Bass and Pen, Theory and Application

I don't ever write anything I won't read later.

Instead, I store up all of the words, ideas, expressions. Endless reams of them. Miles and miles of them, if I somehow set them end to end. Just word after word, idea melding into idea, thought into thought, precept into concept into information into action, and on. Then back again.

I've always kept them. Carefully and meticulously dated them. I store them on altogether, like volumes of one anthology, bits and pieces of one story. I keep them on shelves. Some proverbial, theoretical, ideological. Others are real.

Either way, I have always saved them. Kept them around. As if, at some point in time, someone will have been waiting to discover them, waiting to read them, expecting to find them. And in them, me.

As if someone were already and always looking for me.
That implies a fairly striking and pressing question: what if they found me?

I hadn't thought to ask that question of myself, really. Or, if I had, I answered it in a way that at the time only seemed logical. They'd want to read it all. And they would keep on wanting. So, on and on I would write. And on and on, they would read.

I don't know why I thought it would be valuable or interesting or worth reading. I just assumed it would be. Or, perhaps more importantly, I wanted it to be. I wasn't "practicing" because I always thought I was good enough. I never had to "work" at it because I'd always known how to do it.

I understand that some people feel this way about music, and that I don't.

I also understand now that in all the times of "not practicing", I was doing just that. And in "not having to learn it", I learned it more easily. Took it up and made it a fluid part of me, an extension of what I would have naturally thought, already. I subsumed writing. Language. Text and words and the rules and the ways and the ways around those rules and ways that got at the very heart of what I was wanting - really wanting to do.

To communicate and create something beautiful. Something stirring and real and true.

I realise I don't have the same advantage with music because I always felt as if I couldn't learn it. As if the way you learned anything was to grind away at it, burning your skin and bending your wrists backwards and breaking a sweat and making it "count". That sounded too hard and so goddamn drab. I just never could.

So instead, I would turn back to write. For myself, for an audience, for the future or the world or whoever and whatever. For someone who loved me. For someone who wanted to know me. For propriety and my "children". For some vague ideology that would or wouldn't ever come to pass.

It never mattered. I just wrote to write and hoped that it was something in the end. Because of that, I think it became something on its own, of its own accord. Fluidly. As if I never had to think about it. As if I never had to try. As if I never sat at an empty page and felt the rage and frustration at having nothing to say. As if I never went through months where words were a foreign language and all I could think was what I was doing next and how long it'd take me until I was on to the next thing.

So now, years later, I have this voice, this format, this way I've found, discovered, happened upon almost accidentally - and yet with effort and deliberation. So that it feels like skin to me. Like an innate reaction. Like a knee-jerk. It's just something that I do.

I have to push and force and struggle with music, still. But I'm hopeful that one day, it could be the same. A knee-jerk against life's bullshit. A respite. A way out when all the other avenues are blocked. A side-road out away from all the fucked up things in life when all the other roads are all jammed with tripe.

Music has, once or twice, been just that. And sometimes, I even find myself hoping that someone somewhere catches themself listening in. It's still a struggle, but I'm on my way. As for writing, I don't think I'll ever stop. Dating things, wondering who and when will read. Looking and hoping for an audience, and yet writing as if I don't have one - all the same.

It has the strange potential for an anonymous sort of blatancy. One I took solace in years ago. One I hid behind while all the world tried to discover what was wrong with me. One I gave all my honesty to only to discover that, in the end, it didn't count like that. I'm only recently half re-discovering it.
I'm not sure I'm entirely happy with that.

And yet. I have also found a sort of transparency through it. A willingness to throw anything out on the table and just see what happens.

So, that's what I'm doing. Trying to do, more often than not. More often than hiding, than fading back into the respite of words without name, without connection, without reality. Trying to speak and see if anyone is listening. Just throwing something, anything, out on the table. Something worthwhile? Possibly. Then again, possibly something worth chucking.

Some things have to be chucked, and that's ok.
Or, at least, I want it to be - in theory.
I'm working on the application side.

In music, it's just the opposite. All theory and an edging in toward any application that might be deemed "acceptable". And then, struggling to remember that I have to chuck that, too. And trying and trying and trying not be trying so hard. And trying harder, all the same.

And then, finally, every once and a while, without warrant or explanation or reason or method - something collides with my chest and something snaps in the back of my thoughts and down I go. Falling like raindrop into whatever current it is I've always found when I'm writing. All those times when I didn't realise hours had passed and I'm fifty pages later and my hand is sore from rubbing against the page and I'm out of ink. But now, this time, the neck of the bass is in my hand and the notes are still humming in my ribcage - and for two seconds before I even realise what's happened, I know somewhere deep inside my core that I've found my second home.

It's a strange journey I've found myself on.
But, I'm glad I'm still on it, all the same.

Personality malfunction

This is, obviously, a conflict with myself. I write about it with some hesitation, and yet I find it better to write openly than to run hiding. I have been in hiding for too long. So, here we are. Something personal for you to digest and do with what you will. It may not hold any interest for you. It may be meaningful in some small way. Either way:
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In some circles, things are easy. A smile, a simple word, a casual gesture that indicates more concern about you than myself, than you'd expect, than you'd asked for. Quandaries, letdowns, disappointments, dilemmas, insecurity, cosmic irony, negativity cause no problem because they don't enter into this simple equation. There are - at most - three or four factors, all of which are within my control because I'm the one defining the terms.

This is easy. I can handle this.

There is a separation between my person and my action, between what I say, do, express and what I am. It might be a modicum of a difference and the barrier may well be transparent - but it is there, nonetheless.

In other circles, where we try to dissolve that barrier and blur that difference - things get sticky. Messy. A mess. Without the defining lines, it's impossible to tell who is arranging the terms of what situation and who the terms are being arranged for. Who is the determiner and who is the determinee.

I think it might help to think in these terms.

In a given situation, with friends or strangers - when two or more people are involved - one is giving something and the other is receiving it. This could be anything. A compliment, a critique, a harsh word, a kind word, a request. A cup of coffee. Attention. Respect.

The grounds are, essentially, still the same.

The problem someone in my line of work often finds is that the general stranger is easier to deal with. The terms of the situation are set. No thought goes into establishing what the other person wants because it is predetermined by the setting. So, both people can act accordingly without question. It becomes easier with more experience because you are always dealing with the same request.

Then, transition to a stranger on the street. After enough time in the above setting, you learn how to deal with the average stranger in the same way. You quickly set the terms of the engagement and act as you would. There is a certain open freeness in this. You can talk to people without the same inhibitions of your everyday personality because you know how the interaction ought to pan out. It doesn't always work, but it makes it easier to jump in.

Now, transition to a friend, a spouse, a family member. Here's where I get into trouble. The terms aren't predetermined in the same way because the terms are on-going. Each given encounter is a throw back to previous encounters where something, perhaps something completely different, was established. Similar with a return customer, but the obligation is higher because the encounters never have a closure-point. They are fluid - one into the next.

When a familiar person of this sort approaches you, the setting is always different and any predetermined terms are based only on a memory of the past. Which is different for both involved.

My tendency to recall the setting of the engagement is to recall past engagements and categorize them. This comes into conflict when the person I'm engaging with doesn't do the same. If they create a broad stroke of the past, they will expect something different from my involvement than I'm expecting to put in.

At it's root, this is a conflict. Which, because of familiarity and unmet expectations, becomes a fight.

I don't want to fight.

I want to be able to tap into the same easiness that sets customers at ease, that gets shy people talking, that turns tension into a smile, anger into understanding, bitterness into a sense of comprehension.

I want to distill negativity into positive energy.

I'm struggling with exactly how to do that. But, I'm trying. Working back from the past of my own life and trying to comprehend what went wrong - not situationally, but emotionally. What things, circumstances, decisions brought me to where I am. So that I can change the decision. So that I can be peace, instead of fear or anger. So that I can be better.

I'm working on it. But, it'll take time.