DIEGO VALLE

Not often in life you find that something worth hours of your time and dedication; the ability to devote days towards “it” seems uncommon, as if it was impossible to dedicate years revolving around “it”… yet, it happens.

As said a gazillion times before, my life has revolved around the music industry throughout the past 9 years. Whether being a guitar student, or the controversial idealist of an almost-forbidden word that starts with an “s” and ends with a “cene”, from the quintessential stereotype, all the way to the unmotivated smart-ass behind a potentially revolutionary project; All these 108 months it has been verses, bridges and choruses the motivation to wake up every morning.

But as entitled by A Change of Pace’s debuting record, “Change is the only constant”. Everything grows old and everybody finds something new to wake up to; because we all need something, from girlfriends to religions, to wake up to. And once we’re through one of them we find something new.

It’s hard to say “I’m not walking away” or “I’m not giving up” when it certainly feels like turning my back on the reason I, literally, still breathe today. (While facing the worst sides of my teenage years, one of Osker’s choruses kept me strong; it reads: “grab the wrist, pull away, I don’t want to die today… and so I won’t”). But I can assure you that, with Math as my witness, I am not bailing.

The friends I’ve made, those still here today and the few that have gone, along with the almost-never-ending list of things I’ve learned is kept in my heart for now and forever. And I would never take back any of these things. Why? Because all of these things made me who I am today.

So here’s how it goes:

9 years after first realizing that through sounds and words life can be danced, sung or even screamed into a much more pleasant way, I’ve achieved as much and even more than I could have expected when I grabbed my first guitar and roughly learned some basic chords. From getting my ass beaten to the radio, television and newspaper interviews; from the home-recorded demos to the internationally-distributed compilations, I’ve already gotten so much I no longer think the music industry owes me anything at all.

I hold no grudge towards such industry; as always, I’ll be as helpful as I can with anybody who requests for a hand with anything that I can help them with. The only difference is that I no longer want to “race”. I’m setting my new goals in a completely different world, a world where I’m already achieving some results; and there I am ready to “race” because it is a world that is almost completely unexplored to me, but that’s another tale.

My new relationship with music, then, brings me back to 1999; back to when music was not something I was trying to make a living out of, but it was something I lived with, a friend who was there through thick and thin and who, with lyrics and chords, gave me advice and brought memories back.

“Ideals are like opinions, believes just like traditions; sometimes both are not enough” (Less Than Jake). Music is still pretty much my life. It is not giving up, it is not walking away; it is walking along again instead of racing for a prize; because I’ve already earned the highest prize available here and now it seems to be time to look around for one more golden medal to earn.