For You
This past August (2010) I finished a series of summer shows, canceled all my remaining shows for the year, posted a short message on Facebook stating my heart was simply no longer with my music, closed down my social networking sites, packed up my gear and have essentially dropped off the face of the earth. I have owed it to you, my friends and supporters, for awhile now, an explanation of my actions. Anyone who’s known me long enough knows I’ve always been a mysterious and private person, sharing very little personal information with those around me. The only idea anyone has really had about me is what they gather and obtain from my music. Of course due to my sometimes cryptic writing style, that may actually be very little. The truth is my music, my career, and my personal life have been a sad story of irony and hypocrisy leading me to the decisions I’ve made. I have kept one thing in specific private and secret throughout my music career, and if only for me, I must bring it to the surface.
On August 18th, 2004, I met a woman who influenced me as a person, as a musician, as a man, more than anyone else in my life. This woman was my friend, my supporter, my partner. This woman was the only person that I have ever loved. Since the day I met her, she became the core of my music, and my life. Every song I have ever written since that time has had her at the center of it. Many songs initially were inspired by others around me, but they always revolved around my feelings towards her as I wrote them. The love, the hope, the sadness, the regret, the pain. My songs have obviously never painted a positive portrayal of my relationship with this woman. We had an extremely unstable relationship, due to my self destructiveness and inability to ever truly commit to her and allow myself to love her. I loved her through my songs, but failed to love her in real life. The pattern of ‘on and off’ we fell into always kept that wave of emotions washing over me… enabling me to write these songs of intense passion, love, and of course hope. My songs of missing someone, hoping to have them again directly displayed that pattern I allowed myself to fall into with her. I never was able to separate her from my music. She was my music. She was my muse. And I lost her. And this time there was no hope left behind. No hope of getting her back. The only thing my music represents to me now is what I lost. Every decision I have made in the past 6 years has been to better myself as a man for her. I finally got myself to a place where I am who I need to be to love her the way she needed to be loved… and I lost her on my way to get here. I kept her 3rd on my priority list. I let work and music take the foreground always assuming she would be there. I took her commitment, her love, and her support for granted. I never made a decision based on my own, or her happiness. I made decisions based on logic, based on numbers. Love is neither. I am left with a sick feeling in my stomach at the decisions I have made, and how I have hurt this woman. Perhaps I feel I must punish myself… which is why I am wallowing in this. I am crippled though, and the drive, the passion I once had for my music was lost with her. And to be honest, I wouldn’t take it back if it was offered to me again. I experienced emotions through my music. It became the only way I could feel anything. My music became a black hole, sucking everything I had towards it. It was a drug. An addiction. My music can not release what I feel now. It cannot touch the regret and pain that lives with me. My stomach is tied in knots on a daily basis. My mind is submerged in thoughts of the woman I loved, the women I lost. That is the honest truth of why I have stopped, of why I have disappeared.
I will be moving away this year. I am hoping that inaccessibility will heal faster than time, because every day that goes by I fall deeper into regret with the woman I hurt and lost. I hope to someday again find passion in writing music. For now, I am focusing on myself. Thank you all for listening, for supporting, and allowing me to share my songs with you through out these years. It has been a privilege. I would like to leave you with 2 things. One is the dedication to the woman that made me the musician and the man I became. I had intended for this dedication to be on the back of my debut album, ‘You Are The Sun.’ I regret not putting this there daily. The other is the last song I recorded. I song that she loved… because it said what I had never said to her before.
Dedicated to J.L.K.
This is for you, my sun…
The light in my life when I am engulfed in darkness…
The warmth in my soul when I am alone and cold…
The center of my universe, the source of my love…
You fuel every beat of my heart.
May you glow forever bright with calmness and happiness…
You are my life, my universe, my only love…
This is for you, my sun.
“Silly little thoughts of you run through my mind
as time stops and I realize
that where we go from here is unknown,
where we go from here is unknown.
Well I’m sorry for how I hurt you
and more.
But I hope you know
that I love you
with all my heart
Where we go from here is unknown
where we go from here
where we go from here…”
