Bela Koe-Krompecher spent a lifetime in Ohio’s vivid music and arts scene, with all its ups and mostly downs. I really like how he expressed this sentiment, both in his blog and in his awesome book “Love, Death and Photosynthesis”:
Nobody got famous, nobody ever really made a dent in any product counting mechanism like Billboard, The College Music Journal or MTV but we loved and cherished one another as if our lives depended on it, night in and night out. What we discovered was the result wasn’t the prize; the prize was the friendship and the making of art for fuck’s sake.
I’m not an artist myself, but I used to hang out a lot with a bunch of them. Maybe because of this, another quote of BKK resonated with me:
Our world was small but it opened up the universe where ideas bounced off of one another like bubbles in beer, we would have one ingenious idea flowing after another without a filter to identify the logical of said idea. Huddled around empty bottles and amplifiers the stage of the world was in the basements and living rooms of our lives.
It’s getting harder as you get older, and the same old stories you share ring more and more repetitive, but I still go out my way to stay in touch with my childhood and university friends, and sometimes I think, it’s the only thing that keeps me from going completely bitter.
BTW, I stumbled upon BKK’s story on the great “Local Waste Music” podcast which I heartily recommend.
What we discovered was the result wasn’t the prize; the prize was the friendship and the making of art for fuck’s sake.
Basically "the real treasure was the friends we made along the way.
I guess there’s something to that. People get so bogged down in the finish line that it’s hard to see the joy in every day. And I don’t blame them, most people are working so hard just to get by.
Would it be amazing if we had magic powers, could slay dragons, fly spaceships across the galaxy, or travel over mountains to find treasure? Sure. But if that was normal, it would likely feel just as boring as our lives now. So we need to try to enjoy the moments of our lives as they are because we don’t really get that many of them.
Welcome to Buddhism.
Bela Koe-Krompecher spent a lifetime in Ohio’s vivid music and arts scene, with all its ups and mostly downs. I really like how he expressed this sentiment, both in his blog and in his awesome book “Love, Death and Photosynthesis”:
I’m not an artist myself, but I used to hang out a lot with a bunch of them. Maybe because of this, another quote of BKK resonated with me:
It’s getting harder as you get older, and the same old stories you share ring more and more repetitive, but I still go out my way to stay in touch with my childhood and university friends, and sometimes I think, it’s the only thing that keeps me from going completely bitter.
BTW, I stumbled upon BKK’s story on the great “Local Waste Music” podcast which I heartily recommend.
Basically "the real treasure was the friends we made along the way.
I guess there’s something to that. People get so bogged down in the finish line that it’s hard to see the joy in every day. And I don’t blame them, most people are working so hard just to get by.
Would it be amazing if we had magic powers, could slay dragons, fly spaceships across the galaxy, or travel over mountains to find treasure? Sure. But if that was normal, it would likely feel just as boring as our lives now. So we need to try to enjoy the moments of our lives as they are because we don’t really get that many of them.