“Try not to become a man of success but a man of value.” – Albert Einstein

Quote of the day: A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life – Darwin

Time.

Where does it go.

Where has it gone.

I remember being a kid. A teenager even. Every day was a chance to grab life by the horns and go do something, anything. Something spontaneous, interactive. Nothing could stop us. I never hesitated, or questioned why I did anything. I just DID it.

I’d find myself in the middle of a snow filled Saskatchewan highway, feet away from our vehicle yet barely within eyesight of the muffler. I’d spin around that same highway uncontrollably and laugh at how many times we could have died. We’d quit our jobs, do our best to book a batch of shows and never stopped smiling for a month straight, even when the show was canceled, no one showed up or we didn’t even get gas money. It didn’t matter. We were the kids, and nothing could touch us.

They say that at a certain age, your brain, once it is fully developed, changes. You desire less the things that were once essential. Your dreams, passions and perspectives… are altered. You are literally no longer naive. You are technically and physically fully developed.

A friend of mine has been telling me for years that “Music Keeps Us Young”. I like the sound of this. To me it explains why all us kids in bands never seem to age…you all look the exact same as you did when we were 16 and playing our first shows together. Our lives haven’t changed much either. Maybe you toured a bunch more, finally made it to Australia…I hear so-and-so got engaged…what ever happened to Sarah?…man you look EXACTLY the same…the more things change, the more they stay the same…

Do you look back on your life and feel regret? I feel like my childhood, if anything, I was so petrified of wasting a moment, that I did everything I could to do anything unconventional. Staying up all night, driving all over for any reason at all, quitting any job at the drop of a hat and never looking back…I did everything I could so that I wouldn’t wake up one morning and think “Where did my life go?”

From 12 to 22 I spent more time living out of a backpack than carrying out the stability that is conventional in our culture. But after too much of that, you just want to stay in one place for awhile. Even though I’ve been back and forth from L.A. to Vancouver for the last year and half, I do feel my roots starting to sink in to the soil. Does this mean I am wasting precious time?

Please let me know if you see any typos. I have been typing fairly fast.

Random fact about me: My first 3 tattoos were birthday presents.

For as long as I can remember, I have known what I am not.

In fact, I’ve know exactly what I’m not.

I’m not this, that, or the other thing.

I’m not like them, one of those or part of that.

I’m not up for grabs, paying attention or looking around.

My head has been down, gaze hardly shifting, my pupils a pinpoint at a point right in front

Why?

I’m not easily distracted, or buying just because there is a sale

I’m not connected to the mainland

I wasn’t built to be bought, made to be sold and I don’t make songs that should be played on the radio

I’m not popular or the life of any party

I do not entertain

I’m not the class clown or the prom queen

I’m not the guitar player, drummer, pianist, bass player OR lead singer

And although I have known for this long

All the things that I am not

I just recently started to see

What I am

In Hollywood, there are about a dozen people who write every song you hear on the radio.

Most of them know the songs they write are terrible. Most of them hate what they do. But, they know how it’s done, and they do it well.

There’s a reason they call it “selling out”. There is a big paycheck to this formula.

This is not to say that there are not beacons of light who shine through this mess. YES, there are still people who write their own songs. They’re out there, somewhere. You just don’t hear them on the radio all that often.

If you do hear them on the radio, chances are it’s because they gave a song they wrote to someone else. Maybe they planned to release it themselves, maybe they thought it didn’t sound enough like “them” (even though they wrote it). So, you give it away, cause if the person with the biggest machine behind them if singing the song you wrote, you’ll be richer than if you sing it yourself.

Why is the radio such a big deal? Why do you even listen to it? It’s like watching a spreadsheet on T.V. or a listening to a sonic math equation. It’s all so…calculated.

All over, every where, there are kids in bands, like me, complaining about the radio. It’s been this way since the beginning. Maybe you think the radio is awesome. Maybe you listen to it every day. Maybe you love American Idol and Hannah Montana and every Disney Brat and Pop Tart the machine can spew out. I know there are people like you out there, there has to be.

The thing for me is, even if I can admit the song is good (I loved “Since You Been Gone”…it’s a truly well written song) I just can’t get past the fact that the person singing it didn’t write it, produce it, chose the album cover, write the melody, pick the arrangement…nothing. They had nothing to do with it. Sometimes, they’ll have something to do with it, like the spelling of the title. but it’s too dangerous to mess with the formula. There are millions of dollars on the line…

If you want to make a million bucks in a week, you gotta have a radio “single”.

I, for one, can’t WAIT until people stop using the word “single”.

See, my favourite songs, will never be played on the radio. My favourite songs do not sound like “Singles”. If you want a song on your album to be played on the radio, it has to be the “Single” and the “Single” has to sound like all the other “Singles” out there on the radio, even if it sounds nothing like anything else on your album.

And this is the formula. And this is the way it has been going for years. And I just hope it ends one day.

That is all.