EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Have you ever stopped to think about yourself and your story? If someone were to write your memoir what would it say? We all seek some level of authenticity but have trouble removing the labels and finding our whole story. Welcome to Dropping In with Diane Dewey. In this program we’ll explore diverse stories on identity to help determine what is truly yours. Now here is your host Diane Dewey.

 

Diane: Thank you for dropping in. welcome to the show everyone. I’m Diane Dewey and I know that busy schedules get in the way of meeting folks we want to meet. Dropping In is a lost art. When I was a kid my parents would sometimes go over to the neighbor’s house or vice versa just dropping in on them or we’d be hanging out and somebody would knock on the door and right away it was a fun surprise. Where I live now on the gulf coast of Florida I sometimes don’t see our neighbor friends. Our digital lives haven’t made it easier instead it’s more complicated. It’s time to drop in and see what folks are up to.

 

We’ll do a deep dive into the subject at hand. We’re dropping in to find out what makes our guests tick artists, musicians and writers who’ve discovered how to make a statement usually one that goes against the grain. Making a contribution to the world is tough. It’s a tough goal but there are people who’ve come at it usually the hard way and won. We will listen to their diverse stories about identity. Identity can refer to biological, nurtured, gender, cultural, racial and spiritual and other labels we assign ourselves insider, outsider, hipster, square or nerd. Sometimes the I in identity gets lost. Everyone wants to become our authentic selves despite the odds against it. We each have a context whether it’s in the family of origin, an adoptive family or a marriage. That makes maintaining identity the call to rediscover and reclaim who we are that much more challenging.

 

For me the call came when at 47 years old I got a letter from my Swiss biological father. Having always known I was adopted from the German orphanage at age one I faced his question. Would I like to meet him? I would I said and why did I agree to that? Maybe I was filling a void. My beloved adopted father had just died six months before. I’d ended a long-term romantic relationship with a man who just drove me crazy. I was ready for a new anchor and that letter started me on a 16-year journey of learning my roots and discovering a new identity.

 

I visited Switzerland with my biological father and went cross-country skiing in the Engadin Valley. He had done 18 ski marathons. I was petrified but I told myself I could keep up. Maybe it was to please him. The Engadin is a special place, very raw, very rural and remote where the old language Romansch is still spoken. It’s almost extinct. This struck me as being like I was far, far away from who I had become as an art gallery assistant in New York. My biological identity had been obscured but back there in my father’s homeland I had aha moments. Why had I gone to Vermont years before and become a cross-country skier? Had my genetic coding been in spooling all along? What else would I learn about myself that had been hidden?

 

Otto and I visited my biological mother’s family in northern Germany. Helena had passed away before I could meet her but the family showed me pictures in an old musty smelling leather album. In the photos Helena wore outfits that she’d sewn herself. I thought back to my teenage years when I told my adoptive mother that I had to have sewing lessons in order to make the kinds of clothes I wanted. It was another uncanny connection with biological identity but that’s not all. Her siblings had kept Helena’s baby spoon, pearl earrings and grandmother’s ring for me and while I didn’t have her through these talismans I felt I had found her love.

 

When I asked her siblings what made them think they’d ever meet me. They said we just knew. They didn’t question their intuition. It was something I’d have to reconnect with. Faith in what I knew that if I were to find inner guidance and stay true to my identity I’d need to accept my intuition. I felt like I’d won the lottery with this loving biological family. I knew many others didn’t get this chance. Even though it would be years before I pieced together what really happened to put me in that orphanage I had gained juice, strength and validation to move forward. Through meeting biological family I realized that love is the strongest force in the universe. People across the globe will find one another especially now with the advent of DNA kits.

 

I’ve also learned that the truth has a special force all its own. It will prevail over deception. Faith that the truth would come out gave me trust in the world, a world that had been uncertain. I’d been told by my adoptive parents that my biological family were dead. Finding this truth is the subject of my book called Fixing the Fates. My identity was formed by parts of all of these people, biological and adopted but I also became aware that I was a person I had created myself. I had to ask who did I imagine myself to be. After I sift through and locate myself who I am is who I designate myself to be, the labels I attach myself to.

 

We are always becoming. Part of this process is to look beyond a traumatic past and push through self-limiting beliefs and often to do a reality check on self-love where every dream is attainable. My job is to resist the traps of magical thinking either too positive or too negative. Part of my arsenal in this fight was knowledge. With a Master of Science and mental health counselling I’ve tried to unravel my story. I help writers get to where they want to go with their manuscripts and my strength is in analyzing the intention and execution to see if these two match up in their story. I investigate the writer’s goals and look at how language carries that out or doesn’t just yet.

 

Writing takes shape in the editing. I’ve crossed out and replaced all the way along and then I had a year’s plus worth of content and copy editing. Reviewing text to make it as real as life itself is an irresistible obsession for me. At True Nord Media I’m aided by two ace editors one from the world of journalism and one from corporate public relations. You’ll find their input indispensable. To light the way forward towards publishing we have an on-staff book agent. My fellow writers work forms, shared truths that we want to polish and tell through story.

 

I come out of the art world in New York where for much of the 1990s I worked for the Guggenheim Museum. It was a place of great visual beauty. The visual arts relate to how you set a scene in creative writing. It’s the revelation of the senses sight, smell, sound and touch that brings the scene alive. Since we live through our physical bodies and feel our instincts there. It’s key to listen when the stomach goes into knots or our breathing gets shallow or our eyes are squinting. Maybe we can’t adjust what’s happening or relax enough to breathe or there’s some, this doesn’t add up.

 

Writing is a way to access what’s happening with ourselves. We make sense of our own thoughts and emotions through words laid down side by side like bricks. There’s both left brain logic and insight and if we can name the emotion the right side brain forms a whole. That’s what I’ve done in Fixing the Fates which readers tell me reads like a page turning novel. I hope that you too will find the inspiration to define or redefine yourselves from dropping in. we’re stopping by to talk, to take a deep dive into a subject while we skip the small talk.

 

We’ll meet a musician who’s written a Grammy award-winning song when before his dyslexia delayed even his reading. We’ll hear from a best-selling writer who didn’t believe in his own strength until he found it through bodybuilding, violence and sometimes sentence building finally. We’ll talk to an intellectual who’s discovered that her elderly mother found her own truth sexually in the role of a dominatrix. An author who did things she swore she’d never do traveling in an RV for example. Now she lives full time on the road enjoying wanderlust. An American living in Qatar who woke up one day to find that the rug had been pulled out and she was no longer that person, that wife.

 

An individual who became a humanitarian when her father then governor of a southern state represented all that was evil in racism. Gender questioning persons for whom birthright is a starting point for the conscious choice of deciding who they are. Important truths about identities worm their way out. By listening to others get a foothold on who they are and learn about their process is to become more ourselves. I hope you’ll take away clues for how to do this at home. You may find the person you’ve always known and imagined yourself to be.

 

Dropping In guests are people like you and me who have shown the world what it means to be an individual to sift through, create, discard or reclaim and to listen to their intuition not always easy with all the noise of our busy lives, our yapping brains, our self-judgments and censorship. Somehow I never thought I’d have much to say. I wasn’t empowered but others who had more confidence encouraged me that everyone knows a unique truth. Now we’re empowered to tell our diverse stories about identity. Authors, writers, musicians and artists have been my teachers at how to arrive at a place that’s aware centered and even brave especially when the facts around me were collapsing. Their creativity is contagious. When we listen to their stories it’s easier to recreate ourselves the way we had intended. We may have gotten derailed by something shiny, hooked on a glamorous detour or focused on something that turned out to be false.

 

These distractions are not failures. They’re proof that we’re growing. Jim Carrey said that depression occurs when your avatar no longer identifies with who you’re trying to be. The psyche knows what’s real and what’s not. Its signal is whatever becomes vibrant to you an inexplicable affinity with African drums, an ethnic tile, textile or a poem. We construct identity constantly through an organic process of binge and purge.

 

At Dropping In we’ll explore diverse stories on identity. What makes people unique? We’re done with shoehorning ourselves into preconceived notions of who we should be being told who we are. Dropping In stories are stories of self-discovery. They enable us to find our truth reconfigure ourselves to that truth, reimagine who we want to be and become stronger for it. By listening to others talk about their own path ours becomes less fearful. We’re always supposed to know what we’re doing but often we don’t and there’s no shame in that. We need a compass. Drop into the conversation. Create a new dialogue. You’ll get the answers you seek or even the questions you want to avoid. The adventure continues on Dropping In where unique stories become far part of the fabric of diversity.

 

We’re going to take a short break now and when we return today’s guest D. L. Byron will drop in to chat with us about his career, about sex, drugs, rock and roll and how he came this close to signing with Warner Records. You don’t want to miss this. We’ll be right back.

 

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Technology is changing the way we live our lives and how we do business. On CIO talk radio we talk about the benefits of technology and the great things it allows us to do as well as its risks. Heard every Wednesday at 9 AM Central 7 AM Pacific. Sanjo Aul interviews business leaders and other experts that are shaping the way we use technology. To learn more about this show visit www.ciotalkradio.com. Keep up with the changing world of technology and listen to CIO talk radio with Sanjo Aul. Listen in every Wednesday at 9 AM Central 7 AM Pacific right here on Voice America Business.

 

Has your manuscript languished because you can’t find the direction it wants to take or have you lost the motivation to finish and polish it for publication because it can be such a big formidable task? Let Diane Dewey help you resolve your writing issues. Diane’s manuscript coaching offers help with sticking points like the arc of your story and how to flesh it out, finding the inner story and what you want to say, developing your message revelations that become your reader’s takeaways, helping to rally the motivation to finish your project and what to do next. We can analyze, edit and advise you on publishing. Who are the next collaborators on your writing path? If you seek resolution to these and other questions please contact Diane Dewey author of the award-winning memoir Fixing the Fates. Find her at trunordmedia.com. That’s T-R-U-N-O-R-D.com on her author’s page dianedewey.com. Diane can also be found through social media. Connect with her through the links on the show page.

 

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You are listening to Dropping In with Diane Dewey. We’d love to hear from you if you have a question or comment about the show. Send us an email to ddewey@trunordmedia.com. That’s the letter ddewey@trunordmedia.com. Now back to Dropping In.

 

Diane: We’re back today. We’re dropping in with D. L. Byron, a survivor of sex, drugs and rock and roll who has lived to write a book and tell the story about it. The book is called Shadows of the Night, it’s an extraordinary read. A great story of resurrection and rebounding. D. L. Byron, welcome to the show.

 

D.L.: Oh thank you Diane. I’m quite honored to be on your premiere episode.

 

Diane: Well it’s great to have you and such an inspiring story. I knew that I did an injustice to you earlier on when I said Warner Brothers Records so why don’t you set the record straight. There was an episode in your life early on when you felt as though you self-sabotaged by not taking a record deal and really tell us what happened there.

 

D.L.: Okay. Actually it was an easy mistake. It was RCA not a big deal. They’re both they were both major labels and still are. I had a band with a writing partner, a very close friend of mine. We spent years writing together. We were living up in Woodstock, New York at the time because our manager had a place just outside of Woodstock in Bearsville which is just north. We’re up there writing and sort of just working on our craft and getting a body of work together and enough songs to create at least an album. Actually we came up with more than enough needed for an LP.

 

We had this manager and his partner shopping our demo tape which came out really well. They were going different companies and then I got a call from the manager of our publishing for publishing company at the time. She said your guys Bruce and David, that were their names got you a deal. We need you to come to New York right away but don’t bring any attorneys anything like that because we just want to make this deal like really quick.

 

Diane: That was a red flag.

 

D.L.: Yes not to bring attorneys was kind of weird. I asked her well can you just at least tell us who the deal is with. She refused. I sort of hung up the phone and I said look, I’ll call you back and hung up the phone. I started talking to my partner Benny and I said listen, this this sounds kind of fishy. I explained to him what was going on. She wasn’t coming forth with the name of the label. We both decided or we both decided pretty much that we were not going to go to New York unless we at least knew what to do the label was because we didn’t want to be on some we wanted to be in a major label. We didn’t want to be on some like fledgling record label which at the time they were a multitude of.

 

Diane: You were afraid justifiably. You were cautious.

 

D.L.: We were trying to protect ourselves. Of course as you said the no attorney thing was a big red flag. I called her back and I said look, if you’re not telling us the name of the label we’re not coming down. She got really upset and cut us off. All of a sudden we weren’t getting our weekly checks and we think that it was really bad. Our girlfriends were buying us groceries. I think on my birthday that year December 18th we were burning our garbage in the fireplace. It had gotten so bad we had no money for oil or we borrowed money for the last tank of oil. It just crumbled.

 

Diane: I have to say in the retelling of it just now it sounds like you really had some integrity there. It wasn’t so much self-sabotaging as it was self-protection and really trying to do the best by yourselves. When I think about it in reading this story I really always felt throughout your book you’re such an honest person. You’re always trying to get kind at the unvarnished truth and to me there’s something very real in this. That’s what makes your book compelling is you almost verge on being if I may say so like kind of a nerd. You’re hard-working. You’re honest. You’re trying to get at things and you’re in this world of like loosey-goosey.

 

You don’t strike me as the kind of quintessential rock and roll type guy where everything is kind of reckless and fly by the seat of the pants. You another kind of person and were you always a seeker, a seeker of some truth or integrity?

 

D.L.: I’ve always been at the heart, at the core that person although I did have my slipshod moments in my career where I acted like any other rock and roll idiot that you read about Rolling Stone or various publications but I think for the book’s sake I just really wanted to be totally like stripped down honest and almost confessional at the risk of being self-effacing. that’s what I really aimed to do because I was sort of timed to at that point in my life when I started the book I just felt like it was time to come clean and just tell the stories because a lot of the stories are intertwining and they’re interesting I think. I think people will find them interesting but I had to do it in such a way that I was just like flat honest.

 

Diane: I loved it and I love the fact that you let yourself be imperfect as a person. You showed us the good, the bad and the ugly. I do think that a memoir it’s an unburdening and sort of letting go of lots of things that you’ve been carrying around with you. I really applaud that and it’s funny you should mention Rolling Stone, you meant the magazine but I was also thinking in contrast the musicians. You have like Mick Jagger’s recording Under My Thumb and you’re in your pages in your book talking about I’m on the road. I’m sleeping with strangers. What am I doing? You’re a different kind of animal. You’re kind of a questioning person. I wanted to know the whole thing sex, drugs and rock and roll. Can you talk to us a little bit about what that was really like and maybe the loneliness that you felt while you were on the road?

 

D.L.: It was a whirlwind experience for sure because every night you’re in a different city. The whole prospect of playing before such large audiences was new to me. We were playing I think fifteen thousand, twenty thousand seaters. That was a new thing for me but interestingly enough when you’re playing to that kind of venue you really don’t see anybody because the whole house is black. It’s almost like you don’t even know that they’re there until they applaud or boo you. That was one aspect that that was kind of interesting for me.

 

Far as like the women that I met on the road and ultimately had a relationship. wouldn’t even call a relationship with but the one night stands on the road it was at that point in my life I was sort of satisfying the arrested adolescent in me. I was just trying to go with it but there was certainly a sense of an ultimate emptiness about that because it was just it was. There was no exchange there really. It was nothing substantial. It was just sex for sex sake basically. sometimes is okay but it was just a revolving door of sexual experiences that really didn’t lead anywhere or sort of left me feeling like it’s empty.

 

Diane: I also wondered if you were particularly sensitive to that emptiness and alienation having been raised by parents who, you’re adoptive parents. They were not your own biological parents but also radically different than you D. L. I mean a mother who really had very serious and we’re sympathetic to mental health issues that you coped with. I mean I don’t mean to make you the knight in shining armor. I do remember reading that I think fire setting and things that you were acting out at that time but I wondered if it made you driven or like there was a little magnet in your life kind of going towards something warmer, more whole that included love. The only love that I could detect that you found in your early life really was that of Aunt Marie and again you were a totally faithful, I would say almost nerd-like person who attended to her, always took care of her even while you were on the road doing all of this. Aunt Marie was a kind of a tether for you. I wonder what your take on that is.

 

D.L.: She was. She really was the only person around me in in my family setting that really understood me. She openly loved me dearly. My adoptive mother as you mentioned had psychological problems uh as well as being cross-addicted to prescription medications, impediments and barbiturates in particular. She had an arsenal of drugs in the kitchen cabinet which I had discovered one day coming home from school. She was always trying to sort of keep my mother at bay or trying to sort of ease her down and say he’s really not like that bad. You don’t really have to be like on his case as much as you are and he should just lighten up. She was my defender in many ways. I felt that when she fell on some difficult times it was up to me to come to her aid and that’s pretty much what happened.

 

Diane: It’s a great balance that…

 

D.L.: But to go back to get back to the sexual thing it’s like for just a minute. I think that the way that I was raised by my adoptive mother I equated love, the idea of love with sex as a result of the way I was raised somehow. the experiences that I had on the road was just with me acting out and I think in some arcane perverse way I was looking for love through that kind of active sexual activity. There’s some kind of connection there between her coldness and the way that I was raised, the love that she had for me which I’m sure she did have serious love for me but it was never expressed. It was never openly expressed in any way. There was never any hugging, no kissing, nothing. Nothing. It was cold and so somewhere in my psyche I equated love with sex. I don’t know how that happened but that’s where it went.

 

Diane: Well there you go right? You’ve said what was the missing ingredient which was contact, physical contact and maybe you were seeking it. I mean the feeling of having a warm body next to you would be a unique revelation at that point. I remember reading that your parents also believed that somehow withholding affection was like beneficial to you because they didn’t want you to get like a big head or something. I mean all of it was just tragic.

 

D.L.: That was just specific to their support or lack of that lack thereof for my musical ability. They knew that I had talents and that I was really motivated by that, by music and I really wanted to learn as much about it as I possibly could. they allowed me to sort of delve into it a bit but never gave me any like back up kind of we think you’re really good or no supportive, no word of support nothing like that. It was strange.

 

Diane: Well here I feel then I feel as though you fell back on your own resources. You cultivated some spine in yourself, some self-belief that you knew and you worked with a music teacher. Music is also this kind of it skips over like the words, the literal words that we might say to one another but you wrote songs. They’re almost like poems and I know you do write poetry now but like songs. It’s a way of expressing yourself. They were probably a little scared by it that you expressed yourself in like a terrific way. We’re going to listen to a cut of shadows of the night. Your version of it which I love but do you think you were trying to get something out of yourself as well? I mean a natural form of self-expression and creativity that you had almost like a very right brain kind of experience. You had been separated from your biological mother very early on. I do want everyone to know that you did ultimately reconnect with your biological mother and not just one but seven sisters. There’s like a whole female part of your brain, a whole female part of experience that came into your life later on.

 

D.L.: Well the part of that particular part of the story I think that was interesting is that when I was around age eight I realized that I didn’t look like either my parents. I went to my adoptive mother and I said why that is? She said well, you’re adopted which means that you’re special sort of in quotation marks in the air. Your real mother died in childbirth. I’m like okay, I’m special and what? now I’m realizing even my old brain could wrap around the fact that I’m responsible for my mother’s demise which blew me away but at the same time I’m really not believing what my mother is telling me. Maybe I didn’t want to believe it or it was something that was telling me not to believe it. I don’t know but I believe that my birth mother was indeed alive and that one day I would meet her. I carried that with me throughout my entire life until the late nineties when I finally did through a certain strange turn of events make contact with one of my middle sisters and then eventually like a week later met my mother and my seven sisters.

 

Diane: It’s something magical, fairy tale about. I love that you also had this inkling D. L. that you nurtured, you kept it alive like a little tiny flame inside yourself. It’s just the most beautiful thing and then to have it be such a big kind of reunion but I do want to play a cut of Shadows of the Night where I think we really hear in your voice a great kind of search going on. I hope we can I hope we can cue that up. How are we doing for hearing D. L. Byron’s version of Shadows of the Night?

 

[Music]

 

Diane: Because I’m not hearing the tee up but that’s quite all right. it’s something that I think must have been deeply thematic for you because you also named your book Shadows of the Night and I think it’s playing on the shadow side where everything is neatly tied up packages, the things that you suspected were not true. It’s the shadow side. The side that’s more, the more true side. You were fearless about investigating. I know you’re writing now and I hope you’re maybe writing even more songs. I don’t know. Are you?

 

D.L.: I am. I’m getting back into it although writing the book created such a mindset that I just got like not trapped in but it just enveloped me. It became like so much of such an obsession to write that book that I really could and I was thinking on a completely different level than writing songs. It’s a whole different animal. It’s something that I had never done before and I didn’t even know what I was getting into. Once I was knee deep in it I said oh my god, am I going to be able to finish this but I did. It’s been a little difficult to break out of that book writing mindset and get back into songwriting but I’m doing it so hopefully there will be more soon.

 

Diane: I hope that it was an enveloping of love because I think everybody enjoyed the fact that you did break out of the medium of songwriting albeit it’s your strength because it tells us so much more about your story. We want to hear more when we come back. I think the fact that you took the time to sit down with us and tell your story it’s so worthwhile and you got into the interior space of what it was like to be adopted, to learn that had musical genius to be unaccepted and then accepted widely and to become a star. When we come back we’re going to hear a little bit more about what happened with that dynamic. We’ll take a short break and we’ll be back with D. L. Byron. Don’t go away.

 

Become our friend on Facebook. Post your thoughts about our shows and network on our timeline. Visit facebook.com/VoiceAmerica.

 

Has your manuscript languished because you can’t find the direction it wants to take or have you lost the motivation to finish and polish it for publication because it can be such a big formidable task? Let Diane Dewey help you resolve your writing issues. Diane’s manuscript coaching offers help with sticking points like the arc of your story and how to flesh it out, finding the inner story and what you want to say, developing your message revelations that become your reader’s takeaways, helping to rally the motivation to finish your project and what to do next. We can analyze, edit and advise you on publishing. Who are the next collaborators on your writing path? If you seek resolution to these and other questions please contact Diane Dewey author of the award-winning memoir Fixing the Fates. Find her at trunordmedia.com. That’s T-R-U-N-O-R-D.com on her author’s page dianedewey.com. Diane can also be found through social media. Connect with her through the links on the show page.

 

Have you checked out Teen Wealth Radio? It’s a show for teens, their parents and educators. Hosted by Brandy England. Along with regular weekly contributors Teen Wealth Radio will cover the topics that teens need to talk about plus we discuss a book of the week and a movie of the week. Each show will offer a challenge to our teen listeners that they can share on our private Facebook group page. be sure to tune in to Teen Wealth Radio live every Thursday at 8 PM Eastern Time, 5 PM Pacific on Voice America Variety.

 

You are listening to Dropping In with Diane Dewey. We’d love to hear from you if you have a question or comment about the show. Send us an email to ddewey@trunordmedia.com. That’s the letter ddewey@trunordmedia.com. Now back to Dropping In.

 

Diane: During the break D. L. we were talking about how books can be a companion and you have read voraciously. Tell me about some of the things, some of the authors and ideas that kept you going as you took this journey.

 

D.L.: It started out when I was a teenager and I just began to read. I was severely dyslexic and still am. I forced myself to read. I think a lot of people who suffer with this dyslexia tend to sort of give up. I just forced myself. I read a lot of the classics when I was a kid and then I sort of got into, as I got into songwriting I got into modern poetry E. Cummings, Ferlinghetti, T. S. Eliot, people like that. I became completely enamored with what was going. being a big fan of Bob Dylan also that sort of sort of connected to all those, connected the dots a little bit because Dylan at the time when he went electric started his writing changed and he started to really sort of play with words or paint with words almost.

 

I just got into that whole sort of way of expressing some kind of twisted imagery that was unique and said something entirely unexpected and different. That was very inspiring to me and became integrated into my songwriting.

 

Diane: Well I love paint with words because I know that you actually are painting these days. You’re not the only recording artist to have done so but do you feel as though that increases like a dimension in yourself to be able to paint as well?

 

D.L.: I feel like it’s therapy for me in a way. I don’t know if what I do is any good. It doesn’t really matter to me. I just have to do it. That’s the kind of the nature of the work that I’m doing now. I paint on the floor.

 

Diane: Like Jackson Pollock.

 

D.L.: Yes, I was just going to say. The kind of stuff that I do it’s sort of like a Jackson Pollock on acid throwing up on the floor.

 

Diane: Cool but you don’t have to be on acid and you don’t really have to be throwing up either.

 

D.L.: No, I don’t but that’s what it kind of looks like. That’s what the stuff kind of looks like but not quite Pollock but it’s just sort of like I don’t know. They’re like sort of psychscapes I think in a way.

 

Diane: They’re free and like autonomous painting where it comes straight out of your psyche.

 

D.L.: Pretty much. They’re just totally like subconscious or unconsciously done. Whatever they are, they are. They sort of create themselves. I think in a way that’s what all art is about. It’s about the individual just becoming a vessel in a way and you get your ego and yourself, your big self out of the way so that the art can sort of create itself. That’s true in in songwriting I know because a song like Shadows of the Night. That in particular was written in like 15 or 20 minutes. It’s basically a question of me just saying okay, I’m at the piano. I’ve got a pad and a pencil and just go. Then it just happened. Those are usually the best songs.

 

Diane: Totally, I mean you’re unmediated. You’re not judging yourself, your egos. You’re standing to one side. Also, I mean to me that’s fascinating that you’re able to access. The other thing you were able to access I think was a kind of a psychic ability. I mean did you actually experience kind of unbidden messages from even your biological mother or I mean at times you’ve been very, very intuitive. I wondered if you thought that this creativity and this intuition were linked and whether or not that was something that you inherited. It’s just you? I mean certainly you’ve had a number of sources. What do you feel about that?

 

D.L.: I knew at a pretty early age that there was something about me that I didn’t understand. I would get these images that would pop into my head. I would never be able to figure out where they came from until later on down the road. It would actually transpire and I’d say oh right. Wow, I thought of about like six months ago or three months ago or something. I knew I had something going on but I wasn’t quite sure what it was.

 

I basically lived my whole life sort of intuitively but not really knowingly. It just happened that way and as it turns out when I finally met my birth mother she is or was very psychic. Some of my sisters are especially one in particular, the youngest Sandy. She’s very, very gifted but they don’t seem to really want to be so much in touch with that part of themselves. I think that people who have that going on in their life sometimes are put off by that may be scared to go there but I I’ve sort of figured out that it’s just part of me and I should be welcoming of it and to try to nurture it as best I can because it’s a very useful tool.

 

Diane: Sure. It’s your super power. I think normal mortals, this is like going back to Bewitched. There’s mortals and you can’t blame people for wanting to have normal lives. You fortunately have a life where you’ve been able to expand out into a world of creativity and the things that you’re saying just strike me as being creativity defined. Not knowing where images, impressions or sounds even were coming from. Just allowing yourself, I wondered if your practice of meditation and your study of Buddhism also enabled your ability to stand aside from your ego and allow this juice to flow, your flow to happen.

 

D.L.: That’s really what meditation is all about. Of course the Buddha talked about life is suffering but he also offered sort of the remedy to that which is the stillness that we find through meditation. That’s when there is no ego. You’re not always able to get there. I mean just try as you may I mean you could have a regular meditational practice that where you do it every day for a certain amount of time maybe twice a day. You don’t always get to the same point each time but you do get somewhere and it’s worthwhile doing.

 

The more you do it, the more you understand that your ego is the thing that’s chattering all the time. It’s that part of your mind well, the Buddhists call it monkey mind. You can see how that metaphor is this accurate because it’s something that’s just jumping around and screaming all the time. Most people allow that to control their lives unfortunately. They never realized that they identify with that and they think that’s their self but it’s not.

 

Diane: Right exactly. I mean you’ve you at least, I love that you sort of when you meditate sometimes you just get to turn down the volume on that but lots of people aren’t trying. They think we’re supposed to be governed by our mental selves and I think you’ve found a way through that again you’ve done a lot of uncovering. You’ve gotten yourself to a point where you’re listening almost to a different vibration, a different vibrational place where you go. Of course as a fellow writer I can attest that putting, we’re just words on a page. It’s a different medium. It’s a different vibe. I think we talked a little bit about this before but I think our audience is going to want to know if you’re working on some songs, if you want to go back to that more artistic place not that the book isn’t because it’s a great read. It’s a compelling read I could not put down but I do want to hear what’s next for you and what is your next vision?

 

D.L.: I honestly don’t know. I’ve been performing a lot more recently and I’m really enjoying that. I’m starting to write songs again so I guess I’m going to go there as well. As far as writing another book I kind of feel like I’m supposed to or that I might but I don’t know what it’s going to be.

 

Diane: Okay, we’re on the edge of our seat now D. L. you don’t have to tell us but this is super groovy to be, to expect wow, maybe we’re going to hear more.

 

D.L.: I don’t know. I need a little distance from the first book before I even like broached that issue but there’s part of me that could see myself writing another book. What it’s going to be I have no clue.

 

Diane: That’s probably even better. It’s going to announce itself someday when you least expect it. I’m going to read just a short passage from D. L. Byron’s Shadows of the Night at the point where your adoptive mom has passed away. You write I just wanted to understand the pain inside my chest. It was like a Molotov cocktail of both heartbreak and relief working simultaneously to confuse and torture me. Of course I had loved her. I just didn’t know if it was the normal love a son has for his mother.

 

I mean this language it’s taking us, it’s transporting us into a place. I just want to thank you for that and I also understand that and I just encourage everyone to delve into this. I encourage you D. L. as a writer who’s now established a couple different platforms just keep going. I think we’ve got a message now that our song, your song. This is not the only song you wrote. There are other fabulous songs on your LPs. I’d encourage everyone to look you up. Your website dlbyron.com and your great production company Zen Archer which fabulous. You’re obviously a Sagittarius.

 

D.L.: People can go to the website and check out my music and there’s also a link to buy the book. It’ll take you to Amazon if you’re interested. Check that out.

 

Diane: That’s great. Okay, I’m going to, I’m going to ask now that we play your song the wonderfully compelling song Shadows of the Night in your very, very own voice D. L Byron.

 

[Music]

 

Thank you so much for dropping in. please join Diane Dewey again next Friday at 8 AM Pacific Time and 11 AM Eastern Time on the Voice America Variety Channel. We’ll see you then.