“Ari, you need to make loneliness your friend.” My mentor, Pastor Bruce Benson, told me my senior year of college. I was born in Tokyo to Christian parents. Then I lived in São Paulo from age 12 to 18. Came to US for college and have been here ever since. …
What you see in the picture are a few of my favorite things. My acoustic guitars on which I write songs. My bed. And the western sun shining on them. Minnesota is a cold place, so sunshine is precious. And I like it that way. The smaller guitar is my …
Music doesn’t need words to be powerful. It doesn’t need meaning to be emotional. That means if we are bothering to put words to music, we better make them count. You may be surprised but this doesn’t always happen. Certain genres and traditions use words simply as something to “mouth” …
It’s better to make it easy to win. I like to dream big and be ambitious. I want to achieve things fast. But it is so easy to set lofty goals and then fall short. Sure, shoot for the moon and landing on a star work for some people, and …
So far in our history, we were primarily concerned with our physical survival. We built cultures, customs, and systems to maximize the chances of our collective survival. And in the last few decades, some developed countries started achieving that. Our physical survival are not our primary concern for the vast …