Days of Future Past

In retrospective contemplation, I feel compelled to say I'm better off because of how life's worked out, opportunities I've had for taking certain paths instead of others.

What if I'm not better off, though?

Perhaps "better" is a coping mechanism. Perhaps I don't have better, while I do have now. This is where and when I am, but seen parallel, other options could potentially be much better under certain analysis.

Who am I to judge the man who made different decisions simply because I did not? Different circumstances. Different consequences.

Is he a failure who seized the opportunities I didn't?

Then again, could I have really done differently as I sit here with separate results in a separate reality. (Free will sometimes seems a shaky concept in hindsight.)

Right now does not equal better. It could have, I suppose, but I dare to admit than in my case it doesn't. This recognition is the meaning of regret.

I would imagine that hope, as far as free will is concerned, lies in that chance we might make the choice that not only seems the wisest at the time but whose consequences would stand up to the scrutiny of all other possible situations. It's the hope that even if the best is too far off, better off is right around the corner. Not only that, but it may just be in our hands.

Real life, after all—the one they told you will start just as soon as you're done doing whatever you're doing now—is the conglomeration of a whole lot of misplaced priorities.

Where Am I and Who Are All These Crazies?

Been bringing in some really cool folks to record on the new album lately, and between all of them and the utterly fantastic engineer with whom I get to work, I am simply surrounded by talent and kindness. The creative energy truly just drowns that tiny room in some not-so-fancy but still very much brilliant and exciting ways.

I mean, check this out:

That right there is the phenomenal Ashley Wright laying down some mind-blowingly cool piano parts (think Mozart meets One Republic) for a track that the wicked talented Whitney McCombs  had sung on (read: broke hearts into a million pieces) only a few days prior. I've also had my dear friend Chris Murphy adding some very catchy guitar stuff, and am hoping to bring in some more of my friends—old and new—quite soon. 

This is all so exciting. I mean, I just played a house show with a whole bunch of artists I'd never met. Every one of them was so nice and encouraging and...TALENTED. I'm surrounded by it, drowning in it, engulfed in the mighty wave that is this crazy town and its crazy people. 

I know I've spent a lot of time on this blog complaining and philosophizing (more like angsting, which should really be a word) at length about what's wrong with my life down here. I now have a place to stay for relatively cheap rent, a job that, despite a certain amount of soul-destroying, allows me to live in said place and eat food and pay for gas and buy music stuff and so on... Still, though, there lingers questions of morality in being a part of so many corrupt systems. Those questions haven't disappeared (though going from a car to a bed has made me realize how blurry the lines between societal classes really are). 

However, being generally pretty depressed means I have to find ways to lift my head up and keep pressing forward. Honestly and with all the sincerity in my heart, I tell you the only way I have been able to do that is the fantastically genuine and supportive group of creative folks I've met down here. It is often hard for me to believe I have friends or to know what to do with them once I've got 'em, but these folks are good, unusually honest (and quite excitable about new ideas), and fairly patient with me.  

I hesitate to say that is through others we find ourselves, but perhaps in the midst of others we can at very least get some fairly overwhelming levels of feedback. 

Good, bad, inconclusive. 

People. 

>sigh<

Voting or Not

So I’m not the smartest and didn’t really do my homework. I knew I was registered to vote…in PA. I live in TN now, but my registration hasn’t changed. I thought I could do the absentee ballot thing, but I’m neither a student nor in the military. I’d have to fly back to PA and vote in the county of my license there. This makes sense and I’m not saying it’s wrong or anything like that. However, I can’t afford to fly to PA without taking a pretty big risk of not being able to afford November’s rent. 

So am I too poor to vote? Maybe. Maybe not. 

Did I really want to vote in the first place? Maybe. Maybe not. 

You see I believe that exercising my right to vote is an important part of preserving one of the great symbols of what’s still good about the US. Still, with the electoral college and battleground states and lying douchebags running for both of the two major parties, it is mostly just a symbol. 

Does your vote matter and should you vote if you can? Yeah, I believe so.

Will you then be responsible for choosing between two politicians? Obviously.

So it’s kind of a relief to be honest. The president doesn’t have as much power as this season makes us think, and no matter what/who gets elected. The way that you live in your local area, loving your neighbor and all that, will make a bigger contribution than your vote will. 

(and I was prob gonna vote for Jill Stein anyway)

What Really Matters (Art for Art Sake)?

By the end of this month, a few things might transpire in my topsy-turvyish little life. 1) I stay at a job that is making me feel increasingly miserable no matter how hard I try to see the bright side, and I then miss out on some really great opportunities as my soul slowly melts like an overly hydrated wicked witch of the west. 2) I find another, at least somewhat more palatable job, one which allows me to either start after or start and still take off for those "great opportunities" (one of which includes maybe playing a show), and quit my current job. Or 3) I find myself at a place where I must choose between leaving a job for aforementioned opportunities or staying at a job where it's okay to mislead your employees about their ability to take off for said opportunities as well as melting their souls on a daily basis. It's a statistical improbability that everyone hates their day job, right? Right?

All that to say I'm trying to get into a better situation—one which will not only allow me to continue to live under a roof but also free up time in the right places so I can continue recording and performing and writing my book and countless other creative endeavors. My current job (and most other entry-level jobs by their descriptions at least) require an elementary to early high school level education, and yet somehow the employment process makes it seem like I'm not qualified for any of them. I really hope all those folks in my "class" who graduate this coming May find themselves in a very different situation than the one I've been in. (If not, please know it is possible to drastically lower your middle class standards for what is an acceptable level of number of showers per month if necessary...2 maybe 3 sounds good.)

  

On another note, I've met a lot of fantastically talented songwriters in this town, but I've become to notice a trending dichotomy. There is this line between those that write as an art and those that write as a craft. The former shatter open a bottle of their inner most thoughts and feelings, pouring out an over-exposed, blurred mess of gut-wrenching, heart-squeezing, tear-jerking REAL set to music. The latter build a machine, cog by cog, with such finely tuned precision that it basically spits out radio play and awards to give itself. There have been a few throughout contemporary music history who have been able to bounce back and forth across this line, bringing handfuls of one side to the other. No one can traverse the tightrope all the way across that gorge, though (all that plays at my work is late 70s to today's pop music and I've yet to truly find correlation besides bipolar relationship issues). 

I'd almost rather have something real that rips my foot off and feeds it to me still raw and bleeding than a tin toy that timidly trots over and coaxes my toes into tapping. (alliteration overkill, oh well.)

A friend today asked me if the whole point really was to become rich and famous or to even be heard or if art for art sake could be enough. I used to think, used to hope that it could be. 

Back then I slept in my car for two months and was more creative than I'd been in years. Now I'm paying rent and hating my job and trying to find not just the time but the motivation to keep creating. After a long day of work, it seems almost impossible to crank out the same level of material that I made when my life was either so taken care of or so desperate that I couldn't or didn't have to worry about much. Growing up or in school or when I was just roaming, the art was all I had. Now, all I have is getting through the day... adulthood, by some definitions. 

I still believe art for art sake should be enough. I still strive to be someone who creates out of the deep, honest places in my soul, because that's just who I am. But then I gotta pay rent, and I gotta eat, and I gotta this and that. You know the propaganda. 

All I can think, though, is what's the point if what you gotta do to keep living takes away what makes your life worth living?