Brutal Truth

Sometimes, the thing we love most becomes the very thing we struggle hardest to let ourselves be.

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There are many things we aspire to be or do in life: little things, big things, epic things. The latter are often both the blessing and the curse of our personal legend.

For me, it was and is music. I’ve been musically inclined since I was three, and it came naturally. As I got older, music lessons became less relevant, while my own forms of arrogance and ignorance gradually took over.

Trying to fit into a regimen of lessons, rudiments, and rote learning was maddening. I just wanted to do my own thing. I could always “hear” more than the notes on the page were singing. Eventually, my last music teacher started handing me a piece of music and saying, “See what you can do with it.” Sticking to what was on the page had become not only boring but futile.

My father, who was paying for the lessons, never appreciated my aloof, cavalier approach to structure and discipline. He wanted me to become a professional, or at least a “serious” musician, perhaps the one he had never become himself. The sins, revisited, perhaps.

My need for written music faded, and my passion for flowing with instruments, ideas, and inspiration took off. Happily.

Once I found the time and space to dive deep, I practiced for hours in near-out-of-body experiences at my keyboards and drums. I played so hard my fingers and forearms burned. A good hurt. I often miss those days.

I wrote bits and pieces of hundreds of songs. Every time I sat at the keyboard, and later with a guitar, a new melody or two would show up. It’s a beautiful thing.

Then came the business of music. What a way to ruin the joy, one bite at a time.

Over the years, I vacillated between “It’s music, or nothing!” and “Get a day job so I can do it for fun.” And a decade passes. Then another.

I wasn’t always aware of how deeply doubt, guilt, and shame ran, or how they shaped my choices and kept me in various states of self-sabotage. It’s all here in my little rants, articles, and essays… I’m still learning.

Sometimes other interests show up, and like clockwork, I convince myself a new challenge might satisfy me. I dive in, hoping to recapture that joyous sense of newness. Happily, some interests stick and become integral to my “work for the betterment of humanity.” A vanity, perhaps, but also a deeply fulfilling, often uncomfortable sharing of what I see in myself and in you. Yet that wasn’t the whole truth. I was acting, redirecting that creative force while the art sat gathering digital dust.

As artists, we can be chameleons, adapting to most environments, but no matter what, it’s still pretending. I’ve sometimes wondered: is life simply character research for a bigger role beyond this place?

Personal relationships didn’t fare much better amid this underlying torment. They were often another excuse to hide from the various shades of pain and unfulfilled aspirations.

Eventually, the bitter self-reproach and vicious inner battles begin to ease with experience, temperance, hard-earned wisdom, and a gentle, persistent, heartfelt presence.

The brutal truth is that we are too often our own worst enemies. We take outsiders’ opinions and perspectives as our own, even though they’re often just checkpoints, road markers, or suggested routes, sometimes little more than our own eyes looking back at us in the rearview mirror.

Nosce te ipsum