Apr 15 2013

Paul Williams

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Patience

TIME

TIME

 

“Time was a friend. Back when I was young. And summer was forever. Time.  Good was your first name.  Every day a lesson.  With something new to learn.”

I wrote those words when I was in my early thirties. They are lyrics from a song I wrote with Roger Nichols. My life had barely begun and yet I was warbling words of wizened wisdom…  sorry…singing about the years as if most of them were behind me.  Why?  Age ignorance.   No sense of how young thirty really was.  Arrogance?  A desire to be seen as a philosopher poet?   Probably.

And yet I find it fascinating that many of the songs I wrote early on are accurate to my life today.  Accurately reflecting on facts and feelings of the .. ahem .. more mature me.

I’m still fascinated by time.  Watching a three year old Tiger Woods display abilities beyond anything he’d learned in this lifetime; listening to a musical prodigy and watching young genius’s earning their doctorates, while still in their teens, makes me think there’s some serious past life learning involved in such unexplained childhood ability and wisdom.

So, I lean towards believing in reincarnation.  But, that’s not my only fascination with time.

The French poet Arthur Rimbaud wrote his life works while in his late teens and gave up creative writing before the age of twenty.  Paul Gauguin, the brilliant Impressionist was in his late thirties when he quit the business world to paint full time.  He’d been a stockbroker and banker.

My musical director Chris Caswell has been writing songs for decades. They were wonderful songs, though they remained unrecorded.  His career as a musician and arranger flourished but as a composer he’d been ignored.   Four years ago he wrote the lyrics for a Karin Alison album of classic jazz instrumentals.  It was one of the most successful albums in the labels history and for Chris it was the beginning of the most lucrative and creative period of his life.

I started writing songs at age twenty-seven after a failed acting career.  For four years almost everything that I wrote or co-wrote was recorded. I was making a comfortable living writing album cuts and B-sides (remember b-sides? remember records?) but never A side singles that received radio play. No mega hits, leading to fame, fortune or world wide recognition.

Four years.  It felt like a lifetime.  Then in 1970 Three Dog Night and The Carpenters changed my luck.  The “drought” was over.

There was no drought.  I now believe that due diligence and perseverance paid off rather quickly.  I’m grateful beyond words for the people who’ve recorded my songs through the years and every incidental recording along the way was a step towards …  this Perfect Now.

Now – A word that’s receiving more respect from yours truly these days.

Evidently time constricts and expands based on the intensity of an experience,  the age of the subjective mind and the attention we pay to what’s happening and where we are.  We’ve all snapped out of a deep thought to find we’d driven for twenty minutes past our freeway exit.  We’ve experienced a drive to a lover’s rendezvous lasting much longer than a ride of the same length heading for the dentist’s office.

Time.  There’s more of it when we stay in the afore mentioned “Perfect Now”

My last observation will hopefully serve as a reminder to you that, no matter your age, there’s time left for meaningful experiences, new beginnings or a  fresh start.  When Tracey came to me with the idea of writing “Gratitude and Trust: Recovery Is Not Just For Addicts” I was handed a gift.  I stepped into a new world of opportunity and challenges that I find invigorating.  A third act gift.

While the blogosphere, Tweeting and writing the book are consumers of time, I find they leave me energized as I deal with the rest of my world; my work at ASCAP, my songwriting and of course my commitment to the recovering community.  The love of the activity changes the ratio of energy involved and perhaps creates more than it uses.  Wonderful if it’s true.

Long ago I wrote “Time, I feel you moving on. You’re leaving me behind.”  For the moment I’d disagree with that thinking.   Time’s a wave I’ll ride as long as possible and I know that as the days go by they’ll be lived to the fullest if I continue to live them in Gratitude and Trust.

 

 

 

Paul Williams

Paul Williams is a singer, songwriter, actor, recovery advocate and has been a fixture on the American cultural scene since the seventies. His book Gratitude and Trust is now available.