Neither Could Dylan

I wrote Wasted Time back in 2020. It was actually among the first couple tracks I wrote when putting together the A Quiet Place to Scream EP.

But it was the song at the time that I felt was the most out of place with what I was doing then and I didn’t formally try to develop it until I was living in Barrie in 2022 after my divorce.

Once I came up with the bass line, I thought I really had something. It really changed the song in an incredible way to me. “Hey, that’s actually pretty catchy.” It was probably the first moment I realized I could write catchy pop-rock like a lot of my biggest influences.

I hadn’t started learning to play drums yet, so those are programmed by hand, but even though at some point I tried to reach out to a drummer and had them lay down some rum ideas for this, I feel like the electronic drum kit feel works better on this one even if it is a little mechanical sounding.

I’ve always kinda felt like the main driving theme behind Wasted Time is all about writing and producing music. There have been more than a couple times in my life since beginning to play as a kid to now where I’m wondering why I’m even doing this, what’s the point and does it even matter.

And I guess what I’ve decided is it both does and doesn’t.

I’ve dedicated a lot of my life to this stuff. While I was once an avid athlete, I started quitting sports teams in high school in favour of starting a band. When most of my friends were focused on making good grades in science and math to get into a great university, I took creative arts courses and worked part time to buy instruments and recording equipment. I started working in pro studios at 17. When it came time to pick a school, I went into music production and hoped for the best despite all the evidence to the contrary that it would lead to anything of tangible value. Then I spent years hopping between different pro studios to learn as much as I could and God-willing, get a full time job at minimum wage making records.

That was the dream. If you could just get your foot in the door, you could make it happen. And I had my feet in all sorts of doors but it took me years to understand why the people I worked for would never be willing to put me on salary. And a couple more years to understand why I should have pushed back harder about things like that and being credited on the albums I worked on.

I can’t really explain why I’ve been driven into this stream for so long or pin point any particular moment that lured me into it, but despite all my efforts and all the obstacles I have faced as a result of it, I keep coming back to it. I’m not terribly superstitious or anything (I am actually) but at this point it feels like there is both a power greater than myself hell bent on stopping me from creating music and another that refuses to give up the fight.

When I started writing these songs in 2020, even though it certainly wasn’t the first time I was writing or recording anything, it was the first time I was doing something entirely for myself, my own enjoyment, and exciting about the progress I was seeing in my own skills as a musician, writer and performer. I tried to share every little bit of it – even the clingiest stuff and worst recordings I was doing at the time, because that’s probably how this whole process would have shaken out if I had the confidence to be so openly vulnerable in my teens.

It’s a bit of a questionable approach because then you’ve gone ahead and allowed the worst parts of yourself to be exposed to all the worst types of people on the internet, but it’s also weirdly freeing to give yourself the opportunity to not care.

I have lost a lot in the pursuit and I feel like I’m a fraction of the person I was when this all began. So many terrible things have happened over the last few years and it’s really difficult not to feel like there has been some awful black cloud hovering over me every step of the way.

Like so many other Canadians, today I am once again unemployed with no real job prospects. So I’m not sure how I’ll pay my bills and my dream of simply being able to move out on my own again away has floated out of reach. I try not to be so cynical, but it’s hard to feel like there is any real place for me in the world that has been presented to us.

So it seemed appropriate timing to finally release Wasted Time. That’s what most of my life has felt like until this point and I’m not sure that’ll ever change. And maybe that’s all it is for any of us, really. We’re all just finding our own ways to waste our time.

I may never leave any real mark on this world or help people that I know need it, but over the course of the last few years I gave myself a chance to really try to do something that was entirely my own creation. I learned a lot about myself and what I’m capable of and… that’s all. It doesn’t really amount to anything. And I guess that’s fine.

So here’s to the last 4 years of wasted time and if we’re lucky, another 4 to come.