A Shared Experience: How Music Breaks Down Social Barriers

Introduction

Welcome to my memoir. This is meant to be a brief, inspirational short story of how I overcame setbacks and found my way with music, technology, and blogging. It’s not meant to be a how-to; That is, if you copy the steps I took, I can’t guarantee any sort of monetary success, nor can I guarantee success of any kind, really. Similarly, and conversely, I don’t wish my story to be perceived as a cautionary tale. In other words, I’m not saying you shouldn’t take the steps I took, necessarily, or that they are to be avoided, just that they haven’t worked for me entirely, monetarily or otherwise, yet. 

The context that this introduction gives is a vital part of my story. It should be noted that, without reading the introduction, the rest of the text won’t make as much sense. However, if you’d like to skip ahead to different parts without reading the introduction, you could do this with very little degradation to the info I provide in the subsequent parts. This introduction just provides some background on who I am and how I got into music, as well as the general context of my mental health diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder. In the subsequent parts I do my best to provide the context as much as is possible, without being overly redundant by repeating details.  

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, I’d like to say a few things about my humble beginnings, given that this is a story about, you guessed it, me, Ben Ruppel. This will serve as an introduction to myself and my story and also allow us to proceed in a chronological sense with details of my life and life’s work: meaning, you’ll get a sense of when things happened in my life so I can tell my story with some context. While I will tell some of my story, some things will be intentionally left out to preserve the privacy of my friends and family, as they don’t know I’m writing this. This is, after all, a memoir, and it seems to me that, since it’s not an autobiography, I can take some liberties in leaving parts of my background, and those in it, out.

I grew up in the midwest, in a city called La Crosse, in western Wisconsin. I’m not going to get much into the details of my childhood as this memoir is more so centered around my late teens and adult life. I will say, however, that I spent much of my childhood, aside from brief violin lessons in my early childhood and trumpet in middle school, not really interested in playing music myself. I have, however, always been a fan of music. On a related note, I didn’t write raps as a kid, but I did freestyle raps fairly often. 

Like a lot of kids growing up in the 90s, I got into rollerblading with my friend group about the time I hit 5th grade. Yes, rollerblading, the extreme sport. I say this to say, I didn’t get into music like so many of my friends did since I spent my time going to my local skatepark and getting into trouble with the security guards on the University of Wisconsin, La Crosse campus; doing tricks on rails, eventually, etc. My friends, who were my age, mostly got into music around the time they hit middle school and, to the best of my knowledge, quit rollerblading and started forming bands around this time. I didn’t participate in the music they made, other than listening to them play music. Although I have since gotten into music in my early and mid adulthood (I’m now almost 38), I have spent much of my life rollerblading, and am proud to say I still (occasionally) do it to this day. Somewhat sadly, this text isn’t about rollerblading, though, and that will have to be saved as a topic for another story, another time.

You might be wondering, since my friend group played music and quit rollerblading, who I rollerbladed with. I met a group of people who did much of the same thing I did who were mostly older than me, around college age. When one of my good friends moved to California to pursue his career, I turned to the wrong crowd. In my mid to late teens, I’d say around 16, I started to get into trouble, smoking pot, drinking, etc. This continued for much of my late teen years as I entered adulthood. I ended up committing myself to being home schooled at the age of 17, as a junior in high school. This was mainly because I was failing most of the classes I was in and using drugs. I’d also taken a credit card out in my father’s name and used it to buy drugs. When my parents found out, they were, understandably, very upset. This was around 2005. That same year, 2005, I moved to Madison, Wisconsin when I was 17 to pursue a college (AA) degree from Madison Area Technical College.

Moving to Madison was an incredible experience. It was my first taste of bohemia. Although I initially moved in with my sister, who was attending college also in Madison (at the University of Wisconsin), I soon moved out on my own. Frankly, I spent much of my college years in a daze, smoking pot and spending periods visiting other places, sleeping on benches. I also wanted to be a famous artist, so I did graffiti and put up posters around town. These posters were sort of black and white fliers that didn’t pertain to any event, and were simply just, in my estimation at the time, works of art. I didn’t have a very solid plan on how to proceed with college. I ended up enrolled, at first, in a lot of adult continuing education classes, along with some for credit ones. I eventually managed to enter into the graphic design program. 

Unfortunately, I quickly failed out of both graphic design classes I was enrolled in. When visiting my parents, who had moved to Orange County, California, I had to explain I’d failed. At the age of 19, we decided it would make sense to move back in with them and, therefore, move myself (and my stuff) to California. Soon after, I was admitted to an inpatient psychiatric unit in a hospital. I would tell you why this happened, but, other than the context already established in the previous paragraph, I don’t have a definitive reason for my admittance to the hospital. What I will say, however, is that I spent much of my early adult life in and out of psychiatric units, and lived in a variety of assisted living facilities. 

From late 2006 to about 2013, I spent about 14 days in the hospital once or twice a year, and lived in assisted living facilities. During this period of time, in fact in 2008, I was formally diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, which, at least in my case, is a combination of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. It should be noted, however, that I’ve been told that while I suffer from symptoms of both disorders, I don’t suffer from the entirety of both disorders. I’m not sure what this means, or how to explain this part, as I’m not a mental health expert myself, but I believe it is worth noting this to give my full diagnosis. 

I’m not telling you this to make you feel sorry for me or complain, I’m just setting the context for how I, eventually, changed my circumstances, in part, to pursue a career in music and technology. Although I met a lot of interesting people in the assisted living facilities I lived in, I eventually tired of being perpetually without the internet and the ability to build musical setups involving computers, which I discovered was a way to make music from a friend I met living in a facility in Pico Rivera, California. 

At the end of 2013, I moved back in with my parents. I set up some music equipment such as a variety of midi controllers and started recording myself and my music. I eventually decided to get a rehearsal space, and moved my computer and recording equipment into a small room in a rehearsal space in Santa Ana, California. This was in 2014. I spent several months recording music in this space. I also set up a backdrop and took pictures of myself. I spent much of the time I was there going through beats I had made in the past and putting them out, also. This lasted until I decided it was too hard to get to the rehearsal space and it cost too much, given my income (more on how I had income later). After a little over 6 months (as I recall), I left the rehearsal space and went back to recording in my room. 

A few years later, I had a variety of synths and drum machines I was recording in my room, and wanted to move them back into the rehearsal space I had in the past. I did just that, although it was a different room in the same building. I met with some of my old friends I’d met through rollerblading and they often visited and jammed with me in this rehearsal space. This lasted about 6 months and then I, again, grew tired of commuting to the space on the bus and the price of the space. 

Over the years after these experiences, I’ve taken much of what I’ve learned from graphic design, graffiti, rollerblading, and music and put it into what I now consider my main art form: creating music. I didn’t know much about music theory in the early years of creating music, even when working in the rehearsal studio. What I didn’t know in theory, though, I made up for with the vision I had and by doing a lot of different takes before choosing the best one. This was necessary, in part, because I didn’t know different scales, or how to incorporate them into my beats or tracks. Since about 2019, I’ve used different scales to stay within different keys. The scales I generally use are C Minor Natural, D Minor Natural, G Minor Natural, C Major, G Major, and, most recently, C Minor Melodic. I don’t know much music theory but the little I’ve learned has helped me develop a lot. 

The rest of this text covers what I’ve done with music creation in more detail. Each part recounts how I improved musically over a period of time, overcoming setbacks along the way, and how I started to blog about my life and music on my blog at hustleandgrind.page. The parts are divided into different themes and draw from my past experiences but aren’t in any sort of chronological order. You could, therefore, skip ahead to the topics and parts you’d like to read. There’s no need to read it in the order it’s written, but I tried to create a part order that made sense from start to finish, so it makes sense to read it front to back if you have the time.

My overall approach to writing about my mental health diagnosis and how it relates to the narrative I outline in this text shouldn’t be taken as a complete recount of my experience with treatment for schizoaffective disorder. This text is not a definitive source of information, in any sense, on what schizoaffective disorder is and is not. Throughout the text I will refer to my diagnosis and experience with mental health, but this text is not just about my mental health, and does not paint a complete picture of my feelings about my experience with schizoaffective disorder or being hospitalized. In addition, I’ll note here that I have seen a psychiatrist for the vast majority of my adult life. Also, I’ll add that my diagnosis doesn’t define who I am as a person. 

Finally, I’d like to say thank you for downloading this memoir. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I have enjoyed writing it. I hope to share my experience, not just with music, blogging, and mental health, but also a general idea of what it is like to be me. This is also what this memoir is about: sharing the experience of life through music, art and writing. At its best, music allows us to break down the barriers that exist in our everyday lives and find out that we are all living in a very similar reality. There are common truths in all our lives. The differences in truths should be celebrated. As much as we feel we experience things differently, there are many things that are the same about our experiences. By sharing how we see things through music, art and writing, we are able to see that this is true. 

Part 1: Location Matters

Throughout this text I’ll refer to a variety of experiences I’ve had making music and blogging. For all intents and purposes, when I talk about my time making music, I’m talking about my time making music as an adult, since that’s, for the most part, when I consider the beginning of my making the music that I make today. I’ll also present a variety of information about my life that I didn’t include in the overall background provided in the introduction. This is because not everything that’s happened in my life fits into the chronological order I outlined in the introduction. This will probably make more sense as we proceed with my story in this part and the rest of the 10 parts in this memoir.

This brings us to my next point, and the beginning of my journey with music. I bought, in late 2010 (I was 22 years old), a beginners vinyl DJ setup that included 2 turntables, a mixer, and headphones. I plugged it into an old stereo system I had and began my journey into sound. I started out buying most of my records on the internet, but moved on to going to local record stores and digging through crates to find the old songs I was looking for. What I was searching for, mostly, was stuff I’d heard sampled in hip-hop and house records. I made lists of music new artists sampled by browsing on the internet and looking at whosampled.com to find out what old records had been used for what new songs. I then either ordered the record online or went to a mom and pop shop in Orange County or, sometimes, Long Beach to find the (generally used) vinyl records. 

I thought, at the time, that this way of digging through things already sampled would allow me to create DJ mixes and mashups that were basically original. This was not the case, and I was long frustrated by how little my mixes (and mashups) resonated with people once I uploaded them on Soundcloud. Although partly people just didn’t know who I was and didn’t know where to find my mixes, I now understand that, in part, people were turned off by the fact I just mixed two records together, sometimes added my voice, and presented it like it was original music. Although sampling has been in existence for a long time, this wasn’t sampling, exactly, it was more so just playing records and mixing parts of records together.

Although this form of “sampling” and delving into music piracy could generally be seen as a spectacular failure, I learned a lot about what I like about different styles of music during this period in my musical development. I didn’t stop by simply recording the mixes and uploading them, either. I couldn’t figure out why “my music” was getting so little traction in terms of attention and plays online, so I made CD’s of the mixes I made and created business cards with my DJ name and details on them. My DJ name was DJ Monster Mash, and I still like it as a name, but it is a little embarrassing when I remember that.  

I passed out the business cards and tried to sell the CD’s primarily in Long Beach. For those that don’t know, Long Beach is about a half hour drive from where I lived (and still do) in Orange County. I had a blue, 1998 Honda Civic that I drove around at the time, and I knew Long Beach a bit from having gone rollerblading at skateparks there and around the area. Although I haven’t been to Long Beach, for the most part, in many years (over a decade), I still know it as a place that is very lively, happening, and sets many trends. This is part of the reason I chose it as a place to try to sell my CD’s and pass out business cards, but I also learned that Long Beach is a cool place in the process of doing so. I ultimately didn’t sell any CD’s, but ended up passing out a few of them, along with a bunch of business cards, complete with my (then) Myspace url that had my DJ mixes posted on it. 

I say all of that to say that location is a very key part of making music. Certain places have more music friendly vibes, but sometimes it’s good to get away from the everyday hustle and bustle of big cities and record places where people aren’t really interested in your music or your genre. By getting away from other things, you can find the time and distraction-free place to record music. However, I will also say that I regret not visiting Long Beach for as long as I have, and not entirely for selfish reasons, either. By this I mean, while the people there may be more receptive to who I am as a musician, I miss the area and many of the people I used to see there, too. Ultimately, though, this isn’t a story about Long Beach, and, like a lot of topics I’ll bring up in this memoir, it’s not a topic I’ll cover in its entirety.

Another way location matters to music is in where you choose, or are able, to record. I’ve mostly recorded in my bedroom for the vast majority of the time I’ve made music. Even when I had a rehearsal studio, I often spent the time there going through things I’d recorded in my bedroom. I can’t pinpoint any particular reason this was the case other than the fact I spent a limited amount of time in the rehearsal studio, so I often didn’t get to the meat and potatoes, so to speak, of recording music. I mean, in a lot of ways, I didn’t get to the rehearsal studio early enough, or stay late enough, to record tracks, since I took the bus to get there, which took about an hour 1 way. This, in turn, turned me off from the experience the 2 times I paid for rehearsal spaces. 

I’ve only ever visited a recording studio once in my life to record (track) vocals over beats I recorded at home in my bedroom. This is worth noting, though, because it demonstrates the importance of where you record. Recording studios are generally good places to track vocals, in my experience, but it doesn’t always make financial sense to book a session at a recording studio. Let’s face it, it’s also a bit inconvenient to schedule a recording session at a studio. It’s a lot easier to just record in my room, but it is also nice to have someone track the vocals I’m recording for a lot of reasons. Mostly, it makes it easier to focus on vocal performance and not all the other things I have to do while recording into a DAW (the software the computer runs for audio recording). Again, as seems to be a theme thus far in this text, I’m not going to get too into the recording studio topic other than to mention that it, too, is another way location matters in terms of music.

The overall acoustics of a room are another way location matters to music. Although I won’t cover any of the functional ways this is true, I will say that it makes sense to mention this when discussing location. I have, just about, the least acoustically friendly space at the moment for recording audio. I deal with a lot of background noise from my parents that I wish I didn’t, although I do enjoy my parents’ company very much most of the time. 

Having lived in a variety of places while spending time in assisted living facilities, I also learned, at one facility located in Pico Rivera, how to record music on the computer. I had a neighbor at the facility who knew a lot about recording music and taught me a great deal about modern musicianship. Although I won’t drop any names here, I owe a lot, in terms of how I learned how to make beats, to this person. This period, towards the end of me living in these types of facilities, from around 2011-2012, marked the end of my DJing, and the beginning of me making music on the computer as an actual artist.

By 2014, I had moved back into my parents’ home and decided to rent a rehearsal space in a building in Santa Ana. I recorded a variety of things during this time and released my first real attempt at what can be called original music, called “2014 Instrumentals.” Although most of the things I’ve released over the years should be deemed failures from a commercial perspective, I’ve never given up hope of finally having 1 hit song that resonates with people. 

Selling records isn’t part of the reason I started recording music so long ago with 2 turntables and a mixer; I started trying to make music to leave the world with a glimpse of who I am as a person and my thoughts on life. Although I may never have commercial success or be able to make money from music, I enjoy sharing my thoughts on various things with the world and sharing some of what I like sonically. That is, I enjoy crafting various sounds and presets into beats, adding vocals to them, and releasing them to the world as tracks. By doing this, I’m both sharing my thoughts through the words I speak, but, also, I’m sharing what style of music I like. 

Although not all of us live somewhere very hip, there are ways we all experience sound and art in the spaces we frequent. From hearing music at coffee shops to bars and restaurants, going to shows, or even in films at the movie theatre, there’s a whole host of ways the place you hear something affects your thoughts on what you’re hearing and what you then associate with the sound. It’s important to remember that, when it comes to sound, location is a very big deal.

To conclude, location has played a role in everything I’ve done with music. It matters, not just to music, but to life in general. Although this may seem obvious, it’s an important part of my experience with music and blogging. If I lived in Atlanta, for example, I’m quite sure I would have a very different interaction with things in these mediums altogether. Where I’ve lived and where I am living currently has greatly determined my style of music and how I make it.

Part 2: How I Think About and Make Money

If you’ve ever spent a lot of time on YouTube watching videos with advice about music, you’ll soon hear the constant reference to the idea that “music is a business” and that there is a lot of money in the music industry. While I don’t dispute that this is true, and that it’s important to understand that treating music like a business is important as a musician, I haven’t made any money over the course of 2010 to today (late 2025) from music. That’s not from lack of trying, either. I’ve published a variety of music on iTunes, Amazon, Bandcamp, and other digital stores, as well as most of the digital streaming platforms, or DSPs for short. 

The reality of the music industry is that, not only am I in a battle with other recording artists for the audience’s attention, I’m in a constant battle with an industry and an internet space that simply doesn’t know I exist, nor do they particularly care about my music. This started out as hard when I made “music” that was mainly DJ mixes, but it hasn’t gotten any easier when I started making original music in 2014. In fact, it’s gotten harder since I learned how to record my own music, since it doesn’t stand out as much as it did when I spun records, nor is it as polished as the master recordings I was sampling at the time.

In any case, I don’t earn money from music in any way. When someone streams a track I have uploaded on a DSP, I earn a very small fraction of a cent that I can’t withdraw because there’s a minimum threshold of $10 I must meet to make the withdrawal. Over about a 3 year period, so far I’ve earned 60 cents from streams. 

So, you may ask, how do I make money? Do I just always go without? The answer is a bit complicated. I have made most of the money I’ve had in my life by receiving SSI benefits due to disability, since, as I explained in the intro, I have schizoaffective disorder. I’ve also worked a variety of short term jobs over the last few years, and earned some money that way. In no way have I ever earned money from my music.

In the last part, I discussed how I didn’t start making music to make money. This is true. I make music to share my experience as a human being. This is the major theme of the text. I’d be lying, though, if I said I didn’t care about earning money from music or my blog. I absolutely do care. It’s just not the most important part of what I do with either my music or my blog. I still wish I could earn a living wage from music or blogging.

You might be wondering, then, are these things a hobby for me, or something more. The answer is simple. It’s my life’s work. It’s how people will remember me when I die. I know this might sound odd, that I’d dedicate my life to something that makes no money, and I’ve had very limited, if any, success in. I can’t explain that part. I don’t know why I am drawn to creating, whether it’s rollerblading, graphic design, art, graffiti, music, blogging, or anything else. I just know that I am drawn to it. How it’ll work out once I die, I don’t know. I actually am glad I won’t be here to worry about that part. It will just be nice to be remembered for something I did.

Another big theme of this text is that we experience the same thing together through creating music, film, writing, or really any media along those lines. I believe we all experience the same thing when it comes to earning money from creating content or art. Some of us may have more success, whether monetary or from recognition or otherwise, but I’m sure there are still issues that arise in the process of creating with those successful people too. For me, whether I’m recording a track or writing a blog post, it’s always been about sharing my ideas with the world, and leaving a small part of who I am to show what it was like to be me.

That isn’t to say money has nothing to do with things. In actuality, money plays a role in everything I do as a musician and blogger. It’s something I leverage to create things. I don’t think I’d be able to create nearly as intricate music or writing without money. It’s something I struggle with from a philosophical point of view as well as a fiscal one. For example, from a philosophical perspective, would the things I do exist without money? If not, does this mean I’m buying attention, or buying sound, or what? And, since most of the money I’ve spent is from the government through SSI, does this mean the government has created my sound and writing style? 

I don’t exactly have the answers to these questions. I would say that, to an extent, money affects everything I do as a creator. However, I’m not sure I have a firm enough understanding of general economic matters that answer these questions definitively, or as an expert. Like so many things I’ve brought up thus far in this text, it will have to go without a full exploration here.

Money is something that rewards work, and it makes sense to hope to be paid after spending time working on something. I’m not sure how this fits with my music or blogging, per se, but I still hope to one day earn money from the time and energy put into these activities. I know that we all experience this in one way or another in our day to day lives, to an extent. 

Although money is, in this day and age, intertwined with the music industry and virtually every aspect of the internet including blogging, there remains some charm in things that aren’t done to earn or make money. It’s the things that aren’t monetized, at least yet, that are the mainstays in our daily lives online. While a lot of things I do online or elsewhere cost money, it’s nice to have the things I can fall back on that are free. Not everything one does is supposed to generate income. In my case, perhaps the most important thing I’ll ever do is create artistic content, outside of the relationships with others I’ve had over the years with friends, lovers, and family. 

There’s never a good reason to give up on your dreams or goals, even if the money isn’t being made from it. That’s something I’ve learned over a long period of time in both my own life recording music and blogging and that I’ve observed in the music careers of famous artists. Think about Nipsey Hussle, one of the most respected artists of our time, if not ever. He could have quit making music after he released 1 or 2 hit songs, but his legacy is forever preserved in how he continued to create music after he released tracks that reached huge numbers of people on urban radio and elsewhere. As he put it, he ran a marathon, meaning he was committed to his sound for the long term, rather than to make money off a few tracks and then quit. 

To me, Nipsey Hussle’s legacy is forever going to live on, not because of monetary success necessarily, but because he dedicated his life to a greater cause. He was committed to leaving his mark on the world and his marathon mentality speaks for itself; I don’t need to explain it for him, he already has through his music and brands. I try to take the parts of Nipsey’s messaging that resonate with me and use them in my life: staying committed to my goals, not quitting, not blaming others for my failures but at the same time taking my losses personally and learning from life and my mistakes.

In addition to what I’ve written in this part about money and Nipsey Hussle’s legacy as an artist, I want to add that money doesn’t define who I am as a person or as a musician, artist or blogger. It doesn’t measure the amount of success I’ve had as a human being and it doesn’t mean anything, really, in terms of the work I’ve done as a musician or as a writer. Money is the currency we use to reward work. However, for a long time now, at least as long as I’ve been alive, hard work hasn’t equated to money earned, at least necessarily. While society values earned income, the idea that we are rewarded for labor through money is a bit ridiculous. Those at the top of the food chain financially shield themselves from the work the rest of us have to do by paying someone else to do it or automating it to be done by a computer. While the lower class takes on jobs no one else wants to do, the upper class invents new ways to earn and make money off the money they already have.

Part 3: Music and Blogging as Therapy and How Context Matters

I’ll be the first to tell you that, while I’ve seen a psychiatrist for the vast majority of my adult life, I haven’t seen a therapist very much during that same period: probably only a year or 2 or that time altogether. However, I find there is a major therapeutic benefit to creating art of any kind, whether it's painting, sculpture, music, writing, or any other media. The amount of times creating something has made me feel better about myself is immeasurable. 

It’s easier to say certain things through creating content. This is because people tend to only say certain things in certain contexts. If you’re speaking to a large group of people, the things you say will reflect your audience. Similarly, in the context of creating a blog post, you can say things you wouldn’t say in person. The same is true for music. Things people don’t talk about openly to each other very often are often addressed head on in music in ways that are extremely developed and show the songwriter has thought a lot about the thing being discussed. 

For example, think about the theme of unrequited love. How often have you heard this as a theme in literature or in music? It comes up all the time. Would you go up to someone, whether you know them or not, and talk to them about unrequited love? Probably not. In this way, context matters in terms of content, whether the content we’re talking about is music or writing. Speaking with a therapist puts a certain context on the things we say, too. We’re there to share our darkest secrets, or at least shed some insight on what we’re thinking about or going through.

Music isn’t the best way to get therapy. It’s important, from my experience, to get feedback for our thoughts in a more direct way than by uploading tracks to the internet. But the process of creating music drew me to where I am today; in a life that is on another path from my original one. That original path was filled with institutions such as hospitals and assisted living facilities. Whether moving back home was the right move or not, I may never know. It may have been a better move to stay living in an assisted living facility. However, what I do know is that, for better or worse, creating music and blogging are things that have forever changed me in terms of things I think about.

Part 4: The Overall Goal of My Music and Blogging

To be honest, I had to give this topic some thought once I came up with it as a heading. “What is the overall goal of doing this stuff?” I thought. Then, it occurred to me. The point of my music and blogging is to share with other people what it’s like to be me and to connect with people on a higher level than simply talking. As we discussed in the last part, context to communication matters, and the context to my writing and creating music is speaking to the world in a broad way: not speaking too personally or individually, but about things that we all experience and can relate to. 

The most important part about music is, ultimately, sharing an experience that we can relate to on some level as a group. While I’d like to say this is something I’ve experienced performing at a live show, I can’t say that, since I’ve never done a live show. However, I’ve experienced this sort of performance from other artists and, specifically, bands at live shows. I’ve also heard music that spoke to this collective idea online and on CD’s (mainly before streaming was a thing).

It isn’t enough to make music that makes us feel something, one has to make music that both makes us feel emotion and speaks to something we have collectively experienced before. That’s what I strive to do with my music. It took me some time to figure out that this was my goal, but, to put it in words on paper, that is what it is.

I remember hearing part of “Because the Night” by the Patti Smith Group for the first time on a Windows 95 computer around 1995-1996, for example. It spoke to my understanding of so many things, but mainly it spoke to my understanding of what nighttime is to lovers: a time to make love. The fact the song started with “because…” was simply icing on the cake, it explained something I asked. I understood the world so much more at that time than I would have had that song never been released or if I hadn’t heard it. 

In a return to a previous topic, the ultimate goal of my music and blogging isn’t to make money, and never has been. Sure, it’s nice to earn money, but it isn’t the overarching objective I strive to achieve. We all need money: that need is essentially universal. What makes what I do different, and so refreshingly liberating, is that it doesn’t have to make money to be a success. It simply has to connect with people. Once I realized this was my goal, it freed me from the burden our society constantly imposes upon us of making money. When I’m not comparing my finances to where I think they should be (or could be), it allows me to think more positively about my limited success and, more often than not, failures in how I’ve connected with the rest of the world.

The goal of music should never be to generate income. If that’s your only goal, you should find another job. That said, as we have repeatedly learned from countless YouTube videos, music is a business, and a lucrative one at that. The goal that you have might be something completely different from mine, but my goals with the things I do have little to do with money. Money is an important part of life for everyone, myself included. Making money is something I strive to do as much as I can, but it’s only part of what I’m trying to do on a daily basis. Even my success in this life is secondary to my legacy as an artist. 

That’s the thing about being an artist; if you’re really going to be an artist in the traditional sense, your legacy is what you leave the world with. In other words, what you create will live on after you die and people will remember you for what your ideas were, not how much money you made or how much money you spent. It’s been proven over and over again with the legacies left by artists after they die. A quick google search tells us people pay 100’s of millions of dollars for Van Gogh’s paintings today, but when he was alive someone paid him 400 francs for his painting, the equivalent of 2,000 dollars today. This model of art becoming more valuable after the artist’s death has repeated itself and played out over and over again. The idea that I’d be the exception to this rule is delusional at best. However, I think it’s a good step for me to try to get paid, however that has to happen.

The important part about making music is making sure it sounds good enough to stand up to the test of time, which is something I’m always working on, and can always improve upon. It’s a bit of a stretch to think I’m the next Van Gogh anyways, but you never know how people will see me later on. That’s the benefit derived from putting your mark on things through any form of art, it allows people the chance to put value on what you’ve made: whether that happens before you die is a separate question.

Part 5: Finding Joy in Limitations

Anyone who has played an instrument knows there are limitations in how we play them as musicians. This is particularly true of electronic music equipment, in a lot of ways. First of all, there’s only so much one instrument is going to do when it comes to electronic music production. This is because of limits to technology, in part, but it’s also mainly because, in my estimation, there’s only so much you generally want one instrument to accomplish. There’s a finite amount of instrumentation a song can hold, and when you break down the components to be created by a technological device, you’re pretty much left with two categories of instrument: melodic instruments and percussive instruments. These instrument sounds, in electronic music production, are usually played 1 of 2 ways: chromatically (like a piano or keyboard, generally for melodic parts) or sequenced (generally for drum sounds). How this happens varies instrument to instrument but this rule holds true for the electronic music equipment I’ve had. 

Therefore, there’s only so much you can do with music on a piece of electronic music equipment. The same can’t be said for traditional instruments, because how they are played varies a great deal depending on the instrument. Wind instruments, brass instruments, string instruments, percussive instruments, etc. all have their own way of being played. They still all have their limitations, though, in some ways, especially when used in original composition. For example, while a guitar can be played a variety of ways for a variety of use cases, you’re still not going to be able to make a complete track from a guitar alone, unless that’s what you’re going for (which might make sense in some situations). Similarly, a piano is great for composing melodies, harmonies, and the like, but using it for percussive sounds is not what it’s traditionally for. That’s not to say it can’t, or hasn’t ever happened.

Another example of what I mean is the limitations we give the instruments: the possible lack of talent we might have, or a lack of understanding of music theory (particularly for composing). I know, with certainty, I’m not a particularly skilled musician, and I know a very limited amount of music theory. That doesn’t mean I can’t find work arounds for this lack of skill and knowledge. Also, it can be assumed, everyone else out there has a finite set of skills and understanding of the theory behind music as well. So, it makes sense that there are limits to what we, as musicians, can achieve sonically.

It’s actually through understanding this that I have been able to grow and develop as a musician. This, in an absolute sense, makes sense. For example, by knowing I’m not going to be able to play piano at a concert hall for thousands of people, or even in a more intimate setting at a live event (at least with piano alone), I’m able to focus on the things I can accomplish with piano and other instruments that more closely match my skill set. 

Through my study of music I have learned that 2 instruments stand out in terms of being the most notable for composition: guitar and piano. I know, with certainty, that being able to play these instruments a small amount has done a lot of things for what my goals are in songwriting. Voice, of course, is extremely important as well, but I think about it in a different category than other instruments; I’m not totally sure why, I just do. 

Guitar and piano are extremely common in songwriting. Knowing how to play them a small amount does a lot of things for me (and other people) with songwriting. We’ve established these 2 points. We’ve also established that there are limitations to both instruments, to an extent. So, it makes sense that we’re constantly dealing with limitations when we create music. 

It’s limitations, though, that make music the way it is; It has been this way for centuries. In fact, I’d argue that through AI and the other technologies we have today, there are less limitations to what we can do in our bedrooms than composers had as little as 100 years ago. Sure, there were experts in the field who had access to pretty advanced technologies, but the amount of technology found in a cell phone today just didn’t exist 100 years ago. 

In this way, we’re dealing with fewer limitations than ever before. Still, it’s this understanding that there are, traditionally, large barriers and boundaries to making music that keep music as relevant as it still is. It’s in these barriers that we find the human element of music, for example. I’m convinced a machine could learn the breadth of centuries of music theory knowledge in a matter of days, if not hours. It could be given access to some extremely advanced hardware and software in music tech, and it could, without a doubt, compose music in a variety of genres and styles. I’m not convinced technology will ever be able to take the place of raw human emotion or the themes most commonly used in music; Unrequited love comes to mind here. In other words, if there’s no one recording music other than a non-living machine, there is little narrative to present to the fans listening. There’s very little substance to present at all, in fact.

That said, I don’t see any reason AI won’t be able to take the place of a lot of things in terms of instrumentation. It’s the perfect component to include with the main course: a relatable human narrative. There really isn’t, at time of writing, a substitute to human interaction. There are few things that are as necessary for humans: air and water come to mind.

Limitations don’t just apply to music, though. I can say I have a very limited amount of friends, for example. I have lost touch with most of my closest friends and have very few interactions with people on the level of friendship. This is an example of a limitation. The workaround I’ve found to use for it is to be friends with my parents. While this is far from ideal in some ways, making friends with my parents has been the single most rewarding thing in my life. It’s actually helped me overcome most of the problems that I have confronted. If there’s one thing you can take away from this text and copy, it’s this solution. It’s always better to be friends with the people you know, but especially people who matter the most to you.

Speaking of workarounds, there are certainly a lot of workarounds that exist in music. I will point out, though, that there’s a difference between a workaround and a shortcut. A lot of the ideas used in terms of electronic music technology fall under a gray area between advancement and shortcut. This isn’t to say this is a bad thing, entirely. As new ideas in tech develop over time it’s going to be increasingly common to see an instrument and think it’s shortcutting a more time consuming, older approach. This could be because the new approach is better and faster. But, like a lot of things in music and culture, old techniques, like old styles and fads, have a way of returning to our collective approach to making music.

One can look no further than thinking about the instruments I referenced at the beginning of this part. Pianos and guitars are 2 of the most commonly used instruments in terms of songwriting. Would it make sense to replace the sound of a piano with a different tone, one created by a synthesizer, permanently? Probably not. This seems to be a case of the chicken and the egg, and in this case, the chicken definitely came first. In other words, the piano very much predates the synthesizer, and, for a variety of reasons, is still generally preferred for most purposes. There may come a time when this isn’t true, but the original instrument will always be the piano, or more specifically, perhaps, the harpsichord, though this information lies out of the scope of this memoir.

In summary, there are few things as magical as the limitations we face when making music, or as humanising. It’s through these limitations that we find what makes us human. It’s part of the magic of music and life in general. By understanding that we have limitations, and knowing what they are, we are able to adjust for them and find workarounds and, in some cases, shortcuts.

Part 6: Still Hoping to Have a Hit Song

Though there are few things that would indicate there is a chance I’ll ever truly have a breakout hit, I still hope to have a hit one day. It’s part of what I think about when I write music and probably several times a day, if not more. It’s what drives me to continue to create music. In an absolute sense, having a shared experience with something like music can only happen when we are able to share the experience, when people listen to the music I make. I understand, in a lot of ways, it’s not a matter of figuring out the algorithm any more than it is simply writing music that people relate to and enjoy. That isn’t to say the algorithm isn’t part of that, just that sometimes people want to see me do certain things or play certain styles and genres of music, it would seem, rather than others. 

A lot of what I find resonates with people is stuff people have heard already. In other words, covering other people’s songs seems to resonate much more than coming up with my own. This is true even when I’ve written and recorded tracks I think are extremely catchy and melodic. One of my most popular shorts on YouTube is “Take 35 of ‘Oh Susanna’ on Guitar.” This reflects, to me, the fact “Oh! Susanna” was written by someone else (Stephen Foster, according to Wikipedia) and that I played it on guitar. Those two things stand out to me, along with the idea that it’s a totally different genre than I normally play.

Going forward, aside from hoping to have a hit song and writing music I hope resonates with the general public, I’m planning on playing guitar in YouTube videos more often, doing cover songs. I don’t plan on covering anything too modern, with possibly the occasional exception. It seems to me there’s a good chance this will resonate more strongly with people. It might not propel me to my next hit song, but it will, perhaps, gain me some notoriety in the YouTube music community. 

I’ve heard a lot of people make the argument that it's easier to find 1 or 2 people that are very much on the same page with what you do than it is to appeal to a large number of people. This seems to be true to me. However, it makes more sense to still try to appeal to a large group of people than it does simply finding a couple people that are very much into what I do. It’s a bit of a tricky thing to navigate finding “superfans” or people who love what I do when the vast majority of people have never heard my music and really couldn’t care less about what I record, even within the community of people who follow similar artists or acts. I’m not totally sure why this is, but I know people have a tendency to like something once it gets big with a large group of people. Sharing in an experience is just that, a shared experience, so it kind of makes sense that, without a large group to share it with, the experience isn’t quite the same.

There isn’t much I know about how to write a hit song, so I don’t have much advice about how to write one. I know what I’ve done with music hasn’t worked. This isn’t a monetary thing or a success thing, exactly, it’s just the facts. The realization that I’ve written stuff that a small group of people have heard before is pleasant, but that’s about as far as I’ve gotten with my music. That doesn’t mean I’m going to quit making music, it just means I haven’t figured out what resonates with people when it comes to my own songwriting.

Similarly, my blogging hasn’t necessarily taken off in a major way, either. That is something I understand very well, in some ways better than why I don’t have a hit song. The numbers are all there in terms of which posts are getting looked at and the data is available to me. This is true, to an extent, with music too, but I create music based much more on my belief that I can make something and tell a story no one else quite can, rather than base what I do on numbers. Like I said earlier in this part, I plan to deliver on what people enjoy seeing on my YouTube channel (cover songs on guitar), but when it comes to my own songwriting and recording, I have no numbers to back up my belief that my musical story will resonate someday with people.

Part of the reason I started blogging was to find a different medium to tell my story, since my music wasn’t, in fact, getting a lot of plays or resonating with people. It’s certainly been a different challenge in and of itself, but I enjoy the combination of both music and writing about music, so it’s been fun for me for the most part.

Learning to understand that the numbers behind my music analytics are outside the realm of my control has been an important step for me to take as well. I only control what I can control, what I can’t shouldn’t be attempted to be controlled; That is, when someone or some company promises to deliver views, plays, or the like, it’s generally a scam. I have learned this in a variety of ways, not the least of which was getting my music taken down after signing up to be on a playlist and paying to be on this playlist and be promoted. Though I wasn’t completely aware at the time, this violated the terms of agreement with the DSPs I was uploading my tracks to, so (I believe) this is what got my music taken off the DSPs. I still haven’t reuploaded the tracks that were taken off, aside from a few of them on different projects. This is because I don’t like most of the tracks that were deleted, for the most part, or they aren’t as relevant to my style of music as they once were.

Remembering that some things are outside my control is not only a necessary task, it actually liberates me to focus on the things I can control and not the things I cannot. It helps me focus on things that are within the scope of my skillset, too, and this, in turn, helps me work within the confines of my limitations. This, as we discussed in the previous part, is a beautiful thing.

Part 7: Connecting With My Audience

Finding a mutual connection to tracks I’ve written or other things I have in common with my audience is a huge factor in all of what I’ve written so far, including the last part about writing a hit song. When we connect through music, we’re able to hear what parts of the music we write resonates and what parts don’t. We also are able both observe the same thing, together. Often day to day interactions don’t include what we can say in tracks or on blogs. Through creating these things, I’ve been able to articulate things that I wouldn’t normally say to people in person. 

I find that, often, people think about things much the same way I do. It’s not that everyone thinks the same way, it’s that there seems to be a general agreement about certain things that we often take for granted. At its core, music is about telling the stories that we want to share with the world through sound. The shared experience is what people crave about music. So it makes sense that, by hearing someone’s thoughts on something, we connect with what makes sense to us. We take the parts that we agree with and, while deciphering what was said, put our own spin on what was said. In other words, we only understand what we understand about something, the rest is still left undeciphered. 

This might not be the most pleasant thought, but we see the world through a lens that only we have. The world only exists in the senses we employ to observe it: taste, smell, sight, hearing, and touch. In a lot of ways, we create and impose the limitations we employ on our day to day lives. This makes sense, for the most part; Imposing these limitations prevents us from hurting ourselves. It also is something of a formality; limitations create boundaries within our social structure. 

Finding a mutual connection through music, or any artform, allows us to see things from the perspective of someone who has all of these different interactions with the world, and has for their entire life. We share in observing what they see, what they hear, what they taste, what they smell, what they touch. At its most basic, this is what creating art is, and what storytelling is as well. And, while it may be a basic feature of humanity, it doesn’t get any better than that in terms of connecting through a shared experience. It’s truly through this connection of “seeing” the same thing together through the eyes of the story teller, in the case of music the performer, that the shared experience exists. This shared experience exists, then, in the confines of the observers. The observers, in their minds, are taking in the experience and putting their own spin on it, as it exists in the constructs of their world. 

By sharing this experience, observers, including the person telling the story or creating the art, are able to discover how someone else sees the world. This helps to break down the confines of our consciousness to allow a more collective experience, and helps us think in terms of the group and not just ourselves. This is where the barriers that exist in our daily lives are eliminated, or at least marginalized. It’s through the act of storytelling, as ancient as painting on a wall from the caveman days, that we pass down our experiences in life. This incredibly beautiful way of sharing with one another is how we have developed so many things over time, such as language, tools, cars, buildings, institutions, education, and technology. The question isn’t “how successful am I?”, it’s “do I want to continue down the path that I’m on?” 

I mean, in terms of technology, we’ve come a long way in a very short period of time. For the most part, I’m not really Ben “the musician and blogger,” I’m Ben “the guy with a laptop” at this point. Not that people call me either of those things, but the relevant part is the technology I use, not that I’m a particularly skilled musician or writer. And in terms of technology, we have a complete technological revolution on our hands in terms of what computers, tablets and cell phones are able to do and accomplish, along with all the other technology of our time. This, in some ways, is a blessing in terms of things like booking a flight or buying a bus pass, but I think there are some issues with things in terms of what it means to have an active camera in our pockets 24 hours a day and the invasion of privacy this represents. There also are the environmental effects to consider of where we get our energy, how we get around, how we make things, etc.

Overall, we’re in a much different place than we were 10 or 15 years ago. We’ve come a very long way and it’s not just how far we’ve come in terms of computer specs and the like, it’s also in how we use the technology we have. There are so many different sites and apps that do various things these days, in 2025, that just didn’t exist in 2010 or 2015. I’m not the expert on what existed at that time compared to today, exactly, but my point is we’re using technology in different ways every day in ways we never have before. Imagine something as simple as sharing a photograph with a family member. Sure, it’s been a while since I wasn’t able to text or email a photo to someone, but the ease and availability of this is literally unprecedented at this time. In music, creating beats, recording vocals, and mastering audio can all be done online, literally in a browser. This level of immediacy and convenience simply didn’t exist in the past.

While this is a good thing in terms of ease of creating music, there are a lot of negative effects that this has on society from the perspective of privacy. What was once off limits, quite literally, from public view, is now shared freely on such places as cam sites. Having frequented these sites myself, I know a thing or 2 about how they work, how fun they can be, and, also, the pitfalls of them, which I’ll get to in the next part. What I’d like to say here is that connections can be good or bad, depending on what the connection is. It can be nice to have a romantic connection online but sometimes it’s hard to only see and interact with someone through a device.

Part 10: The Joy of Connections, and Their Pitfalls

I mentioned, in the last part, that I’d talk about cam sites and the good and bad parts of them here. It’s not my goal to come down on either side too heavily; Rather, to paint a picture of what I’ve found works about them and what doesn’t, and why I try to avoid using sites like this (but still sometimes do). It’s a relatively easy and straightforward way to meet women online for me. It doesn’t take a lot of effort, and it generally works out pretty well in terms of a shared connection. However, this is about where the accolades for the sites stop. It’s expensive, it shows a sort of odd depravity in my thought process, and it isn’t exactly a shared experience in terms of it being a transactional relationship that is all about what I’m paying for. 

Unfortunately, for the most part, cam sites present little in terms of genuine connection that isn’t anything besides transactional and in passing. I would like to note this, not just for readers of this text, but for myself, to make a mental log, and to address a post on my blog about getting inspired by visiting cam sites. While, at the time, I thought this made sense due to finding love and affection in places available to all of us, I don’t think cam sites are a solution to any sort of lack of intimacy with a woman. There are so many things about finding someone who genuinely wants to be in your life with you that I can’t say seeing someone through a camera will ever take the place of this experience. At the same time, it’s nice to find someone who has a sincere liking for me, as opposed to someone who I’m paying to be with or share an experience with. Although painful to write (and possibly read), I wanted to shed some light on what makes some interactions and connections helpful and others not.

Moving on, life is all about the connections we make and have with other people. There are very few things you can accomplish in life without having some connection to someone. It actually doesn’t work to do most things completely on your own. I know this from my life with music and blogging, but mainly I know it because I don’t have many connections, or a very large network of friends or acquaintances and, therefore, I don’t have the opportunity to do a lot of things I’d like to do.

One of the most basic roles a musician has is to perform live, which I’ve never done. While I fault myself alone for this, it’s partly other people that would have to assist for that to happen. The same can be said for many of the goals I have. Nothing we do in life happens in a vacuum; It’s all connected in some way. From the time we’re born to the day we die, everything we do is intertwined with other people’s actions. In fact, we learn how to interact from other people, including the language we speak, where we go, what we eat, etc. The things we do are shaped by our desires, but also by the expectations of the societies we live in. If we all did precisely what we wanted, the world wouldn’t work very well.

However, what we want to do and what we actually do are very much intertwined as well. If we don’t want to do something, there’s a pretty good chance we won’t do it, at least after a while. How long we do that thing depends on the person, and how much we don’t want to do it. Think about a job you’ve had that you didn’t like. You probably stuck it out for a period of time to get a paycheck and get a good reference for your next job. Not everyone would keep that job like you did. Some people would quit right away, while others would keep it much longer than you did. 

My point is that we don’t always do the things we want to do. So there’s some difference in what we want to do and what we end up doing. But, at the same time, if we truly decide we don’t want to do something, we don’t do it. It’s that simple. For a lot of people, finding connections with others is something they want to do, but feel they don’t have time for, or wish they could do, but, for whatever reason, don’t (myself included). Ultimately, though, and luckily enough for the lonely among us, we will make the decision to connect with others in some way, on some level, somehow. It’s just how life is. It’s how we make this connection, and who we connect with, that truly counts.

This point brings me back to my first point that I made in this part; cam sites don’t actually help us form genuine connections because of how they form the connections we make on them. Yes, they are a step that we can take to break down barriers and meet and interact with other people. However, this step to connect isn’t one that generally fits into a positive interaction with people or results in a healthy relationship. There are other ways we can break through the walls that separate us and find mutual interests and common ground. 

Some of the best ways I’ve found in making connections is through a shared interest or hobby. So, what are some of my hobbies and interests, you might ask, that have produced the best results in terms of meeting people? The answer is a bit complicated. Rollerblading is a hobby of mine that has allowed me to meet a variety of people during a variety of periods in my life. It’s probably the single best way I’ve found for meeting other people. A shared interest in music is, perhaps, a distant second. From going to shows as a kid to talking about music with friends (also as a kid), I’ve had my share of interactions from a shared interest in music. Thinking about this, it makes sense that I chose the path I did: to record music. 

As I grew up and got older, rollerblading got harder to do, not impossible, but more difficult physically and, more importantly, mentally. I just don’t have the same inclination to do the things I did as a kid anymore. It’s a mental thing for me, I don’t have the desire to jump down stairs or grind on ledges that I once had. Partly, it’s my schedule: I fully wake up late in the day and I am at my most alert in the evenings. Therefore, it’s hard for me to go skating in the morning or early afternoon. But, at the same time, evening skate sessions are problematic for me since I don’t drive and it gets dark. So, over the years, I’ve found my other hobby more attainable, recording and playing music. 

Music is full of intricate problems in itself, though, too. Finding people locally to play music with is a bit difficult. Aside from the fact it’s hard to find players, it’s especially hard to find players who aren’t just interested in being session musicians, or playing for money. This makes finding people to jam with particularly hard for me. I don’t say this in a plea for pity, I say it to say, if I had a more level headed choice than my day to day life gives me, I’d choose rollerblading more so than music as a way to meet others. It’s just that I’m drawn to music. This is also partly because I got interested in technology uploading videos and pictures to various platforms through rollerblading. By the time I got a bit older, I found I had trouble feeling motivated to skate, but I still felt the need to share with the world a talent and, simply, what I was up to. I’ve never been particularly found of general social media stuff, necessarily, so I decided to make music a thing I did to share with people, on social media and elsewhere online. 

I say all this to say that I have no quick and easy fix for meeting people; It’s something I struggle with every day. It’s also important to pick hobbies that attract other people who you’d like to meet but, for the most part, the things I’m drawn to I wouldn’t be able to change if I tried. For me, it’s about taking small steps every day to make changes to the things I do and meet people as much as possible without overwhelming myself. 

Part 9: Looking Bigger Picture

In this part, I’ll sum up some of what I’ve said, but mainly I’ll draw upon what I have already written and introduce a broader outlook for my future, and the future of the intersection of music and technology. When we look at the bigger picture, not just today, tomorrow, or the next few months or years, we see that what has changed over time isn’t there by accident, but because we’re constantly striving to improve upon the successes and failures of the past. If there’s one thing this text does, I’d like it to collectively give us a moment to ponder how far we’ve come in terms of technological development. We’ve done everything we set out to do with computers and then some. We’ve put computers in our phones and made them affordable enough to be in essentially every household. We’ve shared, through social media, our highs, our lows, and our in betweens. We’ve witnessed the birth of new generations of human beings, all born to a world we created, flush with these phones and other devices. 

It’s incredible. We’ve done an incredible job with the internet. It’s not just in our day to day lives, it’s the fabric by which we interact, make purchases, watch TV, communicate, go to work, book flights… In short, it’s literally our everything. But, if I may make another, equally important point to my last point about how far we’ve come, it has isolated us from each other. Finding a new way to interact has left many behind in terms of the very thing this new technology was supposed to do: let us interact. We’ve now computerized intercourse. The totality of my daily interactions, outside of those with my parents, are through a computer. 

There are a few ways we can cut through the barriers put before us in terms of isolation. We should rise to the occasion and overcome this, though, that much I’m sure of. Music is a way to connect, to be sure, in some ways. A shared love of music, or a shared love of a certain type of music, can go a long way in terms of connecting with other people. Perhaps I was right, all along, when I posted on social media to check my Soundcloud link.

All kidding aside, though, it really is a common theme in life, isolation is, at this point. There are very few times we interact outside of our social walls we’ve constructed from one point of view in cyberspace. It can be incredibly challenging, as much as it is an incredible achievement. 

So, where do we go from here? Do we choose to be a more inclusive society, to embrace the people around us, even with all their flaws and shortcomings? Or do we choose a path where we separate ourselves more? To be candid, history has taught us that we should hope that we embrace one another, but prepare for a world where in-person interaction is at a premium. 

To better answer the question of where we go from here, I’d like to take this a step further: what can we do to participate in interactions with people on a regular basis, apart from the internet? There’s plenty of hobbies out there that we can get into. There are plenty of social events, clubs, and nightlife that we can attend. Libraries are still a thing… These are the types of answers society generally gives us when asked about where to find a social life. I’m not trying to be pessimistic here about the outlook for satisfying my need for interaction, partly because this is the last part, but from my viewpoint, very little of the things I mentioned move the needle in terms of finding people to interact with. This may not have always been true, but in this day and age, the internet truly is the common denominator in so many of the activities humanity takes part in. There aren’t a whole lot of things that people do together in person anymore. 

This isn’t all bad. People find very ingenious ways of meeting one another, as, I’m fairly certain, has always been the case. Some people might tell you I just need to get out there and break through my shell. But, in reality, the times I’ve been “out there” I’ve seen a world where people don’t really interact with one another very much. It’s not that people are bad. It’s not that they are intent on ignoring the needs of others in society. It’s a shift in social dynamics, brought on by the internet. The pandemic didn’t help, either, but that was really just icing on the cake; The writing has been on the wall for a long time.

I’d like to look long term, though, in this last part, and think about how I want to be remembered by society after I’m gone. I’d like to be remembered as someone who was interested in music, technology, and rollerblading. I’d like to be remembered as someone who wasn’t perfect, in fact was far from it, but who gave his all in life. I don’t think it makes sense to be remembered for these things if I don’t actually do those things in this life, at least a little better than the average joe. I don’t want to be remembered in life, or in death, as what I’m not. I didn’t sit back and let the world die. I didn’t ignore the warning signs of an isolated, disjointed society; I didn’t sit back and let MAGA scapegoat segments of the population, particularly immigrants, for the problems facing the United States. 

Overall, I think the outlook for my music is roughly the same as it has ever been, pretty dismal. It doesn’t particularly matter to most people; It matters to me, though. I am the only person to blame for this outlook. Realizing that is a step that I have to take. In a way, though, my musical failures have become a statement of our times. I’m not sure how to fix the problems we’re in, and I’m not going to offer any solutions to really anything here, other than to say: don’t let something as beautiful as life and sharing your thoughts through art and stories be wasted on making money and a constant pursuit of a capitalist version of success. 

If you want to pursue art, like I have, you (most likely) won’t be rich, and there’s a pretty good chance you won’t be particularly well known, either, let alone famous. The upside is that you get to create things that matter to the story of humanity. I don't usually make things that have political implications. I don’t make things that sell, at least for the most part. I don’t have a lot of friends, and I don’t know a secret formula to catapult someone, especially myself, to success. 

What I do have is a desire to tell the stories that matter to humankind, through my music, art, and blogging. I’m not a perfect person, as I discussed, in a lot of ways, earlier. The thing that separates me from most people is that I don’t want to share my story with others for selfish reasons (at least entirely). I have, for decades, shared my innermost thoughts to rid myself of the irritants they’ve become to the fabric of my being. I remember drawing pictures of a naked couple and putting them up in Madison. This wasn’t to advertise myself to women or to show off my skills as an artist; It was simply to do what I’ve described here, to rid myself of the thought and show I think about the same things everyone else does, that I’m no different from anyone else, that we all think about these things. I’m not saying this to show what a great guy I am, rather to explain why I’ve been acting the way I have for so many years: to explain what it means to be me. Like with so many things I do, whether it is art, music, or blogging; That’s the point.