Making Music

It’s hard, in the bustle of the morning, getting the kids to their various schools, shoveling a bagel in for breakfast, maybe even finding time to say more than three words to my wife before we head our separate ways to our day jobs that we both tolerate but have no passion for, to find time for a coherent thought. But I had one just now as I sat down at my computer.

Outside of my family, music is the most important thing in my life.

Now, it’s easy to say that, and many people have and do on a daily basis, but today, just now, I realize how much of my waking life is spent either thinking about music I’ve heard or music that I want to make and then hear. I mean, I can’t get through a 5 minute segment of my life without a melody or a lyric or a beat running through my head. So what does that mean to me? Funnily enough, not what it used to. If you’ve ever been in a band, at some point, most likely in your youth, you thought music, and more specifically your music, could make a difference. Could change the world. But then you grow up, your music doesn’t change anything other than you and maybe your bandmates, and you start looking at and reacting to your music in a different way. It doesn’t seem so important. It feels like more of a chore. As you mature, it becomes more and more difficult, in the bustle of your adult day, to find cracks of time to commit to making music.

But today, I’m reminded that Someone’s Story has written some pretty damn good songs. And sure, we may never be a Cut Copy or Hot Chip. But you know what? I’d put our songs up against any of theirs in a Pepsi-Challenge, and I’d be willing to bet that 40 years from now, people could still discover one of our songs and be moved by it, while if they came across a song by the aforementioned groups, they would peg it as very much a product of the time it was made.

Sour grapes? Ok, possibly. But I truly believe it. And it’s the reason, despite the complications of working with two other adults that have other, more pressing commitments that sometimes relegate our little band to no more than an afterthought, that I soldier on, writing songs, making music, trying to express just what it is that moves me through this thing we call life.