Of old friends and male bonding

Sorry I've been kinda quiet this week. I've actually been writing quite a bit and doing stuff with 'The Band' (more on that later) but none of it has ended up in blog. Two of my friends from high school emailed me, thanks to myspace, and I've found myself trying to find things to talk about with people that I haven't seen in 20 years. It was much harder than I thought... trying to find words that were witty, talking about myself without bragging or sounding like a jerk, asking questions that don't pry but aren't totally irrelevant. It's weird. These are people that I knew when I didn't know myself, so I'm assuming that there's alot I don't know about them anymore either. It's not like bumping into someone in line at the store, there's social expectations in that case... or more accurately, a lack of expectations. Email is totally open ended, though. Do you babble? How much do you reciprocate vs. letting them have the last word? I've found myself trying to 'type casually' but it's one of those things where the more you try not to think about it, the more you're aware of every possible nuance of what you're writing. Anyway, it was really cool to hear from them, so if you're reading this, Kudos for initiating! Sounds like things are going well for both, which makes me deeply happy. So like I said, I've been doing some thoughtful writing, just not in this blog.

Meanwhile, I've been hanging out with two guys from work who also have the need to get musically stupid every once and a while. We're really just writing and playing for ourselves, but the difference is that our 'sessions' and I use that term loosely, get recorded so that's kind of a twist. The advantage is that the 'You had to be there' factor is greatly reduced and there's more of a drive (for me anyway) to try and create something of value. The disadvantage is that spontaneous music by it's very nature doesn't pull any punches and can have very targeted subjects or audiences. You sing about what you're feeling at that moment and that doesn't always reflect your true position on a given topic. Nor should it have to...

Music, like any other art, is a journey. Either you're trying to go someplace you haven't been, or your trying to take someone with you. A lot of times you're just exploring, though, and you don't always want your attempts documented. Chris, fairly recently, threw out most of her art from college for that reason. They were explorations into areas of art that didn't end up being her direction. They didn't mean anything to her... they didn't have value because they were assignments or experiments, but not her creative path. Very few pieces still had nostalgic value when she took 'how much time did I spend on this' out of the equasion. I'm just saying that there's a difference between the journey and the destination, but it's the final result that always makes the first impression. People don't care what route you take if they don't like where you've taken them.

Anyway, I love the creative outlet, and I love tapping into that part of me that gets supressed 40 hours a week, especially since the results can be so surprising. I tend to have a moral hangover afterwards, though, and I have to reconcile myself to that somehow.