Much of the world advocates dreaming big. You can do anything you want to do. You can be whoever you want to be. Well, my dreams, along the way, and along with my understanding of myself, slipped from Broadway and stadium tours to making a living in the field of music to recording five songs and maybe, someday, a few people might hear them.
Reminder that tickets are available here!
I wanted to leave one thing behind when I leave.1 Something that says who I was, and maybe reminds someone of me.
“Do you not know that a man is not dead while his name is still spoken?”
-Terry Pratchett, Going Postal
This, to me, is an afterlife. Being remembered, or maybe just creating change in the world that outlives you. Not forever. (Nothing is forever.) And not that I think you entirely get to choose how you’re remembered, but I wanted mine to be music. And that was the driving force that got me to the point of recording this EP.
I’m sure not many people who know me would be surprised to learn that my concept of meaning in and after life is influenced by Terry Pratchett. But he only guided me towards the conclusion that had been looming all through my phase of grappling with my uncertainty about religion: What makes a difference is how you affect other people. Whether you affect them in a big way or a small way, whether they even know about it or not, that is what lasts. So affect for the better.
Anyway, it took a while, but we did get those five songs recorded, and somewhere along the way I found my dreams found new energy and grew a little. They pushed and they pushed and they made some space for themselves in this life.
Because the thing is, I remembered how much I love it. I love performing, I love writing songs and sharing them with other people, and (it turns out) I really love recording. I just love making music. Suddenly I couldn’t imagine stopping after one EP. We were already talking about the next songs we should record.
Recording was actually kind of a magical process for me. I learned to love my voice despite being all too aware of the flaws in my singing technique. Oh, I learned how much I don’t know, too, but I did find an appreciation of where I am that I had been lacking. It didn’t come from comparing myself to anyone else, it just came from listening to myself over and over again and finding that I didn’t sound worse with every listen, I just sounded… like me. And being that I was the person I felt should be singing my songs, there was a certain rightness to it all.
So, my dreams grew to encompass the idea of continuing to make music for its own sake in this life. But that’s more or less where they stop. They didn’t extend back to Broadway and stadium tours, or even making a living in music.2 But I have rekindled my dreams of maybe a few strangers knowing who we are, and/or liking our music.
Here’s me, with my small dreams. I dream of writing songs that express some of the things I wish I could tell people. I dream of doing those songs justice in the recording process or in performance, at least to the best of my ability at the time. I dream of making a little ripple in the world that takes a bit of time to dissipate when I’m done rippling. And that’s it. No stadium tours, no Broadway shows, no international fame, just a ripple.
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1 Ideally not soon.
2 There’s no money in what we’re doing. At least the way we’re doing it. We’re doing it by spending money.
A ripple is a good thing. There’s a reason that butterscotch ripple ice cream is one of my favorites. The ripple doesn’t have to be the whole thing, in fact that would detract from the taste. But, without the ripple, you’re left with a plain vanilla experience. I’m so glad that you’re getting so much out of this whole EP process. And, as a fan, I’m glad to be a side benifit-er.