After the screamo festival I headed to Texas to spend a day with my family and play/speak at a cowboy church in Athens. That’s right - from skinny jeans to Wranglers, tattoos to cowboy hats. I’ve got cultural whiplash. That, my friends, is a diverse weekend.
Now I’m in the DFW airport about to board a flight to Colorado Springs. I’m spending a good part of this week at Compassion‘s mother ship filming a DVD that will be used to train other speakers and artists on how to communicate about Compassion, and having a lot of meetings with marketing and IT folks about the present and future of Compassion Bloggers.
While I’m there I’ll also make the final decision on who’s going with us to the Dominican Republic in November so I’ll let you guys be the first to know when that’s all done. And I may have time to shoot some video and get answers to any questions you guys might have about Compassion International too. If I do, what would you like to ask? What would you like to see?
I spoke at a screamo music festival yesterday and here is just some of what I learned about music making from one guitar player there. I wrote these lessons down and will afix them to my bathroom mirror at home for review every morning.
People who take life from me: The guy with the endless need for affirmation. The gossip. The lady looking for a fight. The guy with nothing good to say. The girl who forwards me Republican propaganda. The guy who forwards me Democratic propaganda. The addict. The outloud incessant worrier. The grown man who’s still mad at his mommy. The perpetually depressed. The comma-deficient. The abuser. The anonymous. The rock star. The...there are a lot of these. They’re easy to list aren’t they? And listing them, focussing on them and not the folks in the first group, is a sure way to become a miserable life-taking person myself.
Yesterday, the third annual Groves family back to school bash was thrown. 21 kids and 11 adults (last count taken just before ordering pizzas) in our front yard playing games, eating, hanging out and, of course, having their picture taken (see below).
Today, I was in North Carolina speaking about Compassion International at a screamo festival (stunning video coming soon). About 900 people in a field, no funnel cakes, lots of guys who looked like girls and girls who looked like guys, lots of tapered leg jeans (disturbing pictures coming), one dentist friend, and two fist fights.
Tomorrow, I’m speaking and playing at a conference for independent musicians in Dallas. I will likely see guys who look like girls there but other than that it’ll be a completely different day than the last two. I love my life.
