As I get older, I appreciate more and more how lucky I am to have a talent for music. As I type, I’m just a couple of weeks off turning 42. I’ve been involved in actively learning, performing, making, writing, being immersed in music since I was a kid, growing up in a house full of music, playing in brass bands then rock bands and the rest. One way or another, music has had an enormous influence on me for over four decades.
For a large part of my adult life, music has also been at least a part of what I’ve done for “work”. However, it took many years of learning, experimenting, hard work, various other jobs and being supported by family & friends to finally reach a point where I was able to have music as my only source of income. It’s been about five years since I lost my last ‘proper job’ due to cuts in the Third Sector (don’t get me started) and I became a full-time producer and player of various things. I get to do for a living what I’d do for pleasure anyway. I don’t take it for granted and I don’t plan on stopping any time soon…
The way I see it, our our glorious leaders and their friends in the vast global corporations we’re all familiar with are doing their best to wreck the planet, stifle people’s creativity (unless it’s related to creating more money, creating more consumption…), limit our freedom, turn our kids into nice, polite, obedient parts of the Industrial Machine. This makes it ever more important that those of us with a creative gift, writers, poets, musicians, painters, woodworkers, basket-makers, face painters etc etc etc, share that gift and work our arses off to counter-balance at least some of the destructive influence of modern “Civilisation”.
I don’t really do New Years Resolutions or Mission Statements, but if I did, it would be something like this: to bring music to other people’s lives; to help others realise their own talents; to share, with my children, friends, fellow villagers, everyone I’m fortunate to work with, the deep resonance, power and joy that is music.
