We were lucky to catch up with BK Of BK & the Understanding recently and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, so we’re so thrilled to have BK with us today – welcome and maybe we can jump right into it with a question about one of your qualities that we most admire. How did you develop your work ethic? Where do you think you get it from?
The simple answer: my father. My dad grew up working on a small ranch in Hico, Texas and being taught the value and importance of hard, honest work. After he graduated high school, he went to trade school and eventually became an HVAC/R (heating, ventilation, air conditioning/refrigeration) technician, where he stood out for his work ethic. By the time I hit my teen years, my mother had become pregnant with my younger brother and my parents launched my dad’s HVAC business, which he still operates today. It was during this time that I became my dad’s helper during summer breaks from school and my dad instilled in me a good work ethic. This was no easy task for him, as by default I was arguably a lazy person, but over years of commitment, my dad successfully taught me to work and feel good about earning my wages.
Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?
I am BK of BK & the Understanding, a Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington (DFW-A), Texas-based alternative rock band that I tell locals is a “red dirt alternative” band. If you live in Texas and are looking for an alternative to “red dirt” music, we are your band—please request us at your favorite venues or contact us for booking. I’m a freelance writer by day and songwriter by night. You can support me by buying our music from our Bandcamp page, helping us book shows, coming to our shows and buying our merch, and subscribing to our Twitch and YouTube channels. I hope to add a Patreon and similar websites to the option of ways to support us soon. You may also support me by subscribing to my Headfone.co channel, where content I write gets published as audio shows. Right now my first show, a romantic comedy called Brandon’s Retreat, is up for your listening pleasure.
I’m a passionate writer and creative who likes to use creative outlets to cover philosophical truths that help us better understand our reality and purpose in this thing we call life. I’m a hopeful progressive aiming to inspire people to live better and more impactful lives. Sometimes this includes harsh criticisms or playful satires, and sometimes it’s just pure inspiration. BK & the Understanding is my most-passionate and forthright outlet for these purposes, and to date we have created art that celebrates, critiques, inspires, and jokes about life in 21st-century America.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
I would say the three most impactful skills or qualities in my journey have been spirituality, an unquenchable desire to know and better understand Truth, and the bravery to acknowledge, confront, and change my own character flaws and mistakes while also enjoying victories and compliments.
Spirituality and my unyielding pursuit of Truth can in fact be coupled together, though they are separate in their own rights. In my formative years, meditation fostered understanding and was crucial in me forming better character in myself. It cannot be stated enough how crucial our spiritual well-being and active awareness and involvement in our spiritual journeys in life are to both our lives and the betterment of the world we live in. If more of us, theoretically all of us, knew and abided in our higher selves, our “holy” or “righteous” selves, then the world would be and become vastly different. There are direct correlations to the planet’s and societies’ well-beings to our own.
Seeing and knowing Truth is just as important, but we cannot ever effectively see or understand Truth if we neglect our spiritual well-being. We cannot rightly discern any truth if we are out of tune with our higher selves. For example, if I’m abusing alcohol or other substances, these will directly impact my mind, body, and emotional state, causing me to become numb to Truth and my higher-self and can cause me to believe there is no purpose or objective Truth to even be known, and I will repeat destructive, hopeless cycles of futility where I can only see doom and darkness ahead. On the flip-side, if I abide in the Truth I know and live in accordance to my higher self, my life will be filled with hope and the strength to endure hardships and face threats in a manner that deflects the doom-and-gloom reality by bringing forth a better reality, one that will endure. Our individual realities have influence on the collective reality.
And this leads to the third quality or skill, to be able to confront and change for the better one’s own character. If we are actively participating in our spiritual journey and living in the Truth we know, then we will be able to also more objectively evaluate and improve upon our own behaviors, character, and learn from our own mistakes. Coincidentally, this also increases our compassion and empathy toward our fellow humans, as well as the animals and other crucial lifeforms, that we share the planet with. We all have flaws and make mistakes, and it is crucial that we engage in self-evaluation and improvement. Just as important, however, is accepting ourselves as we are and celebrating the good about ourselves and the successes and victories we have and make. There must be a balance between confronting our demons per se and enjoying our good qualities and progress. If we are in-tune with our higher selves, we will recognize when our lower-selves are brought into the spotlight, and we will be able to interrogate and arrest the guilty parties, parties being our flaws or errors in this case.
All the wisdom you’ve shared today is sincerely appreciated. Before we go, can you tell us about the main challenge you are currently facing?
Money. I’m constantly trying to figure this one out. I won’t lie—I’m poor. No one wants to buy music anymore, streaming services do not pay independent bands like BK & the Understanding, and capitalism is at its breaking point, as it exploits labor to the point of no guaranteed pay at all in the case of us writers and artists. The cost of living (COL) goes up while wages stagnate and become of lesser value over time, which is also true of our time and labor due to the soaring COL and stagnate wages. Wealth inequality directly correlates to poverty, hunger, and homelessness, but no powers that be challenge these evils but instead maintain the status quo. Money is the number one obstacle. So, if you are reading this and are privileged enough to still have stable and expendable income, you could help both BK & the Understanding and particularly me out by going to our Bandcamp page, buying all of our music from us and subscribing to our Twitch and YouTube channels and my Headfone channel. Those are ways you can directly impact my life and BK & the Understanding’s existence. When we have a Patreon or other subscriptions sites ready, subscribing on those also will directly help us. You could even tip us via Venmo or PayPal right now actually. If you are also poor, keep helping us with your time and attention and spreading our art and music, our posts on social media, and volunteer your time to help us out. Your support means everything to us.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://bkandtheunderstanding.bandcamp.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bkandtheunderstanding
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bkandtheunderstanding
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/@bkandtheunderstanding
- Other: Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/bkandtheunderstanding Headfone: https://www.headfone.co.in/channel/brandons-retreat/?language=14
Image Credits
BK, Rocky Lea, & Arynn Tomson.
