Have We Arrived At The End?

In a few minutes I am scheduled to head into the studio and sign off on the final mixes of the Summer Darling record. What a grand undertaking this has been! As I think back on the 4 years of writing and rehearsing, the six months of tracking and the six months of mixing I feel two conflicting emotions.

First comes a giant wave of satisfaction mixed with relief, and maybe a little pride tossed in there as well. While we have four other past releases, the record we are finishing feels like the definitive statement the band was meant to make. It's just taken us eight years and a couple hundred shows to make it. It makes me excited for the future, expectant, hopeful.

The other feeling is an intense dread, the fear of someone being in your house when you arrive home from a long journey, the unease of uncertainty. For the last fourteen months, I knew what my goal was: finish the record. But now that it's done, what's next?

Recently I was speaking over beers to S Foye, the producer of the record, about general life equations, laughing at the circumstances of our extreme rootlessness; we own next to nothing, have no kids, etc, and how different that makes us from a lot of our friends we grew up with. We came to the realization that uncertainty in life produces a hunger that allows for new experience and a unique hope. Because we are still unsettled in this path we're on, we get opportunities to experience things that people who find themselves settled into careers and families and responsibilities don't. It was an exhilarating conclusion. The uncertainty rotting my guts and waking me up at five in the morning (much like it did this very a.m.) was actually a good thing, a product of my willingness to strive for better and different things for me and my band-family. It's a terrible, awesome feeling, and one that I hope we all get to experience soon.

This is what I was listening to while writing today. The song is called "I Get Low" by Timber Timbre.