This week I’ve been rediscovering that my punk-rocker heart is still beating strong even if it lays neglected and forgotten from time to time.

Let me explain.

I’ve been listening to the book of rock god Dave Grohl, his life and adventures in the music industry, and his heartfelt stories about a life fuelled by the creative drive and music filling his soul with grace, I’ve remembered something about myself.

Like Grohl, I started out in the sleepy suburbs where my single mum worked three jobs to raise a child and provide her with safety, opportunities and a good start in life. It was far from perfect, but having lived a much harder life since I flew the nest, I know that it was a lot more than many people have.

I recognise that same drive in him that I had growing up, a hunger to find things that would allow me to feel the bleeding edge of my own feelings. I think that’s because only in finding, shattering and surpassing our own boundaries do we discover our true self.

The sleepy suburban life, though a great place for children to grow up, is also the perfect platform to launch you into craving change and adventure, the launching board for young adults hungry for finding something personally meaningful, a life that is theirs alone and not defined by external things.

In listening to his stories, I’ve rediscovered that wish to have a drum set in my life. I used to play in school, and it’s one of the most cathartic things, to sit there and bang out noise on the drums. I was green with envy when my cousin got drums, but I wasn’t allowed a set – this was before electronic sets affordable to single mothers existed.

But now they exist. And are affordable, even to a broke-ass writer like me in the middle of a career change. So, I’m now a) shopping around for the right set and b) trying to work out where I can fit it.

Because this is something my little punk-rocker heart still truly desires after all these years. And when the thought of actually having a drum set at home, and being able to just rock out to the sounds of Foo Fighters, Green Day, AC/DC, Blink182, The White Stripes… you get it.

And the way he talked about how songs are recorded in the studio, tracks for every part of the song laid down separately and then combined into one whole, reminded me of how writing is. Any creative process really.

You get an idea, jot it down. Then you go over it, again and again and again, layering in more intricacies, more details. Or removing the stuff that’s bogging it down, taking away from the experience or hiding the core of it.

I think it was listening to Grohl’s stories that also made me really think about what I’m doing and how I’m doing it. Pay attention to the quality of the thing I’m doing. And as a result I decided to kill my mailing list, despite that being against all industry advice.

But industry advice also says to first spend ages writing a book before publishing it.

And here I am, publishing chapters as I go.

Screw the establishment! Rock’n’roll forever!!!

How do I know what the right thing to do is? Even when everyone else tells me the opposite?

Because what Rumi said hundreds of years ago, is still true today. “Whatever lifts the corners of your mouth, trust that.”

He said it so perfectly, I can’t add anything to that. 

Except to say that when I made the decision to kill my emails, the corners of my mouth turned up. When I hit delete on my account, they turned up again.  

When I was editing Zaven roiling in his self-created anguish, the corners of my mouth turned up.

So, whatever lifts the corners of your mouth, trust that.

All the love, all the power,
Starsheep