For years, I've been in a creative funk. I sit down to write
lyrics, stories, drawings, public dancing performance art (which has thankfully
never remotely materialized) and I come up with a stanza or two before watching
skateboard tricks on Youtube or looking at old comic books. Poof. Inspiration
flow perished. When's supper ready? One guy who never ever had that problem
left town the other day, and he didn't come back. And that is really something
that I'm having some problems dealing with.
Several years back, I had this problem but it was when I was
still in a band making an album, playing shows, etc. I had to write lyrics to
finish songs that my band collectively wrote, and they were sitting there
waiting for me to catch up. Only problem was that my composition book had dried
up. I had plenty of fire for the first record we did. I had words flying off
the end of my pen for days. By the time we were making the second one, I'd
turned my focus from life's various pains to line dancing, being beaten
randomly in your house, dogs, indie rock bands. I mean, yeah - there was still
spots of passion in whatever I wrote about, but it was different. And once that
record was finished, I turned off the faucet and started several cover bands.
And I didn't have to think about anything. I didn't have to try.
A friend of mine who was on a similar path decided he would
turn the other direction. I think for awhile, and I don't know this for sure
but it's what I gather from his music, that he was in a similar state at the
time. Being that the lyrics are about a kind of theoretical/kind of
autobiographical nature, but angry and raw.. it's what I take from the songs
and really I guess nobody is here to tell me any different at this point. But
something would happen to him soon after that would change the way he lived
life all together. His dad passed away, and it set him off in a crash course of
life living like I could only dream of. I didn't know that pain, that loss.
Shit, I didn't experience any loss. I'd experienced joy, and gains, and
marriage, and well - happiness as far as I knew. And life was picture perfect
in 9-5 land with a white picket fence and a yard in a suburb in safe and quiet
Baton Rouge.
His life however was whiskey, and the road, and women, and
hell raising, and rockabilly kicking. His life was in the eerie dank of New
Orleans to the streets of New York City. Love lost and gained, seeing the world
abroad with bottled zeal I only read about safely in novels.
Today I sit in my beloved hometown, and yes I still love it.
But the other day I was reminiscing about the old days. Youth at our feet, armed
with my band. I was talking to Adam and I told him about how life is not what
it was here. That I miss the camaraderie All the buildings are still here, and
the place still looks the same, but a lot of my mates are scattered all over
the country. We were supposed to get together this NYE for some rocking out,
but that's all over with now. I could make a phone call to St. Petersberg,
Shreveport, Seattle, Atlanta, New Orleans, Antarctica, Bolivia and people
could make it in. But getting one of our members a ticket to come back home
isn't going to be so easy this year.
If anything I can walk with from this it's as follows. I'm
wasting my life with network TV, afraid to leave my house, not tasting and
seeing and hearing what's out there. Justin was a year younger than me and he
lived more life than I will have at 60 years old assuming I make it. We didn't
get lives to live in safe caves. We weren't granted existence to be afraid to
exist. He lived the ever loving shit out of his life, and god dammit I'm not
going to let what he wanted me...us... to learn about life go to waste.
I've had the desire to pick up my old composition book, and
it seems like inspiration will flow a little more freely than it did in the
past. But I'd give up wanting to write anything forever to have him back here,
just like everyone else. I just hope he knows somewhere, somehow, that from now
on I'm going to look a little harder at things. I'm going to listen a little
more, and feel a little more, and laugh a little more. I'm gonna go to more
shows and read a few more books.
While the band might be finished here on earth, you got one
hell of a jam session to plan. And until then, I've got to live life more full
for you and I promise to you, I'm going to do that.
I miss you, my brother. I'll see you on the other side.
