Pendiction

In mostly a good way I’ve been doing some soul searching in the past couple weeks. Some of the soul searching has been brought on by conflicts in my life, sometimes just because occasionally it’s time to do a bit of soul searching. I do yoga on Tuesday morning, there’s a term the teacher uses that apparently I can’t even spell bad enough for google to know what I’m talking about. I thought it was pendiction. Not a word. But pendiction to me is the slow stretching of your muscles within a comfort zone but further than you might in the regular course of life or a workout. Stretch your shoulder further, your neck further. And do it slowly and do it in both directions. By stretching further than you might otherwise, suddenly the everyday wear and tear might bring a little less fatigue or exhaustion. So in these handful of weeks I’ve spent some time in pendiction. As I spend hours trying to suss out the nuts and bolts of basslines to only realize I had been approaching the whole piece wrong I wonder. . . .is this part of my mission on Earth to struggle through these basslines that some of my peers get under their fingers in a half hour? As I hunt down "nos” for my band’s fourth annual almost booked August/September show in Duluth I wonder the same thing. . .am I on this Earth to do this? I have no idea why I’m on this Earth but I doubt it’s to ask or answer that question. But it’s my pendiction. It’s my stretching a little further, asking questions I usually just ignore. The pendiction isn’t just sitting in front of the computer rewinding the four seconds of a song to see if it’s a C# or a D. Pressing play on a song on the radio, interviewing an artist about their next show. Is this me? Am I the right person here. I watch basketball and wonder if I actually like it. Same as music, do I love this, or did I love my brother so much as a kid that it’s the best simulacrum I have of that feeling that is on cable TV at the moment. FOOTNOTE ENERGY: It seems important to point out this comes from a different section of my mind than the variety of imposter syndrome I can face. Imposter syndrome for me involves asking “you’re a fraud, what in the shit are you doing here”. My pendiction is more asking “how’d you end up doing this, is this right for you?” Stretch these muscles for awhile, but then stop thinking about it. Go back to your regular workout. Today I go back to my regular workout and it feels good to type here again, to think about things in a casual conversational way.

One pendiction I was asked to do by my nutritionist was to write an intuitive guide to weed smoking. Intuitive Eating is an important book to me that I read in 2023. The book does a lot to ask you to approach food with a less hierarchical good/bad approach. And the book asks you to do something I’ve struggled with for most of my life: believe myself in regards to what I want to eat. My nutritionist frequently asks me to write things that I won’t share publicly. I appreciate it because it’s tangibly good for my soul and I hate it because I love sharing. I’m here, I’m writing on this blog, because I still wanted to share and express but I wanted to keep those thoughts separated from social media. My desire to share and to broadcast is larger than most. That makes social media too enticing for me. So I’ll keep that writing to myself, but in it I reflected back on this particular moment that stuck in my head from the mid 2000s. Knol Tate’s band, Askeleton, was playing at The Triple Rock Social Club. Knol was wearing a sweatshirt I believe for the University of Montreal. At the time I was doing what I would now describe as pendiction. I was questioning whether I fit in to the life I had built. I was seeing peers step up on levels of national acclaim that I hadn’t, and I was watching the national acclaim Heiruspecs had attained start its decline. At the time I reached a conclusion that I was excellent at being me. Not in spite of my shortcomings, but in collaboration with them. I was drunk. I was looking in the mirror at the Triple Rock venue side bathroom. I was sure that the sum of my efforts, my collaborations, my friendships, my projects. . .I was contributing. To what? I’m not as clear on that. The scene? The universe? The future? I was doing a good job and my clarity powered me through a long set of months of keeping my head down and working.

I have to spend most of my life not thinking about my life. The navel gazing, the what is my purpose, the am I supposed to do this channel can only be clicked over to from time to time. I have a beautiful busy life but most significantly I have a life that rolls on best when I work on the projects in front of me. I don’t know if whoever hired me should’ve called a different bass player, but it’s immaterial, they called me and I said yes. I don’t know if the administrative work I do for creative projects is the best use of my time, but it’s on my plate, I better do it efficiently and keep it moving. And if I move it off my plate I should do it with love and joy, not indignation. I don’t know how deeply I like basketball, but it brings me joy when I watch it or discuss it in the right environment. I’m glad I thought about these things, but I’ve got projects. Projects big, small, indulgent, capricious, beautiful and inspiring. They are in front of me and I feel stretched and ready for all of it.