rhythma - sean michael imler

Music for the heart, mind, and spirit...

Rhythma Blog

Benefit concert for the Support Network this Saturday NightNovember 8th, 2010


The benefit concert for the Support Network (www.supportnetwork.org), the domestic violence program of the YWCA of Silicon Valley, is happening this Saturday! Every cent of your $20 will go to this cause, and the music will be great.

HARMONIES FOR HEALTHY RELATIONSHIPS
An Intimate Evening of Acoustic Music

Saturday, November 13th, 2010 at 7:30pm
Mission City Coffee Roasting Company
2221 The Alameda, Santa Clara, CA 95050
Tickets $20, sold at the door only.

ARTIST LINE-UP:

Sean Michael Imler
Rhythma
www.rhythma.com

Rebecca & Gary Parks
www.rebeccaparksmusic.com

Tim Schwalbach & Mike Masuda,
The Incredible Shrinking Band

Daphna Rahmil
www.daphnarahmil.com

Even if you can’t make the show, please visit the Support Network website and consider volunteering or donating. I’ve been volunteering for almost two years now, and it’s been very rewarding to watch victims become survivors and take back their lives.

Prophetic DreamsOctober 15th, 2010


On the morning of Sept 23, I had an interesting dream: I was in an automotive repair shop standing at the counter talking to the manager, who just happened to be my real-life manager at my real-life job. He was showing me a picture of a steering wheel and a set of tale pipes. He said that I had to replace these parts on my car but that they didn’t carry these particular parts and I needed to go get them myself. I’ve been keeping a dream journal for about 20 years or more, so I’m pretty good at interpreting dreams. I remember waking up from this dream and thinking, “Wow, that’s a pretty clear indicator that my boss is telling me that I need to do my own steering, find my own means of propelling. I wonder if I’m going to lose my job?”

As it turns out, we’d just had a re-org the day before, so I could say that I was having an anxiety dream. I went to work that morning, logged into my computer, and no sooner had I been there for 10 minutes, my boss grimly approaches me and tells me he needs to talk with me, and it’s not good news. I remember my skin crawling as I followed him downstairs to an empty conference room, where he informed me that there was no easy was to say it so he was just going to come out with it. I got “the package” as I call it. I throwback to the dot bomb days when I worked for another company that laid off about 75 people in one day. I remember standing in the stairwell with other co-workers, waiting to see if the whomever was behind the closed door with exit with or without a “package.” I always wanted to submit that to Wired Mag’s Jargon Watch. Maybe I still should.

Sept 28: I have to set the stage for this to put the experience in context. I needed to get a new receiver for my stereo system because the old one ate CDs, ate tapes, and was now sending the volume in all sorts of directions when turning the volume nob. I was done with the Awai POS so was scouring the craigslist ads and trying to learn about latest connections on receivers in a short period of time while trying to find something modern to support them and at a reasonable price, since I’d just lost my job the week before. The day before, I’d called on an Onkyo that looked promising. The guy who owned it lived quite far but worked fairly close to my home, so we agreed to meet at or near his work the next morning.

Dream Sequence, Sept 29: There’s a woman that I’m observing, and yet is a part of me. She is a living on a compound with a group of others. The compound building in which she is in the courtyard, is ranch style; building on three sides and open on the fourth. Her building is under siege and she’s just been shot while she was going to retrieve what looks like a large off-white Nerf football. She picks it up, presses it against her injury and pleads with the person who shot her to not shoot her again, that she’s already very well injured. I guess because she’s female, the perpetrator holds off shooting her again and gets up and starts to cross the courtyard as she is heading down a short flight of stairs and into a doorway. But instead of stepping thru the door right off, she turns and blasts the guy with the M16 she’s carrying. He’s really caught off guard by this and protests at her shooting him but he explains that she made no deal not to shoot back if the guy was going to be stupid enough to expose his whereabouts. She finally steps thru the door, leaving her victim in whatever state, and shuts it behind her and starts walking up the hallway toward the infirmary. Even thought she’s walking past people, no one notices her because the critical nature of the siege.

So, the guy calls me at 11am, right on time. He gives me the location where I’m going to meet him. The timing is perfect as I’ll be heading to my therapist’s office for my appt. at noon. I get in the truck and I’m about 10 minutes into my journey when my cell rings. It’s the guy. He tells me that he’s changed his mind and that he’s decided not to sell the unit. My normal reaction would most likely have been fairly passive and I would’ve said, “That’s okay, I understand that you’re having a change of heart, it’s a pretty good deal.” But no… not after I’d already spoken to him on the phone earlier, and I’m close to 15 minutes away from home driving in the opposite direction of my noon appt. I was kinda pissed. I said, “Couldn’t you have reached this conclusion at some other time when I’m not already on the road to meet you and I’ve arranged my morning to do this?! Jeez!”

After I’d hung up, I decided that it didn’t make sense to go back home so I drove to my noon appt. and made a business call along the way that gave me time to conduct. I discussed the dream with my therapist and realized that the dream predicted the occurrence with the guy over the stereo and that I’d take the dream to the infirmary, i.e my therapist.

Dream Sequence, Oct 6: I’m with George and we’re at an archeological and anthropological site where a tribe of natives to the area once lived, and now is an historical preserve of the tribe’s living environment, complete with tree houses, with ramps leading around the place, kind of like an Ewok village. We’re there, looking to discover some unfound remnant of this tribe and talking about not going into the preserve where the possibility of finding something is most likely futile. We’re walking down a ramp from the village and I stop because I see a very large cat that would be best avoided. It’s dark gray with almost black stripes on it’s back, and has the appearance of a bobcat with an even larger body and tail. George just continues talking and not even seeing that huge creature, and I’m telling George to watch to his right but he’s completely ignoring the cat. He walks to the bottom of the ramp and turns to the left with his back to the cat and still, not a clue that this thing it a mere 5 feet from him. I’m expecting the worst when suddenly… the cat turns around and walks the other way. I’m astonished, nearly peeing myself at this point. I walk down the ramp and grab him and drag him back up to the top where I can see the cat walking away thru the slit in a couple pieces of stacked timber. I have George look but he still doesn’t really see what he’s looking for. I’m gabberflasted and wake up.

This was another therapist day, and with this dream still on my mind, I get to the office and start talking with her. She’s not happy with me because I’d not made my Paypal payment for my previous two session like I was supposed to. She was telling me that it was affecting her personal feelings toward me and that if I wasn’t able to keep my end of the agreement, she may need to terminate our relationship. I apologized and told her that I understood how she felt and that I was a complete airhead for not remembering and that it wasn’t right for me to not follow thru. Also, it was difficult for me to remember such things because all of my finances are on auto-pay and auto-submit, just so that I don’t have to worry about not making payments. Once this conversation was concluded, I mentioned that I’d had a dream this morning and proceeded to tell her about the dream in detail. She asked me what George represented too me. I told her that he was an airhead and boom, I completely connected the whole dream to the conversation we’d just had 5 minutes prior. She was the cat. Our conversation could’ve turned into a nasty conflict depending on how both of us conducted ourselves, and the preserve was representative of the exploratory uncovering that we did in her office and my psyche.

Now, you could say what Robert Anton Wilson says, “What the thinker thinks, the prover proves.” But I’m not so sure, especially the first dream which I had interpreted before the occurrence happened. I’ve been dreaming like crazy lately but haven’t held onto them for memory’s sake. The dreams just haven’t seemed that juicy, but… isn’t it interesting?

Economist Article About Gay MarriageOctober 13th, 2010


Excerpt:
“THE debate over gay marriage is at the heart of many races in America’s mid-term elections. On Sunday October 10th Carl Paladino, the Republican candidate for governor of New York, said that children should not be “brainwashed” into thinking that homosexuality was acceptable and that he would veto any gay-marriage bill.”

My retort:
Mr. Paladino… You yourself have been brainwashed into thinking that it’s not acceptable. Can’t you open your eyes and see the irony. Your biggest fears are staring you right in the face. Your biggest opportunities to personal growth and happiness are obviously your acceptance of others differences. Amazing that you’re a leader with this kind of bigotry and hatred in your soul. You can do better.

Read full article:
http://www.economist.com/node/17227800?fsrc=nwl

My New Band, Souljourne Playing Saturday Night – souljourne.comSeptember 25th, 2010


Well, you know I’ve been doing this solo thing for quite a long time now, and I love having guest musicians performing with me. However, I stumbled into a really great situation recently. I was having a hand analysis done by a talented man named Todd Zimmerman who combines palmistry with medical hand analysis to help you with life purpose information. It was very fascination and really accurate. Anyhow, after chatting for a while, turns out he’s a didgeridoo player and hand percussionist, and his group was looking to possibly add a guitar player. So I went and jammed with them and it was utter magic. The music combines my guitar and percussion with their amazing wooden flute player Kenneth Hooper, and bassist and percussionist Daryl Lowery. As you can see, there’s a lot of percussion and a great dance vibe. The music is world beat tribal rock (that’s my description anyhow).

We’ve done two gigs so far, one at the Campbell farmer’s market which was exceedingly well received, and another at The Institute for Transpersonal Psychology which was awesome. Everything is really fresh with us and much of what we play is improvised, but we’re starting to get a nice collection of songs together. But the vibe is awesome.

You can check out some music clips I’ve recorded on our new web site which we just launched yesterday.

Souljourne.com — Please sign up on our mailing list there.

This Saturday night, September 25, we’ll be playing a great show in Mountain View at 7:30pm at a yoga center.

Yoga Is Youthfulness Studio
590 Castro Street
Mountain View, CA
Tickets – $25
For tix and info, go to http://yogaisyouth.com or call 650-964-5277

I realize the ticket price is a little steep. It was set up before I joined the group and the yoga center set the price. However, I will make sure that no one is turned away for lack of funds. As far as I’m concerned, it’s a sliding scale, just ask for me. I want to encourage you to come out and join the experience. The energy will be beautiful and some wonderful spirits and angels will be present.

Me and George MichaelAugust 1st, 2010


George Michael and I were driving around in a convertible thru a quaint little town with beautiful trees. We were working on the song, “A Different Corner” that I’d never heard with vocal harmonies. He was singing it and I was working on the harmony parts. In the meantime, we were looking for antiques and driving thru an area with a lot of antique stores, but it was a weekend afternoon and the parking was complicated. I was coming up with some nice harmonies and it was a fun day.

I’m Batman, DammitJuly 27th, 2010


So, I realize that I’m Batman and Robin and I are stuck on the rooftop of an enormous building in the industrial part of Gotham. The Joker has taken our utility belts and has them wrapped around an air vent not too far away. The problem is, the physics of the environment are all screwed up. If I go to take a swing, my arm flies along a completely unintentional trajectory. If I try to walk, it feels like my legs weigh 1k lbs. Robin is having the exact same problem and we’re looking at each other exasperated at the unfruitful efforts we’re making to defend ourselves against The Joker, who is kicking our asses. He apparently knows how to function perfectly in this environment and probably created it, and he’s not only fully capable but seems to have extended his abilities to making himself elastic-like and is stretching his arms and punching me in the face from both sides at the same time, yet standing about 4 feet from me, when I can actually catch a glimpse of him. It’s pretty awful.

Rob’s TattooJune 22nd, 2010


I was in the house I grew up in with my Mom and step monster, Rob. We were in the living room near the piano going thru boxes of some sort and we were all getting along alright although I had some misgivings. Rob wasn’t wearing a shirt and I noticed that he had a really unusual tattoo on him but I didn’t want to look too closely because the strange feeling I had about the situation.

We got done going thru the boxes and my Mom left the room. I walked over and sat on the couch. Rob took off the rest of his clothes and wrapped up his lower half with some sort of sarong and started walking over toward me. I watched him more intently now and noticed that the tattoo appeared to start on his back and it was a geographical map of a city. All over his back were large glass beads that had been placed into cuts in his skin that had healed over with a hole to reveal the glass bead inside. I was really astounded.

When he sat down near me, I asked him about the tattoo. He showed me the from of it and I noticed the name “Elvis” on it, and I realized that part of the city layout was a cemetery in Memphis, TN. I asked him if the tattoo was Memphis and he replied that it was taken from a very old map “before the Brazilians arrived.” I really didn’t know what he meant by that but he showed me how the tattoo wrapped around onto his stomach into a large open scroll with a lot of writing. I started reading it but unfortunately don’t remember what it said anymore than it was some sort of historical perspective on the period.

Folk Without Borders, a Benefit for Doctors Without BordersMay 27th, 2010


This is going to be a great night of music @ The Blue Rock Shoot in Saratoga, CA on June 6th, starting at 6:30pm. It’s a benefit for my favourite charitable cause, Doctors Without Borders. Admission is a requested donation of $10 and 100% of the proceeds from the door will go to Doctors Without Borders.

Playing will be folk rock artist Rhythma, SF Bay Area’s power folk trio Tin Cat, and Americana singer/songwriter Chris Hanson. Food, wine and beer are available at the venue and there’s plenty of parking in the back if you can’t find it on the street. Get there early because seating is limited.

Folk Without Borders

Folk Without Borders

Artshots Film PresentationMay 25th, 2010


I got an email from my friend, Vincent Lowe about a week ago asking if I’d run sound for an event he was putting on at San Pedro Square Theatre in downtown San Jose. The event was called “Art Shots” and it was a small competition sponsored and facilitated by Artsopolis and Vincent Lowe to connect film makers to artists. The film makers would choose an artist that they wanted to interview and produce a 90 second film clip describing the artist. The event was the culmination of the competition, showing many of the films that were submitted and rewarding the winners. The grand price was awarded to ArtShots 2010, Carl Couchman.

The best part for me were the excellent live performances of artists from the competition, Amy Obenski and Tin Cat. I talked with the guys from Tin Cat and they’ve agreed to play with Rhythma at the Doctors Without Borders concert at The Blue Rock Shoot in Saratoga on Sunday, June 6th at 6:30pm.

Geronimo GarMay 23rd, 2010


I was standing in a room with a man in his early 30’s, tall, dark hair, dark skin, clean shaven, possibly Puerto Rican. We were talking with a woman in a dark suit. She was in her 50’s, dark hair, educated. The conversation had gone into the topic of 60’s and 70’s television programs and she was talking about programs that the man didn’t know about. I don’t recall the names she used. I was given a book that had the name of the dark skinned man at the top of the first page. His name was Geronimo Gar.


Purchase Sean's original art at
Photography Prints
Get Rhythma paraphenalia at cafepress.com

Check out the list of sites on the internet that I think make a difference.