"Resolutions, Revolutions and Evolutions" (Jan. 2008)

So arrives a New Year, a Leap Year, merrily bounding across the calendar. Since a leap year also means a national election, it also condemns us to endless parades of candidates leaping across our TV screens and roadsides. To you in Iowa and New Hampshire, I am sorry for all you have endured, and thank you for recycling all of those signs.

For most of the rest of us, there is some attempt to put our karmic house in order in some way. Everything from shedding a few pounds or a few no longer needed items, to resolutions to be a better something - spouse, parent, employee, ESPN junkie. I guess it's part of our cycle to look to a New Year as a fresh start, an opportunity to erase the less pleasant memories and events from the previous year, and to move boldly forward as something we wish to be instead of what we've been.

And usually by February, much of that is in shambles. Like a dog chasing its tail, we quickly get caught up in the spin cycle that is daily life in these busy days. All those good intentions (often accompanied by strong libations in the throes of a ball-dropping ceremony) come to rest amongst the clutter and chaos that is our normal state.

Scientists call it Entropy - the many states of disorderedness, tending towards a ground state, an equilibrium if you will, of disorder. Gravity is entropy's biggest helper. It is the way of the universe, the way of all large rotating and revolving heavenly bodies pulled by forces so great that we can't even feel them unless we conduct experiments.

So against that backdrop of inevitable disorder, my resolutions for this 2008 year? I want to evolve, to the point where I no longer care so much about clutter, or perhaps more importantly, what important thing might be lost in its midst that I need to find. I want to simply pick up the foot-high pile of assorted papers and file it in the recycle bin with no worry or trepidation. If the cat happens to be in the pile when I am moving it, so be it. The less clutter I trip over in my office or in the tour van, the less I will notice my return to that ground state of Entropy. And the easier it will be to see the vacuum tracks, to help with my state of well-being.

With the hopes of losing a few pounds, having less stuff, owing less money, and just a general thinning of the underbrush in the karmic forest I live in, I wish you and yours a most Happy 2008, and a most successful cycle of Resolutions and Revolutions.

And for those of you who are wondering, this doesn't apply to you buying more CDs. For that fact I will always be grateful, and I'd be happy to come over and carry away some recycling for you so that you can have space for them. I sincerely hope you enjoy the new CD - we've worked very hard on it, I'm grateful for how well it's turned out, and am honored for the opportunity to share it with you.