yesterday I wrote a whiny rant that I don't even want you to go back and look at. No, seriously, Please don't.
The fact is, I spoke badly about some friends of mine who are musicians, and I shot my mouth off in a stupid way, and all for one reason:
I woke up peevish, and didn't get better.
This is my public apology, both of them and to you, kind readers here at daily Kos, who have had to put up with such drivel. I publicly eat crow, I rend my garments in front of everyone, for publishing stupidities without thinking.
The fact is, music is the greatest blessing in my life next to my family and friends. And I count some people here at Kos as my friends.
I will tell you sincerely how I feel; I feel that the worst music is better than the best war, better than the best politics, better than the best religion.
I have gone through hell, and in the middle of it I've gone down to my music room and picked up my instrument, and an hour later I found myself thinking "I should be more upset than this, I'd be screaming my head off, I should be crying; and yet I don't feel so bad; in fact I feel pretty good!"
And the people that I play music with are wonderful, because they help me to enter the world of sound, and more especially the world of coherent sound.
You see, in our tradition we divide sound into two parts: noise and organized sound, in which category we place music. And music itself we consider to be one of the greatest blessings given to us by the Creator. I also have it on direct experience that all the prophets that I'm familiar with approved the playing of music, more especially if it has love.
Oh, don't get me wrong; there's times when we have to pull out the strange stuff, and throw in a little bit of bitter along with the sweet; but I learned long ago that you have to do it with love in your heart, you have to do it with a righteous attitude.
And the comments that I made yesterday (no, please don't go to that of the diary, I beg you; it is truly unworthy of doing anything but disappearing into the black hole of nothingness, of being forgotten; and don't say that I didn't warn you if you insist on going back there and looking at the crap that I, in my peevishness which was nobody's fault but my own, made the mistake of publishing.) Were not made out of love, but only that same silly peevishness that I was indulging myself in yesterday. Let it be forgotten.
Because in the end, in life as in music, it'll all disappear; as a Buddhist, one of the first things I had to learn was "impermanence", and as a Christian, if you can call me that, I remember that line in a poem by Phillip Larkin:
"What will survive of us is love"
and that's what I really want to have survive of me; I don't even care if people remember the music that I play, the things I made, or what I wrote; and I know all too well that my name is Mr. horrible, because sometimes I am horrible, as I was yesterday; but I do want to leave something, and what I want to leave is love.
Thank you.