Bono Said It Best

It’s 12:40am right now. I thought I was ready to crash at around 10:30 or so, but I happened to turn on the television (a rare occurrence for me) and Mr. Holland’s Opus came on. For those of you that have never seen this film, it’s basically about a music teacher and the impact he has on his students. I’ve always enjoyed this film and could not tear myself away from it tonight.

I guess the movie got me thinking about my one and only music teacher, Miss Gattie Holmes. I went to Miss Holmes at the young age of 5 and she taught me everything I know about music… she taught me how to read music, how to play piano, how to understand and apply music theory… music will and always will be my passion in life and I have Miss Holmes to thank for that.

The greatest thing I learned from Miss Holmes went beyond notes and theory, though. She taught me not to fear the search… she encouraged me to play in bands, to write music, to perform, to explore, but to always keep in mind that what we’re searching for as artists is something we will never understand and rarely ever find. I feel that U2‘s Bono has come the closest to explaining this by saying, “You don’t become a rock star unless you’ve got something missing somewhere, that is obvious to me. If you were of sound mind you could feel normal without 70,000 people a night screaming their love for you.” (taken from U2 by U2)

It took me years to accept this, but without doing so, I think I would have hung it up a long time ago.

I’ve been a musician for 87% of my life. I don’t know what it’s like to NOT know how to play an instrument. Music is as much a part of my language as English is. I’ve tried to walk away from music but all it did was leave me empty and dead. My mom will never understand what drives me, neither will my dad. My ex-wife will never understand, either.

And sadly enough, the best I reason I can come up with is that something is missing somewhere, and I need to find it.

I hope I’m not spoiling the movie by saying that I think the people behind Mr. Holland’s Opus want us to believe that Mr. Holland has come to the end of his quest, that his “something missing” has been found. I wholeheartedly disagree, though, and feel that Holland’s journey has just begun. There’s a rush on seeing your vision realized… and once you see it happen once, you need to see it again and again and again.

I’m sure most of us can relate to that feeling… Bono knows that feeling all to well.

How many of you also experience that “something missing” feeling? How many of you have set your passion aside, only to return to it because it is the only thing that can make that hole in you smaller? How many of you have just recently found your passion, the vehicle for your search?

Perhaps the more important question is this: what will you do about it?

I’m going to keep writing until I either physically or mentally can’t do it anymore. It’s past the point of caring whether I can make a living doing this… I’m doing it because it’s keeping that “something missing” hole at bay.

Maybe I’ll finally fill the hole at some point in my life, but in all honesty I hope that day never comes.