Finding a Way

My life has been one long, convaluted story.  It has not been easy to get to where I am at now.  I could have quit and died at many points during my life, but I am not a quitter, so I didn't die.

My main scholastic educations where in acupuncture and graphic design.  And they didn't pay one damn cent.  Book learnin' doesn't work.  At least through wholistic medicine, I learned about dairy and gluten free diets, and through graphic design education I learned how Photoshop can be used to create original cartoon art.

To this day, I cook my own food, I observe reality with a trained eye, I draw from time to time, and I create my own cover art for my music albums and nutrition books.  But I feel I paid too much money for my education.

The best things I did in my life were hobbies.  I started music in 1995 with a Jewish friend who taught me riffs from Day Tripper and Can't Get No Satisfaction.  I've been playing guitar for over 25 years. 

I started wrestling in junior high school, but only started shootfighting, a combination of kickboxing and grappling, in 1998.  I was 19 when I learned the armbar from the open guard.  Shootfighting was ahead of its time, I was learning MMA moves before MMA was legal in New York!  It had to be called Freestyle Grappling to be technically legal on the kickboxing shows on long island.  Now, MMA is more popular than ever.

So I am a musician and a martial artist.  Shootfighting led to judo and sambo, and this helps you master the principles of Aikido.  Of wrestling with and without weapons on the battlefield.  It is not about doubles and singles and hip throws and arm drags.  It is about trapping, about street effective clinch techniques.

Now that I am 41, I don't even like training martial arts anymore.  I've sustained so many injuries over the years, I don't do pushups anymore, I am slow, and I have no fighting spirit.  I would teach Tomiki Aikido now if I had a student or two.

But I know if I get a degree in Music Education, things will light up.  I would gladly teach guitar to people of all walks of life.  Rhythm and Blues is so old it is like a folk music by now.  Something uniquely American, a contribution to world society. 

The music of the 1960s was about secular gospel music bringing white kids and black kids together.  Today, America is more racially divided than ever, and white kids and black kids listen to totally different music.

I am not just a musician.  I am also a scholar, a historian, and a poet.  Through rhythm and blues music, one can teach, guide, instruct, and heal.  It is a secular gospel music, and the more I age, the more tired of the world I get.  I am becoming more Christian.  The world is not improving, it is degrading as we approach Judgement Day.

So my music is becoming less about sex, death, and adultery, and more about love, social injustice, morality, loneliness, and desire.  I am going from delta blues to gospel blues.  Life is not the way it should be, it's the opposite.  There's nothing right about the world. 

So wholistic medicine and commercial art didn't help me, but music and grappling did.  Practice your hobbies long enough, and they become your profession.  You don't do things to make money.  You do what you love with enthusiasm, and you get compensated for it.  This is good business.  College is a scam, the medical health system is a scam, restaurants charge a 500% markup, dating is essentially a thinly veiled prostitution, etc...

I am finding a way and it has nothing to do with what I learned in high school or college. I wasn't educated right.  But I survived anyway and learned that most people are talking nonsense.  This shit is ridiculous. 

You can be motivated by money or by love.  But I find, if you are motivated by love, the money will come anyway.  So I do what I want to do and I don't worry about the money.  It's just money.