The importance of family

The importance of family, lies in the “there-ness” of family,
Love, oh love, faint and unrequited, that we must be, in the weakness of ourselves in love and loving
All such people, which providence hath bestowed. Upon awakening, and asleepening, the family we have is the family we have. Without thinking, they bend our thinking, and while many of us have strived to develop our self apart from family, myself included, that is never quite possible.

There also is a piece,
the scarceness of family
Which we have only got as much as we’ve got. My wife is my wife, My father is my father, my mother my mother, siblings siblings. They, with the exception of my sweet soul of a wife, did not exactly choose me, but they have me. But in all of this, we are who we are and we can not quickly change our numbers

the growth of family strongly tied to a note, a tone, bell like and soft. The family, a single melody can be added to, and this is a beauty of marriage, is a beauty of friendship. The family is a single melody, and yet by adding a wife and her family to mine, there is a second melody, played simultaneously that becomes a harmony making the first more special, and the second more precious. The friends, added to family, my uncles that are uncles but not really uncles and other good good good friends, add some additional contrasting percussion and other harmonies, each layer adding dissonance, syncopation, but unthought unity and wonder to the whole.

#failfail equals #win and a new original song

Failure is how we define it. Often times, when I fail, and am down about it, I am focusing on a singular aspect of a greater whole. Take this song at the top. I wrote it about fear, in an abstract sense.

As I got it to the level of completeness it is now, I began to feel a bit disappointed. I was focusing on metrics of a song’s goodness that I don’t generally ascribe to, such as clear vocal enunciation, everything being in tune, while disregarding the reason I wrote it, and my decided method for recording. It took my wife telling me that she liked the quirky recording before I started to realize this.

I wrote it as a defiance of fear. Jon Acuff always says,

fear only gets loud when you do stuff that matters.

I’ve been finding, the more I pursue excellence and purpose and goals, the more I hear those voices that tell me everything I’m doing is rubbish.

but fear isn’t failure.

I chose to use a new method for writing parts. I would sing them first, and then one back and learn them on the respective instrument. Sounded a little silly at first, but I ended up being much happier with what I feel are much more organic and felt drum parts and guitar solos. And guess what,

trying something new also is not failure.

And in the end, I wrote a song, and even if I’m putting in my 10,000 hours, as Malcom Gladwell would say, I’m still making progress.

even a bad song is not failure.

How do you define failure? Do you also focus on the metrics you don’t even care about to tell you if you are a worthwhile human being?

William Stonewall Monroe

Ps, the gig at the mill was fabulous. Big thanks to Creighton for setting it up, Katie and Ryan for being the band and rocking it, Zaplin for dropping in on a bunch of tunes, and Zaplin and Songbird Bethann for opening with a great set of originals with a singer/songwriter/hip hop mojo.