- The EAKLE
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- Fabled Mythic Member
Challenge me to a Hawaiian Punch chugging contest. I dare you.
Posted by: mubox47
$.50 in store credit.
OP, your thread was long as heck. But it was good. I've had slightly similar thoughts recently. I'm gonna reply in a similarly overly long, jumbled mess that will hopefully answer some of the questions posed in your thread. First, some of my background. Please enjoy the ensuing blog. For a post more directly related to the OP, read the last two paragraphs.
No, i don't remember learning to ride a bike as a kid. No one ever taught me. I guess maybe my parents were tired after teaching my two older brothers and expected them to teach my sister and I. My sister caught on, i never got off of the training wheels.
The first thing i wanted to do was be a fighter pilot when i was a kid. Turns out color blind/poor sighted people can't fly planes, and telling that to a kid with a dream sort of kills the sense of ambition.
My first hobby was playing drums. In eight grade i was given a single lesson by my brother, the only formal lesson i've ever had in anything. I didn't play much, but i caught on quick.
A year later i picked up Bass. I had started getting more into music (coincidentally, Flobots' Fight With Tools was one of the albums that caused it) and wanted an instrument of my own. I had dreams of performing for people, but doesn't every thirteen year old with some strings?
A year passes, and the summer before junior year i picked up my first guitar. A beautiful Ibanez AF75 Artcore Hollowbody. I taught myself some Cake and Modest Mouse, but still didn't take it anywhere.
Early on in the school year, my Outdoors Pursuits class had a week of biking. I was already dedicated to the class and i'd never ridden a bike in my life. I figured my only option was to learn. So i did. In one night i spent some time outside on the blacktop riding my dad's old bike until i had it down. I felt pretty good about myself after that.
It was an interesting year. My best friend's dad killed himself. She moved in with another good friend, who's grandmother was almost immediately diagnosed with cancer (sadly, she just passed away last tuesday), which was all going on while another friend, practically my third brother because he spent so much time here, was dealing with his own father being diagnosed with terminal cancer. Everyone's life was falling apart around mine and i was just trying to do what i could to help.
The only peace i had that year came from the Avett Brothers, who i just discovered, and a good friend encouraging me to learn more music so i could jam with him. I began learning basic theory, like chords.
Despite their crappy lives, all my friends were planning out their future. And i had no idea what to do. I felt it would be a waste of my intelligence and skills to pursue something silly like being a musician when i could barely play guitar
So that went on for a while. My friends all hated life and i was trying to help them, obsessing over the Avett's music whenever i wasnt out with them or playing guitar with my other friend. Everything seemed pointless. I wanted to move on with my life but i had no idea what to do. I was just bored for the majority of a year, trying to not fall into some sort of depression.
Then that summer i went to a form of camp, and while there i was talking to a very talented vocalist girl back home. We talked about college and careers and she was planning on a double major, being a music teacher and music therapist. She inspired me to double major as well. I figured i could do music and something practical as well, but at a college fair the representatives discouraged me from doing that, saying i should drop the music and stick with something more practical.
And then everything just sort of clicked for me. I wanted to be a musician. I knew it i just, for some reason hadn't admitted that i wanted to make a career out of it. Like you mentioned in the OP, there's a surge of realization. I'd known on some level that i wanted to be a musician for years, and now that i finally said it out loud it seemed like a real possibility. I'd taught myself everything i knew, why couldn't i continue teaching myself music and make a life out of it? And that was that. Music was already my life, and since then it's been the most important thing to me. And here i am, some five months later, submitting my Production Demo to McNally Smith College of music, waiting for my audition next week.
More related to the topic, recently i've been watching this neat show Audio-Files. It gives a lot of insight into the lives and backgrounds of Indie musicians. Several musicians say that they saw music as their option. They'd been making music their whole life and it was the only thing they could do. It's how they express themselves, how they communicate, where they're at hom and where they find God. Then i got to another episode today. The musician was Josh something. What i found most interesting about him was that he learned to play guitar at the age of 21. He loved music as a kid, but had no musical upbringing. He remained independent because he wanted to be able to release want he wanted when he wanted. He was a musician because he wanted to be. He was already happy, because he lived with the girl he loved and lived the way he wanted. Music was just many of the things he wanted to do, along with his gardening and animal raising and being a husband, and his only goal in life was to do all the things he loved, and to do them as best as he could. So he did.
That's what i want to do. Just live, and do it the way i want it. I don't care if i'm making money or being remembered or changing the world. Im just gonna do what i do. My goal while creating music is to connect with others. I'm already happy. I'm 17 and making my own music. I've already won. So i might as well do what i do and hope it makes others happy too.