Todd Clouser: BLOG

We've been playing music in some unique spots of the country of Mexico these couple weeks, which seems to serve us well. I've been writing every morning which is always positive and we're making music this week on the beach in the state of Oaxaca, a town called Puerto Escondido. Its tourist driven, more in the way that certain European towns are tourist driven, there are no resorts, large developments, or chain restaurants. Feels more personal. 

I was writing from the balcony of our bungalow style hotel this morning, its up about 30 yards from the ground, a tall flight of stairs that seems a sif it was built into the Earth, not in spite of it. While sitting there, a mother whale and a newborn calf passed heading south in the Pacific. The newborn was breeching, was about the size of a dolphin. It was very liberating to watch. 

Its interesting, for me, to consider how quickly the world is moving, and how the lone constant seems to be the power of nature. We are being left behind by the way the Earth truly functions, as much as we try to control, we further lose ourselves as being part of what is happening here. Of all the power we think we obtain through money, accomplishment, notoriety, its all lost, and transient. Often our reaction is anxiety, we are afraid we do not have control of what is happening, what will happen. Its all quite meaningless, in the end we have no power whatsoever aside from the power of our own reactions to what is taking place around us. Music is a good way for me to express my sentiments, consciously or otherwise, as to what is happening around me. 

But the power or control we lack doesn't have to be a source of anxiety. It can be completely freeing. We are guests here, we don't own it. And we are guests in MUSIC, we do not own it. We visit and interact with it, exchange ideas, shape each other in a small conversation, we eventually leave, and it lives on without us.