New seasons & a song about life's paradoxes

Life's never perfect, but it's good

It’s been an eventful few months, including multiple trips to Canada (one of which was a 60-hour road trip from LA to Saskatoon and back), visits with family, and a few weeks in Italy.

Throughout, I launched the crowdfund for the pop project, launched the new membership, and have been working on a variety of personal artistic projects, as well as having critical conversations and developing things further over at The Center for Human Nobility.

The truth is that, personally, it’s an insane thing to focus my time on art and transforming the infrastructure for a new arts & entertainment landscape.

But it’s too important to neglect, so I continue. The world needs better things. People are desperate. We are sick of the ugliness and reduction of our being in what we see everywhere. We are starving for beauty and stories, and especially in pop culture.

Despite many joys in the past while, it has also been a stressful time for many reasons. This song of mine has been coming to mind as a result, as the phrase has come often in moments like I’ve been experiencing: where you can stand in the midst of so much that is exquisitely beautiful and yet—and yet—have the difficulties humming constantly in the backdrop. Black fly in the chardonnay.

“Life’s never perfect, but it’s good,” she thought, looking out from the coast of California a few years ago, while also wondering how in the world she was going to sort out so many of the pieces:

Life’s Never Perfect, But It’s Good

So many gifts that I have carried

So many loves that I have buried, oh

So many hopeful Januarys

So many darkened Februarys

I could come to so many conclusions

But this is the right refrain:

“Life’s never perfect, but it’s good”

Who hasn’t felt the disappointment

Who could say they don’t know what joy is

Things that seem divine appointments

Others ravaged by the locusts, oh

We all come to so many conclusions

But this is the right refrain:

“Life’s never perfect, but it’s good”

So many songs I’ve sung in my head

So much love to keep me grounded

I could come to so many conclusions

But this is the right refrain:

Oh, I could come to so many conclusions

But this is the right refrain:

“Life’s never perfect, but it’s good”

It’s good

In other news, I recently launched this and have been wondering where this Substack fits in with the whole now that things have been shifting a bit.

But I decided I’m going to keep writing here casually and sharing bits of my public work, sometimes just linking a song and a couple of sentences, and will likely make Substack my main social media home. I have intended to for a while but we are often weird little homing pigeons and forming new habits is more uphill than a person thinks. Breaking the old ones are even harder, even when it’s so often little value.

But let’s try again.