Reflections on a Music Career

I know the update I posted here was a shock to many fans. He is my explanation for those who truly supported the music, and therefore deserve one. The rest of you may follow along and hopefully you will learn something. The fact is I’ve been going down a dark road for a long time, in being this musical artist of such uncompromising intensity. It’s led to wonderful discoveries & revolutionary content, but it’s also isolated me.

When you burn for the truth in everything, you become intolerant of hypocrisy & lying behavior. The more I try to eliminate it in myself, the more I become disgusted & distanced from others who don’t understand. Artists are bold, restless, uncompromising & revolutionary by nature, and thus don’t do well with patience & temperance.

I’ve leaned on my best friend & collaborator Tom Pearce way too much over the years, because I had to. I won’t let that friendship (& what we’ve accomplished), end up turning into anger directed towards him– out of frustration. Those are the outside stresses that get internalized and refracted into art, and it’s done by real human beings, which means it takes an emotional toll.

People generally don’t think about art & artists too deeply, because they are busy living their lives, just trying to get by. In their free time they mostly seek escapism, instead of studying & learning. That’s how an artist becomes an outcast in a society where culture has been degraded, and it reaches a point where the artist has to make a decision. You either: 1) continue down that road, which leads to self-ruin; or 2) give it up and save yourself.

The truth is, I can’t continue to hold myself (& everyone else) to the artistic standards I’ve set. It gets to where it becomes too destructive. I think this is how jazz-bassist pioneer Jaco Pastorius felt at his end, and I didn’t want that for me. Even with this acceptance & understanding, it’s still an extremely difficult & emotional decision to quit your life’s passion.

As far as what was accomplished, here it is. Ric Size and his collaborators since 2011, through the music and the content on this site, have profoundly influenced music, art, society & politics on many levels, locally & globally. I’m confident Tom Pearce will soon find himself in-demand, as a webmaster, sound engineer & producer. Many others I have worked with over time have also benefited, and I wish them well. The truth is that Ric Size’s music is still too raw & intimidating for most people, and seen as extremely dangerous & provocative by the ruling class.

I’m the kind of person who excels at what I put my mind to, and I never tried harder or wanted anything to succeed more than this music. Now that it’s receding into the past, I see how impossible it all was. I’m definitely an optimist at heart, as I kept thinking I could find a breakthrough, right up to the end.

My final preoccupation as a musical artist was around security. Personal safety for me, my band mates, and the audience was going to be an issue. Ric Size is radioactive politically, and that can’t be separated from the performance. No matter what songs we were going to play, every event was going to have issues with Nazi’s & other right wing hates groups (Republican & Democrat backed), astroturfing our shows.

On top of that, there’s the lone wolf shooter that no one accounts for. This is Orlando where Christie Grimmie was killed after a live performance downtown. Of course, no one in Orlando will forget the Pulse nightclub massacre that happened only a few weeks after Grimmie’s slaying. Preventing these-type scenarios from happening at a Ric Size show was a dilemma that kept me awake at night for weeks. I wasn’t counting on any help from the local police of federal authorities, if you know what I mean. The only solution was to retire, as security was going to be a necessity, cost prohibitive, and in the end an impossibility.

At this stage I’m at peace with my decision, and feel much better. Relief, soothing away the disappointment is my best description. The money was never going to show, and TomP & I took it as far as we could. My initial goal when I came up with the concept of Ric Size over 20 years ago (before I met Tom), was to do it my way and change the world in the process. That mission has been accomplished, and now I happily work towards that objective as a blog writer. I’m still at it, just in an updated form for the times.

I still own a record label called Infinitelink Records, which owns the publishing & copyrights to all Ric Size music. That’s what you need to control and hold onto, boys & girls. Tom & I will work at finally getting everything packaged up & CD-formatted for your purchase online, at whatever pace events allow.

Thank you AGAIN to all our fans for your love & support!!

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