My Youth Remains

July 13, 2008

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!

This week, I had a chance to reconnect with one of my close friends from high school, Fred, on the phone.

Since graduation, we had spoken once over the phone during college.  Considering that, we enjoyed a great conversation — it was amazing how we still related to each other after all these years.  It appeared that although we don’t live close to one another and have had totally different life experiences for the last 16 years, the core of our personalities, the part where we connected, remained.

He and I were discussing how we have changed, and he was commenting on how it appeared as though I hadn’t changed much.  (I had sent him a photo of my family via e-mail earlier.)  I agreed with him that I probably don’t look all that different — if it weren’t for my increasing grey hair, I can still pass for a college student. I went on to explain to him that I really haven’t changed that much.  I’m still a teeanger who loves rock guitar.  If you see me driving, I’m singing along to some CD loudly.  If you leave me alone in a room, I’d turn up music loud and start mimicing Steve Taylor-esque mic stand antics.  (I’m not into air guitar, since I’m a real guitar player.  It feels silly to me to air guitar when I can really play it)

Really, my love of music has totally unchanged.  Before, I thought that with maturity I would “slow down” and stop listening to hard, heavy, aggressive music.  No such change — if anything, I can apprecite even heavier music now.  The range of my music appreciation has widened and deepened — I can like some music I didn’t like before, while some juvenile-sounding music no longer works for me — but really, I still love music.  All I need to do is to pick up my guitar and start belting out some songs, and I’m in seventh heaven.  Nothing else gives me the energy I get from music.

I’m in my mid 30s, but I really am not the person I thought I would be at my age.  I still feel very young, and that I have a lot more growing up to do.

If you think about it, rock musicians are expected to mature young — in their 20s.  I can’t think of an artist that became wildly successful even though they didn’t debut until mid 30s.  Maybe Doug Pinnick of King’s X — though I won’t consider them to be “wildly successful” commercially.  Of course, commercial success isn’t the only definition of real success — and that’s not the point of this post.  Rock musicians are expected to get their acts together at young age, although the music itself can suggest decadence and chaos, and similar traits in their life style.  It’s a bit of contradiction.

But in other genres of music, musicians are not expected to mature until much later.  For example, human voice actually doesn’t fully mature until mid 30s.  Opera singers in 20s have to wait for their voices to mature before they begin the serious part of their career.  Classical composers in their 20s or even 30s are considered “just getting started.”  They are not expected to write their masterpieces until 50s or 60s.

Of course, at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what the world thinks is the appropriate age to be doing certain kinds of music.  My youthful passion in rock music has unchanged since age 16, and has no signs to do so.

I really believe that our “real” age — not the physical age of how long we’ve been living but the true age of our being — is more based on how we feel inside.  That’s why Rolling Stones and B. B. King and John Williams (the film composer) can keep going in their old age.  Sure, their physical bodies are starting to show its limits, but they’ve been able to sustain their activity much longer than most people at their age.  Rock n roll keep people young longer.  They should market it as an anti-aging treatment.

I’m not saying I haven’t changed at all since graduating high school.  I grew up a lot.  I, for one, would never go back to any previuos eras in my life.  I like me of today better — I’ve kept the good parts and got rid of the bad.  And my love of music has stayed with me the whole time.  I’ve tried to live ignoring it.  But every time I pick up my guitar, or every time I open my mouth to sing, I have a melt down.  It simply feels too good, too energizing not to do it.

I don’t expect to be playing “Diamond Sleeps Tonight” at age 80.  But who knows, I may surprise myself, as I have so far.  I may not be getting younger, but my youth remains.  I’m still the same kid who is in love with rock n roll.

Filed under: Reflections |