Playing the Music

I mentioned that my wife and I are musicians. My wife loves music, but it is my passion. I have been playing some kind of music for as long as I can remember.

When I was about five, I used to go to our neighbors. They were an older couple without children. They sort of adopted me. The had a beautiful baby grand piano. I started plinking on that thing and pretty soon they were paying for me to have eight years of lessons. There was a small problem with that.

I loved music and would listen to my mother's classical records for hours. When I went to lessons, my teacher said, "What would you like to play?"

I of course picked something I knew. Since it was a classical piece, my teacher was delighted. Only thing is, I play by ear. I didn't need music to play the piece. Whether my teacher ever knew that I wasn't actually reading the music sitting in front of me, I don't know. I can hardly read music at all.

Yesterday, I started a Soundcloud account. Soundcloud is a way for folks to get their work out there for others to listen to. I posted one song so far. It is a song I wrote a long time ago. We had a neighbor woman with a little baby. The baby had the most enormous swollen big toe. I said it was an ingrown toenail and she should have a Doctor look at it. She didn't want to go to the Doctor, so I wrote this song to encourage her.

Jeremy Nine Toes

I/we make a little money playing out, but not near enough to live on. I would love that, but life got in the way of my musical career early on. Besides, people kept telling me that it was impossible to make a living that way. Damn! I wish I had never listened to them!! Well, now we do make a bit of money and we are getting better at it all the time. The money, however, isn't the point. The point is that we are doing our music!

I guess my point here is; don't let your dreams fade away. Chase after them. You may not become world famous doing whatever that is, but you'll be a damn sight happier!