The Road Ahead - Part 1 - Hindsight

So much of my life has been wasted trolling the line between passion and obsession.

I remember as a child being utterly addicted to data concerning commercial aircraft. I would memorize statistics such as seating capacities, layouts and potential cargo loads, cruising altitudes and speeds, wing spans and any other detail I could collect. In my extremely limited knowledge of potential career fields in aviation I naturally assumed that being a pilot was the best way to make a life out of what I thought was my passion.

Things changed abruptly when I first heard the band Queen back in 1980. I became consumed by the dream of being a professional musician. I remember telling my brother as far back as 1982 that it was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. Then I heard Eddie Van Halen. He sealed the deal. I was going to play guitar like him. No ifs, ands, or buts.

Interestingly, as the airplane fascination faded, being replaced by the drive to be a rock musician, all of the data and details that I had amassed in my huge skull was archived and replaced by myriad minutiae regarding electric guitars and the gear used to process their sounds.

I remember as if it were yesterday my initial trip to a music store in 1984 when I accompanied my friend Pierre Bachelier and his mother as they bought his first electric guitar. It was an Aria Pro II see-thru red finished CS-350, modified SG style guitar, with a 22 fret maple neck, rosewood fingerboard, a fixed bridge, 2 humbucking pickups, a pickup selector switch, phase and coil tap switches, and 2 volume and 2 tone Les Paul style gold plastic knobs. It was the coolest thing I have ever seen, and Pierre's mom, yeah, she was the coolest mom ever.

As an aside, I have so much trouble remembering names, even those of friends who were very dear to me at various points in my life, but I can't forget Pierre's because it is associated with that guitar. If anyone sees Pierre, let him know that yes, I still love metal, and the heavier the better!

I didn't allow the rock star dream to fade, even during the darkest times in my life when I had had to sell everything of value that I owned so that I could eat. I collected guitar brochures and catalogs from any company with a toll-free number, which I would dial from the pay phone outside of my public housing apartment, and again memorized data and details. Those brochures were the only mail, besides unsolicited coupons, that I received for over three years, so it comes as no surprise that they became a source of comfort. Eventually the tides turned and I was back on my feet again, but not before I had lost sight of the purpose of the instrument that I loved so dearly.

Like my obsession with airplanes and my limited perception of potential career fields associated with them, I have awakened, over 23 years after I strummed my first chord, to the realization that the guitars themselves are what matter to me, not the music that I might be able to make with them. I am lost in their details. I should have known this two decades ago when I was the lead singer of an amazing band in France, and rather than investing in equipment to support my singing, you know, like a real microphone, I just had to have a new guitar.

Guitars are my obsession, not my passion.

Now along the way I have enjoyed playing some great music, and have even had actual epiphanies while playing - some day I may be able to retell those stories to more than a select few without feeling like my inner sanctum is laid bare - but I know that I would rather ogle guitars than play them.

When I play I'm just going through the motions, repeating familiar patterns, playing the role, but my music means nothing more to me than a basic exercise in in pattern arrangement. I do love music, that of real musicians, and I experience a feeling that I can only classify as emotional passion when I hear sounds and textures that are pleasing to my soul, but I'm so drawn to the details of the instrument itself that I have almost forgotten their purpose. That's why I'm so driven to design them. I'm obsessed with creating what I believe to be the perfect guitar, but I coun't care less about the music I could make with it.

I do find pleasure in playing guitar on occasion, I still am extremely fascinated by commercial or private aircraft, and I greatly enjoy various other activities that stimulate my mind and body, but I have finally reached the point where I believe that I can admit to myself that those things that occupied my every thought for so many years were not the passions I thought they were. They were, and still are to some extent, obsessions.

Whether they were born of religion's forceful insistence to discover and pursue one's purpose and calling (which in reality is nothing more than an euphemistic substitute for the fear of the lack of identity), the compulsions of an high-functioning autistic child, the pathogenic fabrications of an affirmation-starved attention seeker, or a hybrid of all three, remains to be determined. No matter the outcome of my inquest, I absolutely must be willing to concede that they have no more intrinsic value to me than any other half truth I was spoon fed from birth.

So what is my passion?

I believe I'm watching it unfold before my eyes as I type these words.