And the road never seems to end."
Photo: Jim Coppoc
*SNAP*SNAP*SNAP*SNAP*SNAP*SNAP*SNAP*SNAP*
That was the sound my little neurotic fingers made every night I had to walk down our hallway to the bathroom as a kid. I had managed to purchase The Headless Horseman at the book sale without my dad noticing. I was a freaked out little guy. Everything gave me nightmares. My parents carefully censored what media I consumed because of this. I was a child obsessed with military history, and I knew it was a story about a Revolutionary War soldier. Insert shrug emoji.
The dark hallway that was between my bathroom and bedroom felt like roughly one hundred miles. Now, a seven year old doesn’t really have a concept of what one hundred miles is, so translate to: an eternity of walking. In my minimum understanding of the cosmos, I KNEW that snapping my fingers would keep all the scary stuff away. All I had to do was constantly snap as I walked down the hall. Enter stage-right, my OCD. I also had to snap the same rhythm on each hand and an equal amount of times. I wasn’t sure of the consequences if I didn’t, but I sure as heck wasn’t about to find out.
I also spent a lot of time during my childhood being worried I was going to go to Hell. I debated what “counted.” If right before you died, if you saw it coming, and you said “Jesus, forgive me,” do you get to go to heaven? I had heard of lot of different theories on what was required. Then I would spend my time worried that everything was just seconds from being my destruction. The Final Destination franchise has nothing on my young paranoid mind. Sitting in uncomfortable ancient Ozark church pews, I often enjoyed the stories, but the philosophy behind them didn’t often line up for me. As confused as I may have been, the hellfire that those Pentecostal preachers spewed from their mouths ensured there was no way I was going to gamble. A seven year old, with a worried mind, intent on not being on the losing end of Pascal’s Wager.
There have been a lot of fears pass my mind over the years. Somewhere along the way I stopped worrying about them. There are things in this life that I can change and others that I can’t. What are you going to do about it? Worrying about things I have no power over only pulls energy away from working toward the things I can change.
I used to worry about what people thought about the music I created. It’s hard not to when you feel like it’s a part of you. People ain’t always going to like the music I make, and I decided to stop losing sleep over that a while back. I’ll write the best chord progressions and melodies that I can. I’ll try to be as honest as possible with the words that I write and telling you the story, as I see it. Hopefully, it won’t be too existential, too often.