Life is confusing, hard and complex, and I'd rather play music.

Music, in comparison, is simple. It is never as hard as it seems, and if you practice, you get better at it. You can say everything in your heart and mind without mouthing a word, and it's never a lie as long as it's true (take a second to consider that one). You can't lie to yourself, or anyone else, through music, because it says exactly what it is, and lies say "I am a lie". Which is a truth, to a certain degree, but let's not go crazy with the analogy.

As in life, everyone who plays plays differently; unlike in life, when people play differently together, it's not called a fight, it's just called jazz, and appeals to most, or at least most hipsters. Music doesn't have time for bullshit, and it doesn't care about rent, bills, insecurities, inadequacies, etc. It just exists because it is created. There is no hypocrisy in music, no politics, no faith or disappointment or resentment. Life is infinitely more complex, and mostly because we make it that way; music can be made complex, but in the end it's still music. Which I suppose is true of life as well, after a fashion.

But life gets complicated, mostly because of ego. See ego, or lack thereof, dictates a whole heapin' helpin' of our actions and decisions, whether we realize this or not; some may call it conditioning, others nurture or breeding, some possibly even genetics. But I don't really care; what it boils down to is that either over-confidence or insecurity (often within the same person) leads to half truths, ignorance (in both senses of the term), abandonment, callousness, etc. Now, I'd be an idiot to say that there isn't ego in music, but the neat thing about music is that ego doesn't have to be there. A shy person can play confidently, and a confident person might play meekly, but the end result is being part of a unit, and there isn't room for overconfidence OR insecurity there, because both are obvious. Unless you're into solos, but kiss my ass, solos suck and we all knew it before the 80's hair bands overdid them.

So music: less complicated, more beautiful, MUCH easier to figure out. However, the simple truth of the matter is that knots in your shoelaces are harder to figure out than life is; it's just that, at 3am when you're drunk and exhausted, you are highly motivated to get those shoes off, whereas you never really have a drunken 3am moment for your life as a whole.

Make of this what you will; in a weird way, it may be the most honest thing I've ever written (though likely also the most ridiculous).

-todd