For the past few weeks I spent a lot of my time contemplating what to do with my life, often in long, deep thought, frequently finding myself at a dead end. There was no distinct path that jumped out at me as something I wanted to do, and I even tried doing voluntary work as a writer for a web design business in hope that it would lead to a job. I quit on the first day after it turned out they wanted me to be a living, breathing, soulless spambot.
The one thing I kept coming back to in my thoughts was my passion for writing. Writing, however, is often an unrewarding feat - the problem of course being that whatever you may write and with whatever amount of heart you put into it, nobody cares to read it. Apart from perhaps a few close friends and family. And even then, you have to force half of them into the act of reading it, as if taking their eyes off Facebook for just a couple of minutes is too much to ask of them.
After much consideration and my failed voluntary work experiment, I decided I had to overcome my defeatist attitude. And so, here, my blog is born. Luckily, my surname was available as a username on Blogspot - Serderov - so I registered it and now here I am, writing my first entry.
The plan for this blog is for it to be a collection of personal music reviews, though I might review films and books later as well. I will not be going down the ordinary route of music reviewing, as I find that boring, tedious and unnecessary. If I wanted to read a description of the music, I would save myself the hassle of doing so and listen to the music instead.
The first reason I am partaking in this endeavor is in hope that a writing career of some sort will take off and my writing skills will flourish overall. I have worked every piece of shit minimum wage job under the sun and been fired from half of them. Being a quiescent, obedient pawn for a big company is not what God intended for me on this earth, I believe.
A learned man called Chaim once said to me that the real Hebrew translation of the book Exodus in the bible is actually "Names". He said the significance of this is that under God, we all have names - we are not simply worthless numbers, men without names or meaning, like the slaves who worked to the bone under the rule of Pharaoh in that holy book of the Bible. I want to be a writer and so ultimately, starting a blog and sticking at it seems the most logical thing to do.
The other reason I am pursuing this blog is because my passion for music has been dying over the years. I am a talented guitarist, basic pianist and super-amateur saxophonist (I can just about play the White Stripes' Seven Nation Army riff), as well as a audio producer, trained in Reason and Cubase to a high standard. Most people I know believe music is my best talent and perhaps it is, but music isn't my passion anymore. Long gone are the days when music would be playing in my house from the moment I woke to the moment I slept. Instead, silence fills the air. Tranquil it may be, and I don't desire to become the music junkie I once was with Seinnheisers glued to the sides of my head, but there is a sadness in a part of me dying, a part that largely represents my teenage years.
As I have sat and written this first entry, the music of Frank Zappa's brilliant album Sleep Dirt has been playing lightly on my speakers. It is an album I have probably listrened to 100 times, having been first introduced the work of Frank Zappa by a friend in university (I dropped out..). I have listened to Sleep Dirt at a loud volume, and I have listened to it gently, and either way works beautifully. It is organic, human. Technically masterful, while still retaining a natural essence.
I sit here, the time approaching three hours after midnight. I am slumped lazily to one side in my computer chair, my legs crossed and an electric fan is whirring, blasting hot air right against my shin. It's freezing outside, the middle of January, the bitter chill on the air is relentless. But I feel content, happy and warm. Of course, the electric fan is playing a large part of that, but I feel a warmth in my soul also, watching as the words flow from my fingers and onto the computer screen. A warmth only artists can understand. A closeness with God. Because I am a name, not a number.
