I'm still trying out a lot of the feature options on this new www.mikelunoband.com website, and last week I completed my first mail-out to every last subscriber to our newsletter (welcome to our new subscribers, by the way! Happy to have you with us!). As a way of sweetening the email a little, I included what will likely by the title track to our upcoming CD - 'Get Inside'. This tune ponders an issue I've wrestled with for many years, and resolution in this lifetime doesn't seem likely, tho' I would hope I grow a little more enlightened with time and experience. To kick it around just a little more...
Yes, we're hardwired to seek certain things for our enjoyment, fulfillment, gratification, what have you - but what actually does the trick? Sure, we've evolved this instinct to gorge on fat, salt and sugar, for example, but how good do you feel after eating a couple of chocolate bars and a tin of Pringles? The miserable rock superstar seems a more common phenom than a happy, well-adjusted one, even though such people have attained as much as anyone could desire, at least in terms of material wealth and social status. We (as people) don't seem to have a great knack for predicting what's going to fulfill us or make us happy. We might be hardwired to desire all sorts of things, but that hardwiring doesn't extend to giving us a sense of fulfillment for attaining them. Likewise, those things that actually do leave you feeling happy, satisfied, fulfilled, or dare I say - linked up with that cosmic sense of vitality - often camouflage themselves. Sometimes I've shown up to gigs feeling not-so-enthused, yet there are moments in that night's performance that feel like they're adding years to my life, like a good belly-laugh. Linking up to the universal power grid, Getting Inside. I think the species often tears itself to pieces in pursuit of so many things that are ultimately not worth pursuit, that renege on the promise of real gratification...while we overlook or ignore what would have a much better, and even more pleasureable effect on us. I've certainly seen it in myself often enough...But is getting better at 'Getting Inside' possible? And if so - through practice? Soul-searching? Thinking more? Thinking less? Writing blogs and songs about it? I guess I'll have to keep you posted...but meanwhile, all this typing has given me the munchies. Now, what would really hit the spot about now?
Yes, we're hardwired to seek certain things for our enjoyment, fulfillment, gratification, what have you - but what actually does the trick? Sure, we've evolved this instinct to gorge on fat, salt and sugar, for example, but how good do you feel after eating a couple of chocolate bars and a tin of Pringles? The miserable rock superstar seems a more common phenom than a happy, well-adjusted one, even though such people have attained as much as anyone could desire, at least in terms of material wealth and social status. We (as people) don't seem to have a great knack for predicting what's going to fulfill us or make us happy. We might be hardwired to desire all sorts of things, but that hardwiring doesn't extend to giving us a sense of fulfillment for attaining them. Likewise, those things that actually do leave you feeling happy, satisfied, fulfilled, or dare I say - linked up with that cosmic sense of vitality - often camouflage themselves. Sometimes I've shown up to gigs feeling not-so-enthused, yet there are moments in that night's performance that feel like they're adding years to my life, like a good belly-laugh. Linking up to the universal power grid, Getting Inside. I think the species often tears itself to pieces in pursuit of so many things that are ultimately not worth pursuit, that renege on the promise of real gratification...while we overlook or ignore what would have a much better, and even more pleasureable effect on us. I've certainly seen it in myself often enough...But is getting better at 'Getting Inside' possible? And if so - through practice? Soul-searching? Thinking more? Thinking less? Writing blogs and songs about it? I guess I'll have to keep you posted...but meanwhile, all this typing has given me the munchies. Now, what would really hit the spot about now?