It seems I have not written HERE in over a year... I have written so much in other places less substantial, mainly Facebook and emails, little spiral notebooks, napkins, sticky notes, receipts, and even my hand.
The 'view' from a blog, seems dark, hidden, loamy, inaccessible and private. While I see that overall there have been nearly 2,000 views of this dot in cyberspace, I can't bring myself to sit and concentrate on a verbal dialog with invisible beings... so I concentrate on the immediate gratification of Facebook and email, where responses are short, response time is short, but responses actually happen... I'm not just 'talking to myself'... which I do all the time anyway, so not sure why I don't do it more HERE?
However, it is nigh on another year passing... it is more than just a season of other people's traditions, it is a season of our own music tradition. That of readying for the LONG tours, the COLD tours, the MONEY making tours, the stretch of time away from home that is harder to face the older we get. Adoring each moment in our wee home... washing dishes, listening to the wood stove, watching the birds, even the rattling of the windows in the winter wind bring a sense of joy and peace, gratitude and homesickness for the leaving that is at hand.
And yet.
It is our life journey to always be on a journey. To always be leaving, for in that leaving there is the 'unknown' of going and the 'known' of coming home. This last week in here, in our own bed among our belongings, we are trying desperately to finish recording number 10.
Why? We keep asking ourselves... just to hit the magic number? To prove that we did it? To get down on plastic the last few songs and tunes we love just before we are too old to do it at all?? CD sales are dismal at best. People our age are not buying and the generation behind us does not appreciate our music, nor even think of buying CD's, they download.
So why this push and stress? We've looked at other aging musicians and said "they should have quit when they were still good!" But now... we are the 'oldsters'. The fingers don't quite work they way they did 20 years ago. The voices falter with sagging vocal cords. The tone is rough and hearing gaps leave us wondering if we can even trust our ears any longer. But we are trying anyway.
A last hoorah? Maybe. A 'swan song'? Maybe. Reaching for some sort of reinforcement that we aren't dead yet... of course.
When you live and breathe a direction, a goal, a passion, a dream... it is REALLY DAMN HARD TO STOP! How do we stop. We have so loved this job, so loved the teamwork, the road life, the simple adventures, the wonderful people, the laughter and the tears... working side by side for two decades... it seems impossible that we could NOT do what we do. But our truth, our age, our reality, is catching up with us... we soon will no longer be viable in this business we have dedicated ourselves to.
So the reinvention begins. I will never stop writing, poems, stories, songs... but the focus now will not be 'what will sell', or 'what is performance material'. it will just be molting of language for my own sake. Maybe I'll find more creativity in the landscape of freedom rather than the constraints of what others will hear or like? Hard to say. At this point, we are evaluating the diagnosis... breathing heavily with the dialog of aging... weepy with the memories we've made... laughing at the silly battles we've waged... and hoping there is morphine for our souls as the end nears...
So there is my end of 2012 dialog... and a poem from last year...
maybe I'll write here sooner than another year?
I wear my music like a loose garment
Hoping to find myself comfortable in it
It never leaves my skin
Baggy enough to hide the flaws
Tight enough to flaunt
My landscape
Color doesn’t matter
Color is only a distraction
Of each threadbare fold
It is raging red one day
When I want to quit and be a courtesy clerk
At the nearest market
Blue the next day
When I’ve heard a great musician
And know that I’ll never attain such skill and perfection
Yellow on the playful day
When I get it right
And someone enjoys it
Green on the creative days
When melody invades every cell
And lyric commands my attention
And then there are the white days
Blinded by the dream of the welders torch
Melting the iron will into doing the biz just one more time
I wear my music like a loose garment
I am naked without it
I am naked without it
The 'view' from a blog, seems dark, hidden, loamy, inaccessible and private. While I see that overall there have been nearly 2,000 views of this dot in cyberspace, I can't bring myself to sit and concentrate on a verbal dialog with invisible beings... so I concentrate on the immediate gratification of Facebook and email, where responses are short, response time is short, but responses actually happen... I'm not just 'talking to myself'... which I do all the time anyway, so not sure why I don't do it more HERE?
However, it is nigh on another year passing... it is more than just a season of other people's traditions, it is a season of our own music tradition. That of readying for the LONG tours, the COLD tours, the MONEY making tours, the stretch of time away from home that is harder to face the older we get. Adoring each moment in our wee home... washing dishes, listening to the wood stove, watching the birds, even the rattling of the windows in the winter wind bring a sense of joy and peace, gratitude and homesickness for the leaving that is at hand.
And yet.
It is our life journey to always be on a journey. To always be leaving, for in that leaving there is the 'unknown' of going and the 'known' of coming home. This last week in here, in our own bed among our belongings, we are trying desperately to finish recording number 10.
Why? We keep asking ourselves... just to hit the magic number? To prove that we did it? To get down on plastic the last few songs and tunes we love just before we are too old to do it at all?? CD sales are dismal at best. People our age are not buying and the generation behind us does not appreciate our music, nor even think of buying CD's, they download.
So why this push and stress? We've looked at other aging musicians and said "they should have quit when they were still good!" But now... we are the 'oldsters'. The fingers don't quite work they way they did 20 years ago. The voices falter with sagging vocal cords. The tone is rough and hearing gaps leave us wondering if we can even trust our ears any longer. But we are trying anyway.
A last hoorah? Maybe. A 'swan song'? Maybe. Reaching for some sort of reinforcement that we aren't dead yet... of course.
When you live and breathe a direction, a goal, a passion, a dream... it is REALLY DAMN HARD TO STOP! How do we stop. We have so loved this job, so loved the teamwork, the road life, the simple adventures, the wonderful people, the laughter and the tears... working side by side for two decades... it seems impossible that we could NOT do what we do. But our truth, our age, our reality, is catching up with us... we soon will no longer be viable in this business we have dedicated ourselves to.
So the reinvention begins. I will never stop writing, poems, stories, songs... but the focus now will not be 'what will sell', or 'what is performance material'. it will just be molting of language for my own sake. Maybe I'll find more creativity in the landscape of freedom rather than the constraints of what others will hear or like? Hard to say. At this point, we are evaluating the diagnosis... breathing heavily with the dialog of aging... weepy with the memories we've made... laughing at the silly battles we've waged... and hoping there is morphine for our souls as the end nears...
So there is my end of 2012 dialog... and a poem from last year...
maybe I'll write here sooner than another year?
I wear my music like a loose garment
Hoping to find myself comfortable in it
It never leaves my skin
Baggy enough to hide the flaws
Tight enough to flaunt
My landscape
Color doesn’t matter
Color is only a distraction
Of each threadbare fold
It is raging red one day
When I want to quit and be a courtesy clerk
At the nearest market
Blue the next day
When I’ve heard a great musician
And know that I’ll never attain such skill and perfection
Yellow on the playful day
When I get it right
And someone enjoys it
Green on the creative days
When melody invades every cell
And lyric commands my attention
And then there are the white days
Blinded by the dream of the welders torch
Melting the iron will into doing the biz just one more time
I wear my music like a loose garment
I am naked without it
I am naked without it
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