'Howdy Holidays, my ear muff-wearin' friends,

I've waited late this year to put up holiday lights outside my house. I allowed the neighbors to finish prettying-up their own houses; digital lights zipping around the windows; Walmart Inflatable Snowmen in the front yard; Historically accurate plastic mangers-with-candy-canes on the rooftops. Then, just when they finished putting the final touches on their quaint creations, I snuck out in the middle of the night and built my masterpiece, my tour de force of holiday design. Which is where a truckload of fire-damaged plastic pink flamingos comes in so handy. I got two gross of 'em for eighty bucks. My front yard is now a landscape of migrating pink flamingos, all in a holly jolly mood and making the little kiddies' Christmas Season all merry and stuff. I've got tropical birds posed in all kinds of realistic Holiday situations; over by the gate there are three-dozen of 'em performing the Nutcracker. I must be the last person on earth who has not one clue what the story of the Nutcracker is, so I've just created a general hoe-down situation, complete with fiddles and jugs of white-lightnin'. Is that correct? There is clogg dancing in the Nutcracker, ain't there? Then just outside my front door I have another dozen of 'em with song books taped to their wings. And what a merry group of carolers they make with my guitar amp hidden in the bushes and Regis Philbin's 1972 Christmas recording of All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth repeating over and over all day and night. (I have a little basket of ibuprofin by the steps)

In my driveway I have created the grandaddy display; my most endearing scene of Christmas cheer. My convertible is backed into the garage with a huge bag o' goodies lashed in the back seat, the headlights on bright and a brick on the acellorator. (with the exhaust and all, you can't tell for sure who's behind the wheel, but he's singin' Yeller Winders and drinkin' toddies) My little dawg Bungee has her little butt super-glued to the hood; the most adorably fuzzy little hood ornament you've ever seen! And two dozen pink flamingos with little stick-antlers taped on their heads lie in a pile before the front bumpter, ready in an instant to pull Santa's gas guzzlin' 1964 Malibu up and away, over the neighborhood houses and down to the nearest gas station. Or maybe we'll save a little fuel this year and just sit here and gunn the engine for effect. Anyway, I really shouldn't be drinkin' and flyin', should I?

There's more, so very much more, but if I told you about it then you would have no reason to buy my Holiday recording when it comes out in 2012. (the same year as my book) So just smile and enjoy the pink scenery my friends - like my neighbors will be doing every single day until next July, when I traditionally take down my Christmas ornaments and begin painting my house, lawn and shrubbery red, white and blue.

Seriously, despite my being born and raised in Texas, I am actually a very tasteful person when it comes to holiday decorating. I assure you, my touch is light with everything but the mistletoe.

A few years back though, I took advantage of  the Christmas discount sales and bought miles of flashy garland; pink, red, purple, gold, silver, man, it was pretty. I secured a somewhat frightening Santa cut-out which was huge and missing one leg. I bought miles and miles of lights and lots of the trashy kind of holiday decorations you'd see in a drugstore dumpster the day after New Years. Fully equipped for holiday cheer, I called my friend Rick Grant and informed him of our mission. Rick was unquestioning, he heard the ernestness in my voice and came right over. We then rented a U-Haul with which to transport our gifts and snuck over to our buddy, Carson's, apartment late that icy December night and commenced to participating in the most gaudy, outlandishly-overdone Holiday decorating you've ever seen in your life. There was garland over garland, lights tangled up in more lights. Santa had so many icicles on him that you hardly noticed his missing leg, though he threated to crumple from the weight.

We topped this all off with a merry holiday symbol from the Midwest: a flying DeKalb Corn-on-the-Cob sign that my girlfriend of the time had brought with her from Illinois when she moved here. I never did think to ask her why. I think a cob of corn with wings is a symbol of virility in the Midwest and maybe she'd brought it to pressure me. Which is possibly related to the reason Carson climbed up on the cab of his truck and took that damn thing down the instant he saw it hanging there high above the busy street next to his apartment. He was a single man and didn't want to build up unreasonable expectations in a prospective fiance.  

Rick and I drove by the next morning to see our work in the light of day and found that we simply could not hold the wheel and look at that mess. We bumped up against the curb, the back end of my car angled out in moving traffic, and both slobbered our way into the floorboard, laughing at what a horribly trashy carport our friend Carson was stuck with. Still, it was festive. To our amazement, he'd left untouched every single strand of garland, all the flashing lights, the bloated Santa, even the Merry Christmas Shoppers, Half-Off! sign. Everything was intact but that danged flying ear of giant Dekalb Corn. It seemed lacking, so, as soon as we could stop wheezing and manage the safe operation of an automobile, we went out and stole a Hooters sign and put that up. That's the kind of good friends we are.

After a few years of this separation, I got in touch with my folks and we began a tender, gradual attempt at getting to know each other again. We'd never argued really, we just hadn't known how to be who we were and still be around each other in a way that honored us all. In the three years before my father passed I began to write and call him and mom often. To my relief, there was a real joy growing between us, great laughter and enjoyment every time I called. They'd both get on the phone with me and I could hear in their voices that they were so happy to have me in their lives again. Still, there was the memory of old pain for all of us, the fear of rejection and grief that had kept us physically apart. I'd frequently ask myself if I could possibly go and see them again and make it back home without being emotionally devastated. I never could find that "yes" in my mind when I'd ask the question. Perhaps I was wrong, but it was what I felt at the time.

Then, a little over three years ago my father fell ill and it looked like he might not make it. I was still afraid, but decided to fly down to Texas to be with him and mom. I worried that I'd be judged by them and their friends for my years of being away. That couldn't have been further from the truth. They were gracious and loving and kind. The experience of being with my parents, spending days with my father as he left this life, as painful as it was, was also incredibly healing. I experienced a profound revelation one day sitting at my father's bed, when I received the knowing that all conflict, all distance between us, had been nothing but errant thinking. The separation literally had never existed. In as real a way as if it had been written out on a page before me, I received the knowing that the only thing that had ever existed between me and my father was the bond of loving light between our hearts. It is still there now.

As most of us do when we lose a parent, I felt crushed by my sudden vulnerability as a mortal human. My father is gone, I thought, I am next in line. It was a painfully heavy realization that I'd not had to seriously consider before that time. But my greatest fear concerned what I was going to do about my mom, with whom I did not believe it was possible for me to get along. I'm not saying this was based in anything real either, but it was my deep belief and I thought it was irreversable. To my great, overwhelming astonishment, I found that my mother and I could respect each other and relate as human beings! Do you realise what a statement that is? I think you probably do. I imagine that you know someone you love that you feel a painful separation from as well.

Feeling encouraged by this acceptance of each other, I began to spend time with my mother, to go and see her a couple of times a year. I began to call her every few days and we laugh and talk about our lives. I can tell you now that it's one of the greatest miracles of my life is that my mother and I have become friends. It is a beautiful blessing and one I wish for everyone; to have a healing reconciliation with someone you have been wounded with.

As always, with my website ramblings, I go places I did not plan to go. I never thought I'd write about this. I started out silly - as always - had some fun remembering stuff and making shit up, and then, like always, I find myself going a little deeper to share something from my own life that is healing or hopeful or inspiring. What I most desire to share with you this Christmas Season is that it is entirely, wonderfully possible for you to heal a relationship with someone in your family with whom you've grown distant or alienated. Do you have any idea how much healing can happen if you take a deep breath, ask God or Life or Nature or Whatever you feel to be your Source of Life for forgiveness?

In my own life, nothing has been more healing than the simple gesture of being gentle with myself, thinking kindly of myself, and simply patiently forgiving myself for whatever I have done that I would do differently today. You can do this so much easier than you might imagine. It really is nothing but a decision. We can stay in pain or we can decide we are through with it. I'm not trying to be simplistic and I'm not speaking in theory. I'm telling you what I have discovered in my life and what I am sometimes able to accomplish.

What do you have to lose? Decide to forgive yourself for something you have held in guilt or shame and I promise you you will automatically be moved to forgive someone else; your mother; your father; your brother; your sis; your former spouse; even that danged milkman who promised you the moon and then changed routes just as you got your mascara on.

My father's passing was his great benevolent last Earthly act - which caused my mother and I to begin to heal. I have gotten to see the bravery and tremendous faith she lives with. I see the pioneer spirit in a woman who has lost her soul mate of fifty years and, despite great illness and little money, finds ways to express her creative, loving spirit in beautiful, caring ways for my brother and myself and for the people around her.

In this time that we term the Season of Peace and Joy and Goodwill to Man, how about making it so - even if only in some small way? None of us knows how to stop the war in our world. But every one of us can heal some small wound in ourselves or in our relationships. Be humble. It doesn't hurt at all. Do not fear saying you are sorry. Even if you're not sure you're the one who should say so, say it anyway. Say you're sorry and mean it just because you wish there to be a healing release of old tensions. Be the brave one and do not wait for the person you think really should be saying it.

If you can think of one human being in your life who would be deeply touched if they knew you wanted to heal something that has happened between you, why not get in touch? Is a phone call or an email or a letter impossible?  If so, don't be hard on yourself. Find another way. There are so many other ways. There is always a path we can follow to peace and it doesn't have to be one that terrifies you. If you can speak and say, I love you, or I'm sorry, or I miss you, wonderful. But if you can't, here is what you might do: breathe for a few minutes. Allow yourself the time to do this so that you can feel a release of your own stress and fear. Stay with it. Don't be afraid of what you feel when you breathe. Not one bad thing will ever happen to you because you quietly follow your breath.

When you have found even a tiny measure of peace or release in your heart or mind, give thanks for it and ask this other person, this friend or family member whom you simply cannot say I'm sorry to, or whom you have been unable to forgive, ask them in your heart and mind to meet you in this calm breathing place. Speak not to their personality but to the highest place inside them. I could tell you so many stories about my doing this and the miracles I have witnessed upon next encountering this person and seeing a very real healing between us. If you can find this quiet, sacred place in your heart, you absolutely have the power to invite them into the same sacred space and speak to them there in that precious quiet. Tell them you are sorry. Ask for their forgiveness or give them yours. Or just say, "Howdy podna, wha's up?"  It's not the words, it's the love, it's the intent, it's the hope you have in your heart. You don't need to know how, you do know how on some level you have forgotten about.

I hope you'll seek some moment this Christmas, this Holiday Season, when you may reach out in your own way to accomplish the very thing this Holy Day was meant to be about in the first place: Peace on Earth, Goodwill to All.

Thanks for listening to my songs, I'm leaving you with the lyrics to a song from my Watching the Storm Roll In CD. I hope you enjoy them.

Your Friend,
  ~Michael

Howdy Groundhog Day to you, my friends,

I may have let a bit too much time transpire since my last website rambling, because I'm starting to receive emails from visitors asking if "Mr. Tomlinson still lives here." Well, in the first place, I don't actually "live" at my website, I rent a house nearby though, because I don't like to have to drive online every day. In the second place, I don't respond well to "Mr. Tomlinson" unless it's a doctor explaining that it was just a spot of chocolate on my cheek and not a malignant mole. Now that the doc has wiped off that little chocolate smudge and given me a clean bill of health, there's really nothing I'd rather spend my evening doing than sitting in this crowded, muggy Seattle coffeshop and hammering out this little ditty for you. My goal is to write this entire rambling without once going back to correct or rewrite a thing. It may end up garbled and nonsensical but I'm goin' for it, podnas. Think of it as one of those TV sitcom stunts where they go "Live" during sweeps.  I'm sitting here "Live" at Tully's Coffee and it's exhilarating as all git out. Everyone is looking on in admiration - or something. But maybe it's just my hat, I can't be sure.

I've been working on a new song all day and it's one of those melodies that follows me everywhere. When I first write a new melody I instantly grab my mini-cassette recorder and sing the notes into it. Otherwise, I'll be heart broken later when I can't find them again. Try it sometime. Hum a series of notes, just any colorful flow of melody, then see if you can remember it an hour later. You most likely can't. But if you can, I suggest you contact the CIA and show them your skill. You'll be offered a job for sure. Anyway, I record the melody and that night I place my recorder next to my bed. When I go to bed I'll often place the tiny speaker next to my ear and play the potential song in the darkness before I go to sleep. (in case you're wondering, I don't wear no dang jammies!) Sometimes though, I find that I've accidentally turned the volume all the way up. This startles me awake and causes three things: 1.) bleeding of the ear canal 2.) a distate for that particular melody forever after 3.) my dawg Bungee to rear up and bite me on the neck. So I always try to be very, very cautious about the volume setting.

At any given time I've probably got an entire album's worth of melodies, that are essentially complete musical songs, ready to record. For some reason, I've always been able to imagine beautiful, memorable melodies. I could sit right here in this coffee shop and and strum a series of chords and within a few minutes have the whole place humming a very catchy melody or a haunting, romantic one. But I have this problem and it's called Lyrics. A really good song generally needs words. I realise I'm somewhat known for my lyrics and for the way that they often sound so natural. They roll off my tongue in such a way that you just assume I wrote them in a few minutes. That has certainly happened but very rarely. I tend to take months to finish the lyrics to even one song. Some of my songs have been in process for years. I'm positive that this is, even after all my years of writing, just a trick of my mind. I draw a blank or I write something that sounds instantly stupid or just a rehash of something I've written before and I scrap it before I really get started. For the most part though, I tend to ignore this problem of repetitiveness. I look at it this way: Is anybody actually completely fresh and new and unique every day or month or year? Nope. I haven't met them yet anyway. I'm still the same man that wrote Yellow Windows and By A Friend and Still Believe and Let Us Dream, just a little further along my line of evolution, is all.

When I was in elementary school my family moved constantly. I went to 7 schools from my mid-third grade year to the beginning of sixth grade. This troubled me considerably, to a great extent because I was invited at each and every school to participate in fisticuffs behind the dumpster after school. Is invited really the right word? No, I think it was more like "Hey kid! Either show up in the alley or we'll come and get you in the showers tomorrow." The great tragedy of it all is that I was stupid enough to usually appear at those rowdy get-togethers. Take a good look at my nose sometime.

After my third school in a year an idea occurred to me that shook the core of my little Texan kid belief system: Why not become someone different at the next school? Why not become a very powerful, smart, charming, affable young fellow whom everyone loves and none attempt to kick in the groin? This concept stunned me in it's beautiful simplicity. I thought about it at length and there seemed to be no real barriers in my way. Mom and Dad worked and were never at school. My sister was a grade behind me and not in any of my classes. There would be no witnesses to hold me to the confines of the "Old Mike." I felt that I needed a plan, a basic outline of my new self, so I took notes. I spent months watching the most attractive kids, the most popular ones - both male and female - and I began to draw up a schematic for "New Mike." On evenings at home, I'd stand in front of my bedroom mirror and try out my newly discovered facial reactions, the new ways I laughed and smiled and cocked my head.

Even the new way I tossed my hair back was a big deal. I remember that being a critical point. Perhaps in the same way that boys from my father's generation studied Brando and the way he held a cigarette, inhaled and blew out the smoke, I studied the coolest boys and how they tossed their heads back and to the side to swing those long, sweeping bangs back anytime they suspected they were being watched by a girl. Brother, I got it down good. I was a bangs-swingin' little stud, I swear. It was a new thing to me because all my previous affectations had been an homage to the image of Elvis Presley, who, as any idiot knows, slicked his hair back and only had anything resembling bangs after a fist fight. Even then he didn't so much toss his hair back as he sang it back into perfect place. I remember that in most movies, after he'd saved a beautiful girl's honor with his fists, he would usually pick up some ol' guitar that was lying around in perfect tune and he'd sing her a catchy song and suddenly it seemed that his shiny, black hair was back there beautifully swirled atop his head. So anyway, though I'd learned worlds of important stuff from Elvis, I had to learn to toss my bangs from cool guys at school.

For the first time in my childhood, I began to wish mom and dad would get a hankering to move again. "Mama, are yall thinkin' of movin' any time soon?" She'd look at me and place a tender hand on my forehead to see if I had scarlet fever. I hated to move and she knew it, but she didn't know my plan to implement "New Mike" as soon as possible. Finally, we left the Will Rogers Elementary School District and moved to Woodrow Wilson Elementary School. I couldn't wait to try out "New Mike" on all those unsuspecting kids and teachers at the new school. Even before mom had registered me I was envisioning applause in my homeroom each morning just because everyone was so happy that I was there and not staying home with a cold or nothin'. From my long weeks and hours of studying characteristics of popular people, I was fairly certain I would be voted Class Favorite by the end of the coming year. I stood in front of the mirror and composed my expression into one that seemed humble and sincere, yet ever so clever and world-wise. Oh, and I looked real honest, too. There really is one expression that conveys all those things but I don't think I could recall it now. What I'm saying though, is that I knew I pretty much had the year tied up in the way of popularity.

That was before I found out that Wilson Elementary was mostly a school for mentally disabled children - with only a handful of "regular" kids thrown in. Everyone used the word "retarded" back then. It was considered the proper terminology. You couldn't say "Dumbass" or "Doofus" no more, according to an article my mom had read in Reader's Digest. My very first day at school I sat in total shock at the long lunch table filled with children who seemed to have come from another planet. They looked up and down and all over the place when they tried to eat and it unnerved me. And the most common language seemed to be a sort of gargling. I'm not being cruel here, I swear. I tried to eat my fried-egg sandwich - which I hated so terribly - and I looked up and down that table and realised that there was not a single soul for me to impress. I instantly fell back into "Old Mike," the same quiet, uncertain boy I'd been my whole life. Every gesture, every smart expression and clever retort I'd mastered was lost to me as if I'd never spent three months of my life working tirelessly to become "New Mike." It was all over before it began.

So how the heck does this relate to the story I was telling about trying to be unique in my songwriting? Well, it probably doesn't, but I'm going to try to tie it together somehow. Oh, I know! I decided a long time ago that the only possible way to be unique was to be my old regular self. That sounds straight out of the Boy Scout Handbook, but as it relates to my music, it's very, very true. That's why you will still hear my references to rain and wind and the changing seasons in so many of my songs, from my very first ones to the one I wrote today. I decided instead of trying to find unique ways to present my songs, I'd just present them as they come to me. Whatever growth, whatever sorrow or joy or befuddlement I'm going through, well, you're going to hear a lot of it in my songs. They're not always currrent. You may hear me play a new song onstage at a concert and think, "Whoa, that sumbitch is goin' through some sad shit!" But you might be completely wrong, my friend. I might be going through something very wonderful while the song describes something I went through last spring. I'm fine and dandy now but man, that was a steamroller of an April!

People who really loved my first few albums will often find my website and discover to their surprise that I'm still around after all these years. A woman today actually wrote to tell me that she thought I'd died years ago. That's a big ego booster to a man trying to eak out a living sending songs out into the world. Folks will discover my website and email me and say, "Man, your second album saved my life!" or "You have no idea what that first album did for me when I was in college." They sometimes ask if I can recommend another CD from a more recent period and I almost always tell them "if you like any of them, I think you'll probably like them all."

That might sound like I'm speaking from ego but I promise I'm not. I just know what I instill in my songs. I know my heart goes into them and I know how important it is to me that all my songs resonate with some sense of peace, hope and forgiveness - and as near as I can get to it, truth. If anything, those qualities are greater in my current music simply because I've become a more humble human being, a man with enough life experience to realise that I know much less than I used to think I did. Today, I might not use such declarative statements as "I believe in me, anyway we want it, we can make it be" anymore, like I did in the song No Bad Dreams, on my first album. I still love that song and play it at many of my concerts, I'm just saying that the "New Mike" might not write exactly the same words as the "Old Mike." I might say, for instance,
"I believe in Life, everything that happens is a part of me." But that would be a dud of a radio single, wouldn't it? Luckily for me, there are very, very few of my old songs I'd change.

I made a decision a long time ago to never record an album until I had enough really good songs to warrant it. Now I look back and find a lot of pleasure in realising that there is actually a body of work there, something to show for my life these last couple of decades. It's probably like when you go back through a photograph album and remember your friends and great adventures, the tender loves and the blessed, mysterious events that have come your way over time. I'm still putting those stories into music and I hope they occasionally find a place in your life. I think one of the best things a songs can ever be is a loyal companion, a good friend to join you along your journey. I hope mine have been good friends to you.

Thanks for listening, for visiting my website now and then, and and for sharing my music with your friends. It keeps me going.

Your Friend in Rain Country,
   ~Michael

PS, Here's an old song that I wouldn't change a word of.