I Picked Up My Bass Again

For years, my Fender J sat in the corner collecting dust. I picked it up every once in a while, mostly just to run scales and goof around. It was an exercise in pain, for both my fingers and my ears. I'd gotten rusty. I was never exactly a virtuoso in the first place -- I think at my high point, I was what you might call "pretty good." These days? I just fucking suck.

But between starting my own business and this whole thing with my dad, I've been looking to reboot core aspects of my life, get back to roots, set aside the bullshit and just focus on what I came to LA to do: sell books and scripts, make movies and work.

That part of my mental game was coming together. But there was something missing... I couldn't put my finger on it. Until, completely at random, I picked up my bass. I ran scales again. This time, though, I wasn't just going through the motions. I worked to hit the notes, shore up my basics, actually play the music.

Tonight I ran E major one hundred times. It sounds small, and it is, but I haven't put in that kind of woodshed work on the bass since... shit, forever. I used to practice for hours every day after school. I played electric and upright in college. And now to go back and do that kind of practice again... It felt strange at first, but familiar. It was visiting the block you grew up on. It felt good.

I'm going to take it slow, just a little bit every night. I've found it's better to own one scale than to rent eight. Tomorrow I'll work up F major, the night after F#, and so on until I get to the minors. Rinse and repeat.

Though it doesn't have as direct an application as, say, journalism school, the lessons I learned in music have been endlessly applicable to writing, developing and producing. How could I spend so much time concentrating on the tree, while forgetting the roots?

For a long time, I ignored my bass, because I thought I had to devote every waking second of my life on the film career to get things going. But I've found that sometimes you have to go all the way around the world to come home, literally and figuratively.