CURRENT MISSION

Save the world one foreclosure case (or 2 or 3 if I want to be busy) at a time... Play my guitar and sing while I watch Rome burn... Offer a version of manhood that my kids admire and that women adore... and other men envy...

ABOUT ME

BA in Philosophy and Music from Calvin
Masters in Music from Western Michigan University
Doctorate in Musical Arts from University Of Michigan (GO BLUE!!)

I'm a professional Musician, used to a be a rocker (lead singer), but am now classically trained I have a doctorate in music (see above vitae), yet I perform all styles of music. Played Jesus, in Jesus Christ Superstar, as well as having sung Puccini and Mozart operas, and classical works... But I also play guitar and sing Beatles and Barenaked Ladies songs, among others. I'm passionate about everything I take to... everything I do... "Lend me an ear and I'll sing you a song... and I'll try not to sing out of key" I'll love you if you know who wrote and sang that... Maybe I'll even sing for you... a *private* gig... ;-D

My day job is helping people in trouble with their mortgages, credit, and foreclosed homes. If you need housing (rent or buy) *well* below market, or you are in trouble with the bank... Me and my partners can help you. And best of all, we all get to make money off of the actions of the Big, Bad, Banks who approved bad loans for profit to begin with... now they're cryin'... and we're buyin'... how's that for a living?

PHILOSOPHY

I am wise in that I know I am not. I am deep only in understanding the shallowness and blind turn we all take on ourselves. No one is honest, not with the world, not with themselves, not with their Gods. Yet, I have deep, abiding, conservative and traditionalistic convictions... just ask me sometime...

There are two Laws God gave us to abide and follow: Love God with your whole heart, and love your neighbors... That's about it. Don't spew your Dogma or your Beliefs or what you Learned in Sunday School. Save it for when the Pastor or the Elder visits you on your lovely furniture in your perfectly clean house...

Let me instead watch how you talk to and treat your waitress, the cashier at the gas station, whether with your Go Green, The Ozone is Falling, Al Gore loving self... you live in a house or rental which uses gas, drive a car, take a plane, eat food shipped on trucks... etc... etc... You get my drift. It's NOT what you believe or say you believe... It's the difference you make in people's lives, whether they smile after an encounter with you or cry... whether they are better off for knowing you or not... Yes... Sorry... That's the truth... there IS no Truth that matters except what you hold in your heart-of-hearts (when no one is looking or asking) and ACT upon in your life (again, when no one is watching or asking)...

Use the refrigerator door for pictures of your family and children's artwork... Spare a tree by not posting the waste of paper upon which are written inane platitudes and doctrines and "sayings"...

People are really hurting out there. There is a lot of evil and desolation and nihilism. It's really there... Be counter to it... Be a light... Be a lover... That's what I'm trying to do at this point in my life.

Pourquoi je suis sur Couchsurfing

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

Crashed all over the world between my extended family the the vast network of friends and brothers (DeMolay, Masonic, Phi Mu Alpha, and just... brothers I meet).

Centres d'intérêt

Knowledge, Beauty, Passion, Music of all kinds and Styles, Golf, Reading: for fun, for knowledge, for escape, for education, to not waste time on the toilet... The Water, beach, skiing (snow and water), History, Etymology, The basis of Superstitions, Religious History and Theology/Comparative Religions, Music History and The History of Art and Ideas, Specialize in Knowledge related to The Holy Grail, Templars, Freemasonry, Egyptology, Paganism and Early Christianity... Hermetic Philosophy and Alchemy, Symbolism... enough about that...

Let's talk about the Sox and the Cubs!!

• cats
• arts
• singing
• performing arts
• beauty
• education
• dining
• reading
• music
• guitar
• opera
• camping
• skiing
• christian
• golf
• divinity
• teaching
• etymology
• history
• languages
• religion
• beaches

Morceaux de musique, films et livres

Favorite Music:
Classical music, opera, music theater... Pavarotti, Nicolai Gedda, Renee Fleming, Audra McDonald, John Mark Ainsley, Thomas Hampson, Jennifer Larmore, Cecilia Bartoli, Fritz Wunderlich... oh, and a deep crush on violinist Janine Jansen

Zeppelin, Guess Who, Yardbirds, Cream, Doobies, Eagles, Chicago, The Beatles, Santana, Hendrix, Jethro Tull, Three Dog Night, Grand Funk Railroad, Acoustic Rock, Journey (Steve Perry made me want to be a singer... *the* greatest rock voice ever), Styx, Starship (Mickey Thomas ain't no slouch voice either...), Boston, Kansas, Rush, ZZ Top, Sting, The Police, Extreme, Mr. BIg, INXS, Barenaked Ladies, Big & Rich, Altar Bridge, Nickelback, Three Doors Down, Spin Doctors, James Taylor, Jim Croce, The Temptations, Everly Brothers, Guns 'N Roses, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Toto, The Black Crows, U2, Snow Patrol, Metallica, Creed, Rob Thomas, Matchbox 20, Dave Matthews Band, Goo Goo Dolls, Brad Paisley, Los Lonely Boys, Maroon 5, Marc Broussard, John Mayer, Joss Stone, Jack Johnson, Hall and Oates, Genesis, Andrew Bird, Bon Jovi, Billy Joel, Dropkick Murphys, Nickel Creek, Little Big Town... good alt or alt/punk like Sick Puppies, Green Day, Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, etc.

Blues and Jazz... Miles, Winton and Papa Marsalis, Yellowjackets, Holly Cole Trio, Eva Cassidy, Nora Jones, Tony Bennet, Sinatra, Mel Torme, Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald, Sting, BB King, SRV, Louis Armstrong... absolutely any live jazz or blues playing anywhere... anytime

Favorite TV Shows:
American Idol, Lost, Heros, Rome, Dancing with the Stars, Friday Night Lights, Alias, Batman (the original series with Adam West), Charlie Brown Christmas, The Year Without a Santa Claus, Rudolph (we used to have wait all fricking *year* for those back in the day!), just about any sports, esp. PGA, NBA, MLB, NFL... and any Michigan game if fricking Comcast would just pick up the Big Ten Network and get over themselves...

Favorite Movies:
Forrest Gump, The Christmas Story, Johnny Dangerously, Star Wars Series, Indiana Jones Series, Gladiator, King Arthur, Troy, 300, Braveheart, Excalibur, The Matrix Trilogy, An American in Paris, Top Hat, Daddy Longlegs, Singing in the Rain, Citizen Kane, V for Vendetta, Electra, Daredevil, (pretty much anything with jennifer Garner or Natalie Portman), Batman Begins, Batman (all four are actually alright, but the first one is the best), The Hulk, Spiderman I, II, and III, The Breakfast Club, Field of Dreams, Bull Durham, The Untouchables, Wyatt Earp, Dances With Wolves, Silverado, Good/Bad/& the Ugly, Outlaw Josey Wales, Dirty Harry, Young Guns, The Godfather, Patriot Games, Mission Impossible I, II, and III, James Bond films, particularly the latest one, Casino Royale...

Favorite Books:
liad & Odyssey, The Name of the Rose, Foucalt's Pendulum, The Island of the Day Before, The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana (basically any book Umberto Eco writes), The Once and Future King (any current and historical Grail Literature), Tom Sawyer, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Holy Blood/Holy Grail, The Da Vinci Code, Brothers Karamozov, The Idiot...

Philosophy (especially Augustine, Plato, Kierkegaard), history (ancient, Medieval, US History), poetry, the Bible, Tao Teh Ching, Gnostic Gospels...

Favorite Quotes:
Tout finis par le chansons ("Everything ends in songs"; last line of Le mariage du Figaro, by Baumarchais)

The nearest thing to eternal life we will ever see on this earth is a government program" (Ronald Reagan)

I don't like to commit myself about heaven and hell - you see, I have friends in both places. (Mark Twain)

"Ideas are bulletproof." (V, in V for Vendetta)

Whether you think you can, or whether you think you can't... you're right. (Henry Ford)

"If no one ever took risks, Michelangelo would have painted the Sistene floor." (Neil Simon)

"You don't get harmony when everyone sings the same note." (Doug Floyd)

"Amateurs wait for inspiration; the rest of us just get up and go to work..." (Chuck Close)

Amateurs practice to get it right, professionals practice to never get it wrong.

Q. The difference between a musician and a Stuffed Chicago-style pizza?
A. The pizza can easily feed a family of four...

Of all the things I've lost, I miss my mind the most...

Une aventure extraordinaire que j'ai vécue

A colleague and I found our funding and created a year long project at the University where we taught (he still teaches there, alas, I do not). We took a troupe of SOuth Texas college kids to the Czech Republic to sing a children's opera (called Brundibar), composed by a Czech composer and performed hundreds of times by children at the Concentration Camp/Town of Terezin. I coached them to sing the final "Victory" chorus in Czech. This children's opera was subversive and obviously anti-Fascist and anti-Hitler. The children who performed it mostly ended up at Auschwitz, as did the "Leaders" of this town. Google Terezin and WWII and Concentration camps for the back story on this amazing Town. Bottom line, we were the first American cast to perform the work back at Terezin in perhaps a very room where it might have been done there. Best, and most profound of all, is that we were greatly honored to have in the audience three men who had survived Terezin... On of them... Tommy he's called now... actually the The Cat in the opera back in the camp... The most humbling, moving, brutally true artistic project with which I have ever been associated. This performance in a small room with a stage and maybe 120 people crammed in there on wooden benches was more profound and beautiful than all the Mozart and Puccini operas, all the Lloyd Webber and Les Miserables and Superstar shows, all the many Messiahs... I have ever performed or conducted. Nothing has or likely will ever come close...

Enseignez, apprenez, partagez

I know music inside out and upside down, can teach guitar and voice so that just about ANYONE can get it and get better. I also have convictions, and deep thoughts and a wide base of knowledge... and love to share ideas, debate, search the cosmos and the inner self...

I always welcome strangers who have a twinkle in their eye and a thought behind it... who don't take themselves or this life at all too seriously, and yet... care... But more than care... DO something about it in the way they treat and greet me and my family, and those around them... Foreign languages and foreign thoughts are ENCOURAGED and more than welcome on my couches. And I hope to find the same and offer the same to my couch hosts throughout this globe in my travels to come...

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