I can remember the old piano... At Christmas time we would put a tree on it, and throughout the rest of the year it lay hidden beneath books and boxes. As early as I know, alone at that piano, I learned to speak and to listen. In tireless trances, I searched for the sounds I wanted, and grew to appreciate whatever sounds I ended up getting.
This search took me through an array of different instruments, and by the time I got to high school I had taken up the trumpet, violin, guitar, drums and piano. Still, I felt that I had somewhere else I ought to be, so in my second year, I tested for proficiency and left school.
That summer, I borrowed a car and left home. I played my music in backyards and city parks, selling a homemade CD. It wasn’t always comfortable, but I got to meet some interesting people, and most of them kept in touch on the Internet. Eventually their visits made my profiles the most viewed on both myspace and purevolume.
This impressed a few of the gatekeepers to the record industry, and just before my seventeenth birthday I moved to Los Angeles. That’s when things started happening really fast…
The girl I had been dating left me, and I spent a whole recording session singing about heartbreak. Apparently, sad songs sell, and I got to eat a bunch of fancy dinners with executives talking about that fact. They gave me an advance check, put my record in stores, and I was on the road, again.
I played a show every night for almost two years and lost myself in the movement of it all. I became an actor, and completely identified with my role on stage. People were paying money to see me, and businessmen had placed their bets on my back. Somewhere along the line, I must have overestimated what those things are really worth, and I got lost in trying to sustain them.
I had made myself to fit inside a very strange mold, denying every urge to head home, and every itch of change. I was a rock, a puppet, asleep and content to be so. But then, in a single instant, the album cycle was over, and the label was done with me.
For an entire year, I fought within myself, trying to rationalize the whole experience. I knew I had lost something along the way, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. Slowly, I began to sink into a steep vortex of doubt.
As I gave up hope of expected futures, and then became disillusioned with the past, I found myself seated once again at that old piano bench.
And it all made sense…
Again, I learned to speak and listen.
In tireless trances,
I had searched for the sounds I wanted,
And now I’ve grown to love
Whatever sounds I end up getting.
With this flash of insight, I started to rebuild my life.
Today, I have a home studio, a new company of my own (Simplify), and an album in production. I’m free to act and to create in whatever way imaginable, and I’m aware now more than ever that the truth of art and music cannot be contained, conquered, nor bought and sold away. It glides between us with a simple grace, from one mind to another, untouched by the stuff of this world.
Love,
-Ronnie
