Set honest and worthy goals and commit to them. Ask yourself what you want in life, commit to it and walk towards it everyday. You will discover that your desire intensifies and that you will begin to attract the people and things you need to stay on course.
Your commitment will inspire others.
This is a resurection from an old life for you and the others that you inspire to do the same.
Together you will help sustain each others process and you will truley rise.
Eric
Dirk,
The Rosa Parks analogy is perfect. It shuts the excuse makers up. One act of courage has made Parks an emblem of heroism in our history. What happened as a result of her stance for justice took on a life of its own and became bigger than her. One noble action helped every black person in America and countless others as well.
As I thought about what you wrote, I realized that A Rod didn’t blow his opportunity to be a hero when he shot drugs in his mid to late 20’s, he blew it at 33 when he failed to take responsibility for his actions. He did not have the courage of Rosa Parks.
From Merriam-Webster.com heroic: conduct especially as exhibited in fulfilling a high purpose or attaining a noble end.
By staining his record A Rod may have destroyed his credibility as one of the greatest players in the game. But if he used his press conference to admit with no excuses that he knowingly and willfully shot drugs as a short cut to performance, it could have been his defining moment.
A Rod could have turned the heart of every parent in America if he would have told young kids involved in sports that what he did was beneath a true athletes dignity. If stood in front of members of the press ALONE and told kids that being exposed was his darkest hour and his biggest regret he would have displayed courage. By setting an example of personal responsibility for young kids he would have “attained a noble end”. He would have been a “true hero”.
Unfortunately A Rod and the monkeys who stood by him with their bogus solidarity faces on, don’t recognize this as success. Roger Clemens used to rub the bust of Babe Ruth before every game. How many of these impostors rub the bust of Booker T Washington, or the Tuskegee Airmen who defended us in WWII.
By defining success as the accumulation of money and prestige A Rod missed one of the biggest opportunities of his life. Being a coward in his twenties could have been his biggest asset, but instead of being shaped by his experience he chose cowardice again.
Several years ago my beautiful little sister Kelly was diagnosed with Leukemia. When I told Francis about Kelly’s illness, like so many friends he suggested that we go visit her. However, there is a difference between Francis and the others. While they paid lip service, Francis actually showed up and several times at that.
Prior to his first visit to the hospital, Francis and Kelly had never met. But, they fell in like old chums in no time. Francis showed up with his guitar played Licking On My Chocolate Heart and many songs from his catalog. He even threw a few Wings and Peter Gabriel songs into the mix.
My sister was moved beyond words. Through the haze of various medications she smiled like a child on Christmas morning. Her’s had always been a smile that came straight from God and Francis lit it up like I had not seen in a while.
During these visits to Kelly, Francis was dealing with his own struggles and obligations. He was just releasing The Gulley Flats Boys, touring in Europe, taking care of his beautiful daughter Eva and traveling to Northern England where his own brother Barry was terminally ill. But it was important to him to do what his heart told him. It is a big heart and it kept him busy.
There was one occasion where Francis and I realized our schedules wouldn’t permit us to visit my sister together so he went to the hospital on his own. Francis was not just showing up for me, but for his new friend Kelly.
My sister Justine came on a weekday afternoon for one of her many weekly visits. When Kelly excitedly told her that Francis Dunnery had been there to see her, Justine assumed Kelly was hallucinating from her meds. Justine only knew Francis from a concert at a large venue where the members of Hootie and the Blow Fish decided to show up and do the set with him. Francis was larger than life to Justine and he was about to become even bigger. She choked up when she learned that Francis had indeed given his limited time to our family’s precious baby.
In the thirteen years that I have known Francis, he has always shown me generosity, unfettered optimism and the most outrageous sense of humor imaginable. But the love he displayed for Kelly and the shear selflessness of his visits was beyond the obligations of a friend.
Kelly passed away in March of 2007 and Barry Dunnery a short time after her. My absolute fondness for Francis has been there for as long as I have known him, but my affection grew stronger as he helped ease the pain of my struggle while enduring his own. I hope, had geography pemitted, that I would have shown the same kindness towards Barry. God only knows.
The other day when telling this story to a friend he said “Wow, Francis Dunnery is Amazing.” Indeed he is.
Francis, I will make that announcement for you at any given opportunity . You are indeed the Amazing Francis Dunnery.
Eric
A month after I received the computer I noticed a dent in the rear right corner. The computer had been in my possession and never left my apt. I am certain that I did not cause the damage. It was working fine, but it was dented and I wanted a non dented computer.
I called Apple and they refused to let me return it. I ranted, raved and threatened to no avail. I vowed I would never by another product from them and even the allure of the I-phone would not change my mind.
Recently the G4 battery went dead and would no longer take a charge. When I called Apple care the woman on the phone mistakenly told me the battery was covered by my warranty plan.
Early on a Sunday morning I made my way across town from my East Village apt to the Apple Store. When I got there, Josh, the man at the genius bar informed me that my battery in fact was not covered and that a new one would run me $129.00. I was not planning spending any money.
I took a breath and calmly told him of my disappointment and exaggerated the inconvenience of New York City transit crosstown on Sundays.
Josh’s apology seemed sincere. I told him I understood and that it obviously had nothing to do with him. He must have appreciated my attitude because he then told me to hang on while he called a manager.
The manager approved Josh’s request to give me a brand new battery. No charge! My victory was in my kindness and attitude towards the situation.
Eric
Eric
Two people recording a full-length CD and playing all the instruments it is a bit like painting graffiti on your own wall. It is easy throw a few blobs of paint around, but shaping it and making it bold is tedious and time consuming, and you have to look at it everyday until it is right. Because Ming Dynasty is just the two of us, we never hear our songs in full before we record them. We strum out the parts with lyric and melodic ideas, then we record a version. From there we start to dig into the arrangements and actual instrument parts. We often record two or three different versions of the basic tracks before we settle on one that we like. This can be very expensive in a recording studio, so we decided we would record the Yellow Tiger CD ourselves. We purchased a Digi 002 with Pro Tools 7 and a G4 power book, along with a half-dozen inexpensive microphones. We had a cheap six-channel board that someone had given us, and we intended to rent an inexpensive rehearsal room to record in. This all seemed like a good idea at the time. Engineering was new to both of us, but we fancied ourselves clever enough to manage. We read manuals and books and scoured the Internet for anything to help us capture the sounds we would be playing.
Day 1: We started by taking a cab with all the recording gear from Eric’s place on East 11th Street to Funkadelic (rehearsal) Studios at 37 W 26th Street. The hallway there was filled with beat-up couches occupied by a mix of long-hair, heavy-metal heads, along with a few hipsters and nerdy types, all trying in vain to impress one another. Our plan for this first day was to lay down drums for the title track “Yellow Tiger.” We raced time to set up the Digi 002, the board, the computer, and 6 drum mics, and begin testing the levels. Two hours gone, two hours left before I had to go open the bar at 5pm. Eric was the drummer of the day and feeling the pressure by the time constraints. We knew the melody, but for the drum beat we had nothing more than some vague ideas in our heads–the rest was a black hole. Eric had to play the song to a click track with no band, and I had to engineer with Pro Tools pretty much for the first time in my life. When I thought I was ready, I signaled Eric excitedly with my finger and pushed the record button. Eric was playing a very solid groove: he brought the song to life and my brain started to resonate with it so solidly that I could actually hear the other instruments over the drums! Then, without warning, Eric stopped playing and said, “WHAT’S THAT?!” I got spooked out cuz I couldn’t believe he was hearing something in my brain. Could we be that in sync? The possibilities were both scary and magical…until I saw, though the wall, the Latino band playing in the next room.
My excitement deflated. This is a BIG problem! I thought. No way did we spend all this money and energy to record a rock song with Latino dance music swaying in the background!
I went over to their room and tried to talk them into moving to the other side of the floor. I told them that we were trying to do a professional-quality recording, and I offered them $20 to move. Nope, they were way deep in their groove and didn’t give a shit.
I returned to Eric and we listened to the playback. It seemed to us–through the cheap headphones–that the mics weren’t actually picking up the sounds of the immovable Latinos. And so we continued recording. Eric was playing great that day and we probably did fifteen takes, confident in the performances and sure we had several really great takes to choose from. Drum track number 1 was in the bag. We quickly wrapped up all the gear and wires and rushed out before the studio charged us for another hour. We dragged everything into a cab and back up the stairs at Eric’s place. I headed for the bar. Later that evening, Eric went through all the takes. All seemed well at first. Then, as he started putting eq and compression on the tracks, the song began doing the Cha Cha! The Latin band came back to life in all their glory, and Ming Dynasty would be starting Day 2 from scratch.
Eric
While Ming Dynasty can be classified as Asian Rock and Roll, there is something being missed by many who are not familiar with the band. Several times I have gotten into conversations while touring or playing locally here in New York where the name Ming Dynasty has come up. People love to default to conversations about Cibo Matto and the likes. However,Ming Dynasty is a Rock and Roll band more likely to remind people of Led Zeppelin or the Beatles with traditional Asian folk melodies and occasional Manadarin lyrics than Asian Techno pop . I don’t dislike Cibo Matta or Blonde Red Head and such, but they are not Rock and Roll bands, and frankly I am not sure how Asian music influeneces them either. I don’t hear it. You can hear Ming Dynasty of their website www.mingdynasty.tv or on myspace www.myspace.com/mingdynastyband just hold on to your hat.
Eric
