I’ve heard the song “A Whiter Shade Of Pale” by Procol Harum almost daily recently. They have the radio on in the kitchen at the cafe I frequent, and while many of the usual songs on “today’s top hits” radio are the same hits of the ’60s-’90s they play every day, this one stands out. There’s simply nothing else like it. But more importantly, it reminds me of my late father.
Tag: creative life
For years, I’ve wrestled with the uneasy tension between who I am and who I believed I needed to become. Like many people, I’ve chased reinvention through new environments, ambitions, routines, and ideas, convinced that the next pursuit might finally quiet the underlying sense of restlessness. Yet no matter how far I wandered, I always found myself returning to the same essential nature — the same instincts, curiosities, rhythms, and creative impulses that have followed me my entire life. Perhaps the real challenge was never becoming someone else, but learning to stop resisting who I already am.
When I was young, maybe about 12 years old, I had a dream of performing my music in front of a sea of people. It was just me under a spotlight, holding a guitar, with a microphone on a stand in front of me. I’m not sure what song I was about to sing, but it felt good to be there.
It feels true to me that we write primarily for ourselves, whether it’s poetry, prose, a script for stage or screen, lyrics for music or text for commercial copy. We are ultimately the ones to satiate and to fulfil; we will read it (repeatedly), listen to it (a lot), or be subject to its repercussions once released out into the world.
Newness is addictive to the wanderer-type. We can bounce around careers, vocations, projects, relationships, cities, countries… without taking the time to become utterly amazing at something.