In My Element

So I was watchin TED talks online as I do from time to time and I came across this one which deals with the problems in education in both Britain where the speaker Ken Robinson is from and America where I think he now lives.

The crux of his thesis is that we should all be striving to Find our Passion, or try to find that thing that we love doing. (Joeseph Campbell advised people to Follow Your Bliss which I think is pretty much the same thing.) Because you love doing it you’ll have much more enthusiasm and energy for it than anything else you do and you’ll therefore get really good at it and you’ll have the energy to overcome any hurdles you might face. (Seth Godin deals with these in a great little book called The Dip)

Here’s In My Element which was inspired by the Ken Robinson TED talk and also his book, both of which can be found here http://www.elementbook.com/

 And so In My Element is a note-to-self kinda thing. That’s it, it’s a yellow sticky note of a song to remind me to seek out that place or that thing I do, where I’m in my element. For me this place and time is writing songs, singing songs and playing music. One of the reasons for starting Original Song Mondays and Cover Song Thursdays was to keep me focused on doing those exact things, cause it’s so easy to get into the exact opposite habit. So I hope you get something out of the song.

This video recording is from last night’s gig where I was supporting Petcrafts Music Company, who were performing Beck’s Song Reader album in full. If you haven’t heard about it, Beck released his latest album as sheet music only, which opens the door for others to put their spin on his songs before anyone hears him play them. Sounds a bit gimmicky but I think it’s a great thing for someone in Beck’s position to do, engaging with musicians anywhere in the world and benefiting all. And as a marketing stunt I’d say it’ll work really well once he plays it live as so many people will know the songs by then.