…so this is my only venue. You have mine, and I’d be tickled, just tickled, if you used it. Would love to hear from you.
If you were going to name your band FUNK SHUI you would have to be making a pun on the ancient art of FENG SHUI. Feng Shui literally means, “wind water” and refers to the method of landscaping one’s estate to allow the proper flow of wind and water through it. Controlling the floodwaters is the first duty of the Emperor and controlling the waters on one’s own empire is the first duty of the lord of the manor. The proper placement of trees and the buildings in relation to trees and earth to control the wind is supposed to bring fortune and health to the family that dwells upon it.
The Chinese language is tonal. Tone makes a meaning difference in a word. In English tone only affects the meaning of a sentence. Example: “You have the cat” vs. “You have the cat?!?!?!” Read them aloud. One is a statement one is a question, in the written form delineated by punctuation, in the spoken by tone. Say the word “cat” in any register and it means “cat”. Not so in Chinese. Saying “feng” in a level tone in Chinese and it can mean, “wind”. Say it sharply with a falling tone and it can mean “phoenix”. There is meaning change.
Homophony is rampant in Chinese. In English we spell “led” and the metal “lead” differently but they are pronounced the same. I am counting some 10 “feng” in the first tone each with a different “spelling” (character) and a completely different meaning. That is not counting “feng” in the other 3 tones.
I asked Dr. Jonathan Pease, head of the Chinese Department at Portland State University in Portland Oregon how one would say “funk” in Chinese. First he informed me that his slang was not current, and that it is probable that there is a word for the American music known as “funk” but that he did not know it. Dr. Pease’s specialty is literature and poetry, and suggested a way to construct what he called a “perfect pun”. He took the word “feng” in the first tone, meaning wind, and drew the “sickness radical” around the character for “wind”. The pronunciation remained the same, but now it means “crazy”. He was visibly pleased with himself for the humble man I knew him to be. Our “feng shui” means “crazy water”, which is descriptive of our sick rockin’ funk.
“But Shag, what about the ‘k’?”
Modern Standard Chinese, widely described as “Mandarin” has no syllable finals p, t, or k. Whenever you see a syllable final p, t or k, you are seeing Cantonese or one of several regional dialects. The standard dialect of the humungous China has undergone radical pronunciation changes over the centuries. Although there are no recordings, and the phonetic elements of Chinese are vague, there are ancient surviving rhyming dictionaries and similar reference materials. The rhyming dictionaries are arranged such that one can track ancient pronunciations by noting what words are grouped together that today have no rhyme. Once upon a time the p, t and k was a standard final in the “ru sheng” category. Those finals disappeared and became absorbed by the other tone categories. Short story long, it is POSSIBLE that “feng” was once pronounced, “funk”.
The name of my band is FUNK SHUI. It is based on a Chinese language pun, and has specific characters with a specific comedic meaning. It also has a possible ancient pronunciation connection to the English language pun. If you know of another band named Funk Shui and they are still together by this time next year, please to ask them what characters they have transliterated to arrive at their name and what meaning it translates to.
Here are some preliminary results from a recent photoshoot at the studio of Jared Seger.
The man knows his trade.
What a difference a year makes. Round the sun again y’all!
This Black Friday is last Friday, so Funk Shui is at Biddy’s.
We got Chelsea Luker on sax, Whityn Owen on drums, and Fred Stevenson back on lead guitar.
Pilar French is a local rocker who conscripted me to play on her awesome new record called Deliver. It is one of my very favorite recordings in general and of myself, if I may.
I was also honored to play numerous shows over the last year in cool places like on a boat and down town in Pioneer Courthouse Square at LUNCHTIME!!
So apparently 70% of the internet is Facebook. I’m the last holdout. I had one back in the day, and I recently started a Treefrogs Facebook page that Tracy admins (that’s a verb? Why not?).
Since I’m not on Facebook, I don’t exist. But in typical Sean fashion, i’ll choose obscurity on principle, and make this place my daily feed.
I think I have not posted a blog in long enough that anyone still visiting has probably given up. I guess we’ll see.
I have just noticed that the more connectivity there is the less actual communication there seems to be. People with Facebook pages send messages to me through other people with Facebook pages, even though they have my email, phone number, website etc. Folk with smart phones, the majority I’m sure at this point, seem to be the least likely to return a call, email, or text. It’s a gut feeling. I haven’t collected the data. Could be confirmation bias.
Maybe it’s because of the overwhelming volume of communication they now receive.
So seannowland.com/blog is the new Facebook…for me anyway.
And now…I’m having a nice cup of coffee with breakfast….
Oh Cooper! Irreplaceable.
She’s mine! I found her!
No, she’s her own, and though I miss her I am proud of her for following her lifelong dream. If anyone can make it in Nashville she can. Hopefully I’ll catch some overspray!
Here is a video of our li’l reunion show with Fractal at the Laurelthirst Public House.
Thanks to Fractal and Billy for letting me have that time. It’s most precious to me.
“Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.”
— Louise Erdrich (The Painted Drum)
In July of 2010 I turned 40 years old and ate a whole cake and 2 pints of ice cream by myself. 3 days later I played a 35th wedding anniversary for a friend’s parents who are beef ranchers. After that gig, stocked heavily with barbeque beef, I started my new lifestyle.
When I started, on Monday July 25th I weighed in at 225 lbs, down from 245 at the height of my drunkenness circa 2003 and up from a brief period at 205 in 2006. I had been holding 225 for close to 5 years. During the entire time I was an exercise junky, teaching 3 burly / sweaty kungfu classes per week, commuting by bike every day, and working physical job. More on that later.
In my 20’s I was a vegan for a couple three years. In that time I lost weight, partially because I didn’t know what to eat at first, and I was just starting my martial arts career. I was quite slender.
I decided I wanted to lose 26lbs and weigh 199lbs by the end of 2010. I achieved my goal in less than one month, and in less than 2 months I had coined the phrase “187 bitchess!!” in my doctor’s office.
I have now leveled out at 170 lbs plus or minus 3 to 4 lbs on any given day.
HOW DID I DO IT?
I was an obese child in an obese family. Everyone in my family is massively obese and I was too. My father, and therefore I, tried EVERY SINGLE fad diet this, Atkins that, low carb whatever. In order to lose weight you simply MUST disabuse yourself of this notion.
There is only one way and it is portion control. Sorry… But wait, it’s not that bad and it’s quite simple. Stick with me.
I noticed that when I cooked, I ate while I cooked and I was rarely hungry when I served a meal. Keep in mind that I rarely was ever “full” in my life. I could ALWAYS eat another slice, helping, etc.
So I decided to see JUST HOW LITTLE I COULD EAT WITHOUT BEING MISERABLE OR PATHOLOGICAL. You don’t need that much, and being a LITTLE hungry is not that bad.
I work a physically demanding job. I cannot afford to be low blood sugar dragging ass. That said, a LITTLE bit hungry between breakfast and lunch is not the end of the world.
So see how little you can eat and not be miserable. If you get too hungry EAT JUST A LITTLE. Eat just enough to not be hungry anymore. I suggest having an apple, and or a small bag of raisins and nuts about.
Feeling a little hungry is feeling alive. Most of the time you’ll forget about it in a few minutes and the next time you think of it, it will be lunch time, and time to eat. You should be hungry at lunchtime.
And let’s be honest about being hungry. There are times when we all eat and it’s clearly boredom or other emotional eating. But true hunger is hard to achieve. In fact, when you start losing weight, you’ll start to feel hunger as “the medicine working”. You will start to have positive associations with mild hunger.
Here is some unpleasant science. Calories in calories out…PERIOD. As far as weight gain and loss is concerned nothing else matters. The kinds of calories you eat (Twinkies vs. spinach salad) have other nutritional implications, but are only mildly related to weight loss. Eating 5 servings of fruits and vegetables is second only to being a non-smoker when it comes to reducing your risk of most cancers. If you drink a 2000-calorie soda diet, you’ll get your calories, even potentially gain weight but be hungry, and need to eat more calories resulting in weight gain. These are both examples of the kinds of calories having a health effect, but not for weight loss.
Here is an unpleasant assertion. Exercise plays a very small role in weight loss. There is epidemiological research that supports this assertion and my own experience in which I was massively overweight while being a super active exercise junky.
When I quit drinking in 2003 I was 245 lbs. During that time I was “methadoning” with 2 liter bottles of sugared soda and giant chocolate bars, 2 per day at least on top of my normal eating. With no change in exercise 25lbs FELL OFF my body and I didn’t even know it until I weighed in at the doctor’s office. Restricting the thousands of beer calories I was consuming resulted in the weight loss. Even the soda and candy was not enough to “sustain” my obesity.
Restricting calories makes the biggest and I would say only difference.
If you take in 2000 calories and expend 2000 calories your weight will stabilize.
If you take in 2500 calories and expend 2000 you will gain weight quickly.
If you take in 1800 and expend 2000 you will lose weight.
If you eat one piece of cake over your balanced calorie in calorie out situation, you will have to exercise your ASS OFF above and beyond your normal exercise output just to equal the cake, never mind lose weight beyond it.
We all should have the luxury of being able to work out MANY HOURS a day so that we can overeat but it’s neither realistic nor sustainable for most people.
What I am saying is that exercise has many scientific medical benefits, and it’s a great thing to do to take your mind off of eating, and it will burn some calories.
But exercise must NOT BE YOUR WEIGHT LOSS PLAN. YOU WILL NOT LOSE WEIGHT BY SIMPLY ADDING EXERCISE. YOU MUST RESTRICT CALORIES.
Try it for one month. You are not banishing large portions of fun fatty foods from the planet. You can always go back. But, if you simply eat only when you are hungry, you can still eat anything you want just small amounts. Not only will you lose weight but your need for more food will diminish, and you will start to get much fuller much faster.
The important thing is to be honest about your hunger.
Are you really hungry?
Thanks to everyone who supported me in this endeavor.
Oh the comfort of feeling safe
with a person;
having neither to weigh thoughts,
nor measure words,
but to pour them all out
just as chaff and grain together,
knowing that a faithful hand
will take and sift them,
keeping what is worth keeping
and with a breath of kindness,
blow the rest away.