When I plan a vacation, I usually don’t look to cities. I want country settings. I want to see the edge of the Earth. I want to feel closer to the stars with more access to those that fall; where talking with the omnipresent feels like I’m on a direct line. If my eyes can’t be zooming out hundreds of miles over open water or from a mountain pass, I want them to be set on macro exploring a thick and twisted jungle floor. In my journey I look for a few thrills now and then. Something to write home about.

In those moments I like to feel like Indiana Jones hanging over a ledge, being recklessly whisked away down a sorted highway in India, or lifted off the ground in a single prop plane in a spirited getaway over a grassy, near forgotten runway. In other moments, apart from the adventure, I prefer the kind of stillness that only nature can offer. Put me in places where the wind against my skin is all that powers my appreciating sighs - to hum, to buzz with delight. My lungs, like the rest of my being, hang light, regenerating perhaps, or resting at least, from its heavier duty sustaining life in the big cities.

So far on this excursion down south, I’ve seen only the cities. Rio De Janeiro, Curitiba, Sao Paolo, and Buenos Aires. They are all vastly metropolitan, sprawling cities. Only Rio so far has afforded me the mountains and oceans, which are built into the city’s extraordinary design.

Also in Rio, not unlike many cities in the world including New York and Los Angeles, posh neighborhoods and affluent avenues jut right up against slums. Communities built of scrap metal, concrete and recycled materials stacked clumsily like Jenga pieces. Blue hued glues hold them all together.

“This is not the beautiful part,” said one of our many rotating guides. But I choose to see the contrary. It was a slum, Rio’s largest in fact, but it is still home to hundreds of thousands of lives being lived out in every nook, cranny and crawlspace of the alleyway streets. Slum is merely economic jargon. The word itself has no status. Everything I could see was natural life. It was a typical human settlement. Earthlings clinging onto earthlings for life support, making art to entertain each other, painting walls to decorate or demonstrate. No matter how desolate, floors need to be swept, water pumped in and out. Creativity and ingenuity are hard at work. Children play and mind their pets. People dance and fall in love. Life does what life does no matter where you reside.

I am lucky that I have the freedom to be so mobile. Sometimes I forget that when I temporarily hold myself hostage in a holding tank, hotel, terminal, van, or dressing room. I am quickly reminded of my gift when I meet anyone new. They know I have traveled far to be there and that I will continue to visit many places even if only doing so in the effort to return home. I realize I am blessed and in a sense very powerful. I know I must walk with respect and honor those whose grounds I am effortlessly treading upon. I am here because I sing songs and share my understanding of love with large groups of people. That is all. My work isn’t taken lightly and I spend a great deal of time sweating over and reconnecting with it, not technically, but personally and spiritually. This is not a vacation for me. I would never choose many of the cities we travel to and I would certainly not choose the length at which we travel. But I accept that there is a special calling to abide to right now.

I choose the adventure. I choose my life as it is. Because of this I’m free to be on vacation at all times. That which is this magical mystery tour of life, both in and away from the music industry, is all there is all. My eyes are still the same eyes I had when I was a child. The movie I am watching doesn't pause for commercials. Even bathroom breaks are written into script. Even death.

In 6 days our tour will officially come to an end. The band and crew will pack up their gear and head home. I’ll meander to Europe for a few more promotional waves of the hand and look forward to a mouthful of French on my palette.

In 2 weeks time I will enter the studio and begin recording the next album. Only a handful of songs are written and slated but the momentum of love is with me. Every day new verses get added on. The songs are coming together piece by piece. The process is unlike any of the other records before this. It’s like I’m being gifted the album without having to do the work. I’m creating that in 6 months the project will be complete and then we’ll hit the road again with new sounds and new musicians. From today’s tired perspective I laugh at how soon that sounds, but I know there’s no better way to spend my time and no better way to share and practice what I am learning. We are of service to one another. Earthlings clinging to earthlings for life support, making up acts to entertain its Self. Translation: Being love.

Here are two great examples of Love being "Love Beings." Sting (pictured on the right) with Chief Raoni Txucarramae of the Kayapo people, taken last night at the About Us Festival in Sao Paolo.



20 years ago, Sting lived with the Kayapo's. He said they pretty much adopted him. Whatever they did to him, he looks and sounds amazing at 58.

Click here to read news on what Sting is up to, speaking out on behalf of the indigenous peoples while here in Brazil. The guy has certainly had some practice flexing his activist muscles. Long live the elegance of Lord Sumner!

In Bflat is the perfect Sunday kind of site to go well with rain and introspect. In Bb is a collaborative music and spoken word project conceived by Darren Solomon from Science for Girls, and developed with contributions from users.

Click here inJoy inBflat. Play the clips simultaneously. Get lost in the ambiance. Be your own Philip Glass.

Who else would be fun to be?

Try This:
Close your eyes and imagine being someone else... Feel what it's like inside their body... Listen to a new heartbeat... Hear with new ears... Open your eyes and feel yourself at an unfamiliar height standing upright with a different spine. Look at your hands and admire their operational capacity. Notice parts of the new you that are similar to the old you. Reach out and touch things as this new creature. Be in awe of your transformation. See what your new body and mind are up to.

After you've had a good run with it, consider that you never left your body but simply changed your perspective. This is a game no different than kids play. It's pretend. It's also a form of meditation and self-realization. And we do it through all of life. Only somewhere along the way we stopped admitting with others that we all live in the land of make-believe.

Come on, let's be authentic with each other. Let's be the kids we really are.

Everything we think about ourselves and others is made up. I make up that my constant friend is the most beautiful woman in the Universe. I make up that this blog is important to you. I make up that some people I travel with are bored. I make up that my cat actually thinks about me when I'm gone. I make up that my dreams mean something. I make up that it's too early today to be typing. I make up that with a new age comes a new status. Come on, in the grandness of the galaxy, has my 32 years made a significant sound on its own to stand out or even harmonize with the hum of the earth? I make up that it has, even if I am invisible from space; even if human life is just a fancy form of bacteria spreading on the surface of this life-loving planet. Humans have imagination, choice, and the will to be demonstrative or not.  

Today I'm going to make up that I’m 7. I'm going to be surprised by everything at the airport, especially the airplanes. I'm going to eat lots of sugar, draw pictures, and run a few miles. Why not? I now make up that I'm 7. 12-year-olds are old and anyone over 20 is ancient. I do what I want cuz I'm 7.


Starting now.






Bye.

Good luck on your project, said a woman after we took a photo together in the airport. I had pointed to IamSilent.com written on my t-shirt in sharpee after she tried asking a few different times about where and when our next show was. I had only prepared for yes or no inquiries.

I didn’t think to carry a pad and pen for I thought that too would be like using my voice. I only hit a wall once at the start of the day when a hurried airline attendant asked for my final destination. I froze. Panicked, I didn’t know sign language or how to nod “Curitiba.” After a lengthy pause I mumbled the word and cursed myself for not having had something to point to in that situation. I could’ve flagged down a friend to explain, but I didn’t.

Surprisingly throughout the day, my touring party began to move and speak differently around me, assisting me in a gentle and loving way, (which they usually do). But because I never asked for their help, I felt this enormous love from them as they directed me from flight to flight, van to room. I would laugh inside as I began to feel like an invalid. I would smile “thank you” with soft eyes, bowing, often with hands in prayer position. It was the best I could do.

Halfway into the long journey from Buenos Aires back to Brazil I connected the Vow of Silence to the very serious situation of starvation. Luckily I had a banana in my bag to tie me over, but once we’d arrived at the hotel late in the evening, I was without any supply that would satisfy. My stomach had been acting up earlier that morning and was now an empty pit bubbling with hunger. I thought to go and knock on someone’s door, hold up my room service menu and pray they’d come back to my room and order something for me, but I refrained. The luxury of my situation made me not so hungry anymore. Even the items in the mini-bar repulsed me for their convenience rather than their usual bite-sized absurdity.

As I sat with the lightness of being quiet and empty, the power of the Vow of Silence revealed itself in the final hours before sleep. My stomach began speaking up on the rest of my body’s behalf.

In my suitcase I found some Yerba Mate Tea along with some Biscochitos Materos, flavorless cookies to be enjoyed with the Tea. They were gifts I’m glad I stowed in Argentina and had a few cups and nibbles before bed. Barely a glutton but guilty as one, with appetite curbed I wrote in my journal about much I am thankful for…

Down the road there’s a man watching the water levels at a reservoir. He is sending us what he can, saving some for uncertain hours. Another man is keeping a keen eye on energy consumption. He gauges nuclear intensity or keeps track of how much coal is being processed, or he’s washing an array of solar panels or doing a routine check-up on the wind turbines. He’s so good at his job that he’s able to sell excess power to other cities in need.

A farmer walks out on her land just before dawn. Like a clock herself, she counts down to the second as the early morning irrigation system kicks on. In a few hours she and her team will resume their daily practice of picking, drying, milling, composting, removing weeds and shooing away insects from the crops so all the delicious food can arrive at a store where clerks will stock thru the night as maintenance men buff and polish floors to a spit shine for our safe and smooth stroll among mass quantities of eats and household treats. 

Past every lock and every turned key of any door we walk through - Every room we stand in - The clothes on our body - The safety of the city street – Traffic lights that blink off and on organizing the daily flow of your city’s thousands – Garbage that gets taken away, hauled out of sight, miles from smell – Public restrooms stocked with paper and soap… Everything in the western world set up by others before us makes it a pretty comfortable place to live.

It’s amazing to me that I can navigate from my home to the store or from store to store without ever having to stop my car. I can effortlessly cross an arid desert, climb snow covered mountains and propel over wide rivers all in the same day and the climate in my car will remain a breezy 70-me. 

I see how the guy who pours the concrete to make a new sidewalk does so with love and serious concentration. The plumber installs pipes and valves with such care that our houses, offices and streets don’t flood. A Roofer sweats without shade making sure the structure above us is sound. The last 50 elevators I’ve been in all worked perfectly taking my life to new heights. Doctors work days without rest in emergency rooms to see that friends and family have more time together while scientists continue to make breakthroughs further extending our lifespan. 

I think you see what I’m getting at. We’ve got it made. We ARE provided for. We ARE loved.

Our voice is a powerful tool. We can hold conversations. We can sing. We can shout. We can write. We can vote. We can make powerful requests. If you can do any one of these, we can change the world.

Did you know there are 27 million slaves in the world today? People forced to work without pay, under the threat of violence and unable to walk away. Many of them are entire villages trapped illegally as indentured servants by powerful landowners and successful companies.

Visit any of the sites below and lend your voice to the revolution…

www.FreeTheChildren.Com

www.IamSilent.Com

www.FreeTheSlaves.Net

Tomorrow is November 20th, the day I set aside to be silent acknowledging the millions of oppressed children around the globe who have no rights, therefore no voice to protect them.

Luckily our tour schedule aligned perfectly after making this promise and I will have no concert to use as an excuse to be vocal. I rescheduled all phone interviews and vow to not use email, twitter, texting, etc. Not talking will be easy. I actually look forward to 24 hours of introspection. What will you do to prepare?

For the kids waiting outside of my hotel for pictures and autographs,  I will have something inscribed on my t-shirt that will explain my silence and direct them to IamSilent.com. I invite you too to take this on. Give your community a real reason to talk. Wake them up about the severity of the issue. Let them ask questions and host a big conversation about it on the 21st. Your participation in this peaceful protest places you in the practice of being a global citizen. Empower yourself and join the movement.

Go to IamSilent.com right now and Take the Vow.

This event is being brought to us by the incredible movers and shakers at freethechildren.com

Zippin' it,
Jason

November in Argentina is late spring. I think it's wonderful that we as technologically advanced humans can jet around the world and reappear in a completely different season in only a matter of hours. Is it late here or am I just agreeing to whatever time I'm told it is? Regardless, my eyes are growing tired and I do feel like I ate dinner too late. But rather than return to the humidity within my hotel room to lie down and stick to the sheets letting all that delicious and adventurous Argentinean food go to waste, I stay up and digest with healthy doses of YouTube. Here’s some of what I’ve been watching.

Behold a fully expressed group of young persons. Say hello to PS22 as they perform one of my favorite songs, Joga - by Bjork.



SymphonyOfScience.com presents Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking in this mind expanding auto-tuned creation, A Glorious Dawn.



This similarly enthralling track, We’re All Connected features Bill Bye the Science Guy whom I had the pleasure of connecting with recently. He stressed that the world has to start learning how to do more with less. We are a planet of 7 billion that really only has enough resources for less than 2 billion. And unless we can make two and half more Earths, we’d better start learning to save our scraps and make the most with what we got. If I were me, and I am, I'd listen to them scientists, which I does.



The Kings Firecrackers wow us with something different using just a piece of rope along with some remixed Kenny Loggins. I Love how the stunned Bear from 1:25 gets into it by the end. It's hard not to. These girls do some weird shit.



And lastly... While I hesitate posting this, it's too silly not to share. Last night we performed on Faustào, Brazil's biggest talk/variety-show where the average Sunday night viewership is 40 million. That's a lot of people watching TV! Way more than an American Idol Finale. The show has the tendency to last 3 hours and there are very few commercial breaks as Faustào, the grandiose Host, does most of the pitching. Take a look at everyone's favorite hippy song as celebrated by the Faustào Audience and His Solid Gold Dancers. Besides feeling like I was on a game show, I was present to wishing I'd worn a belt.



What are you present to?

At home, I like to keep it simple, quiet and sweet, “lion” around with kitty, catching some local surf, and feasting on local cuisine whilst concocting me some fresh new mountainy music.

But on this layover between action adventure sessions, I feel the effects of having been gone for nearly two years by this empty old house having issues with my sleeping over.

Deferred Maintenance is the sad and sorry term and from it I do learn, therefore to my house I grovel in the gravel near its robust and rotund feet. Things like: how to fix a busted screen door that someone so cleverly created by walking through it while it was closed, how to probe, discover and uncover a septic system, and what to do when everything you repair inside a toilet still doesn’t work – are fun projects that I would rather pay someone else to do. Yet, I am embracing my inner plumber, flexing generously my fancy crack, pulling out my collection of mismatched tools, and taking responsibility for the property like a natural born Schneider. By doing this, I finally get to live by the Repair Manifesto! Check it out.



Unfortunately, the toilet is too old and is doing nothing to improve my water conservation efforts at home, so I bore the wax ring and installed a new, more efficient toilet. No, I will not be auctioning off the old toilet or sending it to a landfill. I have plans to make it a charming flower planter and seat to go near the garden Sasquatch.



What are you going to repair next?

I noticed a change in the tourist climate almost immediately as this week kicked off high season in the tropics. Last week we had the town to ourselves. The beach breaks were empty and the roads less tread made the potholes more predictable. Yesterday and today the tides washed in a significant number of pasty colored people out looking to do what I’ve been doing for 9 days. Glow.


Today was my last day after quite a lengthy run. Any longer in the sea and I would have developed gills. All aches aside, it was a solid visit with no major burns, cuts or bruises. Sadly, the borrowed blue “beloved” be-love surfboard was run-over today as I got caught inside of a merman’s late take-off. His fin tore through the deck at the back end punching a hole into its hollow core and flooding it with water. Luckily, my feet were nowhere near the tear. I can thank my sloppy frog-man duck-dive for that one. I’m manifesting an easy fix on the board like I manifested the guy with the water camera who will generously email me some clever shots.

I would’ve sent more surf reports along the way but the days ran together like chocolate sauce in a Trits Ice Cream Cookie. The waves were anywhere from waist high to overhead depending on the minute, the tide or the drift, and seldom were they sloppy, even in stormy Weather.


My schedule of events never varied more than Eat – Surf – Eat – Surf – Eat – Sleep – Rinse and Repeat. I did get a massage one day. And another time while picking up trash on the beach, I unearthed some rubber and harvested an entire tire. That was different. It occurred to me while digging in the dirt, that beach and river clean-ups are here to stay, forever. Even if we got every piece of garbage off the banks, there’s gonna be new bits washing up with every tide. Our water obviously wants to purge itself. Why else would the ocean be sucking down glaciers like Mountain Dew Slurpees?

Otherwise, when resting my bones I played lots of guitar on the veranda admiring pleasant jungle downpours and palm crawling monkey families with sandy melodies in my head drawing shadows from a waning gibbous moon.


To my own nutty delight I wrote a duet for a surfer dude and a merman who search for love on opposite sides of the glassy surface. One of them wants a surfer girl. The other craves fish obviously. I call it, Appetite for Mermaid.

My life continues to be a fantastically fast turning flipbook and I’m grateful for getting to shoot it in so many gorgeous locations with so many extraordinary cameo appearances (them’s being you.) In my movie, I portray a water bug with a moon-tan. My favorite part so far is being flung in front of a five-foot wave and finding my footing to surf it.


In a film, anything’s possible. It’s just a film after all. Every thing’s made up. So I hope you’re making up something saucy for your own scenes. Be a “I’m glad I did” instead of an “I wish I had.” Cause from what I’ve seen of it so far, the reviews are worth every bit of the rave.

May love be your wave,
-Jason

This week’s Water Conservation Tip:
Vote for Marriage Equality
How does that save water?
It just does.

From a remote beach in an undisclosed location I am happy to share this short film about the ocean and beach pollution.

A young filmmaker came up with an easy solution to how you can help. It's simple, Pick Up 3 and the difference you will see!



Last Sunday I had the pleasure of receiving the 2009 Missions in Music Award by the Environmental Media Association. Nervously I accepted the award from past Honoree Alanis Morissette and then played I'm Yours to the Hollywood crowd seated down two narrow city streets on the Paramount Lot. It’s an honor just to be acknowledged as an environmentally conscious person. In doing so, I’m created as so. Therefore, I get to be just that.

If there’s ANYTHING you wish to be, ask someone to acknowledge you as that, even if you’ve never done anything related to it yet. Just by hearing You as something new, you are introduced into a new context that you actually get to swim in.

Here’s a clip on the Green Carpet from The EMA Awards. I follow the dashing philanthropist, Sir Richard Branson.



I’m wearing one of my favorite tee’s from BlendApparel.Com, flip-flops made of recycled bike tires and sustainable hemp, while touting a water bottle with the word “Gratitude” emblazoned on it, courtesy of Spoken Glass.


With me on the green carpet is my constant friend, Tawney Bevacqua. A fun factoid about Tawney is how she appears in the original cut of the "Lucky" music video. Seen by only a handful of people, I had suggested to Colbie Caillat that the video end with us both dancing in the arms of another. I wanted to show that neither she nor I were singing to each other – instead, just being two grateful souls singing the same song of love. In the real end however, Colbie couldn’t get a guy in her shot as she filmed her scene in a spontaneous undercover operation, so seeing Tawney and I dancing made me look like a jerk, leaving Colbie unwanted, stranded on a desert isle. (More behind-the-scenes stories like this can be learned in the special features section of the upcoming Live Album/DVD, A Beautiful Mess - Live on Earth. Click here to order yours.

May your day be blessed with fresh and clean organics,
Jason

You are a child of earth – not of a building. When was the last time you thanked your mother? Activate and appreciate the naturalist in you and take your bathroom breaks outside.

The average toilet wastes 3 gallons of water per flush. Yikes.

Go put your coat on and begin adding your nitrogen enriched blend of liquid compost to the thirsty fertile soil. The earth will thank you for it.

Seriously. Do this. Visit Peeoutside.Org and join the millions who are volunteering to pee outside.

If it’s too cold to go outside and sprink, then that’s all the more reason to be grateful you live in a warm house. Many people don’t have that luxury.

If you live in a city and the cops catch you, let them know you’re up to big things, like re-creating the world - seeding AND watering it.

As you will with this Blog, spread your pee around. Don’t always go in the same spot. Urea, the organic compound found in the urine of mammals is one of the most widely used in fertilizers, favored by the soil for its savory qualities. So share it with every tree you see. Heck, you could might possibly potentially sell your pee! So why flush all that value down the toilet?

If you look near the base of this beautiful perennial, you might just see a rainbow.


Did you know that agriculture is quite possibly the number one cause of pollution on the planet, followed by the building industry, THEN, transportation? I mention this to remind you how crucial it is to support organic farming, the producing of goods without having to dump chemicals all over the earth.

Organic farming also creates jobs because it takes more farmers to tend to the weeds and the bugs; tasks that cheap chemicals can do quickly, but at a dangerous price.

So get going on. Create a space in your life for giving back to the planet. Set yourself free and go pee on a tree.

-J

“I thought about one of my favorite Sufi poems, which says that God long ago drew a circle in the sand exactly around the spot where you are standing right now. I was never not coming here. This was never not going to happen."
— Elizabeth Gilbert



I’ve never been lucky enough to find a four-leaf clover. I’ve been gifted plenty, but I never found one on my own accord down on my hands and knees. Then again, I’ve never committed to a long look. But I will admit that in all my years in this child body, whenever I found myself stooped in the grass, fingering between blades of green and those greener, I always hoped that that day’s first charmed discovery would be made by me.

In all of life, failure in the finding never got me down. The upset shows itself as a sign that that my luck would show up as something different, and perhaps a much larger version of itself. So, there was rarely a need to squander a precious moment and/or add a rare and mutant flower to the vision board.

I apply the same theory to never winning the lottery. I know I’m not supposed to get my millions for free. For this I am always eager to earn it.

There were plenty of jobs where I wasn’t hired, many of them in music and theatre. Rejection left me bouncing off of so many NO’s that I learned to be encouraged by the defeats. I found I had more talents to cultivate, more songs to write, more moxie to move. I was always complete in knowing I was moving in the right direction.


Yesterday I sprawled across an infinite patch of tropical clover on a near deserted stretch of one of Maui’s sacred shores, basking in a pink grapefruit sunrise. I warmed and awakened every sense and chakra taking sips of the new day, gulps of air and gasps of soul soothing ginger as tea. In my mind I harmonized with the crow of the cock and purred along with the hush and shush of the swaying palms in a Pakalani filled paradise. I pulled wild hairs from my eyes and allowed my body to dry itself of the sweat fostered a few minutes before in the steamy pre-dawn sauna.

Naked, I acknowledged the elements for granting me such a blessed life. With nothing to offer the world in that moment, my naked newborn self offered up love, laughter, and gratitude. From far out to sea, God, on a cruise ship perhaps, sighed as if to say “well done” and returned the love and gratitude in a breeze, and, on my behalf, cleverly kept the world as it is.

My gaze turned to the clover and I quietly remarked at how it wasn’t the traditional Irish Shamrock I usually familiar my eyes with. This tropical ground cover was so expansive you might miss it over its normalcy. Yet, what I noticed was how each and every little stem had only two pairs of pedals popping out of the sprout. The deeper I looked through the filter of appreciation, the more I realized I wasn’t just sitting on a grassy knoll, but resting rather, almost retired in the enlightenment, enveloped on a prairie in perfect company among thousands of 4-leaf clovers.

Luck is all around me.
Love is all there is.

May every situation be summed up in a smile.
-Jason