This weekend I’m delighted and surprised by this album I’m finishing, called This Worldly World. It occurred to me a few months ago that the title and artwork for my single of the same name, would work well for a title track and album name. After finishing my most recent outings, Delete And Report Junk, and The Wrong Future, I thought, OK, time to compile and start putting together a running order. This is where the surprise comes in – it flows together beautifully, to my ears, and feels like an intended album. A “concept album,” even, to use a rather “prog rock” term! Why not? It’s a concept album, sure. Didn’t plan it that way, but it happened!
All of the songs, even the instrumentals, came out of me like journal entries over the last year or so, with one exception – a remaster of a track I first released in 2020. It fits the concept perfectly so I added it in.
We all cope in various ways, or try to, and for me, creating music and songs which take a satirical or humorous look at the horrors our society is living through, actually really helps me. It is a kind of therapy, and it costs less than a psychoanalyst! I had one, for a month, a year ago or so, expensive yet worthwhile. At our second session I asked him, “Do you offer advice?” His answer was no, that he hopes to help his clients become their own best advisors. I thought that was a first class answer. Honest, and immediately helpful. I then told him about my dear departed friend Luke, who was, in the last years of his life, my career counselor. Luke, I went to for advice, and as a career counselor, he offered it. To my great fortune, Luke’s advice was golden. Actionable, wise, self- and life-affirming in ways I can never adequately express my gratitude for. His advice changed the course of my life, infinitely for the better.
After Luke died, I felt so much grief that I decided professional help was needed, hence my seeking out a psychotherapist, specifically for grief counseling. And it helped, it did, yet the question I asked above was key to the whole experience. I wanted some more good advice, and there was none to be had, outside of myself.
The third verse of the title track on this album, is to Luke:
“(You said bring)
My whole self into the building
(So I did)
Not holding back, no I am building
I am so grateful for your memory
Your wisdom give me strength to shine
And I know
This worldly world will carry on, even if we don’t,
This worldly world, all along, forever more”
He was here, he lived, and he made a huge and positive impact on mine and really many others’ lives. At his memorials I met some of his other clients and was struck by how they all expressed similar gratitude, for how he guided and advised them. That’s quite a career, isn’t it? I’ll say plainly: Luke changed the way I look at myself. Made me like myself more, honestly. What price, self-esteem? I got so much more than I bargained for when I asked for career advice. I got that, but I also got ME advice.
My dad died in 2015, so he didn’t get to see all this, my last ten years being among the best I’ve had in my life. I’m sad I didn’t get to share this time with him, but I have a certain faith that spiritually we carry on, and that he’s with me. I’m also glad, in the same breath, that my dad never saw these chapters of dystopia that started, really right after he died.
Paradoxes pile upon paradoxes, and here I’m in a place of happiness in my life and career, a blissfully single crazy cat man making my own records on my own dime and time, while this dystopian hot mess plays out. I enjoy any day that the hills around me aren’t bursting into flames, literally or figuratively. I’m grateful for each day that my friends and family members live, as we all get older, and start to lose our peers.
And I’m here, and my records are here, and these are records, I’m glad to leave here when I am eventually gone. A little recorded legacy. That feels good to me. And while I’m here, I get a thrill out of sharing them, and I think for some folks, the “therapy” is there, in the tracks. A little remedy from the astonishing unspeakable stupidity and madness that plays out. That, I hope.
14 tracks. Loading ’em up into Bandcamp today. When I share the album, I hope you’ll give it a blast on your stereo appliances, and share with your peeps all around this worldly world.
Love and gratitude,
Eric
UPDATE 8-25-2025: Aaaaand, here is the album!
