Last night I had dinner with a musician/artist/writer friend. We got together to cook up some food and chat about plans for a little writing project to be completed for the upcoming art show, The Thing In The Spring 09. After several hours of food, fine music (including two sides of an insane Boris/Merzbow LP), and talk about the future, I came away with this: I am very jealous of my friend. He is writing music, designing art projects, screening some great art work. It's not just him though. I am in fact jealous of anybody who can do what they want to do. My friend jokes in his bio that he is "poor and happy." Yeah, I understand that. The trappings of modern day life can sometimes act like an anchor. You may not know it when you first attain them and then one day you realize that you're trapped.
You'll not be surprised to read that corporate life has not been treating me so well of late. I won't go into the details (mostly because they're not all that interesting), so let's play with some cliché's and say that I've been feeling like a fish out of water. If things keep on this trend though, I may end up being on the losing end of the next fish-in-a-barrel shoot.
This is what I'd like to be able to do every day. Rise early, have coffee with TheWife™, shower, walk to the other room, and settle down in front of my writing pad, loaded with crisp white paper. The sun beam illuminates the top of the left page, giving the paper's texture a three-dimensional look. The room is filled with the sound of the quiet shuffle of my pencil. Music will come later.
Yes, I know the economy has gone in the tank. Frankly, making any complaint at all at my relationship with the business world seems more than a little misguided. Nutty even. Aggressive dogs, you're not supposed to look 'em in the eye, right? I think of this every day.
Recently, I've taken to listening to Springsteen's Working On A Dream on the way to work. The chaos whirling around in my head comes to a halt for a bit every time I hear these lyrics:
Why do the things that we treasure most, slip away in time
Till to the music we grow deaf, to God's beauty blind
Why do the things that connect us slowly pull us apart?
Till we fall away in our own darkness, a stranger to our own hearts
And, just before the chaos restarts its next counterclockwise circuit, I think... "What the hell am I doing?"
Article comments
1 - Brian aka Guppusmaximus
I feel ya... I dream day in & day out about playing (original) music for a living. I think at some point you just have to do whatever it is that you want to do. We only live once.I remember reading an interview with some rich magazine mogul and he basically said that working for that paycheck is like being addicted to crack. I guess, ya know when you are gonna get your fix...I dunno.