So this past week was one filled with nostalgia and painful reminders. Nostalgic in the sense that I spent a great deal of time digging through both my musical archive and my fiction archive. I suppose composing and performing music as well as fiction writing are probably the two creative things I do best, but not nearly as much as I should. That’s part of the painful reminder part. The reminder, or rather the acknowledgment, that I’m a bit of a slacker if you look at my output versus my supposed talent and abilities. At any rate, let me break it down this way.
Nostalgia: Finally started stocking my YouTube Channel with videos of me playing guitar or bass, as well as started creating new “videos” (i.e. a static placeholder to go along with the audio) of various pieces of music I’ve composed, performed, produced and recorded dating back as far as 2008 when I first put together a home studio (something I should have done back in the 90s or at least the early 2000s, but I digress). I figured, hell, if I die tomorrow, at least there’s now a public archive of music online to show that I wasn’t a complete slacker and waste of talent.
Painful Reminder: Can’t help feeling like a slacker and waste of talent when it comes to music and all my arts (but that’s a long story for another day). Another “painful” reminder is when you’re unknown, there really isn’t an audience for what you produce. Sure, all musicians make music for themselves because we simply MUST make music. However, I’ve always contended that music — and I include creative writing in this too — is a performance art, and thus, is created with the conceit that there will be an audience for it.
Nostalgia: While going through boxes in my office that contain various paper notebooks and notepads — I have more of those than I ever truly realized (just over 60; see photo above) — I unearthed some classic pieces of writing, such as the beginnings of a screenplay entitled Infidelity. I really enjoyed reading the four pages of script I’d previously printed out and was reminded of the ambitions I had for that particular script. I also did some digging through the folders on my computer to pull up a short story from a few years ago called “The Chamberlain House” featuring my disfigured paranormal investigator dealing with the harrowing case of an inhabited, truly and literally quite haunted house on Halloween.
Painful Reminder: This story was started in 2009 and is still unfinished. And I haven’t published any fiction since late 2011. I’ll probably win the esteemed Lifetime Achievement Award for Underachievement.
Nostalgia: While working in my office I spent half of that time listening to great music form the 1960s and 1970s. I enjoyed it so much that I announced on Facebook that I wanted to form a retro soul/R&B band with a touch of funk and disco for good measure.
Painful Reminder: 1960s and 1970s — particularly the music of those decades — are long gone and never to return. And it’s also very unlikely this washed-up musician will get his wish to start-up that aforementioned band.
There’s plenty more examples of nostalgia and painful reminders, but I think I’ve rambled on long enough here. So I will end this on a musical note, that’s both nostalgic (recorded in 2010) and a painful reminder (it’s an unfinished demo). Check out this week’s musical accompaniment.
P.S. About the headline — nostalgia being a mother works two ways, the first of which is obvious. It can also be a mother to the birth of new ideas and new things happening. So there’s that. We’ll see what I have to report on next week’s update.
– BLR
Lost Signal 
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