To be or not to be

Joe wrote a nice bit here about waiting for the song writing dog to return home in the wake of recovery. I told a bunch of lies to others and myself in my youth about what I wanted to be when I grew up...but I'm pretty sure that the real thing I wanted to be was a songwriter. But in that way that you want things and don't work for them...I made no effort towards this goal for the majority of my life. I wrote one song before age 23 and it was a terrible song that is thankfully long gone now. Then, for a couple of years, I was prolific (at least for me). I think I wrote maybe 9 over a few years. Then I went quiet again until like 2006...when I wrote another half dozen or so. I think that of the whole catalog there's probably 2 or 3 worth keeping...and even those need work. I've never bothered to study song writing or to ask anyone for help. And I've never spent any amount of time trying. If I don't sit down and spit something out fully formed in ten minutes I give up. So it is no great surprise that I am not much of a song writer. Writing songs takes inherit talent, sure...but it is also a craft that one learns and practices and fails and then gets better at. I've done none of those things.

Along about the time that I quit PdF I figured out that I am not meant to be a band leader. A front person. A singer song writer. Part of it is that I'm not very good at the musical part (singing and playing guitar and being a showman) and it is a competative and judgemental business (only the best really survive). But even more than that is I found that I didn't like it. I didn't like being in charge and I didn't like being in the spot light. So I headed full time to the drums and bass. And things are much more comfortable over there even though I'm not sure that I'm any better at those things. but for some reason, giving up front person status equated to giving up song writing.

I'm not really sad about this and I really haven't thought much about it. I've got plenty of musical goals and song writing just isn't one of them anymore. These days I'm much more interested in learning what others have done note for note. That's what excites me these days. Even writing original drum parts isn't that much fun. It's nerve wracking. I like copying other people. I guess I'm shallow that way...but it is more satisfying. I have some sense that what I'm working on is worth listening to...and I have some idea when I'm finished and have achieved my goal. And people like what they know...and they don't usually know your original music. And I like all of that.

But I can understand where Joe is coming from. Change...especially the kind of change we share right now...is weird. You really do become a different person. I'm sure he's used to reinvention by now...but there's a difference between moving towards something you crave and feel comfortable with...and moving away from something dear to you. I find strange things changing about myself. I'm fairly certain that if I don't regress to old behavoir that I will be a totally different person in a year or so. Not better per se...just really different. It's exciting...but a little scary. And it is hard work. Constant hard work. Constant exhausting hard work. And some days it is easier to let go of all that and not do the work and do something dumb and numbing instead. Maybe someday I'll get over that periodic return to stupidity...but I have a feeling it won't happen for a while yet. Luckily it happens less often these days at least.

I hope your dog comes home Joe...but if he doesn't that's ok too. Maybe there's a whole new chapter for you that you could never have imagined. It's a funny old thing, life.