When I was eight years old, I gave up the violin.  Blame it on the influence of too much Fraggle Rock (is there ever such a thing?); in one episode, the Fraggles sang about trusting your instincts, that you should never force yourself to do something if your heart isn’t in it.  The next day I delivered this same monologue to my parents and, lo and behold, the violin lessons stopped.  It’s a decision that I sometimes regret, although I suspect I never would have been the world-renowned concert violinist of my daydreams.  I am a notorious quitter.  Piano: took lessons for two years.  Classical guitar: lasted three months.  I even quit my beloved ballet after eight years, thus ending my primadonna potential.  I suspect it has something to do with perfectionism — if I’m not convinced that I can do something absolutely right the first time, I don’t see the point in even trying.  Routine practice befuddles me.  I need to see results.

Two things have remained constant throughout my revolving door of artistic and academic pursuits: writing and music.  This blog is about my long love affair with music.  Pop, indie rock, whatever you want to call it.  I love music so much that I feel like a traitor to the creative writing I’ve studied intensively since I was 15 years old.  I have educated myself in poetry single-mindedly — at a fine arts high school, liberal arts college, even an MFA program.  I currently teach creative writing to college students.

Here’s the shameful secret: poetry has never, ever excited me as much as music does.  I can’t play the instruments myself, but I’ll listen.  In music, I find the same thrill I used to find through writing short stories and poems: the power of imagination, the creation of a complete, new world that can be entered over and over again.  Moments like these, the moments of discovery, sadly, are getting fewer.  I’m sure there are a lot of factors involved, like getting older, busier, possibly even getting more and more jaded with the current “scene.”  But as with marriage, sometimes it’s more about commitment, security, and a deep connection than those precious, fleeting moments of fire and passion.

So, enough introduction.  Press play.