Change Is Good
November 27, 2007
Welcome, new visitor! My name is Ari, the man behind Aries9. Here I share my thoughts on music and life, so you can get to know me and my music. Thanks for visiting!
I don’t know if you noticed, but I changed my location to St. Paul, MN.
Because I’m moving there in December.
I’ve been living in Austin, Texas for the last 10 years. It’s a great music town.
But it’s always been a bit of unrequited love for me. Austin loves roots music — folk, country, blues, Latin. There are rock bands here, but successful ones tend to be all quirky in one way or another — not very main stream. Texas in general has a different taste in music for the rest of the country.
And I guess I just didn’t fit in.
I’m moving to Minnesota because we have families there. But it’s also so that I can pursue my music. You see, I am being very, very ambitious — I want to have a family AND I want to pursue music. Those two don’t get along very well in general. My family is very supportive, but obviously they don’t want to starve nor see their daddy go on the road for a few months at a time.
By moving and being closer to our extended family, we can receive more support and social time. Which frees me up to do more music.
It’s better to live in a smaller music scene but have time to do music, than to live in a huge music scene with no time to do anything.
Plus, change is good. I always enjoy a big change. Change seems to open up the future — you don’t know what’s going to happen next. I like that openness. Anything can happen.
I’ve always had love/hate relationships with plans. When you have plans, you worry whether things go according to plans. When you don’t, you just optimistically wonder “I wonder what’s going to happen next?” But yet, we do need plans, to remain focused and efficient. I just tend to get bound to my plans, that’s why I sometimes like the spontaneity of having no plans.
Don’t get me wrong, we definitely have plans, and plans are good. But there is a lot that we don’t have plans for, because we can’t predict everything in a new life.
This year I released my album, and for the first time in my life, I feel like I have a sense of direction. It’s a terrific time to change and start anew.