Ed Caraeff was only 17 years old when he made the photo of a kneeling Jimi Hendrix who had set his guitar on fire.
He became a successful photographer, and 40 years later, he sold all his possessions including his photographic library, to travel across America in a camper.
Because he was so young when he started working, he wanted to make up for lost time.
Whether being guided from within age 17, like Ed Cardaeff, is thanks to luck, a personality trait, faith in God, or perhaps even something that can be trained?
When your passion calls you out that loudly, you walk the right path automatically.
And to the envy of many who do not have Jeanne d’Arc like callings.
But there is a flip side…
The day when you realize it’s no longer working.
People who have learned to love their job (or each other!), or who have made a sensible choice for a profession that offers stability or gives them a sense of purpose, will be able to carry on even when things are shifting;
But for the passionate ones, like Ed, that is a hard landing.
You can compare it to the difference between a relationship that is functional because you re in your thirties and want children;
And a love affair you canceled your return ticket for, lost your job over, and are now stuck with abroad, and you can’t go back home because of Covid.
In the first situation, if the marriage is no longer serving you, you will be able to keep it up for a good while. Maybe even forever. Because it was largely designed and planned out to begin with.
But if you were used to doing everything intuitively and in full connection?
In full wanting of each other?
(there were times when you didn’t even eat that’s how much sex you had!)
And then suddenly conscious efforts are required to even remotely get along?
That stings.
So at times like that, it’s good to realize that it’s one or the other.
Either you re going to plan out your life, and make it sustainable;
But then you re never going to taste the sweet high of being carried by Life itself, always knowing the next step, having more energy than you would possibly know what to do with, creating your best work, needing hardly any sleep;
OR you’re going to enjoy all those things, and not be sensible and stable at all.
Whether you’re one or the other is (probably) set (by now).
But they can both train or work to get better outcomes!
Whether you’re Mr. or Ms. Passion or Mr. or Ms. Plan;
There’s no reason to not get you where you want to go.
Providing you don’t work against your talent.
However what I have experienced, is that we as a society know much about how Mr. and Ms. Plan can reach for their dreams;
And very little about how Mr. or Ms. Passion should go about them.
The biggest difference between being someone who is comfortable planning their life, and someone who lives with passion and from an intrinsic need to do something, to answer a call, is that we (the creative and the passionate ones) also tend to muscle through it, thinking of our end goal.
When that will never work with us.
Instead, we need to find the passion back.
So what do you do then?
I imagine Ed Caraeff being front row at a Lenny Kravitz gig, and it was the one where his pants were accidentally ripped open and he was suddenly naked on stage.
And Ed finds himself eye rolling instead of clicking his camera….
You stop.
You be.
You just allow that sense of knowing you’re in the wrong spot to sink in and allow all the feelings that come with it.
If I look back on my life, it is the ONE lesson I could have learned earlier;
When it’s no longer working, for a passionate creative person?
That is a whole different ballgame than if it’s no longer working for someone who has been consciously designing and planning his or her life.
They can tweak and hack around it;
But for us such a thing is pointless.
We need to burn the bridge and move on.
So here I am, December 2020.
One year after I became single.
Two years after I became a Bon Jovi fan.
And it is time to burn the bridge.
Just like Ed Careaff, I have cleared out all the paperwork.
Removed the list of Bon Jovi concerts I was going to review, from my kitchen cabinet.
Tore out a manually written catalog of Bon Jovi songs, from an A4 journal. Threw them out and stored the remainder of the notebook with only blank pages.
Cleared out my ringbinder with information on the 1995-1996 tour.
I unfollowed all Bon Jovi accounts, and Bon Jovi affiliated accounts.
The only ones I kept are people I consider friends.
So here I am.
Alone.
With absolutely nothing to show for.
Yet I feel as if I’m 24 years old, on my knees;
And I just set my guitar on fire.
The New Rock Star Writer
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