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Okay, so when I said I’d be posting daily, what I really meant was that I’ll be posting during the moments when I’m not out of the house or watching Battlestar Galactica. I’m about halfway through season 3 and plan to finish that in the next couple of days. I’ll be heading to Baltimore for New Year’s Eve and have a few other items that I’ll be taking care of: reading Robert Wright’s Evolution of God, taking some continuing credits towards my Associate of ISC2/CISSP, etc. In the midst of that, I’ll be updating about the past year.
In previous years, I’ve set at most one New Year’s resolution. But even those resolutions were so oversized that I couldn’t reasonably accomplish them. For instance, one year I set a goal to be “more confident”, but what does that mean? I’m pretty sure I’d think about the big goal and try to apply it to different situations but that gets tiresome. To quote Dr. Gaius (because my personal contact currently is through the battlestar), I need the clay to make the bricks (and not the other way around). Those type of overarching changes are only as good as each moment they’re put into question. I eventually gave up on these type of resolutions because they weren’t very useful (and probably because life got in the way).
2008 may have been the best year I’ve been alive. I feel like every year before that I’d looked back at the year and thought about what a waste it was. In retrospect, that was almost certainly my attitude in looking at it, but it was the same attitude that I’d carried throughout the year. 2008 wasn’t different in that a lot of good stuff happened; I just felt more in control of my day to day life, like my life was starting over again.
I had so much good energy coming out of the year that I got really ambitious with my thoughts about 2009… so ambitious that I set between 40 and 50 goals for myself (the number is ambiguous because some of the goals overlap). Somewhere along the line this year, my energy left and I thought that the year was turning into a bust. The strength I’d carried from the beginning of the year had dissipated from some torn up relationships and from getting burnt out at work (I can’t help but think that these two items reinforced each other). But here I am at the end of it, meeting most of the 40 of 50 goals I’d set for myself and I can’t help but be content that my work this year has paid off in some small but tangible ways.
I think one of the reasons that I had so much ambition coming into this year was that I didn’t know what I wanted to do, especially from a musical standpoint. When I left college, I was finishing an album and wrapped up my affiliation with a small, JMU-associated record label (80 One Records). Throughout 2007, I wrote 52 songs but ran out of steam. I took 2008 off to recharge, but decided to pick back up in 2009 and write two batches of songs (I write by semester). The spring batch ended up being 15 songs and the fall batch is 12 songs, so 27 total for the year which is what I’d set out to do. I feel like I’ve developed a consistent voice in my writing, but I’m still unsure about how to voice them (with musicians and/or instruments).
At the beginning of the year, an old friend from church sent me a message and asked if I wanted to help out with a CD that a group of his named Rev 5 were working on. Christian rock isn’t really my bag, but I was happy to help out the people in the group (and happy to play music, even if it was outside of my comfort zone). I played guitar (and a little bass), but things never really came together and the group disbanded after a couple of months. Last I heard they were going to try to serve as a worship band for the church I grew up in, but I decided I didn’t really want to take part because (among other reasons) I’d feel weird doing instrumental worship in an a capella institution (as the Church of Christ is set up to be). Not for religious reasons, just because it (or I) felt out of place.
The next opportunity came about a month or two into my work with Rev 5. I’d been interested in joining the Washington Redskins Marching Band for a couple of years, so I contacted a JMU friend who was a member (Eric Petit) to see if he could offer a contact for auditioning. He’s off in Texas now, but he set me up with the head of the band who told me that they didn’t need any more Tuba players (though they did need trombones). So, I got in touch with my first high school band director and got a loaner trombone to re-learn the instrument. Rehearsals started in April, I tried out in May (maybe June) and found out I made the band about a month or so after I’d auditioned. It’s definitely different than the past marching bands I’ve been in, in that there’s a strong musical influence from HBCU bands, but it’s another opportunity to play music and be with musicians. In short, the Skins band is another opportunity to play music outside of what I’ve had experience with, so I feel like I’m growing from that perspective.
I ended up going to five weddings this year, three of which I was asked to play music for (other two being the Pittsburgh wedding of Ben Silber & his wife Kelly and the blizzard wedding of Matt & Suzanne). For Phil & Leonore, I played their first dance (the Rainbow Connection); for Kenny & Jessica, the ceremony music; and for Mike & Misha, a couple of first dances (I Want to Grow Old With You from the Wedding Singer for the bride & groom; In My Life for Mike & Mom; plus the Electric Slide for good measure).
At Mike & Misha’s wedding, I met one of the groom’s high school friends (Adam). We started talking music during the reception and he invited me to come play with his cover band (True Currency). It’s more or less a jammy 90s pop rock band, which isn’t totally in my wheelhouse either (but not as far out as the other two bands). For that group I sing and play guitar/synthesizer (bought a Moog Little Phatty). We played a show in Alexandria in August and have another gig set up for January 16 (same day as the Governor’s Parade, which I’ll be marching in with the Skins band). It’s more of a traditional rock band than the other two groups, but one that had been established before I entered.
So, I can look at those past three or four paragraphs and I can read that I’ve been really busy musically, which has been a step in the right direction. But with each of these groups, I don’t feel like any of them are mine. I’ve been growing a lot by playing instruments and genres that are outside of my experience, but I’m ready to make the next step; and that next step is starting to get clearer. I’ve got a backlog of songs I’ve written (79 from 2007 and 2009) and I need to get set up to play them. I need to get engaged in the local DC scene; find musicians to play with, craft a sound of my songs and start regularly performing. If I hadn’t worked so hard this year with all of the other bands (two of which are still going on), I wouldn’t know what I wanted to do next. And I’m sure that in time that desire will change as well; but for now, I need to take the energy that’s come out of this year’s music and look forward. Can’t help but be grateful, but I want more.
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