There is, yet again, another page on my blog.  The Links page (see the tab at the top of this page) lists all of my official pages on the internet, as well as all of the bloggers in The Great Blog Off.  If you don’t know what The Great Blog Off is, join the facebook group, read the blogs, and vote for me at the end of the month!

I just spent an hour or so resizing various photographs that were taken between September 2008 and February 2009 by a brilliant photographer named Adam Loewen.  I chose the best shots and ordered them very intentionally onto a new page called Image.  You’ll be able to see how my hair (both facial and head hair) changed various times over those months… which is a pointless detail not really worth mentioning.  I’m just trying to make conversation.  Alright, moving along…

Please feel free to visit my Image page at your leisure.  To go to it, just click on the “Image” tab at the top of this page.

What’s your favorite picture?

My song “Death of Me” was originally a completely different song called “Autumn Leaves”.  The only parts that are the same are the guitar, a bit of the melody, and one line.

When I was recording Dark Before Dawn, I realized that the lyrics of Autumn Leaves wasn’t quite working.  The whole song was a metaphor for the passing on of grandparents, using the imagery of leaves in the Fall.  It was written decently well, but it didn’t have much heart to it, which is because I wasn’t really writing from experience… I was writing more thematically.  My producer, Adam Loewen, said (in the nicest way possible) that Autumn Leaves sounded like a teenage girl reciting her poem to an old folks home.  Here are the original lyrics for you to laugh at if you wish:

Autumn leaves, when winter comes we won’t forget your colors

Autumn leaves, you’re beautiful; your character is in your wrinkles

Fall down gently underground

Lay still in peace

In time this tree will see more leaves

In colors of gold

Autumn leaves, your history is memorable; you made a home

Autumn leaves, when winter comes this family tree feels empty

The only line I wanted to keep was  “Fall down gently underground.  Lay still in peace.” Although it lost it’s irony when it was no longer talking about leaves falling underground, it was still a good line.  I eventually thought of writing a song about a relationship dying - a love dying.  This is something that I could write about from experience.

I remember being in the relationship and both of us would always tell each other that we love each other, but we rarely showed our love.  I kept on hearing people say that love is a choice, which confused me.  I thought that if I chose to say, “I love you,” and tried to believe that it was true, then everything would just fix itself.  I didn’t realize that the choice involved real action as well.  I think the advice, “Love is a choice,” is a bit misleading.  I think the full message is that you need to choose to love someone and then act on that choice.  In other words, “Love is a verb,” like Dc Talk sang (I can’t believe I just referenced an old-school Dc Talk song!).

After my relationship broke up, I read a book called The Five Love Languages.  It’s too bad I didn’t read it earlier.  It talks about how people express and experience love in different ways from one another.  So sometime our love doesn’t get communicated because we are essentially speaking different languages.  The five languages are: service, quality time, gifts, words of affirmation, and physical touch.  People can speak all of these languages to some degree, but most people focus on one or two.

This book taught me how to act out my love (which I’m still working on).  And obviously when people don’t act out their love, it dies.  Hence my song, “Death of Me”.  You can find it on iTunes.

Here are the lyrics:

The air escapes my lungs. My God what have I done?

I knew our time would come but, not yet

My heart is slowing down. My head is spinning ‘round

My mouth is spilling out regret

Fall down gently underground

Lay still in peace

My love will be the death of me

It doesn’t suffice

I swear I read your mind. I knew you every time

But you had one surprise, you lied

You used to share with me, strong integrity

Now that ceases to be, we died

Fall down gently underground

Lay still in peace

My love will be the death of me

It doesn’t suffice

It doesn’t suffice

Love doesn’t suffice

I was on transit the other day and I smelled something familiar.  It took me a minute to figure it out, but it was the smell of my ex-girlfriend.  I looked around, but she was no where in sight.  Somebody else was wearing the same perfume, or using the same hair product, or whatever other smelly thing  that girls put on.  Whatever it was, it reminded me of her and it instantly brought back a flood of memories.  I could almost remember what she was wearing on a specific day three years ago, just by the power of the smell.  There is a strong connection between smell and memory.

I allude to this in my song “Tired Eyes“.  There’s something about the smell of rain after a sunny stretch that makes me feel all nostalgic.

I can’t explain why smell brings back memories.  I have no idea.  But I do think it is an amazing part of being human.

This all made me think of this other time when the weirdest thing happened to me… I could smell over the phone!!  I know this sounds crazy or it sounds like I’m straight out lying, but I kid you not.  When I was in ninth grade I could smell over the phone for one day and it never happened again.  If you don’t believe me, talk to my friend Brendan Smoker, he was on the other end of the line, presenting different items for me to smell.

Some tell me, “You have to not care and just have a good time.”

Others tell me, “You have to work hard, get yourself out there.  Constantly promoting, constantly marketing.  Never stop.  You won’t get anywhere by sitting on your ass.”

Is it just me, or do these two recommendations sound contradictory?

On one hand, I need to not care… on the other hand, I need to care a lot.  This paradox drives me crazy.  When I’ve tried not caring about my music, I didn’t work very hard or do any sort of promotion.  I essentially sat around in my boxers all day, playing guitar.  But when I’ve tried working hard on my music career, I found myself worrying a lot about success.  I became self conscious and fearful of not selling enough CDs, or making enough new fans, or getting enough new opportunities.  I need to care, but not care… nonsense!

I wonder if this is a semantics thing (or perhaps it’s a problem with the way I think and the way I understand these recommendations of caring, but not caring).  Maybe I shouldn’t use the word “care” for either situation…  I think it might be too vague.

Maybe a good way of rephrasing these ideas would be that I need to put effort into my music career, but I need to not worry about how much success I have.  In other words, I need to enjoy all aspects of what it is to be a singer-songwriter.  If I don’t want to play shows, or record, or promote my music, or talk to fans, I shouldn’t be a singer-songwriter.

But what I’m coming to realize is that I really do enjoy being a part of the music industry.  In a fairly small way, I’m already living the dream that I’ve had since I was twelve years old - being a musician.  But I need to avoid getting bogged down by the slow speed of success (I can’t even say I’ve had many failures yet… it’s just taking a while to get my music out to the public, which is to be expected).  I love working on my music career.  It is, however, difficult to live in the tension of caring, but not caring.  All I can do is keep at it, and learn to become more comfortable in the tension.

Here’s a video of me playing “Tired Eyes” at the Railway Club in Vancouver.  This was the night that I refer to in my blog post called “Free Beer and Stolen Wood”

“It takes too long to learn, so I won’t bother trying.”  That’s something I subconsciously say to myself all the time.  Have you ever dreamed of doing something (maybe being able to play an instrument, or fix a car, or design a website, or break dance) and then give up before you even start?  I’ve done that many times.  Some things just seem to be too big to accomplish.  I might try for a little while, but when success comes more slowly than desired, I just give up.  For example, I wanted to learn Spanish last year.  I worked my way through the first level of Rosetta Stone, but then realized I could still barely speak Spanish.  It was a lot of work just to get through that first level, so I was too frustrated to keep going.  I think part of the problem was that my motivation (a desire to go back to Costa Rica, where I had been for three weeks) seemed too distant.  And the main problem was that I wasn’t patient enough.  I often think in present tense.  I don’t do a lot of planning (future) and I tend to save reminiscing (past) for rainy days.  However, I need to start thinking more long term.  It’s good to live in the here-and-now, but I need to think about what I’m doing with this time.

Because I’ve devoted a lot of time, money, and energy to my music, I’ve realized that I need to make sure I am good at what I do.  That means I need to practice.  I’ve never been the type of person that hates practicing, but I’ve also never been on the other end of the spectrum with those freaks who play until their fingers bleed.  I’m somewhere in the middle.  I enjoy casually picking up my guitar and belting out a song or two.  But that’s not good enough for a professional musician.  I need to get closer to the practice freaks.  I’ve decided recently to work on some finger-style guitar.  I started with the song “Rylynn” by Andy McKee.  It is incredibly challenging.  I’ve been working on it for about a week and a half and I still don’t have it all down.  To add to the frustration, there’s a Korean kid (literally a young child) on YouTube who can play the song flawlessly.  Here I am stumbling over every second note while this kid, half my age, is kicking my ass.  It’s embarrassing.  It almost makes me want to give up.  I feel like it will take me forever to be as good as this child, so why even bother trying.  But it has occurred to me that if I don’t give up, I will eventually get there.  It’s like a marathon.  The finish line is nowhere in sight and I am super tired and wanting to stop, but the laws of physics say that if I keep moving I will get there.  What is it you want to do?  Are you trying?  Throw away all your excused and just do it.  Stop watching tv, get off the couch, turn off the computer, and start doing whatever it is you dream of doing.

I can’t believe I’ve jumped on another social networking bandwagon.  That’s right.  I am now a twitter-er (is that what we call someone who twitters?  Or is it “tweets”?).  I find this whole thing ridiculous.  But when I look back on my experience with these kinds of things, I remember that I took forever to get a myspace page (of which I’m on my third one now) and even longer to get a facebook page… I would resist for as long as I could until I just felt left out.  Well… this time I resisted for just a short while and decided to give in to the cultural psychosis of hyperactive social media.

If you’re interested in “following” my tweets… pop on over to www.twitter.com/JeffHawker

Does anybody else laugh at all the new internet lingo that has arisen in the past ten or so years?  When I was a kid, writing on someones wall was considered vandalism, but now it’s just how we say hello.  Terms like “add me” and “comment me” actually make sense to most people, when really they sound like bad grammar.  Whenever I had a dumb questions when I was young, my dad would tell me to look it up (or he’d make up a false answer and I was gullibul enough to believe it, which is why I bowed like a royal prince at the end of my children’s play)… now when I have a dumb question he tells me to “google it” or “wikipedia it”.  Somehow this language has become a social norm.  We accept these terms without thinking twice about them.  And now I will accept the new term “tweet”.  But I still can’t say it with a straight face.

A couple weeks ago I visited CIVL radio in Abbotsford and had an interview with host Nathan Moes.  We talked about all kinds of things, including bow saws and life after death.  You can listen to it here or go to www.civl.ca

They also have a podcast, so check that out if you’re interested.

I love it when my friends come out to my concerts because it’s always great to hang out with them and I feel supported by their attendance.  However, I totally understand that they can’t come to all of my shows… that would be a lot of time and money for them to invest.  But whenever they are able and willing, I really appreciate it.

There is actually something good, however, that comes from me playing gigs alone.  It allows me to spend more time getting to know new people, whether they be other artists, musicians, or fans.  And in an industry so dependent on connections, it is very good for me to spend some time getting to know people.

Last night I played a show at the Railway club here in Vancouver.  This is a venue that bands like the Barenaked Ladies and the Tragically Hip have played at, so I was pretty stoked.  When I got to the club, I met the other performers and found out that we were going to all stay on stage for the whole set.  This was a foreign idea to me.  Usually concerts are divided into sets with different acts - one or more opening act and then the main event.  But we were all up there the whole time.  I would play a song, then Jenny would play a song, then Super (that’s his real name, I think) would play a song.  It was different, but kinda cool.

As I was mentioning earlier, playing shows alone allows me to meet new people.  As I was drinking free beer (perks of performing), I had a conversation with a man named David.  He had a fantastic D’artagnan mustache (you know, the mustache accompanied by a soul patch).  For a living, David makes wooden horns… like didgeridoos and stuff like that.  He told me a story about sneaking into a public park at night to cut down the perfect branch to make a horn with.  He dressed completely in black and even painted his saw.  He even got a woman and her dog to come with him to be on the lookout and to also be a distraction in case anyone was coming (he also told me that this was a great way to seduce women… there’s nothing more romantic than breaking the law together).  Apparently he almost got caught by the cops once, but managed to sneak away.  He seems to think that no one would notice a branch missing from the park, but admits that he would look mighty suspicious walking past a police car, all dressed in black, holding a saw in one hand and a giant branch in the other.

Later on I had an inspirational conversation with Super, one of the other performers, about the music business.  He encouraged me to keep playing shows and told me that I have some good talent.  Encouragement is like the fuel to my music career.  It drives me to keep performing.  I think I will always play music nomatter what, at least privately, just because I love it… but in order for me to play publicly, I need to know that other people actually appreciate my music.  It would be selfish for me to play songs that people don’t even like.  A few months ago I was unsure if anyone would like my music, but now I’m starting to think that it really does connect with quite a few of people.  I just need to get the exposure so that people know about my music.  If you have any ideas or connections for me, let me know.