Eric Keyes

What Drives Us

May 14th, 2013 Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

My good friend Eric Delegard told me one time “Eric, you like a challenge.” He is a great friend I have known for over 20 years and he is right I do like a challenge. An easy life teaches nothing. I am not scared of anyone, anything or any place in life. I don’t even fear death. We are defined by our opponents and let me present this question to you:

Is the purpose of life, to win?

Many people would tell you that it is. Vince Lombardi, the famous football coach said “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.” I have a problem with that. If winning is everything wouldn’t it make sense to choose an easy opponent?

Yehuda Savin, who teaches a Kabbalah class I enjoy attending, brought this up in a great way. Let’s use the game of tennis as an example. If winning is everything why wouldn’t you choose a 5 year old novice as your tennis partner and annihilate him every time?

You see, this is a profound and valid point. What made Larry Bird great is having Magic Johnson to deal with. They came in the league at the same time and kept each other on their toes. When I was growing up I did not know I was Italian yet. I had a playful rivalry with my best friend Chris Sacco as to who was a better guitar player. Brent Ralston used to call me and Chris up and fuel the fires of this playful competition by asking us who was better. Chris and I were both better off because of it, and both became great guitarists.

Michael Jordan is the most overrated basketball player of all time. It took him 6 years and the guidance of the brilliant coach Phil Jackson to finally not be a ball hog and win a championship. Like my friend Clint Strong says, you should always try to be the worst guy in your band. Bird and Magic’s impact was immediate, as was Kobe Bryant’s. Magic won the championship his first year in the league. Larry Bird won it the following year. Instant impact from players with a complete, all around game that was not selfish. Michael Jordan was basically a good athlete with marginal shooting skills as long as he was close to the basket. Proof of this can be easily viewed by watching the bitter nature of Michael Jordan’s NBA Hall of Fame speech.

This is why I was so proud when I wrote “Keep Denton Beard?” We have to have something that drives us. I personally disdain pretentious know it all musicians who use the “indie label” as some kind of cloak for slacking and making themselves feel important. We settle for less in life when we don’t have an opponent that drives us. Desire rises to the level of desire. That opponent can be your own little nay-Sayer inside of you. It does not always have to be someone outside of you. The resistance is what makes us great. The effort that we do in this world is the effort of transforming our mind and going against our nature. It is easy to be lazy. I do not want to be a passive player in the game of life, I want to create my own destiny and I encourage you to do the same.

Do you not like yourself?

Do you not want to be the cause of your own fulfillment? Any time you go against your own nature it creates tension and a fire inside your soul to move in the direction of your life’s bliss. If you want lasting fulfillment you have to earn it. As I said before, an easy life teaches nothing. Fulfillment that you have earned, no one can take that away from you.

That is why you must be careful who you hang around. Hang around enlightened individuals who encourage you. In the word enlightened we find the word “Light” encapsulated. Nay-Sayers and Yeah-but people come from the dark side. Negativity. Darkness and light cannot exist in the same room. Wherever there is darkness there is just not enough light. Here is a great tale Yehuda shared with us that comes from the wisdom inherent in Native American tribal lore.

When a young man is ready to make the transition to warrior the elders take him into the woods. There are two wolves there, a white wolf and a black wolf. The white wolf represents the light and doing well and the black wolf represents darkness and not believing in yourself. The warrior is then informed by the elders that the two wolves will fight and he is asked which one will win. Perplexed he asked the elders “How will I know?” The answer is profound.

Which ever wolf you feed is going to win the war.

Which wolf will you feed?

Much love,

Eric

Peace of Mind

May 2nd, 2013 Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

I was watching a brilliant tirade by the late great comedian George Carlin recently. It got me thinking about how much our country is built on war and the military industrial complex. I am also not against the military in any fashion. My Dad was in the Navy and he still gets up early in the morning and does his exercises just like he did when he was in the Navy. He is 85 now and a great hero to me.

I favor a policy that is Laissez Faire or what some people may call detente. There is a quote that resonates very deeply with me that was the philosophy of the great pacifist Mahatma Gandhi- “I cannot teach you violence as I do not believe in it, however I can teach you not to bow your heads before anyone, even at the cost of your own life.”

What a powerful, profound vision this man had. He single handedly took down Great Britain with this philosophy and he went on to influence Martin Luther King who adopted Gandhi’s philosophy of non violence.

Jiu-Jitsu and especially Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu also has at its core a philosophy deeply rooted in non violence. The monks in India were men of peace and they did not want to kill the robbers and tribes that attacked them. So they came up with Jiu-Jitsu as a way of neutralizing aggression and causing the opponent to submit via arm bars, leg locks and/or chokes. The opponent, once neutralized then was offered the option to tap out.

I agree with the statesman Ron Paul that one of the factors that is causing so much hatred of our country from terrorists is our foreign policy. Half of these wars that we start are over oil and you would have to be blind to deny that. All of our interest in the Middle East has its roots in oil. We cannot afford any longer to police the world. It is time to focus on ourselves like Denmark and Sweden and Switzerland.

Wasn’t it interesting how many years we had a cold war with Russia? I grew up in the 80′s when Reagan was president and I remember living in fear of a nuclear bomb attack from Russia. The Patrick Swayze movie “Red Dawn” came out when I was in High School. Russia went broke trying to keep up with us on military spending. Look what happened when Russia adopted Perestroika and put down their arms and gave up on the cold war. The whole world went to help them.

This brings me back to the futility and the infantile nature of the U.S. being the last big super power. We are about to go broke and we need to quit with these stupid wars on everything. You ever notice how care free we throw around that word war? The writing is on the wall folks. It is always a war on something. Currently we have our “War on Terror” when just a few years ago we had our “War on Drugs.” What a joke that is. Anybody who understands basic human nature can easily see drugs are an escape for people who are hurting. What does it say about the leadership of a country that declares war on its own people who are hurting? If you don’t remember anything, remember this:

A society is only as healthy as it treats its citizens who are at their lowest.

I was in jail on a traffic related charge for one day. I met a homeless man in the holding cell I was in. He confided in me that he purposely slept on the street where he knew he would get arrested so he could spend the night in jail and have something to eat. We can do better than that as a society and I know it.

Here are some of the other foolish wars I have seen waged:

War on Poverty
War on Drugs
War on Terrorism
War on Obesity
War on Taxes
War on Immigration

And the list goes on and on. Why don’t we have a war on war?

I think all of this is stupid and a waste of our time. What you do to another human being, you do to yourself. When we declare war on our fellow man we are declaring war on ourselves. I understand protecting ourselves when attacked. However this is never as it seems. Pearl Harbor is a prime example. Anyone who has a basic understanding of world history knows that Japan had no choice but to attack us. We were already bombing their bases in China. It was inevitable that we would get involved in that world war. The powers that be just come up with excuses to sell it to the masses.

Watch the movie “Wag The Dog.” It’s great and has Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, Joe Montegna and a score of other fine actors. It is a thought provoking movie that illuminates everything I talked about in this blog better than I ever could.

Peace,

Eric

King Fly

May 2nd, 2013 Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

This was recorded at Reeltime Audio with drummer Matt Thompson and bassist Eric Delegard. I love working with both of these guys. When it comes to drums Matt is one of the best and currently tours with King Diamond and Shaolin Death Squad. This is a tour de force for guitar and so many of my friends and students were on me to record this, it felt great to finally get it done. It was a trip to listen back to this and hear all my early influences on guitar come through.