Premier 100 Guitar Amplifier   Volume gets everyone's attention. It's powerful, and all too often, can't be ignored....

I saw a raven sitting on a garden gnome. I’m not the kind of person to put a gnome in my yard, but they’re fun to look at,...

Levitated Mass,” by Michael Heizer, LACMA I think what the world needs now is a store called, Et Cetera & So Forth. It...

Pacific Grove, California I just found out that our favorite breakfast and lunch place, Holly's Lighthouse Cafe in Pacific...

Donna's eyes through a kaleidoscope, The Hamburger Bahnhof Museum, Berlin, Germany  We ventured out to one of our favorite...

Highway 1, Central California Coast All-day long, I pulled hot plastic parts out of a plastic injection molder. It was a...

Asilomar State Beach, California There's a famous story of Christopher Columbus landing in the new world. Even though he...

Monterey Bay, Monterey, California I went out for my Sunday morning romp. It was chilly, the good kind that wakes you up...

Via Paraiso Park, Monterey, California  There's a piece of audio equipment called a compressor, a powerful tool with...

Avila Beach, California This morning I peered out our bedroom window. The sun was angling across the yard, lighting up the...

Monterey, California Ara lived down the street in one of those houses that sits way back from the road with a big front...

Joshua Tree National Park, California I was walking next to a park several blocks from our house when I saw a dead crow in...

Berlin, Germany This morning, I walked through the yard of the Monterey Museum of Art and came across a pair of sculptures...

Venice Beach, California I’m walking through the Park. Spring’s starting to look like summer with leaved trees, a warm sun,...

Clearing Storm, Monterey, California So what do I do now? I remember the SAG AFTRA strike of 2000. The strike prevented...

Pacific Grove, California I love spring. Everything's coming alive, waking from a long sleep, welcomed by the warm sun,...

Tuolumne, California I have my version of this, a way of carrying myself that helps me fit into the world. It fascinates...

Desert Hot Springs, California Last week we drove out to the Mojave Desert to a 1940s motel with a natural hot spring. I've...

Mission Bell, Monterey, California I had a girlfriend, Ann, who owned a horse sixteen hands tall. She named it, Freedom,...

The Fourth Floor, Monterey, California They've been painting the trim on our office building. What does it feel like to be...

Window Shopping, Monterey, California I had an attorney named Allan Stamm. He was over 70 years old when I hired him to put...

Somewhere, California I’ve been thinking about the word integrity. Merriam-Webster defines it as: firm adherence to a code...

Anywhere, California I walked into a public restroom and found beautiful white and violet flowers sitting next to the sink...

Monterey Vista, Monterey, California With a cold winter chill in the air, I walked up a hill towards our house; my coat...

El Carmelo Cemetery, Pacific Grove, California Early one morning, I was out for my Sunday morning romp on my bike. On the...

Asilomar State Beach, Monterey, California Early last Sunday morning down at the wharf, we saw an older woman with a bag...

In-flight, Monterey, California The twinkling lights are coming down, and the eggnog is going sour. Everything seems the...

Highway I-25 north of Chugwater, Wyoming The week between the holidays has a feel. No other week feels quite like it. For...

Berlin, Germany The sun felt warm, friendly, and inviting on my face; I just leaned up against the concrete wall and let it...

Multivox Premier 100R Guitar Amplifier The Japanese have a word, wabi-sabi, which means finding beauty in the imperfection...

Black Sand Beach, Sayulita, Mexico What should we do with the blank wall in our living room? Yes, we could put a piece of...

First Rain, Monterey, California Thanksgiving evening after dessert, our host passed around paper and pens and asked us to...

Berlin, Germany When I think of surface tension, I'm usually thinking of bugs skipping across water. It's the attraction...

Somewherezig, Germany I saw a cigarette butt on the sidewalk. A long butt more than half a cigarette, and I felt a pang, an...

Tiergarten, Biergarten, Berlin, Germany It’s a Sunday afternoon in the beer garden with people laughing and munching wurst,...

Zumevhere, Germany I sat in the Paris Bakery, sipping an Americano, eating spinach quiche, and trying to read. Two older...

Big Sur, California I’m fascinated by the creative process. There’s nothing, and then there’s something; ideas and feelings...

Kindergarden, Berlin, Germany When I was five years old, one of my older brothers taught me how to ride a bike on a beat-up...

König Galerie, Berlin, Germany I never know how I’m going to feel. I go to the river expecting a good time, smell fresh...

Jettenbach, Germany A woman down the street had an estate sale. I met Sandra as soon as I walked in the gate, cheerful and...

Fiscalini Preserve, Cambria, California I stepped out of the house in the middle of the day, and it was unusually quiet....

Desert Hot Springs, California I drove down the road with both hands on top the wheel, thumbs touching one another, gliding...

Fiscalini Preserve, Cambria, California I went for a walk in the forest. As I left the house, I heard a chainsaw, not...

John Dotto Fish Sculpture, Monterey Conference Center  I had a close friend, Ron Harmon, who played sax, tenor mostly...

Asilomar State Beach, Monterey, California I stood and watched the beach, the sun reflected off the rough surface of the...

Municipal Pier, Monterey, California I was out walking in our old Venice neighborhood one afternoon. I turned the corner to...

Fishermans Wharf, Monterey, California A few years ago, I started experimenting with different ways to set the table....

Nepenthe, Big Sur, California We employed a woman named Maria Martinez. She came by once a week to clean and moved through...

Millennium Bridge Sculpture, Commons Park, Denver, Colorado There are many different types of meditation: mindfulness,...

Azi Feduoi, Fishermans Wharf, Monterey, California At the entrance to Fishermans Wharf, which is mostly a tourist...

The Peace Fence, Monterey, California It was hard to get. You had to have connections. If you looked right, long hair, bell...

Fisherman's Wharf, Monterey, California Late one afternoon, it started to rain, a soft, cold mountain rain, and my dad went...

San Carlos Cathedral, Monterey, CA An Altar of Nothing I was in a meditation group for over a decade. The meetings were...

Neve 1066 I still have a bunch of old analog audio gear. Some of it keeps going up in value, and people still use this...

San Jacinto Wilderness, California I’ve been writing my weekly missive for a year. I named them missives because I didn’t...

Del Monte Forest, Monterey, California I was walking on a path through the Del Monte forest when a crow flew over and...

Municipal Pier Monterey, California It was a bright mid-tempo rock song, and everyone wanted to get it right. We were...

Banyan tree, Lahaina, Maui, Hawaii They look like tattoos. The tree’s over a hundred years old, and the writing is in many...

Scully 280B 8-Track Tape Machine Early in my career, I worked with a Scully 280B 8 track tape machine. It was a workhorse...

I recently spent some time in Mexico with an old friend, Galen Wathen, a chiropractor turned bodyworker. During our...

In a recent study, a number of radiologists looked at a series of X-rays as if they were looking for lung cancer. On one of...

Shure PE50SP Vocal Microphone This Shure PE50 pictured in the photo belongs to Donna Rawlins (my wife). She used it, on and...

Photo of original wall, San Carlos Cathedral One of the fascinating things about seeing paintings by the old masters is...

Haleakala Sunset, Maui, Hawaii I remember the first Earth Day in 1970. We used different words back then: water pollution,...

When walking through a forest, I’ve noticed certain unique trees, usually located some distance from each other: they are...

The summer I was sixteen, I thought, this may be my last summer to goof off because I’ll probably have to work every summer...

On a recent trip to Mexico, we met a woman who worked on a foot-pump Singer sewing machine with hand-tooled silver inlays....

Years ago, I was walking through the halls of a small record company in Hollywood and bumped into the CEO. An artist friend...

My dad hated rock music. He tolerated it, but mostly he scoffed at it, even the Beatles. We were watching the Lawrence Welk...

Sonic expressions have been tumbling out of humanity for a long time. We have archeological evidence that humans have been...

Staring at an empty garden space in a yard, at the blinking cursor on a computer screen, or a musical instrument with a...

At my first real job in a recording studio, sitting in sessions and watching the producers, engineers, musicians, and...

One of the things I’ve always loved about working in the studio is walking in, flipping on the equipment, opening the...

Volume gets everyone's attention. It’s powerful, and all too often, it can’t be ignored. But it’s also a cheap trick. You...

I read an article the other day that stated, “In the digital era, guitars no longer rule popular music.” Yeah, well, that’s...

The minds propensity to construct order out of chaos is unavoidable. It’s an undefinable idea and extremely difficult for...

Donna and I went into a popular restaurant in Palm Springs, and because it was crowded, we thought, “it must be good.” But...

The ability to find beauty is an exciting, desirable skill. The first thing pressing on my mind is: what is beauty? Miriam...

I’ve always been fascinated by the creative process. There’s nothing, and then, there’s something. Many books and courses...

When I recorded guitars for rock bands, I hated those little effects boxes guitar players love. I preferred instead to plug...

I love to photograph rain puddles, focusing deep into the water to reveal the trees, clouds, and sky from a new...

I ordered a sandwich the other day at a local shop; they make great sandwiches, but some of the workers make them better...

Instinct is defined as a natural propensity, an intuitive way, an innate behavior, from Latin: instinctus, which means...

Now There are only 26 letters and a handful of dots, lines, and squiggles, and with that, we can represent all the ideas of...

It happens before anyone is expecting anything good, so it’s free from the poison of self-consciousness. As a recording...

It seems like it’s always a little too cold, doesn’t it? Or it’s too hot, I’m too young, too old, or out of shape; I don’t...