the leap

 

 

now playing: james taylor, “believe it or not”

 

there is now, officially, internet service at the new place. dylan is busily frying bad guys on my computer in the “study”, just off the living room. i have the old, trusty, compaq laptop on the sofa, tossing data packets through the air to the wireless router that sits on top of my deskjet printer.

already, it feels this much more like home.

tonight, i had to drive up to kutztown to drop some things off with jayda…when i walked into the dorm, she was in the lobby with her back turned to me, but i knew it was her. after i left, i had to think about how it was that i just instinctively knew it was her, in this time of identical haircuts…i’m still not sure. i just think it must be one of those things that you just know, as a parent – just as i could pick out either of my children by the sound of them crying when they were babies. i could tell, if i heard a child crying in a public place, or if i could hear them and not see them, whether or not it was jayda or dylan, or if it was someone else’s child.

anyway, i digress…

she was there, in the lobby, playing a game with some of the TC’s and a lot of the other students, and she just seemed totally at ease with where she was and who she was with…she had a confidence about her, and i could tell that she was really enjoying herself. i handed her the things i’d brought, and she flashed me a smile and i asked her about a phone message she’d left earlier in the week and i was on my way.

i still feel as though i’ve been shortchanged, in terms of the years i was supposed to have a child in my company…not a teenager, not an adult, but my little girl.

i know i’m not the first person to feel any of this…it just seems like she’s been ahead of the curve for such a long time – that she went from being 7 to being 15, and it all flew by waaaay too fast.

i drove home listening to an ancient cassette of our mutual angels that never seems to leave the car, and thinking about blake’s record, and the progress being made on it (he’s actually starting to mix some of the tracks of late) and the studio waiting to be reassembled in my basement…

y’know, it’s funny. barely two months ago, i was intent on moving, intent on getting out of this area, checking every musician’s classified ad website on the internet, plotting my escape…convinced that i needed to be somewhere else.

now, two months later, i’m putting the finishing touches on moving into a new house right here where i’ve been for the last 15 years. what happened?

as seems to be the one constant in my life, i never really seem to have a grip until the dust has settled and i have to figure this all out after the fact.

justin, my friend whose house i now occupy, made the leap. i didn’t. i chose (albeit somewhat unconsciously) to leave my roots where they lay, even as i was planning and plotting doing exactly the opposite.

had i kept my nose to the stone and left the blinders on, i wonder what direction i’d be moving in right now…but as it is, we have a great new house and – with a couple of notable exceptions – i’ve felt really good about what’s taken place in the time since my determination to flee to nashville and “get on the bus” has subsided somewhat.

what i have to realize, though…and what i think hit me as i was driving home listening to my seven year old album, is that this move, and this willingness to “lay my dreams to rest, if only for today”, pretty much means “game over” for me. taking this house, moving here and allowing the roots to cut that much deeper into the earth, pretty much means that i’m here for at least another five to seven years. in seven years, i’ll be approaching 45, and whatever realistic chance i would have at even getting sideman work would be prohibitively slim – slim enough to become a serious deterrent.

so what this means is that i can now remove the musician’s classifieds from my morning sites checklist when i get to work…it means that i can stop amassing gear tailored specifically for road work. it means that i can make some choices about the projects that i’m currently involved in, and some things that i very much would like to do…

it means, in a nutshell, that it’s time to hunker down and accept my fate. my lot in life.

the truth is, it’s not a bad lot. never has been. it’s pointed in different directions at times, but where i currently stand isn’t a bad place. there really aren’t any parts of my life (other than the trivial complaint) that i find loathesome or troubling…i “have a good job, my kids are wonderful, i have a wealth of friends and talents that i find personally satisfying and rewarding…i’m not, by trade, an ingrate, and i do appreciate all that i have.

it’s just time to let go of some things that i’ve always considered attainable in the back of my mind.

that’s all.

on a totally unrelated note, i’ve made the switch to vh1 classic in mid-entry, and i just have to say that even through all the stylistic travesties that have occured in the time since she’s become a commercial commodity…even through all the embarrasing fashion moments that have brought other, bigger stars to their doom…somehow, amy grant has always looked amazing. even in an awful video with you know who surrounded by faux ballerinas, she just looks like a breath of fresh air. and shes’ still pretty amazing looking, almost twenty years after that particular lapse in judgement.

boy…unrelated, and quite long-winded.

i have clothes in the dryer for some time now. i think it might be wise to retrieve them and take my babbling ass to bed, before i give this awful swing out sister video enough time to take residence in my head and keep me awake.

god, this is just awful. i’m not sitting on the remote, i hope….