2024-02-28: the way we want what we want

a middle-aged man, maybe early 50s; he's playing a guitar in a ruined, graffiti'd building; it's a cheaply made music video, the song maybe best characterized as generic dude rock.

he's not playing badly. i don't like it, but that's as much the genre as the amateurish videography. that said, if we're being honest, it's musical, he's in tune. and if he wrote the song himself? yeah, good for him.

after, we get the context: this is his sister's ex-husband; he's been trying to make it as a musician for the better part of forty years.

and damn if that isn't going to stick with me for a while. not because pop music is very much the domain of the young (being discovered late is, statistically, just about impossible), but because of the tenacity in the knowledge of such. knowing what you want to do, have to do. maybe knowing it's denied to you, and going out and doing it anyway.

it's been kind of eating at me because my own dogged pursuits in the face of less than overwhelming talent. i can write (i've had a decent amount of work published) but my manuscript is still in purgatory at a bunch of publishers; i can play a bunch of instruments reasonably well, but not well enough to ever change my life. good but not good enough: the story of me.

that's me with the blue guitar, playing riffs and singing in an abandoned building; that's me every time i pick up my own. you know what? good on him for putting that out there, taking his shot even though he knows it'll sail wide. i hope i remember this as i get older. a kind of, fuck you, i'll always take my shot.

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