You know those projects that you always wished you did but never did and are sitting there thinking – oh my god – what if I die tomorrow and I haven’t done {skydiving, visited the pyramids, wack the Prime Minister in the face with a pie}. You know – the special things in life.

For me – its music. I love having time to write music but it always seems to have taken a back seat to other things that have been going on. Its the age old principle of “life is what happens when you are making plans to do other things”. Unfortunately you get to a point sometimes where you start to wonder whether life is controlling you or you are in control of life. Not that I regret too many things in my past – we live – we make mistakes – we grow. The fool in life is the person that is too full of themselves to not admit a mistake and take ownership over correcting it.

So what brought this up? Well — ever since high school I’ve been writing music. I’m not going to win any awards for my playing or my composition skills but that really isn’t the point. The point is being willing to express yourself and having the confidence to put yourself out there to see if maybe other people might feel connected in the same way. Artistic expression – whether it is macaroni art on the kitchen fridge or some Voice of Fire in the National Art Gallery – allows us to talk with each other. It provides a common frame of reference which opens the door to thoughts and ideas which wouldn’t normally be the case without some type of catalyst.

Beyond this however is the idea that you can’t simply sit still. You have to be constantly learning new things each year. Do something different. Find something you have never done and give it a whirl. Those things you love will stick with you your whole life. But you won’t know unless you try.

In my case – old cassette tapes of some rough cuts of electronic music which have sat unfinished for 15-20 years. I finally got around to finding a tape-to-mp3 devices to get these things into something internet accessible. What I realized as I was listening to compositions, that in some cases resulted in fairly horrific attempts to use a 4-track studio recorder, was I miss not having spent more time playing and composing. I like doing this type of thing even if only one in ten compositions are something that are worth sharing.

So here I am about to put myself ‘out there’. Maybe this is the kick in the ass I need to get many of the other works I have finished. After all – I’d hate to be on my death bed thinking – why didn’t I take control of life and create that album I’ve always wanted to. Good or bad – its about dialogue and who knows – maybe someone might like it besides me.

Catalina Island Waltz

Sometimes it just comes out and there is no way to stop it. Such was the case after a trip I took to dive off the California coast with a good friend of mine. I had already had close to 100 dives by that point including places like Cozumel. There was just something about that week however that was just crying to get out once I returned. The Catalina Waltz was the result.

— Kevin Feenan

 And before you say anything – yes I know there is tape hiss in here however at the moment I don’t have the right tools to remove it proper. Once I get this re-scored later this year and recorded digitally I should have a much cleaner copy which I’ll use to replace this with.