It’s Thursday! And more than that, it’s the last Thursday of the month. It’s time to talk about a thing that I watched, read, played, experienced, listened to, whatever in this month, and which inspired the hell out of me to push my creative energies ever further!

I’ve talked about just about every kind of entertainment at this point, but one that I haven’t tackled yet is music.

I’m pretty much always on the lookout for new jams. The soundtrack of my life is perhaps as eclectic as they come, with punk, rock, rap, dance, psytrance, musicals, showtunes, indie pop, pirate rap, steampunk ballads, classical music, video game soundtracks, contemporary classical, polka, ska, metal, emo, gothic.

The list goes on forever with the weirdo shit I put in my earholes and enjoy.

So it was with genuine glee that I discovered a band I had never heard before, playing a genre fusion I also had never quite heard before.

Feast your earholes on Katzenjammer:

Four Norwegian women got together out of a music school and decided they wanted to do their own thing. And the results are fascinating, fun, surprising, and most of all, catchy. These four ladies play what I have been referring to as “polka and country have a party and throw a carnival on top”. Their Wikipedia page suggests they play Folk, baroque pop, rock, country, Balkan music.

While accurate I like my description better. Carnival country polka is my new jam. My new Katzenjammer.

The four women are not just good at one instrument, or one type of music. Their iconic bass guitar may appear in any band member’s arms. They all sit the drums. They all play the keyboard.

And they constantly play multiple instruments. Four women might collectively play a guitar, a bass guitar, a banjo, a fiddle, drums, a washboard, a whiskey drum, a xylophone, a harmonica, keyboard, trumpet, accordion. If you can produce a sound out of it they might use it in their songs.

They did not want to be stuck to a single style or a role. There is not a frontwoman. They play musical chairs on stage, swapping out who the leader of a song is.

They are vibrant. They are jubilant. They pursue their music and performance with a passion I only wish I could approach with my writing.

They are unabashedly themselves and it is the most inspiring thing I’ve heard all year.

I want to pursue the thousand things I want to do and I don’t want to give up on any one of my dreams.

I want to write, I want to draw, I want to play the piano and compose music. I want to try everything. I want to see the world. And I can if I just let myself stop worrying about whether I will be any good at it, or will enjoy it.

I love writing, but it is only one aspect of who I am, though it is rather important to who I am this year. Next year maybe I’ll do “Sketch a Day 2016” or “Music Man 2016”. You don’t know. I don’t know!

And Katzenjammer helped reinforce that. I should stop worrying about whether what I’m doing is going to have a market. If it’s something I want to do, and I enjoy it, then by God I’ll fucking do it. I can worry about agents and publishing and all that some other time. While I’m writing I’m going to write the hell on.