hello!
I think……a lot can be said about anything.
I was really, really worried a year ago, three years ago. I’m not now. Things have improved enough.
Something that you need can come out of something you already knew, whether you realize it or not. Something you want can come out of something you didn’t think would be there. We can’t plan everything, it’s impossible….which means we have to leave room for unplanned things. Possibility.
I feel grateful to become the person who writes this way, who talks this way, who plays the way I do. I’m not another person. I’m not the straitlaced, obedient, clean cut kid I thought I was from 2007 to 2012. You can pretend, but eventually you find out yourself that something’s just not going to happen with that equation. It’s not right. It’s not you.
I wish, truly, I could explain that to people. I wish I could’ve told them while I was figuring it out. I wish I knew that, eventually, I would need to be around people like Frank Lacy and Tyler Mitchell, and I would need to have what they wanted because it was coming from that deeper place, a place I wanted to be. I wish I knew I wasn’t going to juggle what other people wanted very convincingly at all. I wish I could tell at least a few people that I wanted what they wanted, but also wanted other things, and maybe just wanted those other things a little bit more. Not exclusively, just a bit more.
I’ll be in Hartford in September 2nd with a fairly new big band, the Hartford Jazz Project, at Black Eyed Sally’s for the weekly installment of Jazz Wednesdays. You know what? I’m thrilled. It’s home, musically. I can’t deny how good it feels to play A Calling, Mr. E, and more. I need it. There’s such honesty and depth to it. It just fits - it did then, and it does now.
You can’t overestimate that, because…..well, the Hartford thing is special, and there’s not a ton like it. A lot of the people who go in that direction actually went through the Hartt School at one point in time, people you might not even know about.
On some level, it guided me in 2010, and it guides me still today. On some level, I can’t have any regrets. Something inside of me hurts, but I have to let it go eventually.
This is a lot closer to what I would have done as early as 2010 or 2011, regardless of the timeline, regardless of anything else that happened. Confusion…..sure. When you know who you are and what you actually needed, the things you may have missed matter less. Less and less as you get closer to your own goals. I don’t think that can be overstated: on your way to your place of belonging, there are things you think would belong that probably don’t, for reasons you haven’t understood yet. I say that’s what happened to me, and I say that’s totally fine. Some things and people are less you than you thought, but the attachments are still there, still lingering. Some people play by the rules. Some fake it. Some don’t. I am wired for……unconventionality, have been since the day I was born, and that won’t change. It’s who I am. I love this music because I actually get rewarded for being the way I am - but not by everyone.
You have to wake up courageously, and go to sleep peacefully. In between, there’s confusion. I say let that confusion be the effects of being honest, true, and determined, not the goal or the direction. The people who offer you nothing but conditions have even less to offer, and the people who don’t need you to say anything or do anything have even more to offer than you thought. The contradiction isn’t them - it’s how much your heart knows about whether they are good for you. Sometimes it wants more than you do. Sometimes it can’t let go.
An unbroken circle of life, centered around a quest for freedom. Believe in that, always.