How to BEAT the Winter Doldrums…

Ah, there’s nothing like an NYC winter. The days are short. The nights are long. You wear sweaters and socks to bed and still you feel like you just had your feet in the freezer for the past few hours. No wonder so many people get the seasonal blues. For me, it usually hits right around February. So what to do?

Travel, my friends. This year, I’m heading down to Costa Rica for a week-and-a-half of surfing and jungle exploration. More specifically, I’m going to the Envision Festival, taking place on the Pacific Coast sands of Playa Uvita.

In just four years, Envision has grown into a global phenomenon. People from all around the world converge on the pristine Costa Rican beaches from February 26th until March 1st to vibe on music, art and an elevated sense of consciousness. Additionally, there will be classes in yoga, permaculture and speakers from a variety of different backgrounds.

Plane tickets to Costa Rica are reasonable. I’m flying from New York, and round-trip, it’s only $450, with tax. Getting around Costa Rica is fairly cheap, as are hostels, food and drink. In addition to the festival, I’m also going to try and drive up to the more northern end of the country and climb up high into the jungle canopy, where about 90% of all rainforest organisms can be found! 

To find out more about Envision, go to their website here, or read this article that my friends over at Reality Sandwich wrote about their experience at 2014’s event. Tickets are expected to sell out fast for the event, so get on it while you can. Hope to see you all there. Pura Vida!!

How do you write about what you know?

It’s a common enough saying. “Write what you know.” In fact, I think I’ve heard it ad nauseum, in that I never necessarily agreed with it. I mean, I like to tell fantastical weird stories. I can’t say I’ve ever met a man like the Digger of the Wastes, who appears in Bridge Burner Hyperion as a man with narcissus flowers for hair and the job of killing the old stories beneath the ground before they wake up. Nor would I want to meet a man like that, quite frankly.

However, I think there is a kernel of truth to writing about what you know. For instance, I love music. It’s in my blood. I’ve played in more bands than I can remember, and only feel the most sane when I have a guitar I can pick up at a moment’s notice. My love of music has found its way into my writing through characters who are either musicians themselves or have to use music as a means of understanding the worlds they inhabit.

Thurmond, from Bridge Burner Hyperion, uses a bass-saber as both a weapon and an instrument. This was an idea I came up with after I had started learning how to play bass when I was sixteen years old, part bass, part axe. I don’t think I would have ever been able to think this up if I hadn’t been learning the intricacies of the bass guitar. The idea came from something I knew, but wasn’t just a literal interpretation of my knowledge. I reshaped it, dissolved my knowledge in my creative juices and made it something wholly original. And as artists, isn’t that what we’re supposed to do?

What music inspires you?

Ah, music. Have you ever met a person who has not been moved by a particular song or arrangement? Even my current roommate, who says he is the most musically challenged person in all of New York, is moved by Chopin and Tchaikowsky.

I always find my writing process is hugely inspired by music. Being a musician, it is hard for me to listen to many things for fear of me being distracted by trying to take apart how the song is put together. “Oh, the bass player is doing something interesting here,” or “sounds like he’s using a combination of wah and delay pedal here.”

In no particular order then, these are the artists I’ve been listening to for the past couple of months while working on “Pyronic Technique.”

Sigur Ros. The Rolling Stones. Krishna Das (and all sorts of other Kirtan music). Thievery Corporation. Phish. Deadmau5. Kronos Quartet (especially the album they did for the Fountain soundtrack).

Not really much of a trend there. Some of the stuff you could categorize together, but really it’s just a random assortment of different styles, different genres. The only way you could really group these artists together that would make sense, at least in my head, is that they all drive me forward. They push my creative process forward, bringing it along for a ride. They turn something on inside of me which makes me aspire to create, which makes me want to write.

As I said before, not all bands or musicians do this to me. I listen to The Clash or Hendrix and I’m usually too distracted to focus too much on my writing. I want to be immersed in their respective lyrics or guitar virtuosity. Are there artists who drive you forward? Maybe it’s not music which does it for you, but paintings, or spoken word, or the smell of a loved one’s cooking.

Whatever it is, identify it, and make it work for you.