Music with the message changed my brain and opened my heart. Thanks Winston!
What if when you were a little kid in the summertime the ice cream man drove around in a big colorful van that was electric and silent.
What if the ice cream man back in the day had one of these new Rivian manufactured Amazon vans colorfully painted with pictures of bomb pops, drumsticks, push-ups, snow, cones, ice cream, cones, fudge sickles, and other frozen treats.
No noise
No music, or bells ringing.
It changes everything right?
Sales would plummet and the hearts of children would be broken as the stealth like slinger of frozen confect slid out of town without a peep.
It was like when the St. Louis Rams left town in the middle of the night ha ha.
Music is a common bonding element that brings people together that has existed as long as human beings and ties us back to something much bigger than us in the process of experiencing spontaneous, auditory vibrations in our central nervous system.
I have been drawn to music and felt the deep love and connection to it for literally as long as I can remember, and you will never come to my house and not hear some flavor of music playing somewhere because that’s just the only way I know how to live.
I can remember an elementary school my dad pushing me out the back door to go to Eberwhite elementary school in fourth grade while I was waiting to hear if the Bee Gees staying alive was gonna come on at the 8 o’clock hour as it sometimes did on WJR radio.
If the song came on, I stayed till the end and just ran the first couple of blocks on the way to school and made up the three minutes that way.
In fifth grade, I can remember meeting up with some of my friends before school even in the morning in the winter time in Michigan to walk around the playground before school started listening to music on the tape recorder that I got for my birthday in October that year. I remember the record button was orange and I had to make sure not to hit that because I would record over my cassette tape and ruined the mix ha ha.
William Gilyard and Devon Wilson were two of the guys that met me up there and Larry Rudnicki would come up there too as he was in the cool cat club with me and we pulled all of our money to buy records every week.
I went from buying records in elementary school for $.96 each and then four cents tax at Kmart to then DJing with my brother Tony Fisher, a.k.a. Treble Tee throughout high school and all we did was blow our money on buying more records and a little bit of beer and pizza.
You should’ve seen us at Denny’s at four in the morning laying out $1200 in cash that we got from DJing or fraternity party and we charge them an extra $700 by staying just two extra hours. Those rich frat boys from Grosse Pointe for all the cash. They had every time we DJ because we set the contracts up so that we ended early and then charged every half hour after. They were mostly spoiled, entitled stupid kids that didn’t read contracts very well and would probably go and work for their fathers insurance agency and just slide right into some privilege and junior executive country club status ha ha.
It was through DJ in 1987/88 right before I moved to California that I had a major spiritual awakening.
The bar was Dooleys the big college bar in Ann Arbor at the time that would stuff 67 800 drunk kids in there drinking $.25 beers and I would be up in the DJ booth three nights a week, spinning records and sneaking my 18 year old friends in the back door to get hammered.
The owner was a big Coke head and made very spur of the moment quick decisions as a result, including the call to start a reggae night on Tuesday nights.
What the owner didn’t realize that reggae fans don’t drink much alcohol and most cases and are really there for the music so the till at the end of the night was nearly empty, even though there were tons of people there.
Reggae night was canceled and I got to keep all the records. except they’re listening to these poor young men from Jamaica singing about the realities of living in very difficult newly independent country in the Caribbean with 400 years of colonialism and force migration.
For me as I read the lyrics on the record jackets as they did back in the day, I was struck by the fact that the lyrics were all really gospel lyrics in praise of God, giving thanks and praises and preaching love and unity, as well as many of the self-improvement teachings of Marcus Garvey.
I had no idea. I thought Reggae was party music. Watch this video below, and tell me that Reggae is party music.
It was the most serious music I’ve ever listened to in my entire life in terms of the subject matter and the lyrical content.
It was listening to Burning Spear and the lead singer Winston Rodney that I dropped down on my knees in my room and said the first conditional prayer my life and I wasn’t even sure what God or what the hell was going on when I was doing it to be honest.
I was broken.
Scared.
Sad.
Lonely.
I literally weighed 50 pounds more than I do today. I couldn’t lift my right arm up. I was getting drunk just about every night and all I wanted to do was get the hell out of Ann Arbor and escape the trauma of my collapsed family and my dead dad out in the cornfield outside of town.
The last thing I expected that winter before I moved to California was to have a spiritual revelation or an awakening at my lowest time.
I just wanna know how the heck found me in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and set that whole thing up with a reggae night that lasted just a couple of weeks all for the express purpose of me to connect with the concept of something bigger than me.
For me to find others that have found faith even in the darkest and most difficult difficult times and to know that this faith can be the bridge to create the patience to appreciate the magic of gratitude.
You see without faith it’s very difficult to wait for the reveal as I call it. That happens after difficult situations are endured.
What I mean is that you have to have faith in something bigger than you to believe that either a lesson or a lesson will be revealed from the difficult experience, trauma or challenges that you’ve gone through.
When I landed in California the very first week God had one more funny and clever surprise for me.
The band burning spear the band I prayed to back in my room in Ann Arbor was playing there in Santa Cruz, California the night I came into town looking for a place to live.
An old Rasta that became a friend of mine explained to me that if I met him in the back of the venue that night at the Catalyst club on Pacific Avenue in santa Cruz that he knew the bouncer by the back exit. With this relationship, we would be allowed to sit by the back door with the bouncer and you could hear the concert as if you were in the front row. The old man told me “to bring your imagination because you need to use your eye to be able to see Winston Rodney and the burning sphere band, but we will be able to hear them as if we were on the stage with them.”
It was amazing and it was assigned that I was on my path and then I was exactly where I needed to be.
I have since seen burning spear, probably 20 times and Winston Rodney the lead singer? The Singer has been immortalized in my family as we have had cats one name Winston and one named Rodney that each lived full lives and it was a little joke. I played on my family because they didn’t know the name Winston Rodney.
Our second cat arrived to complement Winston I just casually suggested the name Rodney and everyone loved that name.
After the name, I could explain the significance and everybody got a kick out of that.
And the universe will find you no matter how hard you try to hide from the messages and the answers that your higher self needs.
There is a saying in the community of healers and shamans that when you have an experience like a sweat lodge or an elevated altered state experience that you don’t necessarily get the experience that you want, however, you always get the experience you need.
Here’s to music and the magic that it creates the celebration of how the right music in the right time can do everything to expand yourAttitude of Gratitude.
EVERY DAY:
Love
and
Gratitude
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Thank you sincerely.
The G.I.F.T. Today
Grateful: for the difficult times and challenges that pull the greatness out of me
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Every day, every way, grateful.
KC
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