This morning I was chatting with my chum Michael about his teenage son fooling around with recording some rap/hip hop music at home with his friends recently. It reminded me of when I was younger and used to do similar stuff with my pals. We’ve made a bunch of fun, silly recordings over the years: a banjo-based mountain music version of the Pokerap, a funny and stupid(er) version of I Get Around by The Beach Boys, covers of The Ghostbusters theme song, Break On Through by The Doors, Liquid Swords by GZA…
It’s been years since we’ve done anything like that though, and I’ve been thinking about why that is. I think it’s because, as we get older, free time becomes more and more scarce. I mean, teens with no jobs who have summers off or only work 20 hrs per week and live at home with their parents have lots of time and money to do fun, silly stuff. But now, a lot of my time is taken up by boring necessary shit — cleaning the house, yard, cars, or doing maintenance on them (cleaning gutters, changing oil, stacking firewood, mowing lawns, vacuuming, learning to clean scale from toilets). I also spend a lot of time working out, hiking, stretching, getting massages and physio to keep my body from fucking falling apart. Shit like that.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining about these activities. I love all that shit. Even mundane shit like washing dishes while listening to chillwave brings me immense joy. But I want more creative, artistic outlets too, and I want something neat to show for my efforts afterward. I want to write music, I want to record it, preferably with friends, and I want to be able to share it with people afterward. I want to learn to draw, and I want to make a Calvin & Hobbes-style comic that I can hold in my hands and laugh at and be proud of.
Sadly, there simply isn’t time for all of these things. Even blogging like this takes time, time that I can’t put toward learning to use a computer recording program or practicing drawing. And I LIKE blogging, this is one of the things I enjoy doing but sometimes I feel like I should not do this, so that I would have more time to devote to other creative endeavours.
I really just need to fucking retire. Fuck work. Life is too short.
I am a slave to time. And to jobs and money too, I guess.
crimson highway 