A Journey Within

To master without,  you first must master within.

Belong nowhere.

Love Always. Sometimes.

I need confidence in myself. And the pieces of you left with someone else.

I'll give you all I've got if you give me what you can't. 

Love. Me. ?

"A Lonely Place" by Deveraux featuring Anthony J. Shears From the upcoming EP "Sheet Music" - Coming October 30, 2012!

Used To featuring Anthony J. Shears

This song is dedicated to anyone and everyone who refuses to give up. I used to be a used to...

Death of a Muse...

To Whom It May Concern:

I once had a MUSE. Whose eyes I knew. Or so I believed. But I missed all the clues. With love I pursued. Though our pasts were confused. I patiently waited for my time's "I Do"s. But her heart was bruised. So she misconstrued. That my heart's only wish was that she never lose. But she could not choose. With lies she eschewed. And has left all my love for my heart to recuse.

Sincerely,
me

Everything Breaks Sometime.

All love is unrequited.  All of it.  And there is a certain sacredness in tears.  They are rarely the sign of weakness.  They speak more eloquently than ten thousand voices. Tonight they are messengers of overwhelming grief, a bit of regret, and an even smaller bit of happiness.  An unspeakable love. I've seen her cry. Once. At the darkness moment of night... Right before the sun rose. 


Love is like an hour glass, with the heart filling up as the brain empties... And then it all breaks apart. I've never wished to be everything to everyone. Just something to her. And tonight... With that confirmation. I also received a goodbye. 

Her: "Maybe we'll be butterflies..."

Me: "May I could have loved you better. Maybe you should have loved me more. Maybe our hearts were next in line. Maybe everything breaks sometime."

Goodbye.

JAS

For Life. Forever.

"Street life is expensive/And what it cost some niggas/Is everything!/But I been buggin' since I lost my nigga."  - Anthony J. Shears - Mea Culpa 2008

I am lost. At a lost for words. Lost in this way of life. Lost in thought. Lost in pain. Lost in regret.

Death is always around the corner.  But the neighborhood I'm from seems to give death inordinate help.  My man has taken leave of life. And my only thoughts are on the uncertainty of how it all went down.

We used to joke about being willing to die to live like men.  PJ was a real religious dude, and one afternoon as we sat in the gym he asked me if I was afraid to die. I told him I wasn't and asked him what he thought death was. He looked up and then at me and said, "Dying means we ain't got to sin no more."  Stopped me dead in my tracks.  I've thought about that conversation every now and then over the last decade.  I used to think I had some subtle fear of death.  That conversation with P that day  changed my entire opinion on death and dying.  I realized that day that dying was the easy part. Living like anything other than a man standing on my own two feet - that seemed much harder to  me than death.  Way back then we made a decision to live as men, no matter the cost.  And in the end, the residual of the answer to that question is why my man is gone. 

Someone said once  "Coming generations will learn equality from poverty and death, and love from woes." I've memorized the pain of these woes and can recite them backwards.  I don't think of myself as a kid from the ghetto.  The home I grew up in had everything I needed. I think of myself as someone who knew from an early age that I would live my life totally responsible for myself, and all that I wanted to achieve.  P was the yin to my yang.  Where I was "cold and calculated", he was "warm and likable".  I kept my distance from most people and most things. P wore his heart on his sleeve... To a fault.  Where I had accepted the judgement and sometimes rejection of others, he took any perceived slight to heart and responded accordingly.  In the end, we balanced each other out, in life and on the court.

He said to me once "I'ma die fighting!"  And while I didn't attend his funeral, I sent a kite up saying I missed him and admired his commitment to his word.  All great men want to live beyond their death.  No one can say with any certainty they will be alive tomorrow. So we live hard, with no apologies today. My personal dead are never dead to me. I never forget them.  And I'll never forget Mr. Princeton Jerome Latimer. You told me "when you blow up, I blow up!" It's taken awhile my friend. But I promise you I'll make good on that promise. You embodied everything a solider should be. And until I can fulfill my promise to you, I won't weep for you. I won't celebrate your life with morning because you're still alive in the hearts of those who love you. And will continue to live in the mouths of men thru my music.

That's my word.

AJS

A Lonely Place...

Tonight I broke down while performing. I can't remember exactly what song it was, but I remember it hitting me pretty hard. It's a very real, potent feeling to look out into the crowd and see people tearing up and crying - to see your music touching them and taking them to that very raw, personal place feels a lot like an accomplishment - one I am very proud to have been a part of.

The entire weight of the words I had written, the stories I had told, and the hope I was looking for came crashing down at once. At that moment, there was nothing standing between me and the pain, love, and hope that has influenced the message in my music.

As a performer, the worst thing you can do on stage is to "think".... The best performances are pure emotion... You become the snare, the kick, the violin, and the piano. I've found that it's easier to find men who will volunteer to die, than to find men who are willing to endure the pain of vulnerability. My goal is to keep my music as far away from ego and as close to vulnerability as possible.

This particular show on this particular night provided a platform for that moment where vulnerability meets pain and patience.

Though the room was full, the space felt like a lonely place. And I feel all that much better for adding what I could to it.

Special thank you to Deveraux for his heart-felt performance, and to Elijah C for bringing us home with his guitar.

Thank you all,

Me

Labor of Love

This morning... 9 hours after I sat down to write last night... I looked at my post-it notes, scratch papers, drawings, sketches, musings, and 3 empty energy drinks... and I saw myself.

A long time ago a friend of mine named Noah gave me a book by Khalil Gibran called "The Prophet"... I read the entire book in one night, and found myself totally transformed the next morning. There was a passage in the book where Gibran commented that "Always you have been told work is a curse and labour a misfortune. But I say to you that when you work you fulfill a part of earth's furthest dream, assigned to you when that dream was born, and in keeping yourself with labour you are in truth loving life..."

Love life. I write to right.

Sincerely,

Me

Last stop, Brookland

I thought the reason it hurt so much to separate is because our souls were connected... But fate would have it that even the dearest of friends eventually part. And honestly, until this moment, I did not fully understand how painful it is to lose something you never truly had. Which begs the question, "If I left here tomorrow, would you still remember me?" I wonder if you would.

Nevertheless, I take comfort in the fact that you gaze up at the same stars I see in the same sky I am under. I ask that you remember me and smile; but afterwards soon forget. For I'd rather have you forget me completely than remember me and cry.

This story ends in Paris. It is 1919. I walk into the cafe bearing flowers. Happiness is an angel at the bar with a serious face and pain in her smile.

Tonight, I walked across a bridge. But there was no bridge there. I carried a bag full of love. But no one to share it with. And then... I thought of you.

Last stop, Brookland.

The Poetry of this Moment...

The poetry of this moment starts with a look, a glance... Up then down. Then embarrassingly to the side. "Hello. It's so very nice to see you again" I say. It is much like that moment when one sits down to write a poem. One never knows what one is going to do. One starts to write and then it becomes something quite different. "Have a seat" she says, while simultaneously standing in defiance of what appears to be vulnerability.

And her beauty... evokes aspects of both sight and spectacle. If I were a painter I would have sought to capture it in a sketch. But as in painting, so is poetry. So I sat next to her trying to juxtapose her beauty with what was obviously a paralyzing pain she was attempting to hide.... Or maybe she wasn't. An artist always must always start from reality, unless of course the "reality" being presented is an attempt to disguise reality. Then an artist must go deeper.

I look but try not to stare... And my words are not as good as a painting, though they are painted - my pen acting as the paintbrush , each word written with with the ashes of something set ablaze and destroyed before I arrived. Each thought a surrogate sculpture. I've always been good at capturing the essence of weeping women. But this type of writing is stronger than me. It makes me do what it wants. And right now it's forcing me to capture the breaking of her heart. Observation and possession....

So I sit next to her... dipping my pen in tears... to express the painful idea that there's no pleasure without fear... And she mumbles something like "My heart is a tragedy of war"... and I whisper "My art seems to always want more".... She smiles at the physicality of my words... and then "crawls like a worm from a bird".

And then silence.

Because we both know this type of art was not meant to hang in rooms...

I look at her before finishing my drink. She asks me what I'm thinking... I smile, and say "Later when this you see remember me."

Ab imo pectore.

We All Got Dreams of Blowing Up!

Hello World,

Happy New Year! I hope it has been as good for everyone as it has been for us. Musically, things have picked up to an almost unmanageable pace. 6 days straight of shows will take it out of you. We've been disciplined though, working out and hydrating by day. And in the studio by night. We gave you 3 solid songs before the New Year as we promised. Deveraux is about three songs away from being done with "Sheet Music". We've discovered a few new producers who will undoubtedly be making their mark in 2012. We've solidified at least three new partnerships, including clothing line Napalm Dreams, and help them launch their latest designs. As a side note, I've been performing for nearly 15 years, and never seen anything like I did in Oak Harbor/Whidbey Island. Shout out to everyone there that night. You guys should be proud of yourself, and judging by some of the talent we seen on stage, it won't be too long before the rest of Washington has you on their radar. You guys gave me the first mosh pit I ever had. That's love. Thank you.

And to top it all off, we rocked New York last night. To wrap up the New Year, we gave Brooklyn all we had left. I passed out shortly after getting off stage from what I thought was exhaustion. Turned out it was bird flu or swine flu or something. Spent the rest of the night deathly ill. Today has seen me better. And though I'm writing you from the ER, I can't say I'd change a thing. Around here we have a saying "No days off!"... And there couldn't be a more true statement regarding SMG. We don't take any days off, and won't. And I"m still going to perform tonight in DC.

We thank each and everyone of you for your continued love and support. As we gear up for 2012, we hope to continue to be able to offer you the kind of music that makes you feel like you can, and inspires you to get up and try. We've learned through our own trial and error that ambition is the path to success. But persistence is the vehicle you arrive in. This road will undoubtedly be filled with valleys and peaks. Thank you for letting us be the soundtrack to your grind.

Sincerely,

Ashes