The travels, experiences, random thoughts, fiery passages, or subtle conversations of Brandon Box-Higdem. Anyway you write it....they are truly just Musings of a Wayward Traveler on this earth...living each moment of my life to fullest...
So many years ago now, I was living in Omaha and had a wonderful opportunity to create numerous cabaret evenings...some of my own creation...some not. But one evening, a group of friends were together sharing drinks and visiting about an upcoming cabaret evening...and one of my friends said, "You know, you and Mitch just seem to complete each other's musical sentences. He gets your thought process and knows how to run with it. He knows how to make music work with you. You create beautiful music together."
And you know what, what a beautiful opportunity that experience was!!! To share music with each other and to be able to create an evening of performance that moves, that reaches down deep into one's soul and brings tears, or laughter, or just taking in terrific music...experiencing it all. What an amazing moment to be able to share...
Jump ahead many more years and we are out with friends in Fayetteville at a music club there to see a group called Penny and Sparrow.
I had never heard of them or their music.
From the first guitar strum to the last note, it was all just wonderful music.
Two amazing talents,
with voices like butterscotch and smoothness, and a guitar
and I was shook.
Tears welled up at times...Giggles were had...
They are funny.
They are true.
Their friendship is undeniable.
But their music was effortless and calm and together and beautiful and I just had to share a little of their music with you...
They complete each other's sentences and their blend is phenomenal... and powerful...simple and powerful...
Believe me...you will love them...go see them in concert...or get their music....you will not be disappointed.
We have a little pause in our competition season...before we head off to more tournament competitions. Time to expand some minds and hearts. Broaden horizons...
I have spent the last few weeks broadening young minds with lots of different aspects of performance and different ways to use ans see art around us. How to take a piece of art and create a performance piece around it. Studying all the different types of art and how they may not all be fully understandable, hard to watch, or make you laugh or cry.
But is it still considered art?
I think so. Amazing conversations have ensued...
Friends...
Art is meant to entertain. Yes. However, I think some folks take that for granted sometimes. Sometimes they think that art is meant to be there to serve them...make them laugh and make them forget. Hate to tell ya folks, but it is meant to also be so much more.
It is meant to make you THINK.
It is meant to shake your core and force you to look at something in a different way.
Some art is not meant to be understood right away...it may be built on a theme or concept that is not immediately present. I think powerful art is meant to hold a mirror up to the face of its audience and say "You cannot look away. You cannot shy away from this. No matter how uncomfortable this makes you feel. You have to learn."
Art is meant to appeal to your senses as well as your own deep emotions.
It is meant to express what we are feeling, what we want others to see, and feel, and touch and hear. And be moved...
To be better.
To do better.
To instill change.
I think to try and define art is to limit creativity and that is wrong.
We each have a different voice...a different view of the world...to limit art would be to do it a disservice. Perhaps we should let art speak for itself...
as an outlet...
and an instigator for change.
as a source of entertainment.
and a place to work through what we see.
It is so easy to get overwhelmed.
It is so easy to get drug down into craziness and fast paced and blurry.
It is important to stop. Regroup. Refocus. And make a little mind shift...
Lord knows...
I need to spend a little time focusing on some gratitude for the day.
1. I am so thankful for comfy sweaters. You know the ones...the ones that wrap you up in soft comfort...the ones that the minute you touch your soft sleeves...those long over-sized sleeves that go over your hands a bit...it just brings you around...puts a smile on your face and you can relax and find a bit calm.
2. I love the opportunity to just get a good cup of mocha, to redirect my thoughts and to just people watch. It is always so much fun to sit back and just watch people. How the interact with each other, how they smile, some of their mannerisms, clothing choices...sometimes I will just sit back with my headphones on, my favorite tunes running and jamming and rocking...and just observe those around me...kinda turns into a little movie track...Of course, I try not to be creepy about it...come on...YOU KNOW ME BETTER. But thank God for ALL sorts of people.
3. Thankful for all stages of life. Of course you spend most of your life thinking, when I grow up, when I get that promotion, when I get this done...and we miss out...I am thankful for the energy and drive of youth...the push to succeed and accomplish and do and learn...sometimes the hard way...to GROW...and EVOLVE...and CREATE. And to BLOOM where you are planted...and continue to GROW and LEARN...DO we ever stop learning and growing?
4. I feel great gratitude for a night out. A chance to shake up the schedule and just reconnect. Good food. Finding a new hideaway where they mix wonderful drinks. A chance to look across the candlelight at your loved one and just be grateful for the conversation, the honest connection, and the love.
5. I am grateful for all the colors we take for granted... The color of the sunset. The color of green grasses and pine trees. The color of the ocean. The colors of Christmas. The color of art hanging on the bright white wall for all to see. The color of friendships and family and of joy.
6. So grateful to be HERE. In THIS moment. With this life. With this heart.
7. Thankful for the smile of a friend. Thankful for the smile that can brighten up any room and change any mood.
Promise me that you will be that smile for someone today?
I am gonna try my best today too, friend.
The events of this past week have been heavy on my heart. I cannot say that I have not really begun to think about my teaching career and when moments like this happen, you cannot help but feel the fear of entering into the school building. You cannot help but wonder if something like this would happen to our school? And no matter how prepared you can be, it doesn't stop it.
What is most frustrating to me about this whole thing...whether you are for gun control or a member of the NRA...is the fact that once again people are talking and talking and talking and no one is willing to begin a discussion and discuss options...hell they aren't even willing to compromise...discussion blends away...and then more kiddos die...and we talk and talk and talk and offer up condolences...and then nothing...and then more kiddos die...and I just can't help but think...when will it all be enough?
Many try to blur the lines with mental illness and how it is all about mental illness. NO. Not JUST about mental illness...sane people can access these types of guns and do the same premeditated damage.
Many say it is because every person in this country has a GOD-given right to bear arms. OK. I agree with that. But I would think, and believe many have said, that this is truly not the question, it is the fact that automatic rifles shouldn't be in this MIX. And CERTAINLY not so easily attainable as we are learning from recent disasters. And my thought is that why not be willing to go through just a few more preventative, protective hurdles to see if these awful moments would lessen?
And yet...
God FORBID that OUR RIGHT BE TAKEN AWAY.
And more bloodshed...
Many are trying to raise all the questions about the facts being given...this many shootings in the year 2018...how it is this number...or that number... And this is the sort of discussion that SHOULD NOT BE GOING ON...its ridiculous when I think about it...WHO CARES???
So much bloodshed...
How about we finally begin a discussion on how to rectify this horrific situation?
Shouldn't ONE shooting be enough? God forbid the amount that we are currently at for the last 10 years and STILL nothing has been done???
Heck, we are now setting a trend of doing nothing and children are dying left and right or being presented with extremely traumatic, fear-filled, awful circumstances...ones they will remember and experience the remnants of for the rest of their lives.
And STILL Nada.
So much blood on everybody's hands.
Both Sides. ALL sides.
All that MONEY being pocketed for SILENCE.
Is everybody OK and complacent with this?
It is becoming common discussion or sending "Thoughts and Prayers" and yet doing
NOTHING.
BLOODSHED CONTINUES.
And SILENCE
No one is innocent from this if you don't support some sort of correction to this issue...
Or at least being willing to discuss...
to attempt to create a solution and help stop this bloodshed.
I love this so much. This would be a discussion and an opportunity I would totally jump at...an evening at a table with a group of guys and talk about social norms, society issues, personal thoughts, and how wrong it has all become... SO interesting to me...
Who defined my masculinity in my childhood was always set by my father as well as grandfather. There were numerous discussions on how"sensitive" I was...how feminine I was and how in my later years, my mother told me that she always tried to encourage my father to spend more time with me possibly in an opportunity to provide a stronger male presence and as a role model. He would back away from it, according to her. He would always have other things to do. Was always absent.
Yet, I look back now and realize, perhaps fairly and unfairly, when I was younger and going through it all my father was absent and the moments we spent together with me as a boy are blurry because of all the anger and resentment I felt about my Dad, and towards the military, and towards the divorce...was all HIS fault. That the times he was away for summer camp or every one weekend a month for the military, he would come home and talk about what I took as being a boys weekend filled with drinking and hanging out and time away from his family. And all the choices my family made that lead us towards the divorce predominantly was because of my father. And my grandparents saying hurtful, awful things and a young man cannot forget these things...And drew me closer and closer and closer to my mom and all we had to go through together without him.
This defines my feelings sometimes of the military in regards to my family. And I know that this is an unfair labeling...and yet I struggle.
And yet as I have grown older, I realize the blame needs to be placed on both sides. Both my mom and my dad were to blame for the divorce for different reasons and yet what I cannot shake is the fact that my Dad was absent both physically and emotionally and what do I do with that?
Brene Brown is AMAZING. Her TED talk about SHAME is so powerful. Men feel shame when they feel WEAK. She tells us that vulnerability is NOT weakness as a majority of people believe or choose to believe or struggle with. And yet, a man is not allowed to feel weak and not allowed to show it...throw in the struggle of coming out and all that encompasses and it becomes overwhelming. She states ,"Vulnerability is taking risk. It is our most accurate measurement of courage. The birthplace of innovation, creativity, and change and how we adapt to it."
When is the moment you are having to "become a MAN" in regards to being forced to grow up? I think my first breakdown was the evening I was called upstairs into the living room and told of my parents' choice to divorce. I was forced to pick between them as to who I wanted to live with. And take in all of the above and the selection was obvious to me and all rolled from there. It was at that moment that I realized, "Oh we are here. This is going to be what defines my life for a bit." Little did I know that it would define my entire life. A moment when I knew there was no going back. I would never experience innocence again and I cannot go back.
The next time was coming out. And I would NEVER want to go back into the closet and yet the shame I felt by coming out and how ridiculed I felt and how I needed to apologize for being gay and coming out...apologize for dreams that would not be met...apologize for being different and odd in the face of a family who were steeped in religion, traditions, and me always feeling like the odd man out...apologize for who I was at my very core and was just coming to realize...gay people continue to feel this on a daily basis and it is absolutely debilitating...and yet I PUSH forward.
And in the last few years, I think we have ALL been finally given our voice and an opportunity to shake the shame, shake the guilt, and find our voice and strengthen it. Thankful for the leaps and bounds we made in regards to equality and basic freedoms and humanity. Leaps and BOUNDS...yet now with the tone of the American society taking leaps and bounds backwards, I feel like we are being forced back into the closet and you know what, I refuse to go back. I refuse to apologize for my life. I refuse to apologize for my relationship and marriage with my husband. I REFUSE to apologize for YOUR insecurities.
Being comfortable with being in the process of becoming a newer version of myself and what it means to be manly...this is self-defined and being comfortable to define it for MYSELF. WOW!
For some reason...this has been playing on the track inside my mind for the last couple of months.
I know this is Mom...just coming on through to let me know that she is indeed still here, somehow pushing through and telling me everything will be okay.
For those of you who have lost loved ones,
this song gives me great solace and peace of mind.
