Here I Go

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I returned to music with hesitation, unsure if anything remained after years of fear, silence, and self-erasure. Bookbinding proved I could still learn, but music exposes the version of me I ran from. This is the beginning of confronting that history, sharing the process, the darkness, and the question of whether I can create again.

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Date: Monday December 8, 2025

Ordinal: Week 1 | Day 1

Yesterday, I posted A Time of Review | Part 2. It discusses the inner thoughts and emotions that led me here, this project. How are they connected, and what did I learn from the experience? My ability to learn and execute aren't broken. Were the same powerful feelings present? No. Bookbinding satisfies reasoning, a sense of accomplishment upon completion, but as an emotional outlet? No, not for me. Is either greater than the other? No, just different.

As I lay on my death bed, some future I cannot know, I imagine his world; his perspective. His regrets, his shames, sitting at the forefront, on the tip of his tongue if he yet speaks. It isn’t proof of his ability to learn, to iterate, to reason. He casts no shadows on the loved or lost, the missed opportunities, the people he failed to impress. I play for him the memories we share: the good, the bad, the shame, the guilt. It isn’t those he regrets. Those simply prove he was capable of learning, of becoming more than what he was. He accepts his past. May I be so lucky.

But when I replay our history with music, like a hot dagger to the abdomen, he is pained. In his world he never attempted to recapture what he might have been. When through music his deepest experiences choked him to sing, to convey, to be heard, but caused such anguish, such agony. In that imagined space, he cannot speak. Only through feeling can he communicate, and it’s up to me to interpret the pain, the shame, the guilt.

An Attempt to Answer

Our history with music is complicated, so I’ll attempt to put matters straight without undue flourish, yet where human emotions are concerned, one cannot entirely exclude their effects. Music was where we escaped. And while I can’t speak for the people who occupied an orbital position around us in the dark early days, I can approximate how we may have been perceived.

As I went out into the social scene in my late teens and early 20s, I found I was as understood as I had been at home. I unsettled people. I had difficulty conforming, difficulty understanding the unwritten rules. I was full of ideas, aware in some matters, blind as a brick in others. I concluded that every negative outcome in my relationships must be accounted for by some defect within. So: be less, be less, be much less.

Yet when I took those thoughts, ideas, observations, deep questions and reservations about existence, both as presented and as lived, and put them to music, something different happened. Regardless of the subject matter, there was connection. Even recognition from those I never met. The more I was recognized, the more fear took hold. The greater my desire to stop, to put it away, to hide. 

A Bad Partnership

Eventually I would return but only after profound losses, and rarely without alcohol. Eventually the two became enmeshed. What began as a way to connect and be understood became a release valve for my darkest thoughts. As I sang, I lamented loss. As I lamented, I drank. I didn’t lose the desire to share, but the fear of managing all those faces, all those expectations, became overwhelming. You and I, dear reader, are reading this for the first time.

The connection I deeply desired, a little boy’s dream of a thousand people singing his songs, became the greatest terror, the waking nightmare: to be perceived, to be seen, to be open to judgment.

Now a new fear joins the chorus. Am I past it? Has my creative bubble burst? When I played, I felt alive. In private, I contemplated the opposite. To be so fearful of the consequences of taking part in your “dream” that you cannot, yet it’s all you long for. Sounds like a curse from some ancient god. Yet, if I am here attempting to process this, perhaps the fear of regret is as powerful as fear of perception and thus judgment. Perhaps.

Over the past few months I’ve gathered all my old hard drives and pulled recordings as I find them, pooling them into one place. This morning I began listening to them in sequence in the shop. A mixed bag of emotion and difficult memories, each demanding confrontation. To be frank, this is fucking hard. Is there something to be recaptured or is this portion of work, my work, in the attempt itself? I don’t know. So far, the only inspiration I’ve felt comes from reviewing my history with music: a concept, an album name. A promise to myself, maybe; a point on the horizon that encapsulates what I must remember and how I must convey meaning as I trudge toward it.

Sit in the Chair You Made

I don’t know what any of this means yet. I don’t know if I can recapture or reinvent my relationship with music, sharing publicly, with being seen when the subject matter is so intensely personal; its roots tangled together. If I can, and there's unfavorable results, does that only confirm what I fear?

I don’t know.

But my time with bookbinding has provided evidence; evidence in how I might aid the search for answers. Share the process. Share the shit behind the curtain. Speak the darkness out loud, breathe life into it and be utterly consumed. Maybe damn the consequences too.