So I write...

Music has been a huge part of my life since I was a child. My father played drums and listened to music whenever he wanted, which often failed to consider things like his children sleeping or his wife not wanting to deal with the noise. Having said that, I learned from my earliest days to appreciate good music and it has carried through to my adult years. I started getting interested in playing drums after watching drummers on television shows like "Don Kirshner's Rock Concert" or "The Midnight Special" - until that point I'm not sure that I had much interest in music, I was more interested in sports.

My father had practically no interest in sports, so I could probably count the number of times he tossed a football or baseball with me on one hand. Thankfully my uncle Ron was tireless in tossing footballs and baseballs with me. Looking back at how much he did that and how important it was to me, I can't thank him enough. I simply wouldn't know that experience if it weren't for him. Ron spent loads of his time doing those kinds of things for me and talking to me while he was doing it. To this very day, I can see him standing across from me and I can feel being a bit nervous about how hard he was going to hurl the next one at me - and I'm certain that he wasn't tossing anything anywhere near as hard as he could've.

Not only did Ron know that doing something like this was important to me, he knew exactly how long the game had to last in order for me to get the most out of it. Most young boys want this experience and go through phases where they think they'll be an athlete when they grow up - I was no different. I wanted to experience this kind of thing and I wouldn't have the memory of it if it weren't for Ron. I had other uncles who would take the time to toss a ball with me, I had friends to play football and baseball with, but it's Ron who spent the most time doing this kind of thing with me and making sure I got the kind of energy release that a young boy needs. I'm eternally grateful for that and those moments of tossing a ball back and forth with my uncle Ron are at the top of my favorite childhood memories.

I suppose I gravitated towards the drums because seeing various drummers on television made me feel like rock drumming was pretty close to athletics and if I couldn't convince my own father to toss a baseball or a football with me, maybe I stood a chance of him spending time with me at the drum kit. That never happened - but my own interest in the drums and in music did take off on it's own. It was often frustrating, particularly at the start. My parents did not have a healthy marriage and my father was completely narcissistic - which never bodes well in a marriage or a family. My parents divorced and things got tougher for all of us for a bit. My mother held our family together and gave my sisters and I every worthy value that any of us hold as adults. I don't know how she did it when I think about those days now - I didn't care how she did it when we were all in the midst of things all those years ago, and I had no concept of how hard things must have been for her then. Those kinds of things change when you grow up - boy do they ever!

Over the years I would pick up and drop my interest in drums and music. I loved music then, and I love it now - though more as a listener. I never liked so much of what goes with being a musician - even on the best days. I'm fine with practicing, playing - but the reality is that there are so many more things that go along with being a musician, even as a hobby, that I simply don't like. To me, those things took away from the actual playing and the music. Things like driving home after playing four sets in a bar with your ears fried and not wanting to hear a thing on the drive home. I hated driving home when I simply wanted to be home.

In the end, after many years of going back and forth with my love of music and absorbing myself in it only to remove myself from it, I felt that on my best days behind a drum kit that I was a mere imitator and as much fun as that was at times, I felt that I should be more after the number of years I'd been at it. While I've got a long ways to go as a writer - particularly when I think of people like my friend Dianne, who writes so well that I often feel like she invented the entire English language, I've always, from my earliest memories of writing assignments in school, felt that I have a unique voice/way of saying something. So I've always written and always felt like I've wanted to write. That writing takes several forms and there are times when I don't like the solitude of it, but I write through those moments. I like words, I like how mere words can have such an effect and do so much good - so I write.