Thoughts

  •  
    Jake Walden » Thoughts

    dreamers across the sea…

    This message is for all my dreamer friends from across the sea…..For
    Holland and Germany, for the REAL people there who have reached out to
    me, who have somehow understood and cared so deeply for the music, for
    the words, for it all….who wanted to share some nights of music….I
    thought I could come right now. So many of you reached out and tried to make it happen…SO much work and creativity…Nikki and Frank and Sabine and so many amazing friends….I am so grateful for that…the dreamers did just that, but more on that later….

    I thought the world was telling me this was the time. But it is not.
    Truth is I’m not ready. Money, the timing with the making of the record
    and also the hope that I can come next year with what I hope will be a brilliant new
    creation to open new doors, new songs that matter and the kind of support one needs (business speak)
    to come do it right….

    This is a tough letter to write. I have lost a lot of nights sleep
    consumed with my guilt and weight of disappointment I have not been able
    to make this happen.

    I hope you will understand. I hope you will continue to listen and
    contribute to the work, to share with your friends and spread the word,
    because Europe is in my heart. It always has been.
    Did you know I was an exchange student in Denmark when I was 16?
    Or that I backpacked the whole of the continent when I was 20 for over three months. Two
    defining experiences that literally changed my life. My time there gave me
    something in my heart I carry with me every day in the way I see the world and myself in it. I never would have found ART and the unending desire
    to accept and figure out the world as we all see it without my travels. Thanks Mom and Dad…thanks drunk driver that almost killed me and my best friend but didn’t and we got 10,000 bucks for it to pay for the trip…

    Sometimes I dream too big….don’t you? Sometimes I get ahead of myself
    and reach higher than the seeds I have planted have grown…I guess if
    you set an idea in motion, if you picture it and put it out there, and
    the world begins to conspire and peoples hearts and imaginations are
    captured, well, there is no dream too big. This is what we are meant to
    think…this is what we deserve to believe and to manifest.

    But dreams, like love, like Mothers….they have no destination, they
    are concepts and reality all at once; they grow, they nurture your
    secret self…they are everything. Some may say you must make specific
    your dreams, but I have always believed that dreams are an instinct, a
    collection of feelings and thoughts and the intangible “soul” of who you
    are speaking a language you can not see, but simply feel…and work
    towards. Because the “dream” has to be lived in every moment of chasing
    it…its your life…

    I’m here, across the sea, living the dream the best I can. With your help
    and patience, I’ll get there…I will….in a way I never could have
    imagined.

    9 comments July 2nd, 2010

    …a hole in the ground…

    Met with one of my favorite film director/artists today about the possibility of making a video for the new album..!!!!!…..
    and for some reason in my montage of unedited thoughts that leap from my mouth I mentioned the image of a hole in the ground…with me in it. Now, there were a million other things mentioned and I have no idea why I said that cause it makes no real sense…it certainly didn’t in the moment…it was a passing word, a random image that has been circling my mind…a moment no one else at the meeting probably remembers…but I do.

    And now I think about myself in that hole in the ground, and the dirt around me and the roots and stones sprinkling the walls of my captive safe place, in the earth….and I wonder…as I often do…
    why does that feel like the most truthful thing I have said in a long while? Why have I expressed how I see myself as this man deep within the earth, surrounded by the ground and urging himself to WANT to climb out? I think about what it is to make that climb, how every grab and pull at the walls of your open captive hole both drown you and bury you further and bring you one stop closer to the light. The dirt crumbles…I can feel it in my face. I can taste it.
    What is it about the earth for me? Why am I here in this city? This city of so little dirt? Why are my shoes on right now? hmmmmmm…

    When I blurted this ” ..yeah, like I’m in a hole in the ground…..” (thankfully I believe I made some truly cohesive and inspired thoughts and impressions)…I think I was climbing in my mind. I think I’m always climbing in my mind. I hope I’m always climbing in my mind. I like the way the dirt feels. I like the light. I like the coolness of being under. I like the smell of it. I like how people could be all around me and if I didn’t make a sound maybe they wouldn’t notice I was down there…and yet if I did, if I shouted and pulled, the earth would move and they would look down and see me….see only me….and like always, the arms, the hands, the faces pressed to the earth to reach as far as they could would come for me.

    I could wave…
    I could reach…..

    Peace, be you,
    Jake

    1 comment June 28th, 2010

    The saddest song I’ve ever heard
    is the one that wasn’t written…

    Add comment June 21st, 2010

    ….to Katie’s wedding…

    Tonight I get on a plane and fly not across the sea.
    Tonight barely feels real…
    Tonight I go to fly for only an hour, maybe above the California Aqueduct,
    or zigzagging along the coast as it becomes more jagged the further north
    you push….only long enough to look through my “new album notebook” which
    is like my obsessive ever present blanky these days, who’s evolving
    content’s smell is so obviously mine; maybe even make a connecting thought
    or two…and then, in the dark of the night, I will let it all go, all the
    intricacies of my own inner life; I will land and my Mom will pick me up
    and once we get to Cotati…it’s real.
    My sister is going to get married….
    Katie’s wedding to Muiris is here. A week in the forest. A week of all
    the people who made her, coming together, in one spot, to simply witness
    the dreams and joy of she who no one would dare say is not the most
    beautiful person they have ever known. Oh and Muiris…yeah, I approve…a
    rare man to fill the role HE creates. He is charming and passionate and
    independent thinking. He is a caregiver, a protector, and WANTS BABIES.
    Most important, I sense that he is complicated, like all of us…and he is
    not afraid to show his light and his dark, though his spirit like hers is
    bright…so bright…
    That’s all I can say….I’ll leave the rest for them, for my words at
    their wedding….
    Just wanted to share…wish them luck…time to let go of little “k-fart”
    introduce myself to
    Mrs. Katie Griffin


    1 comment May 30th, 2010

    fetal position

    Such a funny thing about life…
    it’s every day, you know? every day.
    There is nothing you can take, nothing you can hide behind, nothing to make that not real in some way. And sometimes it’s messy, and sometimes you wonder WHY? And maybe, you’re like me and when the perfect storm of a lot of tough LIFE hits you, your mind goes wild as your body shuts down. It’s like overload, it’s like a small glimpse into madness…It’s like how we still randomly find ourselves awakening from the night in the fetal position.

    And I see the sky my favorite shade of midnight blue, and I hear my friend laugh from behind the door, and I look at those I love, frozen stills on my walls, my constants…my hearts. And I feel guilty…because I can’t be THAT every day.

    And my body, so weak as my brain never settles and somehow, every time, I search for one single understanding to miraculously pull my brain and spirit and body as it never eventually fails to find me. I look for it though I tell myself, “maybe this time the light will not find you again” And I am ugly inside.

    So I go to that place. This place where my peace of mind will find me and my body can heal itslef again as the tunnel doors crack. I write it down. I put it out here just thinking…if I feel like this? If I am living every day..must everyone else too?

    You can find your dreams. You can find and share true love. You can be a giving person with purpose. You can be rich…and yet there is something within we all must face alone I guess….just sometimes.

    Maybe it’s the universes mysterious way of balance. Maybe we just get lost sometimes.
    Maybe it doesn’t have to mean we’re crazy, or that we can’t give and have what we yearn for, what we deserve…maybe it’s kind of what makes it all worth it.

    For now, Josh plays me this country song…I don’t know the name…or wait, maybe it’s Christian Rock (which I not so secretly love sometimes) and the line says…
    :” And they say the road to heaven might leads us back through hell,
    but we’re holding on for more than stories to tell.
    Maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow,
    we will win this fight and bury this sorrow.”

    It’s called Google Jake, and the band is Wide Awake
    Ok, I’m waiting now…come on ME! Get up!…..GET UP!

    Peace, be you, Jake

    Add comment May 26th, 2010

    Where it is I am going…

    I remember when I was alone for all that time.
    I remember the years I spoke to no one.

    …and I think back to that time composing the songs that would become Alive and Screaming, with the window open and my bare feet sliding on the floor, and the hazy gaze of the midnight black around me. And it hurt so beautifully.

    I sit here now in my little house with my little family and I wonder how I got here. I remember the day of my “L.A. freedom party” when I gave up my waiter job, apartment, city, sanity…and I was a traveling poet and a student of life like I always told my Mom I wanted to be, for over a year…a gypsy, singing my way from edge to edge of the country, from peoples floors to a movie star’s home…I learned a lot. About myself, about people…about struggle and how to live with no ground, no comfort, nothing but my raw exposed self.

    I think of all the dreamers I met. I think about how cool it is that people invite me into their homes, into your darkest secrets and greatest joys.

    There are days now when the prophet feels as if it IS mine. And the purpose has grown so much deeper than the music, but instead has given me an ability to find and speak my heart as it evolves every day. It has given me YOU.

    The “Jake Walden Dreamers family”, as eclectic and sometimes dramatic and weird as we are….we love each other. I have learned so much about love and the power of believing in others….hoping for them…hoping for you as you hope for me…every day, in every way, as love should be.

    So here I am, at the moment where after 2 years of touring the album, two years of too many hours a day on the computer, of every day trying to create something, traveling the country and meeting, as my dream has always been, the strangest of the strangers…

    It’s time I found THAT place again. It takes everything. And for this season, for the creation of something truly of value and depth and uniqueness and honesty and purity and love and LIGHT, for this season I have to go…
    I have to make this album, to write it, arrange it, fund it, envision every layer of it, record it, LIVE IT!!

    I wrote a song once called “For Someone”. I didn’t know why or for whom it was given to me for at the time. Today I do. I know love, in all its raw, in all its glory, as I always hoped for.

    Listen carefully to “Alive and Screaming”, tell your friends as so many have graciously done before. Spread the word and explore the website, download the album or give it to a friend as a gift…it all makes a difference, it adds up…you plant a thousand seeds and eventually one will grow…and once that one does, somehow as life works so too will the rest. No one wants to be first and yet no one wants to be last to the proverbial party.

    Know that somewhere as the wind is blowing this summer on an L.A. evening, your friend Jake is putting his everything, including the piece of you that YOU let him see into a new record of THIS time…. and after all the waiting, the wondering and worry and hope, “A and S’s little brother will be born… and I’ll come home again, to this place we have all created. This little world I have gotten to be a part of… and then with your help I will come to your part of the world, face to face, and sing for you, with you…for you…and hopefully we will all look at each other with wonder…and smile.

    It all matters… and it all hurts… and it all, every piece of what it is to BE, blows my mind every day…. Maybe, sometimes it’s not supposed to make sense, or maybe it is.

    Beyond the success of what may come my way, all that has come so far…. in the end it is about the music, the unexpected connection, the occasional fumbling moments of clarity, the longing and the ache, the raw and the glory…. and most of all, the comfort in daring to question the questions that speak to us.

    Come to a concert. Let me see your eyes as I sing, and maybe I’ll let you see mine…and for a moment, well, you just never know….you just never know… the only thing I know…. you know?? There is so much more to come…

    See you soon…

    Thanks for listening.

    Peace, be you,
    Jake

    www.facebook.com/jakewaldenofficial
    www.myspace.com/jakewalden

    2 comments May 21st, 2010

    The united states of Tara says no to safety…

    “…of course the pitfall of choosing someone for safety is that we come to resent them…over time…a little.
    But Love loves it all.
    But Love has to see it.
    Love can’t be left in the dark…”

    Continue Reading 1 comment May 10th, 2010

    For Someone on One Tree Hill

    Ok, so last night there were all these rumblings, notes and comments about my song being on the CW.

    Continue Reading 5 comments May 7th, 2010

    the wisest fool…

    and nobody, nothing is perfect…
    even the most beautiful of life’s creations has its flaws.
    In some way I think the flaws are what we end up loving most of all. Love is
    blind…ok, yes….but love is also blinding…and its easy to let
    yourself get caught up in the minor bullshit, the false disappointments of
    the reality that you aren’t in love with YOURSELF but ANOTHER PERSON…and
    thank God for that…
    If we aren’t careful we can miss our moments,

    Continue Reading 5 comments April 26th, 2010

    as spoken by someone I love…”in living with bi-polar”

    Yes, it’s strange to share this confession…it’s strange to share the struggles, especially when you know the whole story, from personal time with her…it’s strange to wonder if someone would judge…but, in the end, as only she could articulate, I believe this to be universally important to immerse ourselves in for a moment…I believe in her…I accept her as she has accepted me…I root for her and look up to her….
    We all have pieces of this story within ours, as with most stories extreme and OTHERS, like a tapestry…like everything…
    Peace, be you, Jake

    Continue Reading 9 comments April 19th, 2010

    Previous Posts