meeting people is easy

i will think of something clever to title this after i write it.

today i arrived back home in sunny jacksonville. after a while of the city, i decided i preferred a quiet life, one that i was completely in charge of. now that i'm back, though, i do miss it.

i watched a documentary of the band called justice. theirs is probably a tiring life. in a bus all day; by night, loud music, flashing lights, screaming crowds. they are dicks, apparently.

this is turning out to be an incredibly unexciting journal entry.

something that both comforts me and scares me is that, apparently, my dad is as morbid as i am. i am learning new things about my dad every time i talk to him earnestly, and every time i learn a new thing about him it is usually something that applies to me. that is, we are very similar to one another. it's something i am thankful for. at times it is hard to talk to my dad because of our specific father/son dynamic but usually talking to him sheds some light on how i am feeling and why, though it doesn't necessarily make me feel any better. it seems like my dad and i though are going through the same sort of creative neurosis/malaise coupled with a fear of death–which is probably caused by an unfulfilled desire to create something lasting, be it music or writing or other. it's also pretty reassuring that alec is going through something similar to what i am, or at least i think he is, i don't know if i know him that well or not but it seems like he is hungry to prove himself as a writer and is impatient to do so already. i believe he can, just as i believe i can become a great musician and that my dad will become a great writer (i've read some of his early work, especially a piece called "Queen of the Hills" which is phenomenal, and apparently has brought several of its readers to tears at a certain revealing part of the story, though that may also be due to the readers).

yes, it has always been an ambition of mine to live off of my music, or at least, to be able to devote the bulk of my time and energy to creating music. i don't care what i do as far as a job goes as long as i'm able to do that (in other words, i want to be part of the new rich). it is, hopefully, an anchoring ambition, something that i see is starting to take root, my own musical voice or what have you, at least as far as guitar goes, which is an incredibly perfect instrument for me in its technicality and physicality and versitality, i really love my sleek black charlene. and i see myself getting better as i play, not only in my playing but in my musical ability, that is, my ability to make music, my own music, beautiful music (i think) from scratch, from nothing but my emotion, and my increasing ability to get the sounds that i want to appear (again, from nothing) is just amazing and exciting and i love the progress that i am making, even though i want it to be faster. as kateland said, though, "you're so young! you have all the time in the world!"

and she's right. at 19, nearly 20, i see young musicians already "out there" and it rips me to shreds sometimes. i think, i should be there. i'm 20, nearly an adult, i am an adult, i have played music since i was 11, or maybe 12, what do i have to show for it? shouldn't i have something to show for it by now? i am trying to train myself to be more patient. while in new york, i devoured murakami's "wind-up bird chronicles" and "norweigian wood", i mean really read them and got lost in them. murakami describes the mundane and everyday activities of his male protagonists in those two books in such loving detail that i begin to long to share them with him, to enjoy them as well. to sit in the garden and just think, or to sit on a bench all day solely for the purpose of watching human faces pass by, or to spend the day with nothing to do but laundry and ironing and lying down on the roof. in some ways i hated the tempo of new york (vivacissimo! vivacissemamente!), though it was a refreshing change from my routine and generally quiet life, i grew to miss it.

now, like toru from norweigian wood, i am listening to miles davis's "kind of blue". it is very good.