The Individualist: Digressions, Dreams & Dissertations

by Todd Rundgren

Something about aging, perhaps the growing insensitivity of the body, causes the past to become progressively clearer as the present defocuses. Would that one could control that field of view and recall in vivid detail the truly epiphanal moments in one’s life in all their sensuality and naïveté. That’s when you start falling down the staircase.

I think it’s best to let God do all the talking and the rest of us strive to shut the hell up about God.

There was a time when every imaginable item was available and deliverable to your abode through a miraculous device- it was called the Sears Catalog. For more than 100 years it was what the Internet is today. When young, you would spend hours perusing the toy section in the back. When you were adolescent, you graduated to the precursor of Internet porn: the lingerie pages. When you grow up, you shop for tools and moccasins. Best of all, there were no popup ads.

Not everyone has the temperament to live alone. Tolerating oneself can be a surprisingly difficult thing. Learning to like yourself… Oy!

Solitude is a commodity so rare that some people live in a form of poverty, a profound lack of peace and quiet. Home is often assumed to be where your loved ones are. For some it may be where everyone isn’t. A place to be unconsciously yourself, walk around naked and talk to yourself, stop shaving and fart out loud. Home is where the fart is.

The music business has its own particular ironies, stories of huge talents who never find an audience, spectacular failures that defy conventional wisdom, one-hit wonders who dominate then disappear. In some cases the personalities at the peripheries survive and thrive long after Elvis has left the building, Elvis for the purposes of this argument being a band that never gets to their second record.

Addiction is built in. Once we get used to something, we don’t want it to change. All you have to do is provide enough of it that you become accustomed to it being there, and while it’s there you are not an addict. It’s when it’s taken away that you notice how much you need it, how much the other things you have don’t matter. All you can think of is what you used to have. Sometimes it’s drugs. Sometimes it’s love. Sometimes it’s Jesus. Waking up is withdrawal.

Here is a thing you should know about cops: they lie. It doesn’t matter where in the world you encounter them. They don’t arrest you to see you go free. They lie.

Most people, if they have a calling, will likely not realize what it is. Conformity is still the foundation of most societies, and if your calling takes you too far out of the mainstream, you are on shaky territory and nothing is guaranteed. But if you can succeed at it you’ll find that many have tried and failed to survive on that barren plain, and if you do survive, you represent their hopes. Your calling is to hold that ground. You are the Individualist.