The itch.

For the last few days I've been having the itch.

The one that would sometimes get me into trouble, financially and emotionally.

It's unbearable, and it started when I was about 13 and my parents moved the old piano, that used to be in the living room, into my room which had just been moved to the basement, sign of the unconditional affection they had for me.

First I repaired it. Some of the keys weren't working, after all it's mechanical.

Then, much to their displeasure, I started playing, and composing, wound up writing some pretty nifty songs. Mostly adolescent love songs aimed at what later would become my wife.

At that time I begun to constantly have music playing in my mind, I could model it at will and it was sometimes great. Although of course it's hard for me to be objective, some of the best songs I wrote came out in that period from my adolescence, to when I was about 23-24.

Eventually I moved on to synthesizers and bought one, a crap Yamaha portable synthesizer with built in rhythms and speakers, which usually is indicative of a cheap-ass instrument that will never sound good enough to record.

As I got older, I got better, the agony of my first girlfriend (not my wife, we didn't date until much later), and then my second girlfriend (also not my wife), inspired some decent Goth songs, which I didn't record until much later, when I was already married and pretty much settled.

That was the major issue with me, once my life was settled, it became uninspiring, thus, the music stopped playing in my mind.

Until last week.

However, a few months ago, after realizing that I hadn't played, or even touched any of my instruments except to shuffle them around to make room for other stuff, I decided to sell them.

My Fender bass guitar went first to a young man from a local automotive forum.

Then my Korg N5 went to some older "techno-making" dude.

I later started dismantling my wiring and the studio/recording PC I had built became a download PC that I use to download and convert material from the web. Nothing more than a drone...

Last night the older of my little sisters called me up and asked me if I had heard, the CBC is having a contest where you send in a tune, and if you win they give you 100.000$ and will use the tune for Hockey Night in Canada.

She wanted me to enter.

I declined.

I can't write that kind of music. It would be fake for me. I can't justify doing it, even for 100K$.

However, I will look around for a decent, cheap ass, used synthesizer to replace the Korg because I have a feeling I might want to jot down some music and lyrics soon.

At least sooner than I thought I would.

I got the itch baby.