Down in the valley

     It has been a little while since I wrote last.  In most regards, the news picks up where it left off - only further ahead...  Not to let the cat out of the bag, but you will soon be hearing our tracks coming from the silver screen. Yep, you got it, we have some really amazing film placements coming up.  BUT that has also meant that before finishing off all 14 of these tracks, we had to take a hard look at them AGAIN.  Think of it this way, if you had your song playing through Dolby Surround Sound, wouldn't you want it to sound perfect?  Because you know that if there is any little monster hiding in that mix, it is going to become crystal clear in that setting.... SO... we are almost finished remixing everything to the K-20 (cinematic) standard.  And our album is still set to be mastered by none other than the wonderful Bob Katz (the K in K-20 is for Katz, the man wrote the book and the programs for mastering!!!!).  So we are still, excitedly plugging away at this labor of love, and I think that it's nearly done.  -Almost time to push our little fledglings out of the nest and to see them take flight!
     But on a more personal note, it has been, and continues to be a very difficult journey.  I have lost a lot of family members in these last few years, and last month I lost my great grandmother, and my uncle.  This month I will be losing my aunt.  This snowball effect has been taking a bit of a toll on me.  On one hand, it makes me work that much harder at my art and life, because I know now that there is no pulling the wool over my family's eyes when they are no longer chained to their bodies.  I want to make them proud of how I am living my life.  And I feel that I am.  But I also have moments of feeling like I am stuck in a blizzard, trying to find my way back to camp.  Maybe I'm holding a rope that leads back to camp, maybe the rope just leads to a cliff, or a dead body, or more snow... I feel like I am straining to catch a glimpse of any familiar markers so as to get my bearings.  But it's too hard to say what is delusion, illusion, and reality, and how do I separate them?
     I do not mean to frighten people by this.  I am not entirely lost, I am not drowned or immobilized by grief, I am only trying to be truthful in how I live and feel.  As an artist, this is my duty.  And as an excavator of the human condition, I must leave no stone unturned.  As I feel this world around me changing by the moment, I have to stop and remember from time to time that TIME itself is an illusion.  And even that is a struggle for me.  There is so much that I want to give, so much that I want to love, and so much that I want to create, that  at moments like this in my life, I fear that there is not enough time.  But I shake these delusions off as best I can, and as a warrior of peace and love, which I believe takes more strength than destruction ever will, I set to task again and again.  -Hoping to create something boundless, timeless, for everyone to love and feel loved by.  So even in the valley, perhaps the valley of death, perhaps the valley that I live in, I strive not to hang my head low, but to keep it straight ahead and to walk without fear.  To walk with the knowledge of infinite love and life as it truly is.  That is my art, and that is my challenge.

-Dion Vox