They are messing with my heart…
-Thomas Dolby “Hyperactive”

Welcome. I’m Tristan.

I grew up in the Berkshires. I started taking music seriously when I was nineteen: a late bloomer. My first instrument was drums, and I was fortunate to study with a world class jazz musician named Randy Kaye. Randy Kaye was a poet on the drums, especially with brushes. Graceful, subtle, very unique. From the start I got a highly creative, non-traditional perspective in my instruction, and I threw myself into it. I was lucky. Randy recognized my commitment and in a year or so, started sending me on gigs.
I went to school and studied jazz and music theory. I played a lot of drums. Big band, small group, funk, shuffles. I loved playing brushes. I started playing keyboard, not just because this is required when you study music theory, but because I so intensely wanted to learn the melody to the Sade piece I was studying, the bass line from the latest Miles Davis song I was obsessed with. I fell in love with harmony and voice leading.

Looking back, there is an almost monastic quality to studying music for the serious student. This doesn’t really change, even after you’ve developed some skill you need time alone to study your craft. But that’s okay, it makes the surge of people and energy all the more exciting when you go out to perform.
As I developed my voice on drums, I found my passion was playing funk music and blues shuffles. Right out of school I started a blues band and we did just that. This was with three of the most creative, gifted people I’ve ever known. We worked a lot. One of the interesting things, looking back, is that we had each (except our singer Ed Moran, who needed no schooling) studied and played jazz, and had a fairly complex understanding of music theory. We had some chops. But rather than exhibit this in our music, we chose to simplify. We found that when you channel that much intensity and passion into a simpler structure, the results are fascinating and powerful.
It was beautiful. I miss it. But this is now, and I’m excited about the future. I am excited about the creative potential available in this life to each of us.

What follows are some thoughts of mine on life, culture, humanity, the world of arts and music. If you like, you can dive in deep. Or, you can just move on, look and listen. Either way, it is an honor to have you here. Thank you.

My experience with the world of music and musicians is that there are some who can be quite rigid in their approach. There is a certain way things are done, whether you’re producing a pop record or playing a jazz gig. I still find this surprising. Music is often thought of as the quintessential art form for expressing rebellion, dissent, freedom! Humanity and feeling in its most undiluted form. I find it curious then, that it attracts a certain amount of people who lack courage or originality.

It just seems like the artist’s path is so codified these days, especially in music. The whole track is laid out for you. Reality shows and “rock star” camps that teach people how to act like “rock stars.” Can nothing inspired or spontaneous happen? One of the most striking things about tv shows with real life rock musicians going through some codified ritual: wrecking a hotel room or something, is that you get the feeling they don’t even believe in it. Just going through the motions. I think tradition can be a good thing, but a situation like that is inherently focused on what’s already been done. Here we are in the new millennium, and all I’m saying is, let’s have the courage to evolve. If you’re attracted to a certain style or a way of life, then fine, do it. Many of our ideas just float around and recycle anyway. But let’s not deny that authentic self just because we’re afraid it’s “not what people want” or some other sad, misguided reason. I think people always have a thirst for genuine, inspired work from artists. This can absolutely be pop music or commercial music; I love pop music. I have great respect for it. I’m just saying let’s keep it real, and be open to possibility.
This is probably why I am attracted to other artists: actors, filmmakers, dancers, painters. I love unusual, quirky people. I love people who are instinctively pushing boundaries, who can imagine something better for their world and act on it. In my opinion this is the most important thing we can do.

The following are some thoughts on our culture, government. They predate the encouraging and unprecedented administration of Mr. Obama, which I have hope for. If you came here to listen and read about me as an artist, please feel free to stop. But if you like, you’re welcome to read on.

In my opinion, there are two things we should recognize about western society and government, the second as or more important than the first. One, things are pretty bad. Two, they don’t have to be that way. We shouldn’t confuse the way things are with the way things have to be. If you look closely, I think you find that human ingenuity, talent and resources aren’t lacking; it is inter-connectedness and compassion that is lacking. Government, corporate culture and the media that serves them encourage this point of view at every turn. Many of us have bought into a lie which states that we can’t really afford things like compassion and generosity in world affairs, in business, in manufacturing or production. The more cut off we are from our joy, from the things we love, the more toxic and abusive our environment and the more stressed out and strained we are in our own lives the more this perspective starts to make sense. But it is only one of an infinite number of possibilities.
The United States is the most powerful nation on earth. From what I can see, this empire is structured in a kind of pyramid scheme of exploitation and brutality, with a fair amount of people in the middle who don’t seem to have the inner resources to treat other feeling beings more kindly than someone treated them. They’ve been dominated and dehumanized, they see no other alternative, and many can’t wait to get a little power and dominate the next. If challenged, they will point to others who do it as justification. So it continues. There are official positions and roles in our society, perfectly legal and sanctioned by authority, that virtually guarantee atrocity.
But I think we should remember that exploitation and domination are only one aspect of human nature. We have the ability to manifest the most inspiring and humanistic aspects, too. That’s a choice we make. Nothing defines human nature except possibility. Much of our current system appeals to and encourages the absolute worst aspects of human nature, but we still have a choice, day by day, moment to moment. Are the majority of people on this planet compassionate and sensible? I think we are. Not to say the Carlyle Groups, Haliburtons and Blackwaters of the world won’t be in business for a while; they may be. How long will people tolerate blatant corruption, war profiteering, rape, the killing of unarmed civilians? I think as long as we are lulled into unconsciousness, silenced by fear and confused by the false authority of empire.

Let us wake up to a truth. Wars are arranged by the ruling class and fought by the working class; common people suffer and die while a small minority reaps obscene profits. One of the hardest things about this is to watch the propagandists and media shills trick people into believing “support” for aggression and outright atrocity makes one patriotic; it is not even remotely patriotic. An American man or woman in Iraq has more in common with the people he’s fighting than he does with any of the power elite who put him there. The only war worth fighting is one against oppression and injustice.
The instruments of that oppression however: isolation, desensitization, fear, have to fail in the end. Awareness, compassion, generosity, these are the threats to that system. In other words, feeling. As much as modern media and education systems may have been successful in dumbing people down, I think a worse effect has been their success in numbing people down. If our species evolves, the people who look back at this time will see it as a strikingly hypocritical one, but they will also recognize it as an extremely cruel one. Cruelty is intrinsic to our culture. It is so ingrained that often times we just aren’t aware of it. We segment ourselves. We have fleeting moments of fear that something is horribly wrong; we hear someone talking about Katrina victims, or victims of US supported genocide, or animals suffering unimaginably in a testing lab but we don’t believe we can do anything about it. That’s the kind of despair a system of oppression depends on, that and the consistent mirage of false authority to commit that cruelty. But it’s not true. We can make choices every day that address these conditions. We can insist on cruelty free products for example; that’s one piece of activism corporations will pay attention to. Democracy may be severely compromised in the US, but a substantial number of people could absolutely change things.
Solidarity, empathy, kindness, these are natural human qualities, thus a system based on suppressing them is inherently unstable. In other words, to the extent that we allow joy, empathy, diversity and spontaneity into our lives we overcome the rigidity and brutality of our time. In my opinion, this means finding the strength to free ourselves from the social conditioning of cruelty, take action, and vote with our pocketbooks.

It’s just that with our current level of fear and ignorance, social conditioning works. With even moderate pretensions of authority, it is easy to convince people to behave with great cruelty, and to condition the rest of us to be indifferent. If we look into history (even our own), governments, state and federal used illegitimate authority driven by economic interests to enforce horrific conditions. It would be extremely naive of us to fail to recognize that this is very much alive today, the ruling elite just as arrogantly convinced of their authority and the false legitimacy of their atrocities. Most of us are not heads of state, but the people are more powerful than the state; their hold is tenuous. I think we should keep in mind that though the current war in Iraq has been extremely criminal and illegitimate from the start, has been an atrocious crime in the name of profit and domination, it was the first war in which there was massive worldwide protest before it even started.

I struggled for a long time with an apparent conflict between my intrinsic need to be an artist and my sense that there was an urgent need for social justice and change. I’m starting to heal that pain as I realize there is no conflict. For that I thank artists like Tom Morello, Arundhati Roy, many others. Artists, activists, thinkers, teachers, writers and scholars who influence and inspire me.

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