Reinventing Your Life

Hola mi Gente,

Right now I need one of two things: a funder/ sponsor who will subsidize my basic needs so I can have a place of my own somewhere quiet to write a novel and a book of essays -- or a job. Pass the word… LOL

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Creativity

Don’t play what’s there, play what’s not there.

-- Miles Davis

I want to tell you a story. Perhaps you have heard it?

Once, years ago, the great violinist, Itzhak Perlman, was giving a concert at Carnegie Hall, or some huge venue like that, and the house is packed. He hobbles onstage, puts aside his crutches, and takes his seat. The orchestra begins, and then fades for his entrance. He begins to play and when he hits the second or third note, a string breaks. Goes off like a shot. And everyone’s thinking, Well that’s fucked up, this is it.

Instead, very quietly Perlman signals to the conductor to begin again. Perlman then proceeds to play the entire concerto on three strings. According to the individual who told me this story, you could all but see him rethinking and recreating the part in his head as he was playing -- rearranging it, recasting it, remaking it passionately. And he does this faultlessly, impeccably. He gives the performance of his life, in the process taking the audience to musical heights.

Afterwards, he is quoted as saying, “You know, sometimes it is the artist’s task to find out how much music you can still make with what you have left.”

What a powerful example. Isn’t that what life is all about? To make a beautiful, sublime work of art of our lives with what we are given? If you’re waiting or pining for the right time and place, the right job, or the right lover in order to sing the song of yourself, then yours is a wasted life. And a wasted life is the only sin in my book.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization…