26 on the 24th

Dear Reader,

It doesn't seem all that long ago that this post was entitled "24 on the 24th." I've been trying to make some sense of the rapid acceleration that seems to have overtaken the gas pedal on my life, but so far my only theory is that time flies when you're having fun. If that's true, then I must be having a blast. Life is hurtling by.

I'm one of those people who largely exists in their head, and it is taking me a long time to accept that every thought, emotion, opinion, and revelation I have is not necessarily unique to me. I thought I was a "special snowflake," but you live long enough and you realize that that belief was the ego-centric fantasy of a younger you who desperately needed to feel original and somehow set apart. I still feel that need. Don't take my cognizance of the need as diluting my desire for it. Some of my least favorite words are aptly applied to my life right now: grown-up, stable, comfy. It is taking a remarkable amount of willpower to not resist the intense inertia I'm feeling in my Good Life. Perhaps that's the definition of responsibility: Not upending a good thing just to feel like you're moving forward.

People have been yelling at me, perhaps rightly so, about my grumbling over turning 26. It's not a spectacular age. It doesn't have the wide-mouthed flare of 18, the newfound power of the raucous 21, or the sober, trenchant 30. It's a middling year, one of those great gray expanses between wayposts where one continues to put on the new outfit of adulthood. I'm struggling somewhat to know how to act, defining myself from the outside in as I do. What does a 26-year-old look like? How do they think and act? I feel like a child playing dress-up in front of a mirror. "Here is me at 18. Here is me at 26. Here is me at 40." What's really changing?

If anything, the blessing of getting older is that congealed feeling I have on the inside. Readers of this blog know that I've been liquid for a long time, desperately seeking to become solid. And I can feel that happening, piece by piece. It's not a hardening, though that temptation exists. How many adults do you know who mistake solid for hard? I look at those people, the ones who are cynical and sour and brittle, and I try to be anything but what they are. I am convinced you can grow older without totally smothering your inner-child.

In my music, actually, I am trying to get back to a place of innocence. We start out, as children, creating with no sense of the outcome. We just create because the joy is in the creation. Who cares if it is good? Who cares if it makes sense or doesn't make sense? The outcome isn't the point. The point is the act of creation.

But then we go to school, and we learn how things "should" and "should not" be done. We learn that there are others who might be "better" or "worse" than us. We learn critical-thinking skills and hew a keen critical eye. We are evaluated on how well we critique our own work and the work of others.

And in the process, we forget that you cannot create with a critical mind any more than you can be critical with a creative mind. We focus so much on the quality of the outcome, which is the domain of the critical mind, that we almost become afraid to create. What if it doesn't come out perfect? What if it isn't good? Would that mean I am not good? What if I'm not as good as I used to be? What if I'll never create anything better?

When I was a child, between the ages of 12 and 16, I wrote 42 pieces of ragtime music. From age 16 to now, I've written 2. That's a 95% reduction in pieces over twice as much time. What really changed? My ability to compose? Not likely. Did the pieces get better? I'd like to think so. But in the process of learning how to be critical, I forgot what it was just create for the joy of it.

So, now that I'm 26, I am going to relearn how to think like a child. I find that devilishly ironic. We spend all that time learning how to grow up, only to realize that what we truly need is to think young.

26. I suppose it's up to me to make it a good year. Perhaps by focusing on what is special and unique to me, I'll be able to feel that all-important sense of "progress," of moving forward.

Your,
Martin