Pat and Bill are my neighbors. Bill is in his mid 70s, Pat in her late 60s,
Pat works in the office, Bill is retired.
Every night at five o’clock, they go to the casino, they get their
dinner, Pat spends an hour or so playing slot machines, while Bill sits in the
sports bar section and watches whatever is on one of the 25+ tvs that are up on
the wall. Now, I’m not here to tell
other people what and what is not good for them, it may sound like I’m going in
that direction with this, but I’m actually here to make a different point. For me, doing what Pat and Bill do
would be a huge waste of time, it would not satisfy me, it would be a very
short time before I would be very unhappy, bored out of my skull, and I would
feel like I’m just doing, “Me, me, me”.
As for me, me, me, if there should ever come a time when I get to
retire, where I have enough money to do what I want, I would still want to do
something, or maybe more than one something, that would contribute matter or
sound waves that is worthwhile to the universe – not necessarily to the human
race, just to the universe. While on
that subject, anybody who has read more than one or two of my blog posts knows
that I generally detest most people – with good reason – I have been cheated,
lied to, exploited, taken advantage of, stolen from, and bullied in one way or
another ever since I can remember. I’m
not speaking of the being pantsed and stuffed in a locker kind of bullied – I’m
speaking of mostly workplace bullying - where
the typical pathetic little boss type feels the need to throw his or her “authority”
around, and, I’m speaking of street bullying – being tailgated, huffed and
puffed at in the grocery store line, and on occasion, having to confront some
smartass, and subsequently being threatened by cops and/or lawyers. There was even one occasion where I thought I
killed a guy by belting him – and I only belted him once. That was the scare of my life – I thought my
life was over – that by biggest and longest running fear was finally coming to
fruition – that I was going to spend the rest of my life in prison because some
yellow bellied, bullying piece of human crap pushed me. This kind of thing (bullying from parents,
little league baseball coaches, high school basketball coaches, bosses, etc.) has
been going on since I was eight years old – at least that’s as far back as I
can remember. So, hopefully you get my
point – I generally detest most people.
There’s also the fact that I’ve seen the universe work against me in
just about every way possible – stifling everything I’ve ever tried to do –
seeing to it that everybody benefits from my hard work and abilities – except me. That being said, I don’t know why I care even
a tiny bit about doing something “good” for the universe. Again, couldn’t care less about people, but
on some level, I feel compelled to do something good for the universe. At the top of my mind is this – that should I
ever be able to do what I want, when I want, I would probably spend a good
amount of time in some wooded area in Colorado, under a tree, playing my guitar
or banjo for the lizards, the dragonflies, the mountain lions, the bears, and
the trees. This would of course, be
somewhere where no human would know I was there, much less hear anything I was
doing. I would do this at my leisure –
probably not every day, just when I felt like it. I would be ok to do this until I no longer
wanted to be in this life. Even more
ironic is the fact that I’ve thought about trying to get the message out to the
world that we were being duped and royally screwed by the rich and the
ruthless, that we’d better wake up, or our kids and grandkids will be fighting –
literally – for their lives. Again, I don’t
know why I care. I probably won’t do the
latter, even if I do ever find myself on a platform that would enable me, I
guess I don’t have the energy anymore. I
would, though, spend a lot of my time under the old trees, sending music out
there for anything non human. One of the
many benefits of playing for animals and cactus plants – they wouldn’t be
calling cops or management companies to shut me up. I’ve actually had non humans come around on
the rare occasion that I was able to play under the trees – mostly lizards and
dragonflies, but I’ll take it. Mountain
lions, bears, deer, I’d play for any and all of ‘em, and the more the
merrier. And no, I’m not afraid of
mountain lions or bears – I respect them, but I’m not afraid of them – and I’m
pretty sure they wouldn’t be afraid of me.
There is the possibility that I would want to continue
recording, and, while I cringe for saying this – selling my music, but I would
do it when I damn well felt like it, and I would probably hire somebody to do
all the bullshit – press kits, bios, marketing, and other such society and
money related crap. I hate the idea of
selling my art in order to make a living, I hate it, but I do it because it’s
the only way I know of to bring in any kind of income. The Powers That Be have destroyed the music
business as we knew it, and it’s been a rough road the past three years, so now
I search for other music related avenues to muddle through. On that subject, they’ve pretty much
destroyed most businesses, along with many lives, families, and countries, but
that’s a whole ‘nother. For me, should
there ever arrive a time when I can no longer play music, or hike out to a
place where I can be free of intrusion by other humans, or I simply lose
interest in making music altogether, I would definitely not want to be in this
life anymore, and would happily lay down for eternity beside my proverbial little
bucket. If I cannot do something
constructive, pleasant, or whatever else, then I don’t see any sense in being
here. I will never resort to spending
all of my time doing mindless stuff - you won’t find me in any casino, or playing
some god awful, mind numbing video game, or sitting in front of a television
set for more than an hour or two or three a week. I may go out hiking if I’m able, but nobody will
find me hovering over cheap, crappy entertainment.
So, if Pat and Bill are happy peeing money away in a
casino – that’s up to them, and I’m not here to state how horrible that is, I’m
only trying to make the point that that would never work for me. And please, I’m also not here to profess to
be some noble being, I’m just making an observation – that observation being
that while I generally detest people, and while I don’t see the universe as
having been all that kind or friendly to people like me, I still seem to, on
some level, feel the need to do something “good” for the universe while I’m
still here. I can’t seem to state this
without sounding “holier than thou”, so I’ll just write that off as my
inability to express in a neutral, concise way what’s in my little brain.
So, should my CD bring me any kind of monetary
compensation – enough so that I can have my own life, boy howdy will I ever
have my own life – and I can guarantee there will be some really mad people
should that ever happen – and that makes me happy.
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