Age is inevitable. With the coming of it one’s perspective on life will change adapt and evolve, one would hope anyway (yeww that word-hope). As I age I find that music, while always important, is becoming more and more so. Not just music either but the whole creative process whether it manifests itself with ink, paint or sound. Music is indeed what I have put the most time into and thus one would think what I am best at. The older I get the more I see the end. At least, while not actually seeing it, I am much more aware that the end is a hell of a lot closer than it was 30 years ago. While I do not and never have known the exact date the end will come whenever it is I am closer to it now than I was five minutes ago and closer than I was 30 years ago.
So what do you do? Give up to despair and anxiety. Worry that you won’t get all your life’s goals accomplished. Hell no. You set your nose to the grind stone and try and accomplish as much of whatever it is you feel is important and screw the fact that every little thing that you ever thought you might want to accomplish will not get done. At this point I have a decent idea what is important to me and what I should focus more singularly on. For me it is music. It is the one thing I have had, even prior to taking up an instrument, that could reach the depths of my soul (no big feat given how shallow I can be I suppose…). It is what I most hope to accomplish. At this point there are so many things that at one time or another would distract me from this focus. Those things are still there, some are even a threat, but one has to recognize this and pursue what it is you most hope to accomplish and fend off those influences that would keep you away from your goal. With me there is music and writing and even painting (albeit on a very primitive level… slightly lower than painting a bedroom wall…). I have put out recordings and I have had published and published my own written works. Stay focused and move forward and do not let the distractions win out for there are many of them. I will write as much as I can both verbal and musical and I will do my very best to get them into a form that someone at some point in time can then consume them and think they are either horrible, average or great. Music will, no doubt, be the major thing for me. If I had to sum up the rest of my life in a few words I would say “I wish to create and record and perform as much music as possible and then die.” By this I don’t mean to say I am going to create X amount of works and kill myself but rather that I will keep creating what I can until the moment that death overtakes me. It is all I can do.