What Scares Me Today.

Fear is something that we all deal with every day. Fear of rejection, fear of success, fear of failure and yes, fear of singing a trashy song in a bar at 1:30 am.

We all deal with it every day, and some hide it better than others. Personally I am petrified of my own writing, I fear that my spelling and punctuation errors and sporadic thoughts may lead others to question me. Not question my writing but genuinely question me, my talents, abilities and whether I should be employed.

For me my fear of writing started when I was young, I struggled learning to read and write until I was about eight or nine. And by that time I was far enough behind other students that I perpetually felt like I was playing catch up in learning the basics. The memory of nervously stuttering through reading in class is agonizingly burnt into the back of my head. Hiding in the deepest darkest places of my cerebellum just waiting to pop up and say “Hello” at some of the most inopportune moments.

I battle with it each time I sit down to write and to create, sometimes it its yelling louder than others but it is always there. This is one of the main reasons I am working to write more, because learning to dance with this fear will make me better. If not for the sake of being a better writer with a more developed voice, but a better artist capable of creating great work by entertaining my muse and by keeping my demons at bay.

This is a task easier said than done and while I know that the louder they scream the better the art I am creating. Still bit-by-bit I hope to become better at coming to terms with this vulnerability in my writing.

I’ll be the first to admit this fear is rather irrational, and as a red blooded American male I’d like to think that I am scared of very little. I take risks without batting an eyelash, I sing karaoke sober and love talking in front of people, I wear short shorts while running and I even moved across for love. I am comfortable in my own skin as much as anyone that I interact with and 97% of the time even more so. Some of these things made me bashful at points, but I could put it behind me and move forward. Gradually these hesitations have become less and less powerful once I owned them and owned the consequences that came with them.

That being said if one day I become as comfortable writing as I am wearing short shorts I will have bee successful. But until then I will keep typing away, sharing my thoughts and keeping myself on my toes. Dancing with my fear, and loving every minute it.

I Hate/Respect Dubstep

As anyone who may know me has probably figured out that I am a self proclaimed music snob. I love to find new music and share it with friends, listen to it in the car and even sing along. I really love music because of the emotion that it can evoke and the way it can fit the context of our lives so beautifully. I feel like I am as open minded to musical experimentation and the creation of artful performances still there is one category that I have struggled to fully comprehend/understand/tolerate.

My first experience with dubstep was a few years ago in Fayetteville, AR (oddly placed dubstep haven), and from that first moment my mind was made up. This was not music, this was audible filth that people wallow in as opposed to dancing to. While I’ll be the first to admit I do have my guilty pleasures as far as music goes this was on a who different spectrum. Harsh, forced, awkward and just overall unpleasant.

From that moment dubstep and I have never seen eye to eye and we probably never will. Still this is art, its not for everyone and that is the point. I have personally struggled with this as I have told myself that someone has to be crazy to really like this stuff, but there is no dancing around the fact that dubstep really does resonate with people. The dubstep tribe has grown exponentially since its inception and even crossed over to the main stream in many regards (i.e. car, cereal and electronics commercials). And from what I understand its even a rather hard form of music to produce with a lot of front end dedication being required. So was it that I didn’t understand it or that I was just being too close-minded to open up? Was I becoming the older generation that said Rock and Roll was an abomination and was the downfall of society, or was I as James Murphy so eloquently put “losing my edge?”

I have really done my best to give dubstep an honest try; I’ve listened to the best of the best in the eyes of the dubstep community and really kept an open mind. I’ve talked to people about it and really worked to find some common ground between dubstep and myself. Sadly this has not been successful in any way shape or form, to me dubstep still sound like robots fighting or martians playing twister it just doesn’t appeal to me and I’m ok with that.

I don’t have to like the art but that doesn’t mean that I cannot respect it. It doesn’t fit on my particular musical taste spectrum and I’m sure that the dubstep community is fine with that. They love every distorted sound and “weird” audio clip as much as I love my trashy French Pop music.

In a weird way I am thankful for dubstep, it has made me more comfortable with myself and more confident in my decisions. I can take a more objective look at music and the world at first glance rather than judging it and throwing what I see into a category and keeping it there. I don’t have to like the music, but I should respect it for what it creates — an emotion, and even though my person emotion is negative it still is doing its job as art.