1/3/05- A Message From John

Happy new year!!! Hope you’re all healthy and happy and stocked up on boredom. I’m only just beginning to figure out where the hell I am lately. It’s almost like I woke up after a 4 year dream and now I’m 27, but I don’t have as much to show for it as you’d think. Career stuff, sure, but I’m not even considering that right now. I’m just trying to find that “bloom” as a person. Trying to live a normal life without emotionally relying on the fact that I’m an artist, or that I can just get on the road and leave my problems behind. I’m playing with the same rules as the rest of the world now, and I love it.

So I’ll be taking some time off from touring, but not from playing and thinking about music. I’m taking advantage of all the opportunity I’ve earned in the last few years by playing on some other people’s albums. Just finished a track I wrote and recorded with Herbie Hancock for his upcoming CD, and I’ll be on a couple of cuts on John Scofield’s next disc. Lots of other stuff, too, but I’ll let you find out on your own. As for the fate of my next album, I won’t take too long before giving you something new to listen to. I just know all too well that once you press the “start” button, the ride doesn’t stop for 18 months.

I don’t have that much more to report on. Just hanging out, deconstructing my playing so that I can put it together even better than before, and living life as a person. A person who happens to be a musician. I hope you have an amazing year, and that you discover so many new people, places and things. Nouns, I guess. Discover more nouns. I have to tell you, I can see the CONTINUUM of life lately. I can feel how the whole arc comes and goes in the blink of an eye. 27 turns into 35, 45, 55, 65, Geritol. Lately I’ve been playing with numbers, how 1985 was 20 years ago, so if you copy and paste your life from 85 to now, you’ll be 47, if you’re 27 today. Sometimes that seems long, sometimes it seems short. I don’t know. I saw “Garden State” the other night, and it set me perfectly straight. Being lost is sexy. My life has been its most boring when I don’t feel like I’m looking for something. And I’m looking for a whole hell of a lot right now. You should be, too.

Love, love, love, love, love, love... And thank you.