Tag: Writing

DAY 17 (1000 WORDS, 3rd attempt)

It’s time to take control of your life and be who you were meant to be. It’s time to let go of old attachments, to let go of all insecurities and doubts; life is simply too short to spend it crying over spilled milk. What’s done is done, it is what it is. I have to remind myself of that every so often, even if I did rap that song back in 2012, ten years ago now. The time is now, there is no other time. The past has gone and it’ll never return. It exists only in our minds, only for us to learn from it, so we can outgrow it. Every day the memory becomes more blurry though, our own stories slowly start fading away as we fill our minds with so many other things, whether we like it or not, all kinds of things we really don’t need. Does the mind have a limit? Does it start deleting files as new ones are saved into it? I’m sure science has some kind of answer for that, or thinks it does, yet I won’t be bothered to look it up right now. I steered away from my original train of thought, so let me get back on track. What I was about to say was that, every day our memories become blurrier, we forget little details about the past, about ourselves. Therefore, it seems to me like the longer we spend analyzing the past, the more likely it is for us to look at it in error, since all the small details are blurred out. We might even start adding in details that weren’t even there. We can’t learn correctly from a distorted image of the past, so it’s just not worth analyzing for too long. At some point we need to accept the lesson we’ve learned and continue moving forward. It can be difficult because, if we don’t accept the lesson, we keep trying to think our way around it to find something else, and we never move past that. Living in the past is a recipe for depression. Consumed by the could haves, the would and should haves, we regret everything that we’ve done, as well as everything we haven’t done. We fail to see that it was all meant to be, for it all shaped who we are today. Whether we’re good or bad today, just that lesson in itself is powerful enough, because it lets us see that, we can take control of our lives once again, we can start manifesting a better life into existence at this exact moment, by visualizing what we want, putting the work in and staying consistent. There’s no use in holding on to past mistakes as if they should prevent us from succeeding today. There’s no use in holding on to shame and guilt, to fear and hate, because we are what we think. As above, so below, as within so without. The true essence of what is within us manifests into our outer reality, so if we’re always thinking about negative things from the past because we can’t break free, then we’ll keep on running into the same scenarios. A simple example is that if we’re in a bad mood, we’re more likely to have people treat us badly. If we’re in a happy, cheerful mood then most others will reciprocate that energy as well. I know this from many years of call center experience… Unfortunately one can’t always be super cheerful sounding, but I do try to at least be polite and try to help as much as possible, exactly because of this, because energy is contagious. We never know how much a bit of positive energy might influence someone else’s life, therefore impacting whoever they interact with in their own lives. It’s a snowball effect, and I’m not claiming I’m perfect in the least, because sometimes I do fail at transmitting the exact energy I wish I always could, so for sure it’s easier said than done, but at least I’m aware of it and of the things that prevent me from being the best I can be, so that I can get to work on those things. Knowledge of self is the key, and the fact is that if we want to make a change in the world we need to start with changing ourselves. Even the best of us have things we need to work on, to improve on. Life is a constant learning experience, and as soon as we think we have it all figured out something happens to make us aware that we don’t. So again, it’s time to take control of your life and do what needs to be done. No more time for hesitating or procrastinating, it’s time to act. This is basically a letter to myself, to be honest, but I share it with the world because I know that the same applies to all of us. We all hold infinite potential within, to better ourselves as well as the world we live in, we just need to realize that, then to make a plan and to act on it, to stay consistent. This will also keep us from dwelling on the past, since we simply won’t have time. We’ll be more productive and likely to accomplish something, instead of spending time reliving the past in our minds, overanalyzing all kinds of situations. Presence is a skill everyone should practice. After all, we are not our thoughts, but rather the consciousness that thinks them, just as we are not our feelings or emotions either. If we can control our awareness and prevent it from becoming distracted with whatever new thing that comes up, that’s how we know we’re truly in control of ourselves, and of our lives. Having a set goal as well as discipline and consistency goes a long way in helping us achieve this. I haven’t always been great at this, but that’s exactly why I know how important it is to be present. It’s definitely something I’m trying to practice in daily life as much as I can, because I know how much stress I can save myself if I stick it out, and because I know it’s the right thing in the end.

much love

~ rebel eye

DAY 13 (1000 WORDS, 3rd attempt)

Day 13 of a thousand words. I figured I would write about one of my favorite songs of mine, It Is What It Is. This is a song I wrote and recorded way back in 2012. It was released on my February 2012 mixtape Running Rebel. To this day, I consider this mixtape to be my masterpiece. I was trying to make a project with a unique sound, but more specifically, with the jazzy, old-school type of sound that I love so much, the sound that inspired me to get into hip-hop in the first place. This track was the most popular off the tape. In my lyrics I reminisce on old times, which even though were filled with problems, still represent the good old days for me. In 2012 I was only 18 years old, but I really felt like I had grown up and matured. I know what you might think, that at that age there’s not much that I could possibly be looking back at. That’s not the case for me though, since the craziest times of my life actually started when I was about twelve or thirteen, and although I had a lot of fun, I also got into a lot of problems. Thankfully, these problems didn’t escalate as much as they could have. I feel like I’ve always been blessed with good common sense, even when I was acting up I was never completely like a lot of my friends. I always knew there was something deeper to life, and I guess I was trying to find exactly that in the countless experiences I was having, but never finding anything. By the age of 18 I had realized that this life was not what I wanted any longer, so I wrote this song, It Is What It Is. The last part of the hook says “But we all gotta grow, yo, it is what it is,” and I feel like that sums up my mindset at the time, I was done with my old type of life and was sad to let it go, as I did have a lot of fun, but I realized that it was time to move on, to grow into a new phase in my life. There’s a lot of details in the song, about old times, old moments I lived through with close friends, some of which are no longer here with us. Overall, it’s just such a nostalgic song for me, and the amazing chill beat by Dela definitely went along with my lyrics to emphasize the nostalgic aspect of the track. I also like how he incorporated a sample into the beginning of the beat, from one of my favorite rap songs “Moment of Truth” by Gang Starr, where Guru raps “Sometimes you gotta dig deep, when problems come near, don’t fear, things get severe for everybody everywhere.” At the time I felt like I was really thinking deeply, I was finally making a decision about my life and the direction I wanted to take it. Unfortunately, it did take me a few more years to completely let go of my troubled past, so throughout 2013 to 2014 I was back into making gangsta rap songs with RRG. It took me a few years to completely free myself of who I used to be and the toxic lifestyle I was living for so long, and over that time I also quit smoking cigarettes completely, quit drinking for the most part, and quit doing all the drugs I was doing. By 2017 I released my Musical Alchemy mixtape, where I incorporated a lot of what I had learned into my lyrics, from the 7 Hermetic Principles to the Four Noble Truths, from Bible verses to quotes by great philosophers. I wanted to creative something philosophically inspiring, but I feel like I ended up being a bit all over the place on that album. I hope to be able to make an album as good as my 2012 Running Rebel album some day, but I just don’t know if I’m even the same person these days. Even if I never do though, I’m glad to have created a classic, and even though my album barely got more than a thousand downloads, since I’m still basically unknown, I’m glad to have made something I can enjoy, and which documents my growth in life. Unfortunately, now that I’ve started posting my music on streaming services, I haven’t been able to post any of the songs from my Running Rebel mixtape, since the beats I used were just picked from different websites and YouTube videos, in order to match the sound I was trying to achieve. To anyone who might be reading this blog and who is already familiar with my music, I truly appreciate you! And if you’re reading my blog and are not familiar with my music then give this track a listen, I know you will enjoy it. To be honest, I think a lot of what has prevented me from “making it” as a musician has been my own fault, I’ve never been great at promoting myself, it’s never been something I enjoy doing. It feels like I’m trying to show off or something, so I’ve always preferred to have people find my music organically rather than sharing it to everyone. However, I’m now at the point where I realize that this just doesn’t work like that. As a creative person it’s imperative to be able to market oneself. You might be super dope at what you do, but if no one knows it then it isn’t gonna do much for you, so let the world know! There’s way too much wack music about nothing out there these days, so I shouldn’t feel any shame for promoting my own music when I know that it’s dope, and that people would appreciate it if only more people got to hear it. I appreciate everyone reading, as always, and I’ll leave a link to my song, It Is What It Is, in case you’re interested in listening.

much love

~ rebel eye

DAY 11 (1000 WORDS, 3rd attempt)

I can’t think of much to write tonight, to be honest. I sit here and stare at the screen for a few minutes though, and then I just start writing about how I don’t know what to start writing about. I know I have to start writing, there’s only an hour left and I can’t fail my daily goal. If I just start writing I know I can go from there, something will come to me. Wow, look at that! I’m half a paragraph in, although it seems like I already wrote about this recently… about what, exactly? Am I writing about writing again? Well, I am writing about how I don’t know what to write. That’s okay though because I’ve been thinking about how I need to be more spontaneous. Yeah, it’s good to have an order in life, but in between posting this daily message, posting my daily beat for sale, and working my nine to five, it starts to seem like too much of a routine. Now, this is not to say that I want to stop, no way! I’m only getting started and I’m excited to see where consistency will take me this time around, now that I’m finally taking it, and myself, seriously. I do, however, wish that life was more exciting and spontaneous at times. I’ve finally realized that I need to start with myself, otherwise nothing different will ever happen. Then again, maybe life staying the way it is isn’t so bad after all, I’m happy with my wife, I’m healthy, I love making music and writing, and apart from working at a call center from home I don’t have to deal with too many crazy situations since I barely go outside other than to buy things or once in a while to meet up with a friend, which is not too often. Things weren’t always like this, I used to have many “friends” and used to go out and party every week, maybe multiple times a week, and get drunk and all sorts of fucked up, but that all changed after I moved to Honduras and stayed there for three years, where I met Maria who later became my wife. It’s crazy how in life you can’t have it all at once. I love my wife and wouldn’t trade our relaxed life together for anything in the world, but I still wish we went out to hang out with friends every once in a while or something. Then I see what’s going on with a lot of people in the world and it makes me not wanna deal with any of it. Why ruin what we have? And I don’t mean in the sense of me cheating on her or anything crazy like that, I’m just thinking like, what do I have to look for out in the world other than problems? I have my wife here and there’s no need to go anywhere or complicate our life. I know it’s probably not the healthiest way of life but I gotta be honest. I hate to sound pessimistic about the world or about people, but sometimes I really feel just like Bukowski said “I don’t hate people …I just feel better when they’re not around.” I actually do care about people and I’ve always hated injustice with a passion, but it seems to me like most people are not looking to engage in meaningful conversation with others, but rather promote an idea, whether political or religious, or some idea of morality or about the right way to live life. Everyone has all the answers figured out, except for the answer to the question of how to get along with each other. So much trouble over racism, over sexism and homophobia, over politics, over ideologies. As soon as you say one thing you get labelled or cancelled, so no one can have an honest debate. It’s crazy to me how a lot of people don’t see this, they don’t see the classic manipulation that’s purposely put in place in order to divide us and have us fighting against each other so that we can’t focus on being free. It’s scary to think about how well engineered all the propaganda is nowadays, how interwoven everything is, how Facebook and Google knowing everything about us, and how our access to basic services can be cut off at any time, and it’s becoming easier and easier as things become more electronic. Again, we can’t have everything in life. We have newer technology, but along with it comes a new, perhaps invisible, danger. Along with technology may come disease, but then we create medicine to cure disease. Is everything ultimately good or ultimately bad? I don’t have the answers at all, but I think I just might have close to a thousand words, after having just taken you all on this crazy train of thought along with me. Just copied and pasted this post onto Word and saw I have like 800 words. Not bad, my estimate was pretty close. See, I love writing because of this, I can write and just have fun as I document a random moment in my mind, a moment that is forever gone in time and I’ll never recover. Maybe I will though, if I read this blog post sometime in the future. Random ideas… why did God or the universe will it for these ideas to get documented? Why not the ideas I had this morning? Why didn’t I have other ideas right now, for this post? Where do ideas even come from? Well, I like Paracelsus’ thoughts on the matter, but it’s not for sure. It’s something I’ve written about in another post, and maybe might explore in another post in the future. I appreciate anyone who’s reading, blessings to you and yours.

much love

damn, 977, I was sure I had a thousand! Don’t forget to show the ones you love you appreciate them! Time is not unlimited, and we never know how long is left, so let’s make every moment count! Thought I’d end it on a super positive note with a message that can’t hurt anybody!

again, much love

~ rebel eye (1031 words without counting my name!)

What I was listening to as I wrote this.

DAY 10 (1000 WORDS, 3rd attempt)

DAY 10, nice! Only have to do ten days nine more times to get to a hundred. My record right now is 81 days straight, if I’m not mistaken. This time I don’t only plan to beat that, I plan to go for as long as I can, until the end of my days if possible. Consistency is the key to improvement, and when paired with a constant flow of new knowledge it can really make things happen. It’s always a struggle, trying to find a way of keeping myself constantly reminded of this, even during days when I’m the most tired or just not feeling up to much, I’d love to have a way of just snapping back into the right mindset to get back to work, to get back into the flow of things. Usually if I miss a day of something I’ve decided to do daily, it completely kills my motivation to do it, because I know I have to get back to that point again, if I’ve done it before I can do it again but it’s gonna take me a while to get there so I may as well not even start. It’s a stupid logic, I know, and it’s the main reason why I didn’t post on here at all for 2 years after my Day 81 post in August of 2019. I mentioned all of this in a recent post, but it’s cool for me to recap since today is day 10 so it definitely feels like an important milestone. A lot is going on apart from the resurrection of my blog, mainly with my music! Music is perhaps my biggest passion, and today I posted my first beat for sale on Beatstars, something I should probably have done years ago. I always had the idea of eventually rapping on my own beats, but it’s clear that I can’t come up with enough rhymes fast enough to fill up all the beats I produce. Ultimately my goal is to live off my music, or off of any of my creative pursuits, but preferably music, so it doesn’t matter in the end whether I make money as a rapper or as a producer. I can even rap just for fun for the small group of people who do listen to me, and it won’t matter too much because I’ll be having fun making beats and making money that way. This is what I’ve recently decided, so I’ll be uploading daily beats on Beatstars, as well as accompanying videos for each beat on YouTube and Instagram, and just like this daily blog post session, I hope to be posting consecutive beats for as long as God blesses me with life. One of the biggest obstacles in my life has been that of the nine-to-five lifestyle, working soul-sucking jobs that don’t interest me in the least as a creative person, doing the bare minimum since I know a sincere and honest work ethic is not necessarily valued, but rather exploited most times, and the overall depression that comes along with this type of life, having little to no time to do what I love. Recently, during the past few years, I’ve been making my own time for myself, but not to slack off like back in the days. Sometimes I’m filled with anxiety these days even, because I feel like I absolutely have to make it with this music thing, or with some other creative pursuit, maybe like writing, if I want to be free of this lifestyle. I don’t mean to complain, I’m honestly grateful for all of my life experiences, and this type of life has taught me the importance of chasing my dreams, that the power to make anything happen is in my hands. I pray to God to help me find the right way to keep motivated and to keep putting the work in consistently. I also have to start reaching out to artists and trying to network, but this is good since it’ll sharpen up my sales skills which I haven’t really used since back when I had some other nine to five jobs.

So yeah, I’m super excited to be getting into this new chapter of my life, where I’m trying to move forward with my passion first and leaving partying and wasting time behind. To be honest I haven’t even been partying for many years now, having realized the pointlessness and stupidity of the constant party lifestyle, but I can’t say I haven’t been wasting time. A lot of it has been due to indecision, and as you may know if you’ve read some of my other recent posts, I think it may have something to do with me being constantly stoned, so I’m starting a really serious goal to stop getting baked as much, and it’s definitely allowing me to see things in a much clearer way to allow me to do what needs to be done to start marketing my business ideas. Yeah, it’s true that bud helps me get creative ideas flowing, there’s no debating that, but sometimes with so many ideas comes indecision, when what we might need at the moment is extreme focus on one specific idea, in order to get started with the execution of that idea. Everything in life has its right time, and I feel like things are starting to align in my life. Only time will tell if I stay motivated enough to constantly continue with my ideas, such as this daily blog post of a thousand words, or the daily beat I’ll be posting, but I really think I will. I really feel like this time is different than ever before, and I truly can’t wait to be writing to you all soon confirming that to be the case. To anyone who struggles with indecision, my advice is to simply get started. Start putting your ideas together, and once you do start putting them out into the world. If you have good content, and you are constantly learning and improving, and constantly showcasing that improvement, then you are applying the formula for success and it is highly unlikely for you to fail. Once again, consistency is key. Knowledge is power. Practice makes perfect. Learn as much as possible about what you do, nowadays there’s so many resources out there. Keep on learning, keep on applying your knowledge in order to practice, showcase your practice and your progress to inspire others!

much love

~ rebel eye

DAY 9 (1000 WORDS, 3rd attempt)

One day away from day 10, nice! In a way I’d say it feels a bit therapeutic even, writing these thousand words daily, I really think more people ought to try it, at least once in a while if daily’s too much. To be honest I think daily might even be too much for me, but I love the challenge and I’m glad to be taking it on, since I feel like there’s too much shit on my mind, feel like I need to declutter my mental space. It’s nice living life as an observer, and writing down my thoughts and ideas helps me keep organized and on track about what I’m doing. If you’re reading I also appreciate you, it definitely adds another dimension to my mission, it feels like I’ll grow my audience depending on how real I can keep it, how much raw reality I can express in my words, how much of my message I’m truly able to convey. Writing is simple, yet it’s a skill one can always improve on, there are no limits to imagination and creativity, to the combinations of words one can form, and the meanings different people derive from those groups of words, which we might call phrases or sentences. Maybe I can inspire someone to write what’s on their mind as well, and whatever they write could inspire someone else, sparking a chain reaction of inspiration. It’s the invisible things life these which inspire me to write, things I might never notice. So many things have inspired me, things I’ve read I mean, without the author knowing I’ve been inspired. We can’t know whether everything we write is correct in every sense, but if our heart is in the right place then we should have nothing to worry about. Expressing our honest opinions on certain topics can maybe open up the door for much-needed conversation about it, sometimes problems can’t be solved just because there’s simply no dialogue to come to an agreement, so hatred and violence continue to grow. Communication is the key to moving forwards as human beings. Assuming we understand when we really know nothing about something is bound to lead to problems if we ever interact with others who truly do understand. This is the reason why nowadays I spend most of my time watching tutorials, learning the ins and outs of the craft I’ve decided to pursue, now that I finally decided that’s what I want to do for sure. I’ve realized that there’s nothing quite like being prepared, and knowing even more than the necessary just for doing what needs to be done. Things that stand out have to be done with passion, yes, but they also need to be done in the right way, and a lot of times being too passionate at the beginning might result in us starting to soon, and starting off wrong. There’s no such thing as starting too soon, as long as we are prepared, but if we started off wrong then maybe we may as well not have started off at all! So the best scenario is to start off early but to be prepared, and if you didn’t start off as early as you wish you had, don’t get desperate – take the time to learn properly and then get started, now that you have a clear vision of what it is you intend to do, which is what you lacked back then, and the reason why you never got around to doing it earlier. Leaning is the key to life, and to every aspect of it. Hands-on learning is extremely effective, but usually this goes along with learning from someone else, someone who is already very skilled at whatever we are learning, and who is willing to pass that knowledge on to us. We learn by receiving ideas from others, who communicate these ideas from us. Every word I’m using in this post is an idea in itself, and when paired with the words around it, can convey a very different idea than it would on its own. That’s not always the case, but it’s a possibility. Over time, figures of speech become accepted as things everyone says and understands, and as our ideas shape our language over time, so does our language eventually shape our ideas. It’s all a cycle; art – or literature – imitates life, and life imitates art, one reflects the other, back and forth, back and forth. There’s not even a need to specify, to differentiate between art and literature, since great literature could possibly be the highest form of art, effectively transmitting powerful ideas to another, or transmitting powerful emotions through the stories of the character. One Piece is a show that does this in an amazing fashion. I’m not really a huge anime fan, since most animes just don’t have what One Piece has, but One Piece has been my favorite show since I was a little kid in the third grade, I’d wake up at 3:30 am to watch it when it came on at 4am on 4Kids, Sanji’s cigarette was replaced by a lollipop. The point is, I got up super early to watch it because I was intrigued by the story and the characters, by their emotions and the dilemmas they faced. They were emotional and complex yet realistic, or at least relatable. I’d recommend this show to anyone, I’ve even got my mom into it! If I ever complete a novel or any work of fiction, something which I’m actually already working on by the way, that’s what I aspire for, for it to be as moving as One Piece, for it to evoke feelings in the viewer in that exact way. That’s ultimately what I hope to do with the lyrics for my songs as well, I despise mainstream rap because the lyrics are fake and uninspiring, promoting materialism and stupidity. The type of hip-hop that moves me is songs like 2Pac’s “Brenda’s Got a Baby,” a story about a young girl who dies to soon after becoming trapped in the lifestyle of a sex worker, or Flipsyde’s emotional “Happy Birthday,” a track he raps about a child who was aborted because they were not ready to be a family, and the emotions that go along with such a situation. We need more inspiration, people are drowning in worthless pleasure, numbing themselves from an inner feeling that something is wrong, because there’ simply no inspiration. Speak up if you think you have something to say, you never know who you might inspire, and just what might come of it.

much love

~ rebel eye

DAY 8 (1000 WORDS, 3rd attempt)

Time flies, and I’m often torn apart by indecision, since everything is a possibility, yet there’s not enough time for everything to be done correctly, or even at all. A person might struggle along one specific path throughout an entire lifetime, but does he or she finally know whether they’ve succeeded, once the moment of death arrives? Can we ever know for certain that we have lived in the right way? If there is really a right way to live, then it’s terrifying to think that we might convince ourselves into living a certain lifestyle, only to find out once it’s too late that that wasn’t really what we should have done with our lives. Would this regret even be valid though? It’s easy to wish we had done something different, once time has passed and we didn’t do it. Another story is whether we would really do it if given the chance, if we could somehow magically go back to that moment. The past is the past, and we didn’t know back then what we know now, so perhaps we would have done the exact same thing we already did, if we were ever given the chance to go back and relive, or redo, certain moments of our lives. It’s crazy to think that we might never really know whether we’re living correctly or not, we just have to trust our decisions and stick with them. There’s no trial period for the consequences of our actions and beliefs, or our lack of actions or beliefs. Certain things need to be done for other things to happen, certain sacrifices need to be made for certain doors to open. Certain beliefs lead us to act in certain ways, or to refrain from behaving in certain ways, but how can we be sure that our beliefs are the right ones when almost absolutely everyone seems to be one hundred percent positive of their own beliefs? If our beliefs are wrong then doesn’t that mean that all of our actions will be wrong from the very start, that all our dreams are doomed to failure? The scariest thing is that, to succeed at most endeavors we have to spend years and years perfecting our skills, learning, practicing, networking, diving deeper into whatever we are pursuing, whether we’re talking about personal or business endeavors. Who’s to say that, after so many years of working hard at something, we won’t be unfulfilled and left wishing we would have done something different? Maybe we’ll only realize that because of the life experience we’ve gained from whatever it is we ventured into, which we are now thinking was a mistake. But was it really a mistake? How could you have learned this lesson if you hadn’t lived your life in the specific way you have up until now? But then again, what’s the point of this lesson now when it would have helped me out much more so many years ago, when I actually had the time and energy to invest into whatever it is that I now consider what should have been my actual pursuit? Mind games, leading to regret and dissatisfaction. Buddhism would emphasize the need to live in the present, to minimize attachment to what would have or could have been, and to just be happy in the moment, to be present and not to wish for anything to have been different. Sure, this could definitely be the healthiest and most practical approach to life, maybe even the correct approach to life (again, could be, but not sure, just like any other approach to life), but that doesn’t really mean that it isn’t valid to say that maybe we would have been more successful or happier if we had done something else, if we had turned our lives into something different. The point though, as I see it, is that whatever we have gone through was our own experience, it is specifically ours so that we may grow from it by relating to it in our own specific ways, dependent on everything else we’ve experience during our lives. Maybe everything really is meant to be in such a way, and then again, maybe nothing is meant to be, which would mean that all of our experiences, all of our pain and our struggles, our joy, the love we feel our friends and family, would all be random and trivial in the grand scheme of things. It’s true that I’m not a hundred percent sure about anything at the end of the day, if I can be completely honest, but I sincerely doubt that idea, that everything we experience is trivial and that there is no deeper meaning to any of it. As we learn if we study Hermeticism, “As above, so below; as within, so without.” Everything goes way deeper than we could ever know, all of our decisions and experiences, all of our thoughts, our feelings and emotions all stem from farther away, from deeper than we could ever imagine. Well, again, that’s just kind of what I feel to be the truth, no guarantees! I know that someone has the best chance of succeeding if they focus all of their time and energy, or at least as much of them as possible, into one thing and one thing only. Unfortunately I’ve never been able to settle for one thing. I love making music because so much music inspires me, and I love writing because so many great books have inspired me as well. I love rapping because that’s what I started with, that’s what I’m best at when it comes to music, but I hate so much of what makes up hip-hop culture these days. It’s never been the healthiest culture, understandably, but I think any fan of hip-hop knows what I’m talking about when I say that things are much worse now, and it’s gone downhill in a really sad way. Another path for me could be beats, since I love producing beats as well, and I’m getting into it just now like never before, taking my beat game up to the next level, so we’ll see where this takes me with time, I pray to God I make the right decisions, and I have to work at keeping my mind clear and free from stress and distractions.

much love

~ rebel eye

DAY 7 (1000 WORDS, 3rd attempt)

We can get so busy at times that we forget to make time for those we love. Life sometimes demands so much from us, and it seems impossible to win if we don’t spend every waking moment planning out our next move. We think we’re doing our duty since it feels like we simply must provide for our families at all costs, we must protect them. We can get so caught up in creating the life we dream of, that we forget to live life in the present, to appreciate those who are unconditionally there for us. By the time we turn that dream we’re chasing into a reality it might not be exactly what we expected after all, yet they might no longer be there. We change along with life. Change is actually the only constant in life, the most common of things, for good or for bad. We don’t know what’s ahead, so we should always be grateful for the present, we should embrace it and live it to the fullest, just be alive in it. We shouldn’t brush it off as if it didn’t matter, as secondary to our future projects, or even worse, as something from which we wish to escape at the earliest possible chance we may get. We need to embrace the present, and the people who surround us at the moment. Sometimes the people who love us might be the exact people we wish to avoid, and perhaps it’s because we know that they’re willing to call us out on our mistakes while other so-called friends won’t. We might convince ourselves that they’re wrong, that they’re getting too involved in our decisions and that we have everything under control. We might even start to resenting us, but there is no reason to, since friends should always try to build each other up, to help each other grow. Sometimes we can hold grudges and allow resentment to gradually separate us from those who love us, but this will only lead to loneliness and regret in the end. No amount of money or success is worth more than true love, than enjoying life alongside family and friends. I can’t say I’ve never been guilty of this myself, I’ve let the pressure of trying my best to succeed get in the way of me maintaining healthy relationships. Thankfully I still get along with my family, who never gave up on me no matter what kind of crazy shit I was going through, but I can’t say the same for a lot of my so-called friends. A lot of people have walked out of my life for one reason or another, both voluntarily and not. I’ve lost some good friends along the way, a lot just went their own ways and we drifted apart as the years passed, as I travelled through Brazil and Honduras, wanting to fulfill my fantasy of backpacking and seeing the world as a hippie, yet never getting started. Let’s just say things didn’t go exactly how I had planned for them to go, but I’m not complaining and regret nothing in the end. The thing is that I was hoping to make crazy friendships overseas, to immerse myself in different cultures, which are actually my own cultures, since I was born in Honduras and my father’s side of the family is Brazilian, while I failed to realize that I was neglecting a lot of my friendships back in Canada. Some people I purposely wished to cut contact with, a lot of people were only there for the good times, when there was a party going on and lots of booze and bud, but never for anything else. People are complex, and we are all searching for something. I know because I’m complicated as hell, sometimes my ideas might be all over the place, sometimes I might have extreme focus on something that captivates me and catches my interest at the time. Despite the complex nature of human beings, despite the possibility for misunderstanding and issues that may arise from it, it’s still worth it to make connections with others, to keep in touch with old friends just to see how they’re doing, to let our closest friends and family how much we love and appreciate them. You never know when someone might appreciate a conversation, you never know what others might be going through. It’s great to chase our dreams, to work hard, to save money, but we shouldn’t let our relationships suffer in the process. We might become completely oblivious to the basic things the ones we love require from us, we might lose our temper and lash out at them, under pressure by the demands of the grind. What is the point of working hard to provide financial stability to a family, yet provide no emotional stability, to fight and even to hurt one’s partner, to set a harmful example for children, to become bitter from stress and worry? Life is tough, that’s true, yet it is meant to be enjoyed. We shouldn’t spend every moment trying to get ahead, life is not a race after all. Every breath is just as important as the next, they all keep us alive. Every moment is significant, all the moments of our lives add up to create us in our entirety, our ideas and our present thoughts, our preferences and decisions, they all stem from everything we’ve ever been through, and we shouldn’t be ashamed of any time of our lives. I think a lot of us need to take a moment to slow down and appreciate what we have, especially the people we have in our lives, people we might just be taking for granted, not realizing what an amazing influence they’ve been in our lives. Moving forward I think I’ll try spending more time with my parents, and it would be pretty cool to talk more and even hang out with my brother Uriel, although he lives in the States for now so that’s not something for right now necessarily.

much love

~ rebel eye

DAY 5: Eternal Words (1000 WORDS, 3rd attempt)

Day 5 of writing a thousand words from my mind. I’m glad I’m sticking with this goal so far, it’s only been five days but I’m feeling really motivated to keep this going this time. The second time I attempted to do this daily I got up to Day 81, then when I failed it I basically didn’t post anything else on here for like two years. That was from August 2019 to now. I can say I’m finally getting back into writing, and it feels good. Writing is weird in a way. It’s such a simple thing but it can get really complex. How do we know when it’s good or bad writing that we’re reading? It’s all subjective isn’t it? When is a piece of writing finished? Couldn’t we always find another fancier word to convey our message? Writing a novel is complex, every little word matters, every choice makes a different to the overall story. Writing can be complicated in such a way, or it can be simple. Free writing is basically just thinking, but writing down what we’re thinking, or as much of what we’re thinking as we can before our mind is invaded by the next thought. So what exactly is it about writing thoughts down that makes them special? Wouldn’t the same ideas be just as brilliant if they hadn’t been written down? Ah, but that’s the thing, how would we have ever encountered these ideas in the first place, had they not been written down? Often times I feel really inspired by something I read in a book because it deeply resonates with a thought or emotion of my own, maybe one that I hold deep inside and would struggle to put into words if I tried, so I just don’t try. It’s cool to find that someone else has thought about the same thing as you and agrees with you, even if most of the planet might not necessarily see things in that way. Some of the ideas in my mind can get so complex and confusing, and sometimes it feels like I’ve been going over an idea for quite a while without reaching any conclusion. Suddenly something I read shines a light on that whole subject and shows me that I can look at the situation in a completely different way from anything I’d even considered. Whether it’s reinforcing an idea that I already have, or providing a new perspective for me to consider, it’s crazy to me how powerful written words can be, how the correct combination of words used to transmit an idea from someone’s mind can resonate so much with another person, even thousands of years after the writer has passed away. As Marcus Aurelius stated “What we do in life echoes in eternity.” What we do means everything we do, including whatever we write. It’s insane to think that his famous book Meditations, was never even meant for others to read. It was basically like a journal of sorts for him, he just wanted to write some ideas down, and here we are, reading them and listening to them thousands of years later. What if he had chosen to simply think these thoughts, but didn’t ever think to write them down? All religions have their holy books, which are presumably thousands of years old. What would religion be without those words? Now, I won’t get into a date on whether life would be better or worse without things such as religion, but if there was no religion because there was no writing, then you can be sure that there would be a lot more missing in the world, like music and art, even basic education. What would we be? We would be nothing like what we are today. That’s why, as a writer and a musician, it can be hard for me to write sometimes. For any generic radio rapper the task might be really easy, it’s common knowledge that sex, drugs and violence are mostly what sell. It doesn’t take much effort two write a few half-assed bars about how much money you have and how many women you’re having sex with. Yeah, these rappers are what society would call “successful” and who can argue? They have big mansions and luxury cars, every high school boy wants to be them, to be as successful with women as they are, to have everyone look up to you. Are they properly calculating the cost of that success though? Everything has a price, and everything requires some sacrifice. If you essentially sell your talent and allow the industry to tell you what to make music about, yeah, you will get the financial reward, the peace of mind of not having to worry about money anymore, but what about your impact on the planet and on those who are listening to you? What will come to you as a result of all of this? What are trying to promote with your words, positivity or negativity? Hope, or anger and resentment? Do you want the world of the future to be more focused on humanity, on empathy, on how to move forward and help one another to grow? Or would you rather have the young men of tomorrow measure their success by how many cars they own or how many women they can sleep with? Doesn’t this also imply that women are no more than sexual objects, possessions to be acquired? I don’t think any of this is right, but sadly this is where we’re headed as a society, every day we are falling more in love with materialism, and forgetting how to love and uplift one another. So what can you do? What can I do? Well, some of us are fortunate enough to be able to provide help to others who are not in the best situations. If you have no money though, what’s stopping you from writing? I’m simply writing my thoughts here, just like Marcus Aurelius decided to do when he wrote what would later become Meditations. I don’t know what you’ll take from this post, what anyone who reads it will take from it, but I am sure you will get more out of it than if the ideas were just left to float around in my head. I appreciate anyone who’s reading this, I believe that we were meant to connect in this way. Remember, put your heart and soul into all that you do, and if your intentions are pure, most likely you’ll be influencing the world in a positive way.

Much love

~ rebel eye

DAY 2: 1000 WORDS (3rd attempt)

Day 2, 1000 words, let’s go! The main topic I wrote about yesterday was my music and how I’m slowly but surely becoming a much more professional musician, and what I’ve been doing to make that happen. I mentioned a few things such as mastering making beats on the MPC One, apart from FL Studio, which has always been my go-to program for beats, and leaving days off from getting stoned so that I have a much clearer head, which might not always be necessary for coming up with funky rhythms while in the zone, but is definitely needed at this point in order to try to promote my brand effectively. One thing I didn’t mention on my first post though, was that I’ve also started learning to play the guitar. When I was in high school my mom signed my brother and I up for guitar classes at the recreation center since she knew I was into music. I bought an acoustic guitar and we went to a few classes, but it didn’t materialize into anything. I just didn’t have the discipline back in those days, my mind was on a bunch of other crazy shit. I kept the guitar though, it’s just been sitting there in a storage room for all these years, so recently I had the idea of picking it back up and just finally getting down to business and learning to play it. After having watched tutorial after tutorial in order to learn the ins and outs of the MPC, which is basically a DAW inside of a groovebox, and eventually becoming quite comfortable with it, feeling like I’ve mastered it, I’ve become amazed at how much I enjoy learning about music, and how easy it is for me to learn as long as I enjoy what I’m learning. For so long, my idea of myself as a musician was that of a rapper, and a producer on the side, although I’ve always been able to pump out a lot more beats than songs. I’ve made trip-hop beats, techno beats, but never really released them, or even most of my hip-hop beats, since I just always preferred to promote the image of myself as a rapper. I never really look into things like mixing and mastering, or into getting the best quality equipment I could, I just stuck with what I knew, my laptop and USB mic, and FL Studio for beats. As long as I could rap good and it sounds good that’s good enough, right? That’s not necessarily the case. There’s a joy in learning and improving, and even though my music might be already good, there’s no telling how much better, cleaner or fuller it could sound with different effects and sounds, and with more experience with music in general. Music is a never-ending learning journey, just like life is, and I’m really excited to be immersing myself into it fully, like I should have done years ago. These days I no longer care about promoting myself exclusively as a rapper, as a producer, or as any other specific label. I’ve come to realize that I just love music, all kinds of music, and want to create as many different styles of it as I can! I’m a musician, a writer, and an artist, not just a rapper or producer. Recently I’m completed two instrumental albums which are basically ready for release now, just playing with some new mixing and mastering tricks I’ve been learning and they should be ready to go within a month or two. One is a techno/trance album which will be titled “life in color”, and the other is a chill, trip-hop type of album, titled “dawn of a new day.” I’m slowly releasing singles from both of them and they should drop around the same time, within a few months. I’ve also got my own solo rap album on the way, Rebel Spirit, and, having recently released our newest joint mixtape together, The Come Up 10, Kalvonix and I are already hard at work on our next project, The Come Up 11, with no signs of stopping anytime soon. Stress has always been a big part of my life, unfortunately, but it’s great to get back into doing things I love, to discover a newly refreshed love for music in all its forms. These days I usually make a beat or two, maybe one in FL Studio and one in the MPC, or I might even connect the MPC to my PC on controller mode and open up the MPC Beats program inside FL Studio, which allows me to combine sounds from my MPC and my computer to create a complex instrumental. I might be writing some rhymes to some of my beats, or practicing guitar, or watching tutorials on gear I don’t have (yet), preparing for my future in music. With God’s blessings and with all the positive energy I can possibly pour into this endeavor, I hope to go far now that I’m finally taking this seriously. A final message to anyone out there, it’s never too late as long as you’re willing to put in the work and get yourself back on your feet and back on track! Today I was experimenting with different possible setups for filming my YouTube tutorial videos. I need a camera facing me and a camera facing down at the MPC screen, since I’ll start the channel off with MPC tutorials. Unfortunately, the GoPro mount that I bought and just received today wasn’t long enough to film properly above the MPC screen without obstructing the way for me to play the pads, so I thought of using my phone to record the MPC from above, and to use the GoPro with the mount to film myself from the side. All of the audio, both from the MPC and from the Rode NT1 microphone, are going into the Scarlett 4i4 audio interface and being routed into FL Studio, so I only need to figure out the video side of things now and I should be good to go. I’m excited about this new venture, my YouTube channel, since it seems a bit more realistic than blowing up as a musician might be. Not saying I won’t make it in music, but if YouTube is an open door then there’s no point in not taking the risk, and hopefully it drives some viewers to my music as well, whether it’s on Spotify or Bandcamp, or even right on YouTube.

To be continued tomorrow on Day 3 of 1000 Words.

Much love

rebel eye

DAY 1 (1000 WORDS: 3rd attempt)

1000 Words, Day 1 once again. My last post of the 1000 Words a Day series was Day 81, back in August of 2019, so it’s been three years! Wow, time sure flies by. I hope I can stay on track and keep on writing for a much, much longer consecutive period of time this time around. I also plan to write in a bit of a more stream-of-consciousness fashion, just to get more ideas out of my head and onto the blog. I feel like I have a lot of cool or important thoughts floating around in my mind, some of them for quite a while now, that maybe I just don’t know how to adequately express, so I just kind of avoid writing about them, and I feel that if I don’t stop to think so much anymore about having everything all organized and about the exact structure of a post and about where everything should be written or if it’ll all make sense, that I might be able to let more of these ideas out into the light. I have to keep resisting the temptation to read back on what I’ve written so far, and just keep on writing! Before I get into today’s main topic I just want to quickly apologize to anyone who may have been following this series of mine a few years ago and then I suddenly stopped writing. I know it’s probably not many people if any at all, but I just thought I should mention that just in case. So the main thing I want to let you guys know about today is what I’ve been up to for these past three years, since it all comes down to something I’m currently super excited about and hope to share with the world. I’ve always loved music, I have some music reviews on this blog, and I especially love creating music, since I was about 10 or 11. I started with rapping because I liked the flow and the beats and everything about it, and also because I felt really inspired by some of the lyrics, mainly 2Pac lyrics. I started making beats on FL Studio early on as well, just to have my own beats to go along with my rhymes. I have a bunch of my music out everywhere, but to be honest, I never took it as seriously as I should. I mean, I thought I was taking it seriously, but recently I’ve realized that I wasn’t. I was always partying too much back in the day, and even when I completely stopped partying because I started getting into philosophy and spirituality, I was still not doing all that I could for my music. I’ve sure learned a lot throughout the years because I’ve kept making beats and rapping, but other than making a lot of music, I really should have promoted myself a lot more and got my music out there, plus I’m not making as many songs as I used to back then, at least on the rapping side. I’m still relatively young, but I know I definitely would have had an advantage if I went hard twelve years ago when I first started actually recording music at fifteen. Some of my favorite raps of mine are even from back in those days. Anyway, that’s just to provide some history, not to whine about the past. What I’m excited about now is that I finally decided to change that. Nothing is getting in my way this time, I’m no longer constantly immersed in a weed high, I’m setting goals not to get baked a couple days a week, and I’m not partying or drinking at all, or even hanging out with anyone at all, really, other than my amazing wife. I know it’s not necessarily the healthiest, not to hang out with any friends, but at this point I feel like I really just need to make this happen while I still have a bit of time. For a while I was actively avoiding even promoting myself, because I felt like, and I still feel like, fame is not necessarily the best thing that can happen to someone, especially if you have a lot of personal problems to solve or demons to face. My mind changed simply because I’d rather spend a lifetime doing what I love, which is creating music, writing, sharing ideas, than to be stuck at a 9-to-5 job forever, so I absolutely have to make it happen. On a deeper level though, I’ve been feeling like it’s important to put positive ideas out into the world, that if I have positive things to say I shouldn’t keep quite, I should say what’s on my mind, even if it might interfere with my peaceful happy life. So lately I’ve been writing rhymes, but not quickly like before, I’m trying to write inspirational rhymes, taking my time so that what I write and record is something memorable and motivational, not just another rap about all the trash most modern rappers are always yapping about. I’ve also learned the MPC workflow on my MPC One pretty well so far so now I’m creating my own beats in FL Studio and on the MPC. I put time into learning the basics of studio equipment to make sure I’ve got a clear sound, and I upgraded my gear and I’m finally recording on and audio interface with studio monitors and everything, rather than a laptop and USB mic like back in the day. If you believe in yourself you have to invest in yourself. The main thing I’m excited about though, is that with all this learning I’ve been doing, I’ve come up with the idea of making tutorials to show others how to set their equipment up and even how to make beats also, so I’ve got this whole idea for a YouTube channel unfolding. So yeah, big things are on the way! I’ve also recently started making music with my bro Kalvonix again, now that I’m back in Canada, and we recently released a mixtape together on all streaming platforms, The Come Up 10! It’s a continuation of our old mixtape series The Come Up, which we started about 11 years ago when we first met in high school. I’ll be going into everything in more detail as I keep on writing, and I appreciate anyone reading, I hope you’re as excited as I am! Much love fam.

~ rebel eye