yeah I'm trying to count up the things I still have to be excited about and they are different sorts of things than they used to be but I still want to learn one new thing everyday and I still find color to be unbeatably exciting but I just no longer feel that the road to the future is wide open and filled with possibilities, you know?

I mean, it still is. just different ones.

it would probably hurt less if I hadn't centered my life around music for so many years. not going to see bands is like giving up the dream, although I still have my guitars and recording software and equipment and at any moment I could take up songwriting again but I have so many other things going now that I don't know if or when I will ever get back to it.

those other things are exciting in their own way, and I stand a much greater chance of making a name for myself as a writer than as a musician especially since I actually know something about language whereas music has always been done completely by ear. I do know the names of basic chords but when I plink out a melody on the guitar I have no idea what key it is in or what the conventional options are for the next line or anything.

writing is very different. I teach writing. I could never teach anyone to play guitar the way I play guitar.

but music saved my life, you see. it is as though I owe it something I cannot pay back. maybe everyone has someone or something like that to whom or what they owe everything but can give very little. maybe I should write letters to all my 80s punk rock stars and tell them that what they did actually saved one life if not more. there were a lot of us holding onto it like a life raft for quite some time there.

but then it wasn't just music but the thing which animates music and which turns out to animate the universe and although I haven't tracked it down yet I have at least learned why it cannot be tracked down and why it isn't an "it" and how it is that the tracking itself is the divine spark and how precariously we edge along between life and death at every moment.

that's something. I mean it was sort of what I was after but I was going about it through means that I still miss being able to utilize. certain drugs, even. I've had to find other means, for the most part. because as a process it never stops and if you try to sit still (even though you can sense it by sitting very very still) you miss the whole point. what I miss I think was the feeling that I was headed towards a great mystery at breakneck speed and now I find that I have to be more methodical because the organism itself is already not as strong as it used to be although in many ways it is much stronger.

I dunno. you see how I dunno?

well I'm definitely still open to many possibilities--it just seems that standing up for three hours through music you don't care about for a chance to touch an old pop idol is one that is dropping away. and the whole mania for seeing bands live--these days I think to myself 'I can just listen to the cd before I go to bed.'

back in the day I think I was waiting for a miracle of some kind to transport me up there to the stage and into the bodies of the musicians who got to play for a crowd. well, I've played for my crowds and although I'd do it again if I had an extra life to lead, it's no longer the dream. I guess I need to just put more effort into the replacement dreams.

well that is true I suppose but I still feel like there are songs bubbling around in me but I just don't have the time to take them down. I need to hook up my little ipod mic so that I can hum melodies into it when they come to me randomly, which they often do. they didn't used to is the thing, and I wish I had more time to make things out of them but man I have a lot going on!