I am a Musician.

I’ve been feeling kind of lackluster lately when it comes to being a “musician”.  I suppose that lackluster feeling is due to not really feeling like a musician.

In my younger days I used to write two or three songs a week, and be in a band.  We may not have been the best band on earth, but it was a fun way for us to get together and make (what we thought was great) music.  I don’t have that anymore.

I’ve toyed with the idea of trying to get a band together, but I honestly wouldn’t know how to go about doing it.  I have some musicians that I’m friendly with, but they’re all in bands already, which makes it hard to get them to join me. “Hey, I know you’re in a band already, but want to quit and join mine? I haven’t been in one in 16 years, but I’m sure I’m still pretty awesome to jam with!”

I’ve been getting back into writing lately — starting out with blog posts to get the creative juices flowing, and eventually I’d like to get back into writing as many songs as I once did.  (Note to self, I have to finish digitizing the rest of them.  That file storage box is staring at me.)  I feel better when I’m creating things.  Not to say I don’t feel good otherwise.  I just feel, I don’t know, free when I’m writing.  It’s an escape from the things I think and feel, even if those things aren’t daunting or scary.  It’s just a way to get down on paper what’s in my head.  (Or in this case, get them down in WordPress.)

Sometimes I read over some older songs that I wrote, and it’s almost immediate that I know what a particular song is about.  Spoiler: most of them are about girls.  Lesser-known-spoiler: a lot of them are completely fictional and aren’t based in fact at all. I’ve found that it’s easier for me to write a song about something (or someone) that’s completely made up, versus something that’s real.

Take, for example, Subtracted:49.  I wrote this back in 2001 during my “I’ll write stuff that isn’t real” phase.  If you read through the song, it’s very easy to interpret it as a son telling his father that he’s grown up, and is his own man.  The song ends with the line “I still feel it hurt, like the day you died.”  My dad’s not dead, he’s still alive and healthy.  Clearly this is a song created out of a fictitious story in my head.

I like to write songs that tell a story (which is clear if you read through anything I’ve written).  Whether that story’s obvious or not is up in the air.  Sometimes I like to leave songs open to the listening/reader to discover themselves. (Much like a Christopher Nolan movie.)  This particular song, Subtracted:49 tells the story of the young man telling his father that even after he’s passed away he should still be proud of his son.  The title, which I’ve never really explained before, is just a math problem.  At the time I wrote the song, it’s how old my dad was.  If you subtract the year I wrote the song, from the year he was born, you get 49.  (Which in hindsight I realize is incorrect. He’s two years older than that.  Younger me was either bad at birthdays or bad at math.)

It’s always fun for me to go back through stuff I’ve written.  While it never really took me anywhere, I like to think that I am a pretty good writer.  Sure I have my bouts with typos, but when you’re flying along at 120+ WPM, you’re excused for not being perfect.  I should get better about editing my own work, though. I’ll admit that.

In summation, even though I’m not in a bad. Even though I don’t write much anymore.  Even though I don’t practice as much as I would like to or should.  I am a musician.  And being a musician is something I’m proud to be.

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