who i am

Lately I have found that having a band comes with weight. My ignorance fed me somewhat of a false reality. A lot of this weight comes from how people are so critical. Everyone means good, but I don’t think they realize that their critiques are one of many. One of these critiques that I think has some merit is that I need to write songs with broader themes. I write a lot of songs about the female gender. I know this. I feel extremely comfortable in that area of writing songs. I am kind of on this journey to write more songs about everyday life. And it is incredibly challenging. Something in me just holds back.

I have a deep fear that has recently come to the surface of my attention. It is the fear of not being known. Not in the famous kind of sense. But in the sense of relationships. Everyone's personality is multifaceted. Yet I think we only get a glimpse in to who someone is. It is ignorance that we might define someone by a moment. We do it all the time. But I am constantly becoming aware that I don’t want to be defined by just a moment.

I was in a friends wedding a couple of years ago. At the rehearsal dinner the groom went around and said what he thought of each groomsmen. It was quite an emotional night. He went around to all the groomsmen and said such spectacular, graceful things about them. Then he got to me. He said, “Gaskin. You are funniest guy I know.” I mean a great compliment. But I was not flattered. I felt as if I was just a joke. You had me around so that you would laugh.

The tragedy of my life and probably of a lot of us is simply that we will never be known. One because people won’t allow us to be that person. Or secondly they just enjoy one part of us so much that we can never be the vastness of who we were created to be. And the sad reality is that no one really sticks around a long enough period to see this tremendous beauty within each of us. Facebook is great when it greets you with all the people who never gave you the time of day years ago.

I have met some remarkable people the past couple of months. So I think everything is stirring in me because I fear that what we have will just be momentary enjoyment of a brief friendship. This is the song that is stirring within me. Please stay...