THIS Rhett Butler Will Never Die

Well, my day has finally come. I have been recognized by my efforts to establish myself as a quality concert photographer. Two bands have granted me -=photographer passes=- for concerts happening this week. Mind you, they are the opening bands for these shows, but hey, this is the very first time that I've asked for this privilege and it's been granted. Wednesday night I will be photographing Spindrift (as well as Vietnam and The Black Angels) at The Independent. Then Friday night I will be photographing Stolen Babies (as well as Kylesa, Within Temptation, and Lacuna Coil) at Slim's. Feeling pretty jazzed right now folks!!!

If you are one of my bipolar readers, check out this entire article. this is mind blowing information - especially if you live in/near San Francisco. I will put a link to the Icarus Project in my blog-roll. If you are one of my friends reading this, please read the entire article, I plead with you. This information is like gold to be able to understand what it is I am going through. clipped from http://www.sfweekly.com/2007-05-23/news/just-say-no/ Just Say No Conventional wisdom says psychiatric drugs save lives, but for some San Franciscans the pills are a prescription for disaster . By Amy Goldwitz Published: May 23, 2007

The jazz aficionado Miles Davis, a man that surely suffered from manic depression, was born 79 years ago today. I have not listened to enough of his genius music yet in my lifetime, but typically on a Sunday morning I will play my full collection of his music on my computer and fill the house with his energy. Miles Dewey Davis III (26 May 1926 – 28 September 1991) was one of the most distinguished jazz musicians of the latter half of the 20th century. A trumpeter, bandleader and composer, Davis was at the forefront of almost every major development in jazz from World War II to the 1990s. He played on various early bebop records and recorded one of the first cool jazz records. He was partially responsible for the development of modal jazz, and jazz fusion arose from his work with other musicians in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Free jazz was the only post-war jazz style not significantly influenced by Davis, although some musicians from his bands later pursued this style. His recordi...

maybe i just need to rant a little bit... i dunno. been in a lousy mood today, well this week actually. i've been looking for someone to blame for the loneliness and this inability to connect. i think the most fair thing to do is blame it on the seratonin. and the fact that i am not high on it anymore. there was a special Oprah yesterday where she grandstands people that she thinks are the worse case/best case scenarios for overcoming depression and finishes it off by advising people to seek professional help "if they think they may be suffering...". i sat down and wrote her a letter explaining my situation and that professional help is not all that it is made out to be. i think the medical professions ability to help "the depressed" is no ability at all. it takes a village to make us able to fight this disease. pills won't do it. certainly better education of those that live with or know the "depressed" is important... i don't know. don't ...

I can make this easy or I can make this hard. The easy way is to tell you that it's Bob Dylan's birthday and suggest that you listen to some of his music today. Better yet, go to the library (or your nearest bookstore), sit down and read a few chapters about his life. This guy is getting old now, although he'll probably live to be 101 - it's just that you don't know when death will take anyone away from us, right? If you were like me and had lived over 45 years of your life of "not getting" Dylan, maybe this will be your lucky year. The hard way would be for me to start writing pages and pages about what Bob Dylan has done to change my life - in just a little over a years time I now testify that this man has changed the way I look at the world, the way I interpret events, love, death, and everything else in between. And do you know what? I'm going to do it the hard way. I am going to write a lot today about Mr. Dylan and what he has done to my h...

Helium - Sad Songs That Will Make You Cry I am sorry but I have to write about this conceptually, rather than figuratively - like I do with many of my articles here at HELIUM. Two songs have made me cry over the past 6 month period; a song by Neil Young called, CORTEZ THE KILLER, and a song by Bob Dylan called IDIOT WIND. I have heard these songs over and over, many, many times over the years of my life and always felt their groove and energy, thinking "yeah man, dig that guitar..." or, "Wow, Neil (or Bob) really mean something deep here...", but I never took the time to contemplate the meaning of the words, or the real meaning of the emotions being conveyed before. Not until this past summer. You see, I think that a person needs to understand themselves before they can understand others. What do you think it would mean to Bob Dylan if no one ever found deeper meaning in his songs. (Well, if you've read anything about what he really thinks about that subject...

clipped from bipolar.about.com Research continues to dig for the roots of bipolar disorder. Towards this goal, the National Institute of Mental Health has spearheaded a project called the NIMH Genetics Initiative . Recent findings from this collaborative study report that the likelihood of developing bipolar disorder depends in part on the combined, small effects of variations in many different genes in the brain, none of which is powerful enough to cause the disease by itself. The study is the first to scan virtually all of the variations in human genes to find those associated with bipolar disorder. Genetic Roots of Bipolar Disorder From Kimberly Read & Marcia Purse , Your Guide to Bipolar Disorder . Stay up to date!   I am hesitant to give any credence to all these new studies anymore as it just seems to all benefit the "trade" in the end, not the patients. Stymie us with fear and confusion more why don't you. Take it for what you will though.