Quotation Blog Sept 17th

At this point in the book, Clapton has found two of his major passions in life. After going through his base level school and failing the test that moves him onwards to secondary education, Clapton decided to retake the test in order to pursue his dreams of becoming an artist. Clapton also began to realize that when it came to playing the guitar, there were so many more options that could come about with moving outside of his small hometown of Ripley, England. He took the chance and began to school outside of Ripley. When at art school, Clapton began to realize that he was unable to express himself as freely as he wanted. So in order to fill this lust to freely express himself, Clapton began to do the artwork that he wanted to do at school, as well as play hockey and play guitar in the neighboring towns and bars. This unfortunately resulted in his dismissal from art college. The dismissal to Clapton was like a large eye opener as it showed him that not all the doors in his life would just be open all he time for him to do as he liked.

This event projected into Clapton's future as it showed him what life is really like. In order to become famous, there is nothing that one can do. There are no certain paths or things that one can do to become known for your music around the world. There are only doors that randomly open and close that you can choose to walk through and take the risk may lead you to total success.

"I go brought up short by the sudden realization that all doors weren't going to open up for me for the rest of my life, that the truth was that some of them were going to close." (Clapton 36)

This quote relates a lot to my life in the past four years. I have had the chances to do a lot of different things regarding music. Many doors have been open and I have either chosen to walk through those doors or ignore them. The first door that I ever got was when I was 14 and heard that my idol Robben Ford was coming to play near me. I saw it as a chance to attempt to get to meet and/or play guitar with him. So I took it. I created a few videos of me playing guitar and sent them to all of the email accounts available on his website. Next thing I knew, one of his tour managers responded and told me that Robben was interested in meeting me and that I should arrive early to his concert. So I did. I arrived and got to meet my idol. What was most amazing was that he invited me up on stage to play a song with him during the show! Afterwards, I got to sign autographs and put my autograph in a book next too Steven Tyler, all of the Rolling Stones and Robben Ford. Since then, Robben and I keep in touch and I see him when ever he comes to Boston. He has also helped me tremendously by introducing me to a bunch of my other favorite musicians. Thanks to Robben, I now have a bunch of connections in the music industry and the chance to connect with many different amazing musicians that I have idolized in the past! If I had not taken the chance, or not made the most out of the door that I had walked through, I would not be in the place that I am at the moment.

Here is the video of me getting to sit in with Robben Ford.

Here is a video of me getting the chance to sit in with another one of my idols, Matt Schofield, after Robben Ford made a formal introduction for me. This video has Matt explaining some of the story in the beginning.