The past couple days I've been doing what I've been doing all summer. Sitting around with Jordan. Sometimes we do other things though. We'll get Carlos...or go to Seans...and stuff. That's about it though. Last Thursday we saw The Audition and it was really cool. The whole area and stage was sooooo small so that everything was incredibly personal. You could just sit there and talk to Danny in between songs. Way cool. Then yesterday Sean and I went and saw Ace Enders. I liked it a lot because it was similar. Not tons of people and a pretty personal show. That was even cooler to me, because in my head at least, Ace is a really famous person. The Early November played at the first show I ever went to. There was even a bbq before the show where the bands cooked you food and you got to talk to everyone. When I start playing music at places like that, that's what I want to do. Today I went to open gym with only Jordan. It was a little different, because we usually at least have Carlos with us. It was still really good though. I'm really close to having back tucks down. I think I just need to jump a little higher. Anyway, on to music...

I think my idea of a great musician is really different from most "casual listeners." That term makes me sound incredibly pretentious, but I can't think of a better way to put it. For most people meeting the best musicians of the time means meeting The Jonas Brothers, or Britney Spears, or Jesse Mcartney. They do all have a lot of talent (yes you disagreeing people, they ALL do) but I think that most of the best musicians of our time are all busy in more underground places, just making music and not checking their mail for Grammy Award gift baskets. I think that the fact that they are just making music and not trying to get as big as possible is what makes them the best musicians. Yes, the more people that know about you, the more your music is heard. Honestly though, if you make something really good people will listen. I'm sure that if I had never mentioned the names AJ Rafael, Jesse Barrera, or even Bayside to a lot of my friends, they would have never gotten to experience their real musicianship. I'm not trying to take credit and say "I listened to them first!" I'm trying to say that even though none of them are putting their faces on billboards, people are still finding out about them and continually listening to them. Why could this be!? You're only good if you're on MTV right? Noooo. It's because they're still good! I'm not exactly sure where I'm going with this now. I just want people to be able to get into and help out the smaller guys in the music industry. It doesn't matter how. Buy some merch, follow them on twitter, go to a show. When you're not huge I'm sure that everything that you get is awesome. I would do all of the above, but I live in Utah and not a lot of cool people come here, so I just do what I can.

This is the life-ish part of my entry. I know I still have one year left of high school, but I'm worried about when I get out. The first part I have to get past is how laughable what I want to do is. When someone says they are going to be a biologist after high school you think "Oh, that's normal. Sounds like a good, steady job." but when I say I want to play music, you think "Wow, you might as well be an astronaut. You must be dreaming." No, I would make a horrible astronaut, and yes I am dreaming. The reason for this is that no seven year old wants to be a biologist. They want to do awesome things. I'm sure that every little kid wanted to be some sort of performer or rock star though. I guess this reasoning does have it's points though. Little kids = not big thinkers. If you really got into everything though, you'd see that there are plenty of successful musicians. It doesn't matter if you're not on tv. I don't think anyone in my gigantic family have ever heard of Taking Back Sunday, but they are giant and very well off. So to help me get over this part I want to type it down as blatant as possible. I'm going to be a professional musician. There. Done.