I wonder what the years have really taught me about writing and music. I have gotten so used to preaching and teaching that I am a bit looped by the thought of writing—as in how I wrote before (or how I will claim I wrote) before settling into this somewhat comfortable and safe life I have—a life that is as rare and fine as life can be, but I feel myself getting that itch to rediscover who I am as a writer. poet, and songwriter. I need to know there is a next time around and that this is that time.
In many ways, writing is an addiction for me: I come outside to my porch, or settle in on the couch by the fire, and I write—but mostly essays, journals (such as these), long preambles to assignments, and reflections that are short enough to be interesting to me, but not so long as I really need to think about what I write
And I have my book, The Three Rivers Anthology, that I can curate with a few more insertions, and I have my beloved websites, several somewhat messy (but getting less messy) sites that at least prove that I exist as a writer and a performer and a low-level scholar of how to write well.
But to write a new poem with any level of depth or breadth is…hard.
To write a song that is more meaningful than clever is…hard. I feel my age in the same way as when I jog down the road or climb on the exercise bike—like it is a necessary but cumbersome evil, and any excuse is a good excuse.
But I need to say I am working on a new folio ( I hate the term EP) of songs and not just a rehashing and reconstructing of song fragments from old journals. More so, I need to “know” that I am working on a new folio of songs. Damn good songs. Songs that reflect whatever wizened and vine-riped thoughts and ideas I still have within me.
Funny though: I really don’t care whether or not people actually like the songs as much as I need to like them. If it becomes a desperate search and a losing battle, then so will my songs be about desperation and loss.
Though I suspect the songs will be somewhat decent, and I can always force a poem to fruition—if I have the time; if I make the time.
More than likely it will mean stealing time and carving it not out of the day, but out of myself. I will need to shed more of my teacher shell (and it is, often, a shell, not a conviction or a mandate—though teaching seems to be the way I will have to live for some more years. Fenn School is good to me and I am good to it, and unlike Odysseus I am not ready to cut my ties to luscious nymph Calypso!).
I am not ready to leave my Thursday nights at the Colonial Inn, for it is my solace and my platform and my way of keeping music alive in me and sharing through me and remembering through me.
I am not ready to reimagine how or why I live. I am BLESSED beyond imagination at my good fortune on this earth. My family—Denise and kids and friends—will always trump any moment in time and place. I need them and me to know and feel and truly experience that my love is unalterable and immutable in the face of any vicissitudes.
There is no Fate in my love for who I am, nor will be a marionette in a choreographed dance—unless it be that I am fated to joy, simplicity and a genuine humility to my Graces.
I just want to tap into what is left in me and to give lasting and ineffable form to the moiling juices of my heart and soul and being.
So please, be with me, humor me and share yourself with me on this journey.
