We are the music-makers, We are the dreamers of dreams

I write songs. Its a hobby and a lifestyle. As a hobby it is very therapeutic and expressive. I can come home after a terrible day pull out a guitar and a harmonica, and the 12 bar blues will just ease my troubles away with a moaned phrase here and a good riff there. I've found that there is almost nothing you can't write a song about. Well, if you write a song about going #2 it probably won't win you a grammy...but from the hobby perspective it will amuse the hell out of you. while out of school for the summer in seventh grade I picked up this hobby. I sucked at first, but everyone does. After playing day after day and eventually forming callouses on my hands, I was fluent enough to begin writing my own dittys. I wrote really really really awful songs for about two and a half years, but nonetheless I was amused and happy. My songs started to get better once I realized that not everyone sings or should try to sing like Robert Plant. Soon enough I hooked up with fellow musicians at my school and took a stab at being in a band. I was in one band, and then another one wanted me, then I was in another one and another and another. Each taught me more about my music and how to make a sound that was something worth listening to. 

Thats when the lifestyle came in. I found you had to follow a certain rock-regiment. You had to get your songs done, get them heard, and look cool in the process. I found out the latter by trial and error. I dressed in a leather racing jacket, skinny jeans and button ups when i was in a "jet-like" band. I wore all black in a pretty terrible screamo band...etc. I tried to looked interesting I think to create an image that the music I was participated in couldn't. When I started to write, sing, and play all my own stuff with a friend of mine, I realized that you didnt need to try to look cool when playing good music. The image, the sex-appeal, the attention it was already there in the music when you did it right. Like I said though it is a lifestyle. In order to write good songs and be able to play them without flubbing notes you had to cut yourself off and practice, practice, practice, and practice some more. I once spent an entire two weeks inside my apartment writing and practicing for a series of shows I was playing that summer. Also, with being a musician to get the image theres a certain level of aloofness that comes with the territory. This is probably why I took up smoking cigarrettes in high school.--- "Anything that gives you that too cool for school edge man." As a hobby and a lifestyle, being a songwriter has its perks and is the only thing for me. Its a lofty career based on passion and dreams. It is my subculture, and my life. to quote Wonka, "We are the music-makers, We are the dreamers of dreams."