Dear Friends,
It was my 47th birthday this week. As these curiously uneven milestones do, it caught me somewhat off guard. In the moments between things, it made me both look back, and feel so grateful for where I am. To be alive. To have the sense that I’m within life’s heart.
It struck me — for many of us it takes so long to actually arrive inside your own life. I’ve felt the tension my whole life between trying to safeguard what I want to do, while doing the best I can to do what I must.
For most artists there is an age-old tension between creativity and the responsibility we must take for our lives.
Yes, there is the ideal always that the two can fuse — but for 99% of artists, we live in the long tail. And life can easily become a tug of war between what it necessitates and what we long for.
What I have landed on this week is that I want to take fuller ownership of my own life. For many of us our actions are too coloured by what we feel we should do, even more than by what we must do.
That’s the tension.
Between:
Should, Want, and Must.
All I am certain of is that I want to drive deeper into the ground, the stake of my creative life.
As we get older, we become more keenly aware of the brevity of our stay — and how lucky we are to participate in the miracle of life.
I’ve looked back this week on the turbulence of my life, not with any regret, but with a sense of resolve.
I am not entirely sure what peace is. But after the tormented journey of writing Chromatic Zero — the album I have been working on for three years — I feel I am finally loosening the chain to my own demon.
I hope in the coming years to settle deeper into life. Into what it would mean to have a gentler path — to give myself over to a new set of chords if you like.
After a period where I put video aside, I am tentatively picking up the camera again. I have no stomach for editing at the moment, so forgive me if I ramble on — but I felt called to share this moment in some way.
In the video are some thoughts and a little take of a song called “Ulysses” which I wrote in my thirties. I was strumming it absentmindedly when it struck me that it was written in an earlier version of where I currently feel. Suspended between two things; trying to figure out what that will mean, while allowing myself to be fully in this moment.
Before I go on, a question to leave you with:
What is one way you can take greater ownership of your life? For me it helps to simply think — what is it that I love to do, when I feel most free. My resolution going forward is: do more of that, and unapologetically.
With love,
Jim
ULYSSES
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