Hussalonia Song #9: What Will Become of Me? [Second Appearance]

I have previously mentioned that the first appearance of this song on "Ernest Evans Hussalonia" was probably one of my three personal favorites. However, after writing the last entry on this blog, and about to go to sleep (once again, I am up much later than I ought to be) I felt the urge to give this track a fresh listening. I do not know, as I had wondered about in the earlier post, if I can say anything here all that wildly different about this recording of the song as opposed to the one appearing earlier in the album. Nonetheless, I felt so struck by listening to it just now I decided to postpone some much-needed rest and go ahead and write about it while I feel so energized by the recent listening.
I've already mentioned how this song and merely the title of it seem to embody the experience of anxiety about the future for me. My listening experience of moments ago is very much connected with a particular experience I had recently, so this entry may be a bit more on the personal side, a subjective expansion of the more general sentiments expressed on the post about the other recording of this song. As for more specific commentary on the song itself, I would like to add this: it impresses me very much how all three recordings of this song manage to feel, to use a word probably bandied about too often these days, "epic." There is are unique forms of grandeur in both the faster and slower tempo version, and the final appearance of the song, which I'll be writing about later, is such an amazing synthesis of the two. It is a testament to [The Hussalonia Founder]'s talent that he was able to turn this single song into three unique and uniquely beautiful recordings that all fit so well together on the same album.
Now, for the anecdote portion of this post:
Being someone who has written for many years, admittedly with long periods of literary inactivity (as well as general inactivity), I have always veered towards writing odd little stories that resemble, if anything, the fiction of Kafka (I refrain from using a certain much-maligned descriptive word that I nonetheless have no problem with myself). I've never had much expectation that any of these stories would be commercially viable, and as I've slogged my way through college attempting to earn a creative writing degree (because, frankly, I couldn't think of anything better to do with myself that would be any more productive and yet tolerable or inclined to give an illusion of productivity) I feel even more increasingly aware of how unlikely it is that my best work will ever be profitable in the monetary sense. Further, I become more and more worried that selling them would be some sort of betrayal of my principles, in my belief of whatever worth it is that they have. If something is a labor of love, if the aim isn't, at heart, for a physical, material purpose, then should one really try and make money from it? If anything, I don't know if I feel the need to even spread these stories publicly, but rather pass them around individually, in keeping with my philosophy. We've all got to make a living somehow, and I'm still not sure how I will manage after college, but I feel even less confident than I initially felt that my serious, blood-sweat-and-tears literary efforts will ever provide me with food or shelter and other necessities.
Some time ago I decided to do two things, embodied in one project. One of the things I had tried years before, the other thing I had never tried before at all. The thing I had tried years before was releasing my literary inhibitions and just writing things for the fun of it, purely for self-indulgence. The thing that I had never tried before was writing something with the specific aim of making it "commercial," making something that might be marketable, publishable, and capable of allowing me to make a living some day, after years of rejection and perseverance.
I don't regret beginning this series, and I don't blame myself for that aim of making money, though I find myself struck again by paranoia of working in an industry built on corporations and demographics and focus groups and all of those things that some people seem to really believe are worthwhile. It might be presumptuous to worry about success when I have no real guarantee of it; after all, who am I? That's part of the problem though; I hate the thought of playing to the standards of popular opinion. Say, if you will, that this is merely the rambling of an insecure nutjob who is afraid of rejection; I can understand anyone viewing this that way. Nonetheless, the feeling persists and is sincere, and I wonder if I ought not keep writing as a passion reserved for spare time and not something that I attempt to convert into a career in pursuit of that illusive "actually having a job you love" ideal. It all leads back to that question: What Will Become of Me?
I recently asked an illustrator online, who offered to do drawings for a very reasonable fee, to sketch one of the characters from this (originally, at least) "commercial" series. The result nearly knocked me on the floor; the sketches were absolutely beautiful, and they gave me new drive to write these stories, just to live up to the images she created. All the while, it is past 3 AM, and I'm pondering a friend's accusation that the narrator of the series is a manifestation of my own suppressed desires (furthered by an embarrassing Freudian slip on my part), and the character from those sketches is staring into my soul. When I listened to this recording of "What Will Become of Me?" the element of triumph that I perceive in it seemed to outweigh any element of despair even as that despair was still the instigator the triumph. I have tried, lately, to overcome future-anxiety, to live in the present, to cease to worry and deal with things as they come. Perhaps, despite this swirl of sleep-deprived mania and insecurity, the feeling of exhilaration given to me by listening to this track reflects a hopeful move towards inner peace. If not, it is still a really great song anyway, in all three tracks in which it appears.