I’m sure you’ve heard the term bucket list. I’ve never really thought about it until recently. I don’t like the idea of the cliché “skydiving, bungee jumping, getting a tattoo, etc bucket list (all fine ideas–well maybe not skydiving)…
Instead I’m thinking of it more like an accomplishments list. What are the things I want to make sure and do before I become fertilizer. And by do, I mean, like an endeavor. What do I want to do as a human being, to say that I was alive here once.
Well, if you’ve read my previous posts you know that I’ve been a musician almost all my life, yet I’ve never recorded an album as a leader. Never my own original music.
So that’s going to change.
When I moved to California in 2009, it was to attend Brooks Institute and get a degree in photography. I was really focused (pun intended) on that. I had gotten burned out in Ohio from the same old same old. I was working as a graphic designer and a photographer and playing music and just really feeling like I was going nowhere.
So when I got here I was pretty much solely focused on photography. I met some local musicians and started to play casually but photography school is hard and eventually I just quit playing music altogether. (Did I mention that my son Eddie was born 5 months after arriving? Yeah, things were tough).
And that hiatus from playing music lasted almost 7 years. But during that 7 year hiatus I never stopped studying music, listening to music, and playing in my mind. But that wasn’t enough. I learned a valuable lesson that I can’t ever let go of music again. It’s too core to who I am.
So I started playing again and for the first time I really got connected to the larger music scene in SB and I have to say, this town is full of incredible musicians who have really helped me dust off the cobwebs. In fact, one of these incredible musicians said something to me once that really lit a fire. It took me a several months to really process it and understand it.
After playing four or five gigs together, he said, “you really need to start your own group.” I didn’t know what to say. Being a perfectionist and grappling with stage 4 imposter syndrome, I took it to mean that he didn’t really dig my playing. And I retreated a bit.
But after months of self reflection, I realized that he meant that he could really hear the strength of my musical voice. I had really developed a deeper and more personal relationship with music during my 7 year hiatus because all I had was the music in my head. I wasn’t interacting with other people and so there was a renewed clarity to what I was hearing. Now that I could see the positive spin, I really got inspired.
In the past 5 years I’ve written over 100 original compositions, and once I’m over this next hurdle, I’m going to record my first solo album.
That’s just one of several more accomplishments on my list. I’ll save those for another post.
What’s on your list?
Enjoy this moonrise over Campus Point which has absolutely nothing to do with the writing in this blog post.