Q: What Goes Around...

It's funny how kids want to be older - to stay up late, to see movies unsupervised, to eat as many cookies as their father eats.

It's funny how we reach a point where the weight of that desire flips to the opposite side of the scale and we start looking back like we just drove past our destination in a car that refuses to stop.

Luckily I was a child with two older siblings, which provided some of the advantages earned by kids a couple years older while I was still struggling to pronounce the letter R correctly. But I made up for it by being a hilarious little brother. Thanks, guys.

10 years ago, I thought adulthood would be a lousy way to lose the excitement and adventurous freedom of youth. Who would be there to assemble the mind-blowingly complex LEGO inventions that only an imaginative kid can create? Who's gonna tap into the unlimited possibilities inside that Bob Ross paint set that I never did open? My Dad loved hearing my qualms with growing up, always ready to interject with a number of reasons why getting older is the shit! He was so right. And the best part is we're all learning to be sort of Benjamin Button-like in our own ways, realizing Age and Aliveness are not destined to cancel each other out. We're As Young As We Feel We Are.

Sounds like this is the part where I advertise some new age-eliminating milkshake and how it's helped me keep my childlike physique over the years. "And Still Eat All The Carbs You Crave!" But this is all I have to show you...

A: Comes Around (wind permitting)

I originally started writing this entry to mention the awesome ways the world has been replenishing the things I've let fly over the years. It's like being handed a dollar bill upon which you wrote your name in red ink ten years earlier, to find that someone along its journey added the word "sucks", which someone else crossed off and replaced with an arrow that points to George Washington's newly-bearded face. What was at one time only an ordinary dollar bill is now a piece of art, and the very first vote in your favor should you ever grow a beard and run for president. You can't put a price on that.

One of my favorite people on the west coast says, "You meet someone, then you meet them again," encouraging me to trust the full-circleness of all things, that even missed opportunities and unfinished conversations will have a place down the line. And also to remind me to make an honest connection with everyone I meet, for they may be my greatest friend, supporter, or Love interest when we reconnect at some distant mark on our timeline.

This very afternoon, a crazy thing happened. Heading south on Highland Ave, Los Angeles, in the final second before putting on his shades and concealing his face, I recognized someone I'd met 5 years ago, and only in upstate NY. And there he was walking into a restaurant 2,500 miles from NY, in a city of nearly 4 million people, the exact second I was passing by. Sure, it wasn't some monumental reunion of a dear friend or rendezvous with Elvis, but to me this stuff is on par with glitches in the matrix and malfunctions in the lucid dream. I'm always left mystified. Over 6 billion people on Earth yet I find proof everyday to see that we're all just part of one big neighborhood. It's a small world, after all. And I am so thankful for the eight of you in the universe right now reading these elaborate run on sentences broadcasting my constant state of awe atop this revolving planet. You empower these words to live beyond the pages of a dust-collecting notebook. Who knows, maybe in ten years we'll meet up and laugh about how long-winded and tangential my writing used to be, or how I used to be such a good guy before the millions of readers eventually went to my head, or the way some billionaire invested in my brother's videogames and my father's best-selling novels after finding their links on Immaculate Miraculous. "Stranger things have happened both before and after noon." -Anthony Kiedis

To: Life - my foam boomerang,

I want to throw you as hard as I possibly can

so we'll know all the world when I see you again

And tell that girl with the pigtails to watch it, she's really gonna hurt someone.

Alive and amazed, no matter what age.

See you again.

Ryan Dilmore

Back That Thing Up

Slowly as a steady pulse, the tiny lightbulb on my macbook seems more like a heart monitor tonight, showing healthy signs of a rejuvenated machine. Welcome back to Life, young friend. First '09 now '10. I don't know what it is about this time of year that suddenly shoots an allergic reaction into the motherboard beneath my fingers, but it gets me worried sick for the first 10 minutes, followed by seven straight days of creative liberation.

Mercury isn't in retrograde this time, and I've ruled out the threat of a faulty power source. It's a mystifying event that can only be understood through an imagination's interpretation. It appears as though the laptop signed on for an annual weeklong vacation to some Narnia or NeverLand-like world where it's free to relax and forget about cnn.com, text edit, and this horrible four letter b-word that I still haven't gotten used to. For all the energy and possibility it provides on a daily basis, a spontaneous week off in the summer seems totally justified, and I am happy (and grateful, now) to oblige. I can think of so many people who completely earn the right to slip out of their spreadsheets and recline into something a little more tropical more often than they do. We all know how essential a new adventure is, to our own lives and the collective Damn, I Feel Good-ness of our planet. Even a minor change, to give yourself permission to focus only on the fruits that fuel your soul for today, will inevitably fit new puzzle pieces together in the big big picture.

I don't think it can be mere coincidence, the similarities that link the Crash of 2009 and the Freeze of 2010. Both occurred in mid-summer weeks of recording new songs, just as soon as I announce a release date for another homebaked solo album. After the fact, I try so hard to go back in my mind to the moment just before the collapse. Was it something I said? Was it something I thought?

All too often I'm reminded that Life is always listening. Not in a frightening "You better be careful what you wish for!" sort of way, more in a "Santa's bringing exactly what you wanted this year, wrapped in some very deceiving boxes." I realized both last year and last week that my journal entries and general thinking were focused on nature in the days surrounding each iLeave of Absence. Verses and choruses begging to see Los Angeles through the eyes of its native Tongva and Chumash inhabitants. Drawings of trees. The common self-inquiring question, "Have You Seen Today?" meaning, "it's no wonder I'm so pale and near-sighted, I've been locking eyes with this screen for hours in my dimly lit apartment."

(Sidenote: I'm really looking forward to one day having a home with large windows to utilize the unconditionally radiant light that doesn't really rise or set through the single curtain of my current space.)

You don't need a private eye to decipher what's been going on here. If I fuel myself with thoughts of Nature, inviting my mind to drift away from anything that beeps or buzzes to be surrounded with those that... produce a million other, more beautiful sounds,

then

Life acts accordingly without necessarily waiting for me to make the first move. She's so good at saying, "You supplied the thought, I'll take it from here." Two seconds later my phone busts into three pieces, my computer goes on immediate vacation, as I suddenly find myself outdoors three pages into a 10 page pen-to-paper journal entry on feeling freer than ever.

It's been an awesome seven days of drawing and writing. The aching in my fingers from pens and pencils is a beautiful hurt that I haven't felt in far too long. New doors have been opened in my thinking, as I flip through my journal saying, "Now this is starting to look like it belongs to an artist."

I intend to spend more time away from the computer every day, to write more songs without limiting their lives to what "a song should sound like," and to combine the urgency of "live like I'm dying" with the attitude of "live because I'm freaking alive!" I don't think I should even mention the collection of books I plan to release at some point before the Crumble of 2011.

I'm off to take a page out of Juvenile's book of worldly wisdom and back this thing up.

R.

Excuse My Grammar While My Thoughts Meander

There's no better time to clear the fear than 5am. The careful hours when the moon chooses a new perfume, knowing that the closest star is coming over soon.

I wish I could post the huge canvas of the moon and sun I see in my head... maybe one day when I learn to paint I can vivify this wordy space.

My body's been awake way too long for my mind to judge any melodies being broadcast through my system. It's a beautiful feeling to be so unpredictably close to shut-eye, when words and music just pour out onto paper and all I do is watch it happen. "This is the best music I've ever written" - only a good morning's sleep will tell if these drowsy claims are at all accurate. Thankfully my molecular microphones are always on Record, to capture the sensory details that my sleepiness will surely cause my eyes and ears to miss, and to play them back in dreams or hazy memories in days to come. The liberating unselfcounsciousness of these super late/early hours mixed with the spark-starting impulses of music I hadn't experienced before, inspires me to be highly creative, or simply unfiltered, or at the very least incapable of knowing the difference. It's incredible, the chemistry sets at our constant disposal. Adding a few hours past bedtime to this meal and these specific thoughts throughout the day just to see what sort of new ideas arise in the middle of the night... What if I hadn't been listening to Julian Casablancas' new album for the first time, or if I started writing three hours earlier, how different would the pages of my journals look tonight? Would they even exist at all?

Tonight was workshop session number 2 at the home school atop Laurel Canyon. Have I mentioned how lucky I am to be surrounded by such talented and wildly awesome human beings... Shame on me for ever fooling myself into believing for a second that inspiring individuals existed in certain places and not others. Or that communities had to already be in existence for me to find them. This remarkable three-year adventure in California started out as a two-week visit that just never ended, and I've been something way beyond fortunate to find myself alongside the founding members of so many amazing little communities along the way. Some of them appeared the way shooting stars, names of people that inexplicably slip your mind when you need them, and missing keys do - the second you stop trying so hard to search, they show up. I never planned on moving to California, I never planned on playing for 2 years in a rock band, or even imagined I'd be in this workshop. Thankfully my parents taught me to dream huge as soon as I woke up in this world / And my brother and sister have always encouraged flying on the winds less traveled by / And all my friends and co-travelers through twentythree years remind me to stay focused on the core of what I truly want, and that all the steps along the way are gonna move, some without permission, always happening FOR us not TO us. Thankfully I've been too mesmerized by the meandering streams to turn back or attempt to force them to flow elsewhere. These are the paths that have always led to the brilliant chapters in my story. I trust them wholeheartedly. I really do.

Sounds like I have a lot of thanking to do.

Goodnight Moon...you smell nice.

RyanzzZZzzzz

I Dream In French

I find that whenever I doze off in a new place, I tend to have the most elaborate and vivid dreams. Almost as though the room around me has just as much say in what's playing inside my brain as any other ingredients that go into creating the world I see in my sleep. Does everybody feel this? Different locations on Earth trigger unique synapses in my head, each position on the globe delivering its own locally-grown snooze nutrients to my subconscious self, keeping me energized as I protect the innocent from public transportation assassins or listen intently to Imogen Heap's one-on-one songwriting lesson as she urgently lectures at a piano inside a dark room quickly flooding with water. Wish I could post screenshots from that one. I should add that the piano sounded amazing as the water reached the keys. Something to look into.

I finally (two days after the release) got to see Inception - so good. A theater filled with people anxiously biting their nails and dropping their jaws as I failed to hold together the pieces of my freshly blown mind. I'm a sucker for an extraordinary story and my wife-from-another-Life Marion Cotillard.

If tonight was only just a dream,

how will I explain you to the real me...

ryan.dilmore

Good Morning, Miss Bliss

Sure there may be wicked smog lingering above the ass-stained streets of my current neighborhood... and true I never know what to say to Catwoman as she riddles off her daily dilemmas in the fresh fruit section of the grocery store... but let it be known that Los Angeles shows up to my door time after time with the coolest opportunities to mingle and muse with the greatest folks around.

It's been nearly two years since I first came in contact with the supermassive gravitational pull of Matthew Puckett and Jeremy Silver. And it was just a couple short months later that SpaceHeat sonically boomed into the universe. It was never part of my musical plans to fashion the sort of melodies and beats that'll catch the attention of Timberlake and Bieber, but oh what a danceable ride it's been.

Where there's Heat, there's fire

Every session is like going to school where the walls wear vinyl records and soundproof foam, where the dress code is "the same clothes I wore last night", and the teachers are pulled straight off the glossy front page of future issues of Rolling Stone. Lunch count still leaves room for improvement, but overall school rules.

It's no coincidence that I met these musical geniuses in a classroom-like setting, in a songwriters workshop along with a number of other incredible new friends. And I could not be happier to be their peer in yet another workshop this summer. This new school is atop an upward stream of winding roads, amidst the homes that housed Joni Mitchell, Jim Morrison, and some other folks you may have heard of. The desks at this school are plastic green deck chairs (or the two-seater bench swing, if you're lucky). I got a check plus on my first assignment and I cannot wait to find out what becomes of the coming weeks.

Alright, my alarm gave out a warning. Meeting up with Jeremy in the studio to help out with his new album (dropping this Fall)! And if you haven't purchased it already, pick up Matthew Puckett's latest! You'll thank yourself for the musical nutrients it undeniably provides. If you watch Boston Med on ABC, you already know Matthew Puckett's music. These classmates set a really high bar.

...I don't think I'm gonna make it on time,

Ryan

I Saw The Sign

Wandering through San Diego today - land that I Love. The town has always been a friend I'm undeniably interested in getting to know better, but she'll have work, or I'll be writing... It's time we excuse the excuses and be true to our connection. Life has been posting up constant reminders that All of this is a gift, that Now is always the right time to go where our gut tells us, to shine positive light as we go forward, and to say the things our lungs aren't shy to lay out on the table.

It's a new day and I vow to play more than the role of Hungry Bystander.

Let's be brave and do awesome stuff.

See you soon,

Ryan

We're All On Top Of It

I've been writing/recording a bunch of new Ryan Dilmore songs in my quaint California apartment. I've lived in 5 different places since I moved to L.A., with a number of different roommates and real-life cartoon characters (and occasionally their pet of choice). If you've ever moved in with total strangers or searched craigslist for a roof to sleep beneath, I'm sure you share the desire I have to write a book about the adventures. A book that ends with the line, "I'm so glad that's all over." I'm grateful for every temporary co-tenant, it makes having my own space now all the more liberating! I can play guitar whenever I want, I can check my pants at the door, I can do all the things Kevin McCallister did and more.

Another thing - it's so awesome to thread creativity into only positive fabrics these days. Sharing my energy with the brilliant and enthusiastic practices and partnerships. I Love having more time lately to focus on being an individual, developing the artist that I am. Free to sing the songs I want, play the chords I want.

Here's a song I was inspired to write last month. Go ahead, take it for its first spin.

{ On Top Of It }

It was the perfect exercise in accidentally writing a whole tune in under 5 minutes. Quite a contrast from the 2-years-to-finish-this-chorus method I use all too often, which can totally drain the joy right out of the songwriting experience. Songs are meant to be sung, not worked on for eternity. To remedy this, I'm practicing every day to get out of the way, to be the mysterious channel that so many creators speak of. Openness.

Keep the Change,

ryan

Life On Earth

"We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children."

I want to be a heart who takes action. It'll never feel right to be a voice that talks about how dirty the river is and do very little to clean it up. It's pretty horrifying to know entire habitats and views as beautiful as these are currently choking on oil. What if the leak began where I'm standing, and I never got to see what I'm seeing now ... This is possibly the most stunning spot on Earth I've been, and I realize how incredibly lucky I am to have woken up today in this unspoiled paradise.

There's a neighborhood back home in NY that has truly become a sanctuary for my own creativity and wholeness. What if that place were flooded with petroleum? What action can I take starting now to protect the Life I Love?

So many positive do-ers and circumstances have inspired me these past few years to conserve energy, erase wasteful behavior, and understand that we each make a billion daily decisions that undeniably have an effect on the whole shebang.

"When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe." -John Muir

There are so many unbelievable songs and seas and people I've yet to meet on Earth, and I know there are an infinite number of ways for me to give more Right Now for the present planet and for the children and landscapes hereafter.

On your side,

Ryan

Adventure is out there

I'm a seed that lands on a bird's wing, or the dust speck that finds its way to Horton the elephant. I Love being a traveler to new terrain and I'm so lucky to be caught in the momentum of what's already on the move.