If you’ve been to one of my live shows you know that I’m a tall, gangly stork of a man. I can’t dance, I’m only marginally graceful. I’ve always been somewhat off-balance, awkward, and goofy since the air is a bit thinner up here where my head is.

There is one place, however, where I feel a harmony of mind and body. I “zone out” and get into the kind of headspace one reads about for ice skaters and athletes, maybe even zen meditation. While I may be tall enough to do the March Madness thing, my meditation is not basketball. I meditate in front of hundreds of people with a keyboard and some pedals.

When I’m playing a song onstage, it reminds me of my brief stint in martial arts; there is a defined, practiced form with a beginning and end. Assuming I’ve rehearsed (which, for some songs, is a big assumption), there is a clear path through this form, like a stone walkway through an arboretum. Every step is familiar, yet every session reveals a unique experience.

It is in this space that I feel like a warrior on a mountaintop or a bird circling overhead. This is where I am no longer an awkward geek that bumps his head into doorways. Practicing my kata on the black and whites transforms me, if only for the length of one song. (This may be why I tend to write 13-minute numbers like A Cautionary Tail.)

I don’t know what it takes to make you feel the same way, but chances are good you do. You’ve experienced that headspace before at some point in your life. Maybe you can’t make a career out of it like I have, but if I can offer one piece of advice in an email, find that stone path and walk it.

Daily, if possible.

So I finally got out to see The Blue Clan Group Avatar last night. It was everything I expected it to be: A remake of Pocahontas and Ferngully with enough Aliens fan-service to draw in that extra billion (Sigourney Weaver FTW). Throw in 3D glasses, the gimmick du-jour, and the movie squeezes a few extra dollars out of moviegoers too young to remember Jaws 3. And it’s a phenomenal piece of cinema.

Yes, I know, I’m usually the first to bitch about the fact that Hollywood couldn’t find an original script if you stapled one to the forehead of every director in California. There is nothing new about the story or the characters in Avatar. Most of the plot points are so obviously foreshadowed that at times I wondered if James Cameron forgot his audience had to be teenage or older. In some cases the reveals were as obvious as Chekhov’s gun. For those that don’t know the reference:

If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off.
From S. Shchukin, Memoirs

And yet, it was a perfect film.

The Art of Storytelling is not the Art of Writing. Storytellers, like great opera singers, find greatness in the delivery, not necessarily the creation. After all, when we were kids we wanted mom or dad to read the same story to us again and again. It’s not like we forgot the ending after 24 hours; we fall in love with the way the story is told. It’s also why the jokes you heard last night are never as funny when you tell them to someone else.

In my line of work there are few original chord progressions. Most songs in the Blues category have had the same 12-bar progression since before the 1940’s. Cover songs are often more popular than their original recordings (FYI, Jimi Hendrix did not write All Along the Watchtower). Don’t even get me started on Christmas albums; new lyrics and melodies usually detract from their appeal rather than adding to them. A lot of you, like me, have played the same video game (Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando) dozens of times even though you’ve already bested every aspect of the game. Why do we tolerate such repetition in our lives?

The delivery of a familiar story- be it a fairy tale, a movie, or a song -can often mean more than the content of the story itself. Parents had been reading the story of Snow White to their children for years, but Walt Disney told an old story in such a fantastic way that it founded their entire empire. I know a lot of my music touches on all-too-familiar themes: Love, insecurity, politics, Ninjas… but if I can tell my stories with half the skill and passion as Cameron’s Avatar, I might just make it in this business yet.

Now go hug a tree and start working on your storytelling.