Jimi Hendrix

you know, I really didn't think I'd hit two music posts in a short period, but it just seems to fit... like remember when you were right on the doors of turning 27, on the way to Toronto for a business conference and went a couple days early since the only time you could cram for the PDO exam (partner, director, officer) likely was a couple days in a hotel room when you could escape by distance the intensity of ibanking, but in the airport you felt you needed a tuneout, and bought and read a biography of Jimi Hendrix, and realized that there really wasn't a single way your first (and his only) 27 years could possibly have been more different? It's rare to see man and machine meld so seamlessly, regardless of what the machine is. I feel natural on a bike, but I can "play" a bike about a tenth as naturally as Jimi plays a guitar (and a crowd).

and then 5 years later, you don't feel or behave much different, but you've been bombarded lately with engagment announcements, wedding invites, pregnancy announcements, and all your friends houses seem to be full of babies and all that grown up stuff, when either philisophically, or lacking maturity, or just by way of looking for continued outlet, you're not in sync with all that? is there value in being in sync?

crank this shit up, and maybe all your babies will be born naked too.

Bonus here... remember when creative talent was unleashed into an era, pushing that era further, in a place that didn't think it had many bounds on creative talent (and a place that creative talent forever had a relationship with), from where there was before no such thing but a silent stringed chunk of hardware, a set of sounds emerged that divided those who saw what it meant, elevated the nation's understanding of creativity and saw it was just as worthy version of patriotism, and the other portion of the division didn't see it, thinking it was perhaps abuse of patriotism, when in fact it could be the most American version of the star spangled banner of all time, or at least no less american than any other version of it? it's hard to imagine punctuating an era, sheerly from your fingertips, especially when you had to leave your nation and come back later, proven, different, and he did this all in really only 3 years that the world knew him, but he skipped growing up in favour of just pressing those three years into the annals of "forever" by departing prematurely.

and in that three years you can make, take, borrow, remake, interpret, or just play the music of your mind and of your contemporaries, and there's not a hint of ripoff or one upmanship or anything, it's just different through your fingers filtering it, and no matter how much you try, like forever, you'll never be able to "get down to business" even close, even if supposedly that's your (business - my??) calling? (also Sgt. Peppers only a couple days after the Beatles released it, just for sport)

and whilst interpreting that which came before you, it becomes showered in unmatchable talent like playing it upside down, backwards, with your teeth... yeah I can't claim any real talent in life.





and then that's it. your bright light is over, but legends live on. but your era died, and it died when you died, not the other way around, so you took the harder way of "never growing up".