inspiration – Aaron J. Trumm

Getting Back

August 9, 2016 by Aaron

aaron j. trumm, art, being moved, connection, house concerts, inspiration, intimacy, music, nquit music, shannon curtis, songwriting

So I’ve been trying to “get back” to something quite a few years now – and I’ve been trying to “Get back” to this thing in a different way, so that I’m not poor all the time, not neglecting my health, and not running around in lonely worlds trying to connect. Really it’s not going back – it’s going forward toward something I’d touched before, but is also out there in front of me.

The “thing” I’ve been trying to get back to is really connection, and it’s a thing that I did experience a whole bunch when I was a serious slam poet. It’s why we DO this thing, where we perform or make music or art – we’re really trying to dock our hearts into other hearts and become one again and there’s really zero other things more compelling on Earth.

Check this TedX talk by Shannon Curtis, who really spoke to this:

She mostly tours around doing house concerts – shows in people’s houses, in intimate settings. I did a few of those back in the day, and I had plenty of moments in those and other intimate venues like she describes. Her talking about it, and the music video she describes, where she had fans write their struggles on a paper and film them, made me cry like crazy. I started to really remember again why I was doing what I was doing when I was touring a lot as a poet.

I’ve been very focused for 3 years – ever since my epic lung transplant saga – on business, learning, growing, and making a viable and sustainable business. I’ve been so focused that I damn near forgot WHY I wanted to build that business in the first place. It’s because I couldn’t sustain that job of moving, inspiring and connecting with people if I didn’t have a proper business in place. I just kept having to stop and get some day job I didn’t want and which never really made a dent financially, and eventually it kind of fell apart, and culminated in the destruction of my health.

I LEFT the life she describes on purpose, but I always intended to rebuild that job of connecting, and go back to work. It’s a whole new world now, and I’m new, and the job is new. I don’t wish I was on the road all the time. But doing work that makes that thing happen, where people are moved, and you connect, that’s my role in life, and I think maybe it’s everyone’s role.

It really doesn’t even have to be “art” (whatever that means). If you’re a social worker or a teacher, or a lawyer working to advocate for kids, even if you make something like video games or popcorn or whatever it is, you’re doing that for other people, and your main work is connecting.

So – if you ever wondered about me, or any of my colleagues, why we do what we do, Shannon hits the nail on the head pretty good.

Thanks Shannon!

— A

ps:
oh jeeze almost forgot my requisite link to free music – here! 🙂 www.aarontrumm.com/free-download

Music blog, here it is

July 3, 2008 by Aaron

aaron j. trumm, blog, inspiration, music blog, nquit, nquit music

I don’t want to call this an experiment ’cause that jacks with my sense of it being worthwhile. This is a new blog, where I’m gonna talk about my music, and I might talk about other music or even art. I’m just gonna talk about it, from a conceptual or emotional level. I’m probably going to post a lot of mp3s to download because ultimately I want more people to listen to and enjoy the stuff. I might talk about other people’s stuff, and I might refrain from getting into whether stuff is good, bad, etc. Let’s be clear, though, I’m not a reviewer, I’m not a press person, I’m not even really a label exec (even though I own my label). I’m just an artist and most of the bullshit around it has gotten so old.

So now there’s a couple of us, me and Iguanamind/Larry and monkeyking/Troy specifically, who’ve been developing this new way of thinking about art and music, and originally it had a lot of “let’s make a revolution” in it, but over the years, I think we’ve all come to this need for relief. We’re not fucking politicians, we’re musicians. All we ever wanted to do was just make the stuff. For me, it’s still not about just making it, but sharing it, and that’s where things go awry, because then it gets to be about promotion, and popularity, and competition, and man, this stuff, the message that I’m receiving in the melodies, the one that’s straight from God or the Universe or whatever, has nothing to do with all that.

So first I started changing my NQuit site to just be about presenting the content, and then Larry convinced me yesterday that creating this blog which is not about promotion, not even about technical stuff, just a thing to basically express, and let whoever will appreciate it come, would be a healthy thing.

I don’t know if I’ve said anything clear there. It doesn’t matter. I’m gonna put a link now to a really really old track, but I don’t care, because I really just want to put as much content up as possible, so fuck it, I’ll start with stuff that’s 13 years old! It’s my old stage name, and I think it’s dorky so I dropped it, but here’s a track:

[sc_embed_player fileurl=”http://www.nquit.com/sounds/MCMurph/ArtisticApocalypse/02MCMurphMagneticPoetry.mp3″] Magnetic Poetry by M.C. Murph