A Letter To My Niece On Her 1st Birthday...

Dear ----

Your first birthday is a big one.  Soon you will grow and begin to really take wonder at the world around you.  There's a lot to see.  More important than what you see are the questions you'll ask yourself about the happenings around you.  You'll wonder how and why.  Some things won't make sense and may never, but don't stop asking questions.  Asking is never foolish.  Only fools walk this earth going along with the motion and chaos because it seems easier.  Asking is how you become an individual.  As you get older you'll get used to your surroundings and that's okay.  You have to let your mind rest sometimes.  That's one thing I'm still trying to learn myself.  But I never stop asking how and why.

You'll find that I'm a big fan of giving books as gifts.  You may even get really tired of it.  But believe me, books are the best expression of human behavior.  Books will always be written because men and women will always have the need to be heard.  Always make yourself heard!

This book by Rudyard Kipling is one I hope you are read and will read over and over again throughout your life.  Your children will love it too.  Unfortunately I discovered it later in my life.  The reason it's unfortunate I will tell you.  The questions how and why are answered on these very pages.  You see, you are lucky for the simple fact that you are a child and can stay a child forever with the knowledge and lessons in "Just So Stories."  Seeing things through a child's eyes is what you'll do for a few years, but if you can hang onto that beautiful vision forever then you have beat us all.  For to see things through a child's eyes is to see Eden.  This world would be a much better place if we all had the eyes of a child.  You may get word one day that we are all born guilty.  That is wrong.  We are born innocent.  That is right.  We become guilty with such attributes as ignorance, arrogance and being too afraid to ask questions.

As I write this to you I am 28.  Young.  I feel old but 28 is still very young.  I'm sitting on my porch in Nashville, TN at ------ Ave listening to Doves new album Kingdom of Rust.  It's a good record.  But we will speak plenty of music later.  That I am sure of.  I'm also drinking PBR, though I prefer Guinness, and indulging in other things that I shouldn't, but I do.  I tell you these things to let you know a little bit about me.  Now that I think of my age and time, I am reminded of what Kurt Vonnegut says about dates in his book Jailbird.  He says he has to think of years as characters in his life, not just pages of a calendar.  You'll have good years and you'll have bad years.  But if you think of them as simply characters you may not feel as old as I do at such a young age.  But I digress.

So.  As I write this to you, it is your first birthday and I am 28 sitting on my porch asking how and why.


(written in April of 2009)

Looking Back...

When I was 15 I wanted to play the guitar.  When I was 16 I wanted to write songs.  I can remember my first guitar lesson so vividly.  I learned my first four chords, went home and wrote a song.  Being a "lead" guitarist never appealed to me.  I only cared about writing.  And let me say now that I couldn't sing worth a damn.  My sister's bedroom was right next to mine at the house I grew up in, and I can only imagine what she was thinking to herself as this kid, albeit her younger brother who at times did things only to get on her nerves, was singing his heart out...well, there was heart but I wouldn't call it singing.  Anyway, she's alive and well so it must not have been too bad (that's optimism you'll never hear from me again).  Nonetheless I found my "thing."

To go back just a little bit I think it's important to mention a few facts.  I was the kid that loved music more than anything.  I would make mix tapes (yes, actual cassettes) every night so that in the morning I would have my walk-to-the-bus-stop tunes to listen to.  I was also the kid that managed to put the wire, connecting the cassette player to the headphones, up through my shirt so that it appeared I was just resting my head on the palm of my hand...little did anyone know.  And to think my cross-eyed history teacher could tell when someone was chewing gum (we could never tell which eye she was using...harsh I know, but the truth stings) and didn't know that I was listening to Soundgarden.  Yes, I was a suburban, grunge wannabe kid and I loved every minute of it.

Now let's go back again, pre-grunge wannabe era.  I grew up on Jackson Browne.  Lucky enough to have parents that loved music, I was exposed to some really great stuff at a young age.  As a 12 year old, I can remember having all the lyrics to Jackson's "I'm Alive" record down pat.  I don't know what it was back then that caught my attention, but I wanted more.  It may be hard to imagine a kid that young relating to songs about love, despair, and just this overwhelmingly beautiful sadness.  But I was a very sensitive kid.  I knew I had a heart and that this "love" was a dire need to make it real.  So maybe I learned from Jackson what love is.  Maybe a little sentimental of me but screw my college poetry professor (more on that at another time).

So.  Where were we.  Yes.  Writing.  I learned in my early years the strength of words.  I had to have that.  I wanted to say what couldn't be spoken but what could be believed in melody.

The reason this is on my mind today is because I spent a good eight straight hours listening to, well, Mr. Browne.  I am still amazed at his words.  They still pierce right through me.  "In my early years I hid my tears and passed my days alone/Adrift on an ocean of loneliness my dreams like nets were thrown/To catch the love that I'd heard of in books and films and songs/Now there's a world of illusion and fantasy in the place where the real world belongs/Still I look for the beauty in songs" (from Farther On).  That verse just about sums me up.  That alone could be my biography.  For Christ's sake put it on my gravestone.

There isn't a better feeling than welling up listening to music.  And that was my day today.  Beautiful.

I must add also that there's something to be said about music that makes you feel justified.  Everyday I doubt what I do (I say "do" because no matter the state of my success, whatever that means, I do write.  I do sing.  My dream has become real and now I have aspirations).  It's the bond between fellow artists that makes "this" make sense.  And in the state that music as a creative outlet is in these days, it's that bond that will carry us through to the other side, wherever that may be, where we will look back with wiser grins and a more beautiful sadness.


Later.