it's all blueprint, it must be easy.

Rumblings of probably not-reckonings heeded, the darkness that comes so early, the quiet street where nobody seems to live, haunted by ghosts of gentrifiers past, of immigrants and regular folks, boarded up buildings.

But I drive through the rain to make art, and my fingernails have taken a beating from scrubbing with all that acetone and pumice and I show the new student the treasure trove of colored powders and jars of jewel-toned glass like raw-hewn gems. The time goes by so quickly and I'm trying to decide between hues of ruby, amethyst, aquamarine, amber. There will be time for all of these and more.

And tonight, music. I am past the feelings of insecurity, of not being cool enough, of not being good enough, even though I'm not as technically proficient as I once was, which tends to happen when one's tastes shift from reading the John Petrucci columns in Guitar World to listening to the squalling guitars of Repeater for the first time. I know more what I'd want to do.

What I wonder is if this is what I want to do.

It's said there's only two types of music: good and bad, and to some extent this is true. But anyone who has any shred of geeky love for tuneage knows that the strands of genre can be split indefinitely. What kind of 'rock' does your band play? Does it jangle, does it plod, does it shred, does it shimmer? Do you want to save the world or smash it or just get laid? Does it matter? Are you pop-punk or old-school punk or crusty punk? Is your metal classic/thrash/black/death/core/whatever?

Does it matter? Do we get along? We don't have to see things the same way, but are we wired to mesh so well that the creative sparks fly? There's been so many times where it hasn't despite our best efforts. When I didn't know what to play, when Ithought your lyrics sucked, when you all wanted to play Bikini Kill, when you were all friends and I was the interloper, when you said I was ok for a girl. , when me and the drummer decided we didn't want to play with them anymore and quit, when you were a drama queen and maybe I was too and we didn't get along as friends let alone as bandmates, those times I waited for practice to end so we could wander in the woods and be existential beneath the stars and trees.

And now my vision is focused, and I still dream of weekend warrioring, of getting off work to make noise like I did so long ago and dreamed. I miss it so much in these times when the art and the writing just don't coalesce. And maybe by now I'm just getting too old.