I’m torn.
I’ve spent my entire life living off the wonderful feeling I got from “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”, and me growing up knowing both Kung Pow and Shaun of the Dead. Three movies that cookie cut my 6’4″ body into what I could argue is coming close to being an adult. I love music and comedy, but somehow I knew comedy was my true path. I used to do comedy. I still do, but I used to, too.
As I write this, Goodbye Neverland’s “Keep Singing” is stuck in my head so maybe take a quick break and listen to that song before continuing to read the rest of my nonsense. I can’t write, speak, stretch, or even Jaggerbomb without a song taking over for just a tad. Also, each little break I take from thinking of what I’m writing has a quick beat and a “Keep Singing” type song comes into my head (currently because I just found this song), and then I snap back to it.
I can professionally write (multiple people have paid me to write for them) and I’ve been told that I know what I’m doing by someone who sold a television show (“humble brag” – Harris Wittels). I’ve written for film and television with incredible feedback and even some accolades in competitions for what’s already on paper. I can’t sing well, but I made a song that pops up on my social media and Spotify pretty often (“Nothing But A Mandolin“) that I wrote and sang for my wife/baby mama. I love music and I can hardly even function without it. That isn’t hyperbole.
What I’m torn with is two things in this life – music and film.
I spend so much of my life listening to music and writing film, that if the ideas became mortal, I’d have to sit them both down to explain how I never meant to hurt them, but I love how they both push me forward and I love the person they’ve become.
In 2006 when I first moved to Orlando (whatup AKT?), if you asked me what I wanted to do with my life (exclude the first time I trained to be a professional wrestler because that’ll always be my purpose) I would’ve probably said “Rockstar” because I was surrounded by so many incredible musicians (JPo, A Cover Story, Amely, Arturo, Grant, Mohn, Raude, Radford) and always thought I had some kind of talent because I loved how I sounded in the shower. That won’t ever be the case. You’re welcome to find my song for Amanda (then girlfriend) “Nothing But A Mandolin”.
Something that always surprises me is something I wrote in 2003 that I continued to work on until 2004, which was a Sci-Fi about someone gaining power by falling on the throne after a battle to the death… It ended up being the same ending to one of the Riddick movies (something else I loved watching) a few months after. This made me think I was on the correct path. It’s something I’ve rewritten as early as May 2023.
As of this post, I’ve finished twelve scripts between television and film, with AT LEAST 25 others being “in production” with outlines, loglines, and multiple pages being written.
The more I sing in my car and the more I terribly sing in the shower, the more I realize that the late-night writing and the multiple hours a day of writing sessions I was made for writing. I’ve spent the last 9 years writing, filming, producing, and telling friends about goofy ideas. This is what brings me [to] life (Evanescence).
My writing takes me out of the monotony of working in a job I’ve outgrown and helps me through the close friendships I stopped making in 2013.
In the end, I’m torn between my love of music and my love for writing, but at the end of the day, the music other people make is what’s feeding my heartbeats to put pen to paper.
Writing and creating drives me. It’s what pulls my people in and what pushes my people away.
I’m the ocean, waving, pushing, and pulling you all away, but I’m not quite dead yet.
