A little while ago, my friend @gretamorgan posited (in words better than I’ll distill here) that maybe what she & @justinbieber were suffering from wasn’t just an isolated personal physical paralysis, but a reflection of what the collective is suffering: exhaustion, burn-out, the body’s unwillingness to continue along as if nothing’s wrong, a total full stop need to lay low & really heal. People ask all the time if I’m working on songs. The truth is, I’m not, and I haven’t been for a long time. At first I worried it was writer’s block, but something in my center told me not to worry: ride it; be in it. It’ll come when it comes. What’s followed has been a lot of quiet. A lot of listening. And you know what? It’s loud out there! A din of everyone expressing how they feel through a million new broadcast channels, creating a million new newscasters and a million ADD storylines so that it’s impossible to find a melody, let alone focus on the Om of a single note. Instead of adding more to the choir, I’ve loved sneaking away to silence. In this weekend’s case it was the ski slopes — where no one is since it’s not ski season — witnessing the mountains, ablaze with wildflowers. That alone is a song. And if you listen closely, you can hear it, too.