I felt a pang yesterday.

“Dramatic play” is a term that I had never come across before I was a teacher. When I was a kid, we played pretend and dollhouse and acted out and filmed scenes and movies and did all those games in which you told a story that you just made up spontaneously. Sometimes I would become aware of it for a moment: when we had just had a great time and created a whole world that we were totally excited about. It usually happened soon before the parents picked up and you could see everything you did from the outside.

I haven’t felt like that since I was about 13 or so. Not performing plays, for sure–that’s a serious process that counts on you to use your craft to perform your role well because 4-50 people are counting on you doing so. It’s work. It’s fun work, but it is still serious.

But yesterday, I felt the pang of it. I was thinking about my band Agrophonia‘s concept album we’re working on, and it’s fun. It’s not work, it doesn’t have the pall of “serious” around it, and the two of us are working on it with no pressure at all. We’re storytelling for the pleasure of storytelling. The story can be outrageous. We can change keys just for the hell of it and write lyrics that go in any direction. And music has come out of that that I love.

I forgot what it was like. Similar to smelling a smell you haven’t smelled in decades.