Wow. I haven’t updated this blog since January 2021. Over two years.
Recently I have been in touch with people from way back, in the 1980s, from my years in Colorado. It’s interesting. We are all many years older. Time has molded us all, as time does. People have died. People have had children. Marriages, divorces, etc…the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune that come to us all, I suppose. My choices haven’t been theirs, and vice-a-versa, of course. We all find happiness and our sense of being in our own way.
There is no denying that the pandemic has changed my thinking, as it has for many. An old friend fled LA at the beginning in 2020 and moved ‘temporarily’ to New Mexico. He’s still there. He’s found his place, one of many in his lifetime. Others have drifted until they found safe harbor. Whatever it takes. I followed the route of many others and bought a small house, renovated it and have been living in it since November 2021 (please see the previous blog entry). I have also been taking piano lessons for over a year. I’m better now than when I began. I have picked up the guitar again after a long hiatus and am enjoying that too. My photography has been fruitful, mostly analog, and my darkroom is a busy and deeply satisfying place to work these days. Work. I love that word. I love to labor at my craft. Once in a while I splash some paint on a canvas and see how I feel about that. I try not to take things so seriously. I think being happy is better than being right.
In my family, common questions were ‘How’s your work?” and ‘What are you working on these days?” Of course this never applied to our day jobs, how we paid our bills. “Work” was always “work.” In my case it was music, writing, photography…my sisters each have their own artistic paths–visual, literary and academic. That’s just the way we were raised.
There is a wonderful quote by the techno-music godfather Giorgio Moroder that has been informing me these days. Taken exponentially, I find applies to anything, not just music…how I navigate life. He said, “Once you free your mind about a concept of music and harmony being correct, you can do whatever you want.” That’s it, isn’t it? It’s so easy to fall into a pattern of ‘correct’ and ‘right’ whether it is in life or the arts. It’s a place of stagnation and boredom. The random and potentially exciting is supplanted by the predictable and mundane. Work becomes toil. I become serious, rigid. Inflexible. Moroder’s philosophy demands work, some internal yoga to loosen the thinking, stretch the concept. As I said before, being happy is better than being right.
And so I work. I take pictures, develop the film, produce the prints. I use a digital camera too. I play piano and guitar. I study music theory. I stretch canvas and splash paint. I ride my mountain bike and even swim in the sea during these winter months. I read good books and eat healthily. I sleep well. I try not to take myself seriously. I find happiness. I let go of the rest.
–JDCM