I love those who think that life is something that comes at “their” pace. Ever since I used to be on stage performing, I have been aware of this new class of people. The dream chasers, the “opportunists” that think that if they can get your attention, you will take them to the top. Life, unfortunately, doesn’t work that way. It takes unusual talent in this world to make it to the top, and I have always been at odds with the “top.” At one time I could command a six figure advance or have some of the best producers within music or movies seeking me out. Problem was, like much the hippie type I once used to be, money didn’t matter much to me.
As long as I had my booze or my dope, I was happy. Performing wasn’t for the attention, as much as playing the music I loved to play. If people liked it, so be it, if they enjoyed it, so be it, but life even then was something I meant to enjoy and still feel that way, regardless of the statue it gives me. Statue, as I have stated, has never mattered, either in myself or that of others.
I have had many call me delusional, either for my beliefs or what comes out of my mouth, but even that doesn’t and never will “matter.” I once had a person who had been trying hard to change me for a long time because of my drug and alcohol abuses, reach a point over twenty years ago. One day, he came up to me and told me to my face, “All these years I have known you, I knew you for what I saw and ‘only’ for what you seemed to be, never knowing that what comes out of your mouth is TRUTH.” With that he left me alone, embarrassingly, and told me that if I was ever going to change, no one would ever do it but me.
At one time, I had it made, except, that it wasn’t what I wanted in life. People would practically throw themselves at me, some hoping for a hand out, and others for what they thought they could get from an association with me. For as much as it sounds cruel to many, we are the product of our accomplishments and our talents. No one else can give them to us. Through the hard years in my life, I learned to EARN who and what I am, cause it has never mattered how many other celebrities I knew, or how many rich persons I knew, for the biggest thing that got me to the top at one time, was HARD WORK. The constant drive, the constant lack of sleep, the constant seeking and wanting of a life, which turns out, I found out, I didn’t want in the end.
As a writer now, I still run across those who proposition me to do this or that for them, in the hopes I will advance their goals. Yet, as upset as many will get, none of it is an easy RIDE, nor one without a lot of WORK. To date, I have over 48 years as a musician, and could’ve been living in a mansion by now, but instead, sought out “serenity.” That which no amount of money could have ever bought. Oh yes, I had plenty of “friends,” I had plenty of women who sought my company and plenty of “opportunists.” It is to them, that I say, I am no longer available to make you rich, or to share my talents with you so you can proclaim them unto yourself, or to help by giving you what you should EARN “yourself.”
As a published author now, you would not believe how many want a free ride, “just” as they did when I used to perform as a musician. A proposition here, a proposition there, that if I did not have the memories of my own hard knocks and notches embedded into my soul, I would care. Nothing, but nothing means a damn thing, if we seek to rise and fly above others upon the talents of another, because for that we must learn the suffering and pain to earn our own WINGS…..