Find Your Riff via a Whole Lotta Raff

Find your memorable tune by being enthusiastically a little bit rubbish at a lot of different things.

Apr 17, 2023

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Your riff is your delicious. That last lick hooked in the glorious tasty. It taps and floats within the unknowable space of an unlocked galaxy. Existing between ripples upon the tip of a finger at the edge of possibility. It is the soaring, never-ending, locked-eye bend.

Your raff is a little bit rubbish.

If your voice is a shy squeak, Tupperware-trapped in timidity, suck that container of air into your lungs and sing. Honk and bellow and twiddle the dials on your mix until it distorts your ego into submission. Shower songs or car croons—step right in and belt out a tune with no shame and no sense of pitch present. Your only mission at this moment is out-of-tune, off-key, and on-purpose raffery.

Raff is the roadmap to riff. A one-nation army storming the endless beach of try. Soap up your sound and shower it with glory. Slick back the hair of its treasured melody. Make your neighbors cringe and your cat skedaddle. Smoke the water with this, your glorious raff, but know that it is not—and will never be—your riff.

Your raff is a little bit rubbish.

If your body is a stiff implement, never fluid nor arranged in sublime balletic configurations, add your name to a signup sheet for a class taught by a person with the joints and cartilage of a toddler. Through this raff, you will discover—quickly—where your rhythm lies. (And that rhythm never lies.)

If this is raff not riff, you will miss the beat, tap out-of-time, pop-lock and snap out of whack. AKA—be a little bit rubbish. Tempo elusive. Flow unknowable. You will get no satisfaction upon this discovery, but a whole lotta love for the feel of it. Walk this way as you dance in the streets. Shake a tail-feather, a rump, and more. Live confident in the realization that—while enjoyable and something you will always engage in when the beat drops—this ain’t your riff.

Your raff is a little bit rubbish.

If your hands yearn for the cold clay and grit of slippery spin, if they crave ceramic excellence with an earthy, primal sense, find a teacher, throw a clump on a wheel, and get to raffing. Stick your thumbs in the slurry and wet and tuck and pinch and disfigure that pot to within an inch of all right.

And when you hear a classmate whisper to a friend, “They should stick to…” know that you have found a raff. Raff is life. For every born to be wild there’s one hundred thousand born to be milds. Oh, sweet child o’ unfine arts and crafts, this raff may fire up your soul—put a fine glaze on your happiness as a pastime and pleasure—but be ready to accept it. This heat is not your riff.

Your raff is a little bit rubbish.

Twang and slide and pick and tune. This is the raff of a guitar picked up too late by hands that gnarl and snarl and can no longer open a pickle jar. This raff can smell your teen spirit from a mile away. This raff gleefully provides an outlet for your doomed dream fantasies. Desire is potent. Desire moves willing hands upon frets and ignores arthritic knuckles and sobbing fingertips. The raff salves and soothes with every strum.

And if the practice doesn’t stick, or if it’s too hard or you’re veering toward the inevitable campfire guitarist for life path, you must accept your raff-revealed fate. Back in slack, kicked back, been too long, and glad to be racked. This is the tao of this raff. Picking up your cherished electric or acoustic love—knowing that whatever happens, air guitar shreds eternal—you must accept this truth. No disrespect, but this is not your riff.

The list of possible raff is endless. Pursue them with vigor. Be a little bit rubbish at a whole lot of things. Touch upon the glossy faces of perfection with grubby hands and bold excitement. Try something once so that it may become a twice. Or a nothing at all. To find your riff—your holy, repeatable, memorable, iconic purpose—you must practice your raff.

“I’m not good at anything.”

You can be exceptionally good at raff.

Raff hard and raff often. Find old raff, new raff, messy, confusing, worthless, shit-at-but-love-doing, rough-edge, one-and-done raff.

This is what it takes to find your delicious.

Your locked-eye, last-lick, never-ending bend.

Yours in tiny thought,

Janeen

This week’s amends…

“My advice to young people who are trying to find themselves is...keep trying. Make no mistake, outside of some patches of life that lucky people like me run into, everyone is, every day, trying to "find themselves". Maybe the dalai lama has it down, but everybody else is working on it, every day. But as a younger person take note that you can take more risks than an older person can - move to a fresh city - try something new and really commit to it - and then, also, I would add, try to dissemble your experiences smartly - try to notice what you contribute to a project or effort. You may want to be a comedy writer, but if you work on a project, find that you are a better director, or producer...if you can be honest about what your contribution actually was. I was surprised that I felt more impactful and connected in dramatic acting than my first love, comedy. But I am going to take that cue from life and pursue it now, see how far it goes.”
- Bob Odenkirk, actor/writer

Via a Reddit AMA from 2107