Dear 16 year-old me,
Look at them. Both of them.
That's the Peavey bass your dad bought for you last year, and the vinyl lp of Iron Maiden's 5th album that your friend Terry Likness gave you in the hallway at school the other day.
You took Powerslave home and didn't just listen to it. You heard it. It was a clarion call, a new step from what you were learning on your Rush lps. The album pushed you to work harder, faster, smarter on the bass.
Thirty-three years later, they both still look pretty good. Even if you and I don't.
You were thinking about this because on your way home today, you listened to the last track of this:
It's been 33 years and you still feel the movements between every moment of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. You know those notes. They've stained themselves in your DNA.
But you can't play them anymore.
Time was cruel and you ignored Edna, your blonde four-stringed mistress, for far too long. You haven't played in public now for five years (https://youtu.be/bUOWzYPmQWc). Before that, you'd barely taken her out in two decades. The only reason the case has been opened in the last year was to take this photo, just now.
So Edna's pissed at you these days, and so are your hands.
I'm sad to inform you that you weren't a professional musician. You'll have a tiny road trip with a band. You'll cut a single next year with another band that lands on the radio very briefly. And you'll write a couple of punk songs for yet another band that will far outlast your time with them.
You were also never a band teacher, but you found a way to bring new music into people's lives. And, hey: You will get to meet a bunch of Rock stars. You just aren't going to be one.
You can still listen to Maiden, though, and remember what it was like to be the Marlboro Light-smoking, trenchcoat-wearing, long-haired teenager you are right now. It's a feeling that isn't going to fade like your ability to play it did. It's there, on this album, anytime you hear a song from it.
A lot of other stuff happened in your life, too, but I'm loathe to ruin any of it for you. You have to go through it. All of it. Good luck. You'll both need it, and often have it.
One last thing. Mrs. Haley was partially right: You did not write a novel.
You wrote seven of them.