jdavyd

Now Booking - East Coast Tour 2010

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 13:36:15 GMT

Greetings everyone. I'm quite excited to announce the decision to take this show on the road next summer! We've had a lot of fun playing in and around our back yard these last few months, and we've met a ton of new people, and I know that this is only going to get bigger and better as we go to new places.

As with the release of the album, Waves, this tour will truly be a labor of love. I have no booking agent, no promotional staff, no manager, and no street team. What I do have is a strong desire to get out there and bring this love and music to as many people as possible. I also have google, the help of some good friends and fellow musicians, and most importantly: you!

That's why I'm writing now, to ask for your help. If you're on the east coast and want me to come visit, send an email to tour@jdavydwilliams.com. What I'm looking for are specific venues that can host us for a night, and help us out with a little money, a place to stay, some (vegan) food and a certified way to get the word out about the show.

Good examples are yoga studios, open minded nightclubs, coffee shops, book stores, and churches... but basically, if it's got a sound system and enough room for a chunk of people to sing kirtan in, it's worth mentioning. Even the sound system isn't totally required under the right circumstances!

The first date is already booked for June 4th, at the Integral Yoga Institute in NYC.

Expect to hear a lot about this from me in the coming months!

Om shanthi,

Jdavyd

Twitter, a change of heart.

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 15:28:59 GMT

So, here’s the short (but longer than 140 characters) explanation about my change of heart regarding twitter.

Social networking has been on a climb for years. When I first go into the internet, we had to walk 10 miles backwards uphill in the snow naked just to update our diaryland pages.

After a while, livejournal was the cool thing… and get this, you had to be *invited* to join LJ, so it wasn’t just for everyone, only the *cool* people. Eventually that changed, and anyone could join, but by then we had all gone to myspace. Then came facebook (which you could only use if you were at college… sound familiar?) and then twitter.

(I know there’s a million others in their as well. Friendster, I still love ya baby.)

Now we can have a CMS on our own domains that updates all of our other various web projects. One blog update to rule them all!

Anyway, twitter always bugged me. The concept – updates limited to only 140 characters – seemed to be the perfect example of our culture’s short attention span. We aren’t going to write any more than 140 characters because no one wants to read more than 140 characters anyway, so why bother pushing our friends/family/strangers to do more? There were some exceptions, like the use of twitter in Iran earlier this year, but the majority of what I coming out of twitter was: Keep it short, make it shorter!

So this week I was at an AA meeting, and the topic was Slogans. There are a shitload of them in AA.
One day at a time.
Easy does it.
Meeting makers make it.
Keep coming back.

I mean there are literally pages of these things. One person said their sponsor hated the slogans, and described them as, “Like being stoned to death with refrigerator magnets.” Another said it made them feel like they were in preschool.

Sound like twitter to you?

I hadn’t though much about them one way or the other, but it was an interesting thing to listen to people talk about, because most people saw these slogans as tools, and not unlike the memory aids we learned in school. One small phrase to connect you to a larger, greater lesson. Please excuse my dear aunt sally, anyone?

This sort of got me thinking about Mantras, as well, and how if you develop a practice around saying a mantra, it can act as a rope to pull you back towards your center in any given situation. It’s not unlike Kirtan, either, right? A simple word or phrase, and we instill it with power. The phrase isn’t the important thing, it’s the power we put behind it.

All of this sort of made me rethink my disdain for twitter, and the culture surrounding it. I can’t deny that there are people who are and will use it to shorten their already dwindling attention spans… but that doesn’t meant that I can’t choose to use it for something larger.

So, here it is: http://www.twitter.com/jdavyd

I promise if you don’t like twitter, you won’t like this either.

ummwut?

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 15:11:22 GMT

http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/41/squeez-bacon.html

"Each serving is as healthy as real bacon..."

From Reddit this morning. Very Accurate.

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 15:53:26 GMT

When prop 8 passed in California, there was a shot of the reaction from the campaign headquarters. I'll never forget this. At the center of the image was a guy in a suit throwing both hands up, mouth agape in pure jubilation of victory. It was as if he's just won the Lotto. I just couldn't understand how someone could be so thrilled about having gotten so little. What did he get? Nothing. How did his life change? Will he not have to get up for work in the morning? Are his bills any cheaper? Has a loved one who was sick been cured? Does he get more money, video games, blowjobs, or whatever he likes to do in his spare time? He gets nothing. It was all because it felt so good to hurt someone.

questions of the universe

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 16:37:09 GMT

Me: if someone uses the wrong method with the wrong technique, does that mean they did it right?
Arcadia: it means they're pregnant.

ass-istance

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 14:36:48 GMT

livejournal... i need your help.

i need some record reviews that don't suck. as a result, i need your advice on where to send the record to be reviewed.

let's have it!

Oh

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 01:39:31 GMT

So THIS is why Marshall hasn't been working on the Tacit Act album...

Yeah. Makes sense.

This Friday @ Twisted Branch!

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 23:31:37 GMT

My monthly kirtan at the Twisted Branch is coming up this Friday. I am really quite excited about this for a number of reasons. First of all, we’re going to be sharing the bill with Ali Youssefi, who is one of my favorite local singers. He performs deeply spiritual music steeped in the teachings of the baha’i faith, but also carries the interfaith torch as we do.

Secondly, I’m going to be playing with a different lineup of Basement Bhaktis. Arcadia and Patrick will be there on Shruti box and Keyboards, respectively, but I’m also going to be joined by Kevin Ardrey on drums and Chris Rhees on Djembe. Leia Manuel will be on hand to sing responses, and old school Basement Bhakti Courtney Miller will be joining her. You may even see accordian player Tom Lynch in the house… anything’s possible! There’s a lot of new and different energy in this lineup and I’m quite excited to share it with you all.

Doors are at 9pm, and the cost is $5. Here’s that flyer again, in case you missed it!

Om Shanthi Shanthi Shanthi,

yes

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 22:00:18 GMT

i've redubbed the basement bhaktis for the october 23rd show: me-tabla-ca. say it out loud.

PEOPLE OF LIVEJOURNAL

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 15:58:17 GMT

occasionally in firefox, i seem to lose the ability to click between my tabs. i can still manually select the tab via the drop down list at the end, but if i click just on the tab itself, nothing happens. this continues until i restart firefox.

MAJOR BUMMER.

does this happen to you?

Creepy

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 22:26:20 GMT

I've been listening to the white album the last few days. It's been a while since I gave it a solid listen. Is it just me, or is the "Can you take me back where I came from..." section that comes at the end of "Cry Baby Cry," and immediately before "Revolution #9" one of the most... unnerving moments of recorded music?

so, we're playing tonight

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 17:09:24 GMT

first like, um, weekend type in cville, ever.

sure would be neat to see a lot of people there.

woah

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 19:49:58 GMT

sweet

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 11:48:19 GMT

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 10:31:29 GMT

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ucac/20090819/cm_ucac/liberalliesaboutnationalhealthcarefirstinaseries

Ganked this link from audiorapture. the 2 countries she mentions? france and germany? both have single payer health care systems.

finally somebody gets it right.

Wed, 19 Aug 2009 12:42:41 GMT

hey va!

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 16:18:23 GMT

hey! cville! surrounding areas! my cd release is tomorrow.

yeah!

WNRN Tonight

Sun, 16 Aug 2009 14:45:55 GMT

I'm going to be interviewed tonight on WNRN's Subculture Shock, starting at 10pm. I'll be talking about Waves and the CD release party coming up this week. Listen live at http://wnrn.org/

for those of you that couldn't be there

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 22:25:49 GMT

on another note - who of my wordpress friends knows of a good plugin/whatever that would allow my domain's blog posts to be copied to myspace/livejournal/facebook/etc?

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 03:49:39 GMT

we played for an hour tonight instead of 20 minutes. after, arcadia and i joined basim and imran from the kominas for one kominas song, and then some epic improv qawwali.

awesome night. om shanthi.

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 11:14:03 GMT

Last night I went to Charlottesville High School's performing arts center for a Town Hall meeting about health care reform with my congressman, Tom Periello. It was well attended by people who are on both sides of this issue, and while there was some disruption, it never got too out of hand. "In the shadow of Jefferson," said Mr. Periello, "we know how to dissent."

There were some legitimate concerns aired last night, but in my impression - not many. Most people that chose to ask questions basically told their personal story and then asked, "What are you going to do to ensure we get some reform?" True to his campaign message that he would vote for what he believed in, not party lines, Periello admitted that he, unpopularly, was not ready to sign the bill in it's current form, but that he was leaning towards signing if some changes were made. He also (unpopularly) expressed disdain for the Single Payer system that many in attendance were in favor of, insisting that he felt "the private sector can do it better."

I don't think I'm personally informed enough about the Single Payer system to agree with him one way or the other, but I can't fault the logic at work; if the public option is viable and inexpensive, it will force private insurance to improve their quality and lower their costs, else they lose significant business. This ideal is lauded by many on the right as being the backdoor to Single Payer, but I don't agree. I think the door only opens if they are unwilling to compete, and they just want our money too badly to throw in the towel.

One thing that Periello did draw some attention to which I don't think is said enough in the media is that many of the 47 million who are currently uninsured actually do want insurance and would be happy to buy it were they not turned down by insurance companies due to age, pre-existing conditions, and the like. I think it is really easy for the media to forget about these people and insist that we're dealing strictly with illegal aliens and lazy people. I hope this gets a little bit more coverage as this debate goes on.

The greatest disruption came early in the evening, when an older woman told the story of her 78 year old mother being injured in Canada and having to bring her back to the US to receive "the treatment she needed." She also spoke of some issues with her 84 year old father-in-law. She insisted quite passionately that she had read the bill and that in both cases, her family members would have been forced to go before a government panel to determine whether or they were eligible (actually, I think i'm just being polite, and the word she used was "worthy") of care and treatment.

This question of "Death Panels" has become one of the more volatile messages of the current debate, and we can thank Sarah Palin for it. While HR 3200 does reference the establishment of a committee, it is not one that will make decisions on the type of care your family will receive in a time of need. Section 123 actually says that a committee of providers, consumer representatives, employers, labor, health insurance issuers, independent experts and representatives of government will work together to establish the minimum amount of care a plan can cover, not the maximum. This means that everyone in the country will have the same amount of basic coverage, and places no limitation on the care you can receive based on your age/condition/etc. We have those limitations in place already - the insurance companies put them there - and removing them is one of the basic tenets of this reform.

While frustrating, it was interesting to see this woman talk with such passion. I wasn't personally convinced that she had actually read the bill, as she suggested she had, but I can't deny the possibility that her life experience, and the opinion panels she chooses to read in the paper/hear on the radio/etc, has shaped her outlook in such a way that did impose a Death Panel in this bill. My knee-jerk reaction is always, "Well, it's an education issue." This comes down to my time working in HR I suppose. The thing is, I can't help but equate this to the birther thing, or to the people who insisted during Barack Obama's campaign for president that, despite all evidence to the contrary, he was Muslim.

My point is - Periello responded to this woman's question with a simple statement - "There are no Death Panel's anywhere in this bill." I don't think that statement was enough for her. I'm sure she went home that night secure in the belief that this reform meant the end for all seniors, with no change from when she arrived, and I fear that one of life's most basic lessons is at work here. "You can't help those who don't want to be helped." There are a lot of scare tactics being employed about this reform right now - and again I can draw a parallel to Obama's campaign. While the answer to these situations is education, there are people out there right now that don't want to be educated. They want to believe that the government is out to get them. They want to believe that politicians don't have their best interests at heart.

They want to believe (as this woman insisted) that America already has the best health care system in the world.

So where does that leave us? I've always been told that "you can't teach a pig to dance," but I can't help but be motivated to try, because I truly do believe our current system is broken, and that this reform bill is definitely going a long way to fixing it.

On a personal level, I think that The White House is doing it right. I think that these types of inflammatory attacks on the ideas of the reform bill should be addressed, but in a calm, logical, information-based way. I'm not perfect, so it's not always going to be easy for me, but it is the answer. State the facts, and leave it at that. If the person isn't ready for the facts, that's ok.

Another way to say that same basic life lesson - you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink. Let's just make sure that when they arrive there is plenty of water to go around, ok?

Mon, 10 Aug 2009 19:31:23 GMT

just a reminder.... jdavydmas approacheth.

Mon, 10 Aug 2009 17:11:13 GMT

http://www.whitehouse.gov/realitycheck/

oh yeah!

the c-ville meeting with tom periello is tomorrow @ CHS. are you going?

yeah!

Fri, 07 Aug 2009 19:57:29 GMT

they're here!

Yeah!

Jai Gurudev!

why The Hook will always win in my book

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 10:26:36 GMT

blurb from the c-ville about my upcoming cd release:

"Jdavyd releases his new CD Waves, and you get to party to the rhythm all night."

blurb from the hook about my upcoming cd release:

"Moving from one outlandish musical genre to another, former In Tenebris guitarist Jdavyd Williams traded darkwave, a taxonomic class the necessity of which we are still not convinced, to Kirtan, Indian devotional chants which we won’t say anything silly about for fear of retaliation by a badass three-eyed god of destruction. This here is the release show for his debut — or his Kirtan debut, anyway — Waves, which delivers the centuries-old tradition using modern instrumentation."