Dan Steven Erickson

News

In Limbo

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Abstract, Footbridge Beach, Ogunquit Maine by Dan Steven Erickson

Life can be interesting, life as an artist even more interesting. I’m currently in limbo. I’m in-between two major chapters of life. I recently made a move to Maine to help my daughter get a fresh start, and to set up my own future place for retirement.

I’ll admit, I thought this move was going to be easy. I envisioned my new life starting as soon as I unlocked the front door to my new condominium. I’ve moved enough times that I should have known it would not be so simple but you can’t blame a guy for dreaming.

My daughter is doing well so far. That’s most important to me but it’s meant a slower transition and a lot of time on the road. Annie has three jobs at different restaurants in the region, including Jonathans in Ogunquit. However, whereas I’m used to driving 10 minutes to get most anywhere in Yakima Washington, here it’s 30-40 minutes. I’m spending a lot of time driving as we currently only have one car.

This leads to the “in limbo” status. I still have a condo full of stuff and a car in Washington State. There’s a part of me that misses that home a little, but only a little. A greater part of me wishes I could snap my fingers and have everything moved and sold. Yes, that means that so far I prefer Maine over Washington.

So how long will I be in limbo? And what does that mean for my music and writing? It’s hard to say how long. My hope is that I’ll be able to sell and move all of our belongings in Washington in the spring, and then put the condo on the market. The place in Maine also needs some work and furnishings. That may also prove to be a slower process than I first envisioned. My daughter will need to get her Maine driver’s license and a car. That will likely be 6 months off, so I’ll be a taxi for awhile yet. And I hope to seek and find some part-time work here at some point. All of this unsettled uncertainty makes it hard to work on creative projects.

Playing live music would be fun but it’s hard to meet new musicians and schedule events while I’m still helping Annie get to work and back. I did recently release a new ambient music EP, Absence. Composing electronic music can be done almost anywhere, so you might expect more of that while I’m in limbo. Writing can also be done from anywhere at almost anytime. I’m considering requesting a Sabbatical form work and taking some classes on memoir writing. If so, you can expect a start in that direction by the summer of 2023.

So, as you can see, I’m in limbo. It’s not easy. I’m a guy who likes to have things organized, all my ducks in a row. Living in this in-between status is challenging. How long will I be in limbo? Months? Years? My hope is that things will get sorted out by next summer, but the truth is it might take longer.

No, I’m not sorry I made this move. So far it’s been a godsend for my daughter, and I love the region, being close to the ocean. It’s just difficult to muster up the patience and energy to be creative during this time of change. Still, I know myself pretty well. I’ll rise to the occasion one way or another. – dse

Things Get Better

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many years ago in a smoky bar,
The Crossroads,
I was lectured about life.
a half-drunken man told me to go
back to Nashville, told me God
told him to tell me.
and then he said this:
something I’ve heard
many times since,
not sure if it’s a blessing or a curse?
“things will get worse before they get better.”

I never went back to Nashville
and things got worse,
wound up living in a shit-hole town
where they’d just as well shoot you
then give you the time of day.
I was given 18 years for
gross copulation
but escaped with my greatest treasure.

believe them when they say
life can be hard, it’s true.
there’s always something,
a cog in the wheel,
a joker in the deck,
cancer.
but believe me when I say
you can achieve what you dream.
hell, I might even go back
to Nashville.

things get better, it’s true
but you really have to want it,
to work for it, to grind it out every day.
grind it out every fucking day.

Absence

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It’s been awhile since I’ve composed and released new electronic music. I’ve been busy with other projects, including buying a condo and moving to Maine. Just yesterday I was posting about not finding my groove. In the last 24 hours I created a new five-song EP: Absence.

Absence includes the first Anderhill compositions in six months. The music is ambient, sometimes discordant and dark, other times light and airy. There is a theme of brokenness and disintegration throughout most of the tracks. Although this EP was created quickly, it represents my recent 3000-mile move from Washington State to Maine. The move was made out of hope and love to offer a better life to my daughter. Enjoy. – dse

New Electronic Music

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I’ve been composing electronic music for about five years now. My styles include ambient, drone, noise, house, deep house, and Neo-classical. For the last several years I’ve been very prolific in my productions. However, this year I started out hot but have slowed down due to other interests, and just plain life.

My goal is to release at least one new composition or album by the end of the year, but I’ve been struggling to find my groove. Creating electronic music is interesting. Some days, you can compose something and automatically believe in it. There’s just something about it that makes you accept the composition for what it is. Other days you can spend hours working on something just to throw it away. I’ve been struggling with the latter for the last week or two.

As you may know, I’ve just moved from Washington State to Maine. That has kept me busy. I’ve also spent much of this year working on guitar-based singer-songwriter material, so I put the electronic music on hold. Bear with me as I do my best to create something fresh by the end of the year. – dse

Update – I’ve got a new one coming out soon: Absence.

Determination

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Life is a journey. There are no guarantees. You might become a famous author or you might become a beggar on the streets of New York City. But there is one thing that will always help you to become a better artist, a better human being.

Determination.

As I lay on a mattress on the floor of my new condominium in Maine because I have not bought anything more than mattresses for my daughter and myself, I contemplate life, art, education, the journey. My own past has been riddled with pain and heartache. When I was nine years old my parents moved our family 3000 miles from our Maine home to become part of a religious cult in Washington State. That change would forever shape the person I was and who I would become. The cult experience left me confused. I would struggle with fear and paranoia that was ultimately tied to the modern misdirected ideals of Christianity.

My strange childhood left me with another trait: determination. As a young forced laborer I would become a hard worker, very organized and disciplined. As a teenaged boy who resented being forced into labor, I became a rebel, determined to buck the system, to go against the norms of society. It’s this second trait that led me to playing rock and roll, writing poetry, and practicing minimalism.

Life was not easy for me in my 20s. Although I was freed from the prison of my past in a cult, I found myself struggling to discover who I really was. I experimented with drugs, drank too much alcohol, and found myself running from invisible demons that appeared very real at the time. The demons came in the form of the Christian story, its characters, God, the devil, and the curses that were repeatedly woven into the book that I thought would save me.

In my 30s I returned to education. At the time I believed it was the Christian story that saved me, turned my life around, got me clean from drugs and alcohol, and led me to the path that I would take for the next 30 years. In hindsight I realize it was something else: determination. If the Christian God of my youth helped me to change, glory be to him, but why then would that same God have allowed my youth to be so shattered by my parents’ poor decisions, Christian parents at that. It doesn’t add up.

Marriage was one of the worst things I ever decided upon in life. It’s my own fault really. I was quickly moving toward the age of 40 and society told me that getting married and having children was something I should have already done. Blind love led me to choosing a partner who brought much more trouble than happiness and contentment. I lost my firstborn daughter to genetic birth defects in 2001. My second daughter was born healthy in 2005, but by that time my marriage was failing due to the extreme mental health problems my ex-wife faced. All this would affect both my own journey and my second daughter’s journey.

For nearly 20 years I’ve found myself stuck in a single location where I never really chose to be. I stayed because the legal system told me to. I stayed so that my daughter might have a relationship with both my family and her mother’s family. I stayed because I had a good job that paid the bills and provided good benefits.

In 2010 my father died. It was shortly after his death that my story in the book, A Train Called Forgiveness, came about. That was not coincidence. It was determination. I’ve always been determined as an artist, musician, and writer to communicate my story with others, not because I believe my story is special, but rather because I know my story can help others. There is both hope and healing in the power of words and music. Art is both self-therapy and universal in scope.

This year, 2022, my mother died. My living daughter is 17 and struggling with issues that came from an abusive past with some members of her mother’s family. She’s found herself struggling with a substance-use disorder. Living in Yakima Washington, there was easy access to drugs, alcohol, and continual reminders of her own childhood trauma. There are gang-related shootings in Yakima on a regular schedule. I am determined to do what I can to help her out of that dark place. And so here we are in Maine, starting again.

Through it all my art has remained. I have stayed true to continuing to become a better writer, composer, and artist. I still have the determination to communicate through art, to help others on their own journeys through life. Whether it be through the solace of story and song or the meditative quality of ambient music, it’s my goal to bring peace and hope to others. It’s also my goal to attempt to help my daughter find the same kind of determination for her own life. And it’s my hope that this change of place will be a positive catalyst in her development.

If there is one trait that I could pass down to my daughter and to all who take the time to read my words and listen to my music, it’s determination. It’s my desire for you to find the determination to be who you are, not who the world tells you to be. I want you to accept what you cannot change and overcome the obstacles in life that you can. It’s my wish that you always find the determination to work hard, not so you might become rich or famous, but so that your life might shine the way for others who are hurting and healing in this broken world.

Determination. – dse

Photo Dump

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This will likely be the first of many photo posts. At some point I might even create a photo page or reorganize the site to showcase photos on the front page. So here’s my first photo dump at the Dan Steven Erickson website.

I don’t pretend to be a great photographer. I do hope to take my photography to the next level at some point in the future. For now, I just use my iPhone. This first group of photos was taken at dusk on Footbridge Beach in Ogunquit Maine.

I purposely took the photos using a varying degrees of excessive zoom and overexposure as a means of creating an abstract quality to the images. These are all originals with no editing done after the shots were taken. – dse

New Location

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I’m currently living in a new location: Maine. This might be a temporary/seasonal relocation, or it might lead to my longterm home and retirement place. Time will tell. So what does it mean for my music, art, and writing? It’s hard saying, but I know one thing. Hopefully, I will be able to start playing music live in the Southern Maine region in the future.

I’m still teaching at a community college in Washington State. The college is graciously allowing me to teach fully online for the remainder of the 2022/23 academic year. That permission likely won’t roll over into the following year. That means I have some decisions to make. Do I go back to Washington for a few more years and teach until I reach full retirement age? Or do I retire from teaching early and reinvent myself in Maine?

At this minute, I lean toward the second option. There’s an independent streak in me that would love to become and independent artist or artisan, to make my living creating and selling my own talent and/or products and services. Maine is a great place for starting small businesses and I must say I’m a little bit intrigued. Or maybe I could find a gig in education here, if not full-time, a part-time supplemental thing. Oh, the possibilities.

But first things first. We just got into town on November 10 and the new place needs to be furnished and turned into a home. Interior design is actually something I’m pretty good at. So, I’ll be looking for some cool furniture and art for the new place. I’m also going to be painting and doing some remodeling in the kitchen. Winter is on the way. By springtime I should have a better idea where the future will lead. – dse

I Love It Here

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Sidney Nebraska – Photo by Dan Steven Erickson

I’m currently in the high-plains country of Western Nebraska on my way East. I love it here. There’s something about the high plains that always leaves me feeling good. Although one feels tiny in comparison to their surroundings, the wide-open space creates a sense of place. It provides room to contemplate and be grateful for all that surrounds us.

But it’s not just the Great Plains that I love. I love America. I might not be a modern-day “patriot,” but this land is my land. Set aside politics and religion. It’s the land that I love, the place.

This love of place leads to my art. What is art other than a reflection of ourselves and our environment? When I look across the sweeping plains I see music. The wind blowing through the tall grass prairie is a song. The litter on the side of the highway, poetry. The sun peeking over the horizon is a melody. The hum of the wheels on the highway is an ambient composition.

Yes, I love it here. I love The Great Plains. I love America. I love the fact that my art is influenced by every place that I travel. Soon I’ll be landing in Maine for the start of a new chapter in life. But the high-plains country will always be a part of who I am. – dse