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Hey Folks, As many of you will know through my performances and content, I absolutely love freestyling and improvising. Even in elementary school, long before I knew about hip-hop, I recall making up silly songs on the spot to make my friends laugh.  Fast forward 2 decades and I've been doing a weekly freestyle show "Spontaneous Sundays with AllOne" for nearly 2 years now and constantly improvising rap in my shows.  This blog was prompted when a fan named Ryan sent a very complimentary email asking simply "HOW DO YOU DO IT?" So I thought a lot about it and polled an audience of some of my favorite improvisers that I know personally for their thoughts and responded with a version of the writing below.  I think anyone can freestyle if they practice and still I think it is one of the most impressive and amazing performances to watch whether it is musical, rapping, poetry, dance, acting or comedy.  Here are some thoughts.  I have so many personal and distant ar...

Happy New Year and welcome to 2018 my fellow AllOnederers. As the symbolic significance of year's transitions entice us into hopeful changes of habit and pursuits of our ideals, this post I've been thinking about seems prime time to share. One of the things I value more than anything is my writing and musical creation craft.  However, our priorities are really expressed through how we spend our time.  As Kristoff Krane expresses with beautiful brevity on his new 2017 release, "Kairos part 1 ": "There's nothing more true than "You Are What You Do" " I often find myself having a difficulty carving out time to simply sit down and work on a recording project or a writing endeavor.  A mix of my own ADHD and codependency (Note: Self-observed and described) implores me to say "YES" to every plan and event offer or request that a friend or family member asks of me.  The trouble is, often I'm thinking in the back of my head ...

Hello Bookworms!     As we approach a new year, which comes with a cliche degree of incredulity, I figured I'd share the  list up of books I read in the past year (with as many links as I could muster to relevant things either purchase-links or information/website links.)   I don't think it affects you remotely, except perhaps to see where my head may have gone as far as motivation to read one title to another if there were any discernible through-lines, but this list is also in chronological order of reading them (save for random comic volumes) This year I actually obtained three new bookshelves, one of which I made from two old dresser drawers, so my crazy personal library is a little more tidy!   To my retrospective surprise, A great majority of these are both graphic novels AND specifically ones by Alan Moore .  I've really fallen in love with the graphic novel form. Also, in any endeavor he is tackling, he seems to be the greatest creator i...

"Confronting Confrontation" What a furious countenance!  Passion. Intensity. Still not angry! I don't think one can ever really successfully say "I'm a nice guy" .  It's suspicious in its self-aggrandizing presumptions.  I mean, that's up to everyone else isn't it?  At best you can endeavor to be an amicable, well- intended  person.  I'm reminded of a very funny and perceptive comedy routine by Louis CK when he ruminates on how you don't get to deny when someone else says "you're an asshole ", rather, that indicates that it's time to reflect how you got there. (Enjoy the routine by clicking here) . I am a naturally gregarious person. I love spending time with people, both old and new.  I am grateful to be in some beautiful, supportive and inspiring social circles.  I'm blessed to say that I'm on good terms with almost everyone I've met (I think so anyway. See what I'm saying?  How this can...

In June 2017 my writer and musician friend Phil Corso and I randomly chose a predetermined "task" or "challenge" to change our perspective or learn something new and experience something different from our typical life!  We decided to called this experiment "CHALLENGING DAYS"  and Phil created a website where at the end of every day we would post our reflections on the experience and invite people to participate alongside us and submit their thoughts as well.  I made this post to share the full month's worth of my 30 reflections and challenges, which are now also edited more carefully since I was often just doing a first draft voice-to-text update into a shared google document at the end of each day while we were doing it.  I really enjoyed this experience and had some epiphanic and profound moments throughout the month.  I look forward to potentially doing it again soon!  If you did any of these or you have personal experiences with this, please let ...