happens. We’ve all been through it, and we’ve all asked why.

I seriously believe that Got takes all the painful terrible dookey that gets hurled at us and tricks it out and redeems it. I know I’ve seen it in my life. And just like Joesph tells his brothers at the end of the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, “What you meant for evil, God meant for good.” Okay, I don’t know if Tim Rice put that anywhere in the musical, but the source material definitely says that.

So that’s why we can look at the knotted threads that look like stringed chaos and remember that you just can’t see the other side of the tapestry. Why not? I ask that too.

That’s why it’s good to embrace the hot mess action in our lives. It actually makes us remember that we are really weak and blessed and dependent on so much that we don’t understand.

It makes us slow down and reassess what’s really important right now, and then we can take action accordingly….and taking action slowly tricks us into trusting. Then we feel this thing called peace. It’s awesome.

I hope we can relax in this and feel some of that today.

Have a great May!

The word that has been tapping my heart on the shoulder the last few weeks…slow.

I don’t do slow so well. And when I do slow down, a little panic button gets pushed in my brain. It activates an alarm for about fifteen minutes until my brain recognizes that I’ve actually grown more productive since I held my horses.

I don’t understand it. It seems like if you want to get more done, you should do things really fast. But I think what happens when I slow down is that I can take a moment and remember my priorities. Then I can make some wise and deliberate choices about what I’m doing rather than putting out seemingly urgent…squirrel!…fires.

I think this is a big thing for us to download this year. Going slow actually makes us go fast. Going slow makes us see that life is happening right now. Hurrying is destination-obsessed, thinking that we’ve got to scramble so we can quickly get from A to Z. And by the time we get to Z, we’re already preoccupied with the next over-there. So we don’t just miss the destination, we’ve missed every bit of scenery on the way.

This isn’t anything new. Ever since the Ten Commandments, people have known about the need to slow down, rest, and be present. There’s a reason. It’s important.

We should take some time to check if all these cliches we’ve heard our whole lives, i.e. stop and smell the roses, (and if you live in LA, you can actually do that. Sorry Polar Vortex sufferers.)…to check if these cliches have actually made it into our heart and experience. They’re cliches for a reason. Most of the time they are true.

The other day I was watering our veggie garden and I realized that I get more enjoyment out of watching the plants grow than I do harvesting and eating them. Made me think about my grandfather (Papa) Basil Jessup who had a massive garden every year and would give me the tour every few days of how the plants were growing. It delighted him so much to see things grow. And I realized that life should be the same way.

We believe that the actual event we’re preparing for (the audition, the opening night, the career-defining moment) is the real thing, the magical occurrence that will mark the beginning of real life. After that, then we have permission to really enjoy ourselves. Every moment up until then is drudgery that we just have to endure waiting for the big thing.

That’s a lie. And it sucks the joy and life right out of us, making us whiny and complainy and scared that the life-validating event may never happen or pan out. Hard to enjoy anything when we’re complaining and full of fear.

So here’s what I propose. Literally slow down. Walk a little slower, drive a little slower, talk a little slower (this is a powerful tool in that audition room, too). Take your time to plan your days based on your priorities, not on the fires you think you have to put out or the people you think you need to please. They probably care more about what you can do for them than they care about you. If you slow down, I bet you an ice cream cone that you will see yourself accomplishing more, seeing pockets of time you didn’t know you had, and appreciating things like hot running water, food and shelter, and friends in new ways.

Then you just might be a little freer to be an encouragement to the people around you. When we hurry, we are self-occupied (i.e. trapped), and we believe that everything is our responsibility. Lies. When you slow down, you trust, and you change the atmosphere wherever you go.

So that’s my encouragement to you and to myself. Let’s all walk a little slower and take the time to see the people and things around us. You might be surprised at how quickly you get to those surprise destinations that are so much better than the ones you thought you were heading for.

I always miss East-Coast-style fall here in LA. I even bought some liquid amber branches with some fall color on them at Trader Joe’s the other day. They were for Melissa, but were they really? 🙂

But I am grateful that in LA you can still plant a fall garden, so hopefully there will be some good veggies to harvest by Thanksgiving and Christmas. I’m looking forward to the parsnips most of all.

Many of you know I’ve been studying opera and classical singing again. It is not for the faint of heart. It’s unearthed all kinds of gaps in my technique and pushed my nose directly into some very uncomfortable emotional/spiritual places. In other words, it’s a blast.

…Okay side note. I just went out to our little laundry shed to check the clothes in the dryer, and I saw a hummingbird just sitting on a branch. I’ve never seen one sitting still. It chirped a few times and flew away. I just thought that was really cool. Hummingbirds are incredible…

Okay, practicing. Why do we avoid it? Why is practice time the best time to check Facebook, text your mom, or dust the light bulbs?

I don’t think it’s because of the fear of failure. Most of us who are performers have failed plenty, and we didn’t die, and we’re fine. This is my theory. I think we avoid practicing because we know if we practice consistently, we’ll get really good at what we do, and then what are we going to do with that?

All kinds of heartbreaking possibilities come into play then. We could get really skillful at our art form and then never get the opportunities we think we want.

Or we might get the opportunities, and we realize that we’re too scared to accept them. Our skill brings a level of responsibility that deep down we wonder if we can handle. It’s like the lottery winner who squanders all their winnings because inside they don’t think they deserve the money.

Here’s the big revelation. We don’t deserve any of it. Who among us made ourselves happen? We can’t make ourselves breathe. We can’t make our hearts beat. We can’t make our vocal chords phonate. We are downloaded with the most intricate and miraculous systems when we arrive on this planet. My wife is a biologist. She could tell you about it all day long. It’s mind-blowing, the universes that exist inside us on just a micro level.

So all of this is to say that any talent we have is truly a gift. We didn’t do anything to earn it or create it. But somehow we get into our heads that we are not worthy of it, or that we don’t deserve it. Here’s the truth. It doesn’t matter whether we deserve it or not. It’s been given to us. So what now?

We practice, and we make our skill beautiful and strong and precise.

Then we get to give this skill to others who, guess what, probably don’t deserve to receive it either. It’s a gift we get to pay forward. See how it works? It’s all a lot of grace and undeserved goodness.

A couple of weeks ago I was at my lesson, and as I was singing an exercise, everything lined up. The space, support, relaxation, focus, and a really beautiful feeling/sound came through me.

My teacher Renee stopped playing at the piano, looked up at me, and said…”Shit.” Then I started to cry. As the tears leaked out of my eyes, I knew why I was crying. I had been making it harder than it was, saying no to it.

I couldn’t just let it be easy and joyful, I had to worry it and work it. It’s the other side of the pride/ego coin. One side is stamped “grandiosity,” the other side says “self-flagellation.” And pride-ego careens us from one ditch to the other. The narrow, solid road in between the two is humility to receive the undeserved gifts. It’s an active acceptance, a decision to open our hands and receive something precious and un-earnable.

Think about it, though. If you let it be easy and joyful, you stop taking yourself so damn seriously, and something really beautiful gets to come through you. Then what does that mean for your audience?

And this is something we can practice every day. Just the ability to sing a scale is a gift. Because we can’t see an immediate outcome, we avoid it. It doesn’t look fruitful to us. Especially if you live in LA, we’re surrounded by a culture that is entitled and demands results without any investment.

So there is the paradox, right? We are given a gift we don’t deserve, and so we’re entrusted with that to make something beautiful out of it. And even the ability to work on it is grace. It’s a road that requires us to look at ourselves, feel afraid and do it anyway, and then do it again. And I don’t know of a more rewarding road to take.

So I’m encouraging you all. That thing you have been given, that talent: practice it. Commit to it. Be willing to do it even if your heart gets broken in the process. Take the hit. It’ll be broken open and then you’ll have more to share.

That’s the thing about our creative gifts. I can’t think of a more perfect means to redeem the crap that happens and turn it into gold…a song, a play, a poem, a painting, a sculpture, a film. We know the ones that have touched our lives. Let one come from you and touch someone else’s.

About a year an a half ago in the musical theatre workshop, I stood at the dry erase board, and we talked about what we could do as artists in an environment (Los Angeles) that seemed to be offering less and less gainful employment to theatre actors.

Long story short, two separate production companies grew from the seeds we planted that month in our class community, and each is producing a fully-staged musical in the next two months here in Los Angeles. (Sugar Fix Productionsand Not So Artful Productions)

Here is where the bit about being chosen comes in. Almost all of us creative types have a deep need to be chosen. Whether we felt like leftovers when the kickball team captain called our name dead last or if it’s as deep as parental abandonment, we all need to hear, “I choose you. You are precious. You matter.”

The problem comes when we try to get these deep heart-needs met with a career. Every audition becomes a test of our innate worth as children of God rather than what it is: a job interview. Enter fear, shame, and several flavors of mental torment.

In my own life, I am now grateful that I didn’t book a Broadway show in my 20’s when I was finally getting the 3rd and 4th callbacks. I’m glad because to my 25-year-old mind, a Broadway contract was going to legitimize me. I didn’t know it, but deep in my background software, I believed that being chosen to be in a Broadway show was going to fill me up in some way. Don’t get me wrong, I still wouldn’t mind checking it off my list, but it’s not going to make or break my life.

You don’t have to look far to see the results of this broken promise (achievement = fulfillment) played out over and over. It’s the fodder that keeps every gossip magazine in business.

We believe a lie that whispers to us that we are not enough, that we are unlovable, and that we are worthless without some major bells and whistles to upgrade us. Then we begin to compare our bells and whistles to others’. Let the insanity whirlpool ensue.

You are precious, chosen, and significant because you are. End of story. God saw fit to put you on this planet; therefore, you matter.

If you know you’re already picked for the team, you can choose yourself.

Is there a dream that keeps knocking on your door and waking you up in the morning? Maybe you are the one that dream is waiting for. Maybe it’s time to start your own kickball team.

Nearly every time she asks me this question, no matter how well my week is going, how happy I feel, it is that moment when her wise gaze casts a clear, soft light on some deep hurts that I forgot that I was carrying around in my emotional Red Rider wagon.

It’s good that I forget. If I thought about them all the time (like I did in my twenties), I’d be a non-functioning, narcissistic mess. (Yes, I was kind of like that in my twenties.) We’re not supposed to think about our hurts all the time. That’s why God gave us denial and subconscious minds.

This is also why I take time each week to go in and address these forgotten things in the presence of a wise witness who, as my Uncle Joe Bill Jessup likes to say, has seen the monkey dance.

(Speaking of a witness, can you draw the connection to how these things come up when we stand in front of people to sing, act, whatever?)

The hurts and wounds we sustain in our lives, either by the wrong that’s been done to us, the wrong we’ve done, or our reactions to the wrong, have a way of hiding out in our souls. They then mysteriously coordinate to run a background software that, in turns, tells us how grandiosely special we are and then take out the Louisville Sluggers they have hidden behind their backs and beat the emotional tar out of us. It’s a complicated, masochistic kind of dance, and we all know it. Especially if you have a passion to perform. We performers live on the Island of Misfit Toys.

I want to share a few keys with you that have helped me on my way.

Look outside. When the junk starts talking in your head, when you are feeling less-than, constricted, and on the verge of hopeless, you have to actively look out. Number one, log off of Facebook, then ask yourself, whom can you help? Whom can you encourage? Who could use a phone call (not a text) from you?

You will not feel immediately better. You will feel like crawling back into your cave to sort through all the various crap-pieces that you think this time you will finally figure out. You won’t. You’ll just get your head stuck farther up the wrong end.

Look outside and give help to someone else, ask for help when you need it, from others, from God, and keep your focus outward.

This exercises your trust. While you are giving, taking care of those around you, you somehow get taken care of in the process. That bit of info you needed drops in somehow, the light bulb finally hooks to the current. Sometimes you even experience a quiet healing without even noticing it. This isn’t easy, and it feels counter to our nature when we’re down, but it works.

Outward focus is also key to effective acting and singing technique.

Cut Yourself Some Slack. I am writing this one to myself. I will go through a day and be completely unaware of all the ways I’ve been cruel to myself, criticized myself, and withheld forgiveness from myself.

In the end, it’s really super prideful because all of these self criticisms are based on the assumption that I know best…I know best what I should be, accomplish, do, etc. I don’t know. I believe God knows, and if I trust myself to Him, He will carry me where I need to be. I didn’t make myself. I’m not making my lungs breathe, my heart beat, or my cells divide, so why do I think I have all the wisdom it takes to direct my path? I don’t.

Think back for yourself on an instance in your own life when something seemed to go very wrong, but in the end turned out to be exactly what needed to happen. Whether or not that was Plan A all along, something unexpectedly good was made from what seemed to be a crappy situation.

So I will commit to you if you will commit to me to lay off the self-meanness as much as I’m aware of it. It ain’t never helpful.

Sing. One of the great delights of my life is hearing my wife, Melissa, sing in the shower. She revels in music. She loves and enjoys it, I believe, at a deeper, higher, fuller level than I, who live by music, do.

There are few things more healing, more beautiful, more a gift than music . And we all have it. This point came home to me so clearly when I had the privilege of performing in Pippin with Deaf West Theatre. Not only did I learn more about storytelling from my deaf colleagues than I ever learned in class or on stage before, but I also saw that we all embrace and feel music whether or not we can hear it with our physical ears.

We know the world vibrates. Science has shown us what appears solid is not solid at all but made up of all kinds of intricate, mystifying energy. It’s a miracle, and so is our gift to sing. Music is a higher reflection of what’s going on around us all the time. Why do plants thrive when they hear Mozart or Bach? We all know the answer.

So when we practice or perform or just sing in the car, let’s keep that in the forefront of our minds and hearts. We are given the gift of singing, so lets revel in it, appreciate it, and enjoy it.

Happy July, everyone. Thanks so much for reading.

I have been appreciating this whole new “first world problems” meme that’s been circulating, hearing it a lot from clients as they tell me about an audition that went awry or and agent acting crazy.

“I know,” they say. “First world problems.”

Before I go on, let me say that there’s nothing wrong with needing to fix a first-world problem. If you cut your finger, you don’t forego a bandaid because somewhere else someone’s bound to have lost an arm.

But with that said, I think it’s really important as artists to see and appreciate all the blessings that we stand on and live our daily routines completely blind to.

For starters: health, food, shelter, breath, sight, hearing, speech, the computer or handheld device you are reading this on, and indoor plumbing.

A big ole trap that we creative types can fall into (especially if we live in one of the big metropolitan areas where narcissistic neuroses are in fact encouraged) is to get really focused on ourselves and how well our career/artistic development/professional life is or isn’t going.

If I could give you one sure-fire recipe for internal hell, it’s to think about yourself all the time.

That’s the real first-world problem, our crazy self-focus.

We sleep-walk and assume that our health, food, shelter, and DVR’s are givens. We’re surrounded by so much abundance in this country that we become desensitized to it and start to think we are self-sufficient. It’s not real.

No matter what your spiritual world view is, we all have to admit that we are not currently making our hearts beat, our lungs breathe, and our cells subdivide. There is mysterious, miraculous stuff going on, and we walk around completely emptied of our sense of wonder. We get lulled to sleep by the very gifts around us that could make us grateful.

So, the point to all this is if we want to be happier, more peaceful, more joyful human beings (and thereby more productive artists) let’s be grateful for every little thing we can.

Next, let’s turn our focus outward to one another. Who can you pick up the phone and call today and say, “You were on my mind. How are you?”

Third, let’s just remember that the fact that we can even take a voice lesson, an acting class, attend an audition, means that we have been given so many benefits that have led us to this new place and the challenges we have the privilege to contend with.

We are not self-sufficient. We are dependent every moment on the gifts we have been given. My hope for me and for all of you is that we live and work out of that place of wow and gratitude.

Have a great May everyone!