September 13, 2023

Greetings from sunny, beautiful Central Pennsylvania!

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I know – it has been a while since you heard from me. It has been a good summer with a few curve balls (like changing phone / internet service – this turned into a time-consuming nightmare!)

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In the last month I went to the SPAH convention and played / taught at a local event: the Greenwood Furnace Folk Gathering.

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I’m still reeling from everything I took in from these trips and one of the reasons I’m writing is to reverse the flow of information a little bit – I recently read an essay from a guy named David Perrell about writing on the internet as a way of digesting the flood of information coming at us from the internet as well as life…

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Basically, the idea is this – if you just take in information and stimulation all the time you get overloaded and overwhelmed. You become like a swamp. You get stuck. But when you share the ideas coming into you with others, you take them in on a deeper level. You also figure out what to keep and what to let go of.

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You become an active part of the process – a creator- instead of a passive bystander.

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You don’t need to be a big-time author to get into this process. Simply posting ideas on social media, having conversations with friends about ideas you find interesting are forms of publishing. Any time I try to explain an idea to someone else, I get clearer about what I am trying to learn. I surprise myself with insights that never would have happened by just thinking about the subject.

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When someone is generous enough to give you a beautiful thought one of the best things you can do with it is to pass it along to others. It magnifies the power of the thought inside of you as well as to the collective consciousness…

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One of the ideas that I have been exposed to lately in several forms is the power of boredom.

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One way to define boredom is a restless desire for stimulation. When you are unable to tolerate even a few moments of boredom, then you become a phone junkie or a doom scroller on whatever device you are using.

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When you find your work or practice boring and flee to the noise of news and social media as a way of taking a break, you wear out your brain.

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On the other hand, if you do something intentionally less stimulating than the work you are tired of, then eventually you will find it stimulating to return to work.

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A lot of times taking a break can be boring. Maybe that is the point!

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When I flew from Saint Louis to Chicago after the SPAH convention, I did an experiment: after we were up in the air, I decided to spend as much time as I could meditating.

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By this I mean:

– Close my eyes, sit with a straight spine, put the tip of my tongue on the roof of my mouth at the gum line, follow my breath nice and easy, all the way to the bottom of my lungs and back up, focusing on the word ommmmmmm..

– observing my own mind as thought storms sneak in, run their course, and then mysteriously evaporate as I return my attention to my breath and tweaking my posture.

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What I discovered about this form of boredom is that the drone of the airplane fit right in. It ended up being so much better than trying to sleep or watching a movie on a tiny screen with bad sound.

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And occasionally, I had a moment of pure consciousness. I could ride a breath like a surfer riding a wave. As soon as I noticed this was happening, I would wipe out… and then it was time to start over again.

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I remember looking at an old book of photos of Ireland and one of the photos was of a group of men sitting at a dock staring off into mid-space. The caption under the photo was “In some villages, boredom is a carefully cultivated luxury”

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This idea fills me with a strange sense of optimism. What if this thing that so many of us are desperately trying to avoid is a gift?

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Thanks for reading this!

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Richard

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PS – You could also deal with boredom by taking one of my harmonica courses…

Free basics of blues harp course:

​https://www.ultimateharmonica.com/p/the-ultimate-beginner-harmonica-course​

In-depth course on bending notes on the harmonica:

​https://www.ultimateharmonica.com/p/the-bending-course​

A great collection of Irish Tunes and Session Strategies:

​https://www.ultimateharmonica.com/p/the-irish-course​

A great old jazz standard plus scales and arpeggios for improvisation

​https://www.ultimateharmonica.com/p/sweet-georgia-brown-on-harmonica-and-guitar​