It's all in the Eye of the Beholder

No. I've never had to put my faith in the music or the teachings of others. The way I see it, it's just a way of telling a story. Don't get me wrong, I love the sounds, and some of the stories have gone so far as to become a part of me, and what I am to the wold.

But that's just it. They're only stories. Poems, prose, anecdotal evidence of a rainbow of emotions and ideas.

The group themselves mean nearly nothing to me. Naturally, what they do is important, and how they do it is too, but really, when push comes to shove, to me, it isn't real. Another form of escape and fantasy, not far from books of video games.

It helps sometimes. An escape is an escape, and music is a wonderfully raw form of emotion for an artist, much like photography, but applying itself to the spirit in a much more processable way. It's beautiful, and science.

A chord is a chord no matter how it's strummed, or in what context, 4/4, 9/8, or 7/2. Minor, major, third, fourth, fifth, it's all the same. It doesn't matter.

The only time it does is when it's me.

To me, my own creation is perfect. It's not as well crafted, or as skilled or touching as millions of others, but it's looking in my mirror, and finding a perfect reflection of past and future. They say an artist is the sum of his creations, but really, it's a backwards equation. The creation is derived from the artist.
And that's what musicians are dying to share.

There's a reason I've been fighting to get studio time for three years, or that I'll jump at any opportunity to play my guitar in public, even on a park bench on a lonely autumn morning. We want to share our lives, our love, our pain, pride, joy, lust, and everything in between. We want to share what we've done. It's something special to us when people tell us we can relate, or how they might feel that we understand what they are.

But really, we don't.