Facing Your Demons

Dear younger me,

You’re hunched over that drum kit in the smoky club, thinking the whiskey’s the rhythm you need. You’re wrong. It’s the opposite. The bottle wasn’t your beat—it was the silence between the beats, the one you were too scared to face.

Here’s what I know after 78 years: Your demons weren’t monsters. They were the sound of your own silence. You thought you could outrun the emptiness with a drink, a deal, a new city. But the emptiness followed you—into the empty apartment, the empty bandstand, the empty arms of the woman you loved. You lost the gig, the wife, the kid’s first steps. All because you refused to sit with the quiet.

Kid, let me tell you something: The hardest note isn’t the crash. It’s the rest. The space where you think you’re broken. I spent years running from that space, thinking it meant I’d failed. But the truth? You learn to play the rest notes too. That silence isn’t absence—it’s where the music breathes. Where you find your way back.

You didn’t need to be perfect. You needed to be present. When you finally sat down in that rehab room at 42, trembling, you didn’t hear the judgment. You heard the first note of a new song. The one where the rhythm isn’t loud—it’s steady. Like a heartbeat.

So here’s the thing I wish I’d whispered to you: You’re not broken. You’re just out of time. And time? It’s the greatest teacher. It doesn’t care how many times you stumble. It only cares if you keep listening.

You’ll spend years chasing the wrong kind of applause. Then you’ll learn: the only applause that matters is the one you give yourself for showing up, again and again. For choosing the rest note over the roar.

Now? I sit with my grandkids on the porch, watching the light change. The music’s still there. Not in the noise. In the space between the notes. And it’s never been sweeter.

You’ll get there. Just don’t skip the silence.

— Roger Jackson, still playing

— Tracy Carlson, saying the thing since 2018