As I have mentioned here, I've spent considerable time since the pandemic began doing a deep cleaning of our house, nesting, working to create a sacred space for my songwriting activities.
One result of all this cleaning is that I recently found some letters deep in our filing cabinet from May 1990, when my niece, Robin, was very sick, and I took some time away from my PhD studies to be with her and my family in Albany, New York. My sister, Phyllis, and I were on the midnight to 6:00 am shift with Robin for several weeks in the newborn ICU, and I had lots of time to think and write, it seems.
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Wednesday, 5/23/90
2:50 am
Dear Aileen,
I just finished reading Of Mice and Men. Reading something like this makes me want to write stuff like this, just like going to poetry readings makes me want to write poetry, and just like hearing a great guitarist makes me want to play guitar professionally, etc., etc. But I wonder if I will ever really do it. It seems so attractive — while doing literary criticism as part of my degree seems, in the end, so pointless, so impotent, so parasitic.
Yet, I have to wonder if I have what it takes to really write fiction, or poetry, or play guitar at that level. I know you’ll say, “If you really want to, you can do anything.” And I know that that is true. But that’s just it, I’m afraid: I don’t know if I really want to or if I just want to hold onto the dream of doing it.
It’s so much prettier and easier and more meaningful and rewarding and everything as a fantasy, as an escape. I don’t know if I’ll ever have that need to produce, that artistic drive like Nick Nolte’s character talked about in New York Stories: “You paint because you have to. It’s not a matter of wanting to or just being good at it. You just have to, that’s all.” I don’t know if I have to yet.
But the longer I stay here, the longer I live this kind of life, the more I feel like I may have to. I only hope that if I ever do get that need, it won’t require such unusual and trying circumstances to sustain it. I don’t want to be a tortured artist, thank you very much. I’d also rather not be a starving artist -- and in saying that, I suddenly realize that such thinking about practical matters and my own comfort means I may never feel that need to produce. I may, it seems, be in love with the dream after all . . .
I’ve been thinking that the most dramatic, the most crucial, the most important moments in someone’s life are not their actions or the results of actions, but rather those moments when decisions are made. All actions are necessary consequences of decisions made. Our culture is so focused on actions and results, we forget from whence those actions stem. And decisions are hard. They are hard because every decision we make is going to disappoint someone. And they are hard because no matter how much help we get, how much input and advice we get, and no matter how many people will be affected by these choices, decisions must, in the end, be made alone — which is why we often end up paralyzed and unable to make any decision at all.
And oddly enough, making the decision can be the easy part. There’s an old riddle in recovery circles that goes like this: There are two frogs sitting on a log. One of them decides to jump off. How many frogs are now sitting on the log. Answer: Two — because making a decision doesn’t mean you’ve done shit.
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Last summer, 30 years after writing this letter, I finally got some answers to questions I posed here. Last summer, after playing guitar for 45 years, I finally felt a real need to produce, realized that I simply had to make my own music, simply had to focus on making my own music. I finally moved from wondering if I would ever really do it to just doing it, from wondering if I really have what it takes to not giving a fuck, fell out of love with the dream of doing it, let go of the dream and just started doing it.
In short, after dicking around with the idea for decades, I finally made a decision, one which has fundamentally altered my life. My decision requires me to spend significantly more time away from my family, from friends, from work, from comfort and rest, to steal and reapportion my finite time and energy and resources away from where they had been placed and focus them on this new thing.
And I began taking actions that grew from that decision, began developing a creative discipline, a regular schedule of focused effort, reworked all my older material, began gathering ideas for new songs, created this website, and started looking for a supportive community of like-minded colleagues.
There are two obvious take-aways from my experience here:
1) It is never too late to make the decision and take the actions needed to become an artist and make your art. Get the fuck off the log, little frog. What the hell are you waiting for?
2) It is never too early to make the decision and take the actions to become an artist and make your art. You already have everything you need. The only thing I gained from waiting is the deep regret that it took me this long to get started.