On music and structure Play It Like It's Music

Back from a short (unscheduled) silent spell, just in time for the shows to start this week:
Thursday I’m playing my first show of the new stuff with a band. 5:30 pm at South Hill Cider in Ithaca, NY. Opening for Bronwen Exter, my excellent sister who is also lending me her rhythm section.
It’s for all ages, there’s no cover and apparently the cider is tasty, so bring the kids!
- Trevor

I told you I'd be posting every week, and that's still my intention. Of course the last time you heard from me was three weeks ago. Then I went into a real confusing funk, and it dawned on me.
I remember turning 30, thinking "Great, it's time to flush all those childish games from my 20's down the toilet and become a real adult". Then when I turned 40 I thought "great, it's time to integrate all the hard lessons I learned in my 30's and become a real adult".
Here I am today, a month into my 50's and I really can't say anything. I'm just here and I just have to own it: I am a mess. And the messy story is slowly starting to make a little hard-earned sense, but not enough. And milestones don't mean anything when you're neither here nor there.
But I do have a 5-year old nephew. And when I tell him that I'm ten times as old as he is and his eyes go wide, I get all the perspective I need for a season.

His mom, my sister Bronwen, is messily providing her kids with an environment somewhat free of the disturbances she and I had as kids, but full of all kinds of new disturbances which will be their work to untangle. Such is life, the best we can do is stay in touch. Help each other find a way to appreciate where we are and pick out a path forward.
I always need reminding that there's always a way forward, even when I don't see it.
There's a big old gap in my brain, telling me I have nothing to say. But sometimes The Stuff I really want to say is maybe too cutting, too close for mere music promotion? For a moment I actually let myself think "promo" is all this publication is for. It takes a lot to keep my head in the game sometimes.
But what do you do when your head and heart are exploding with vulnerability and you're full of fear, making up smallest-self reasons to hide & not be in touch?
The reality is that I'm a bit paralyzed by the reality of what I'm doing here.
Here I am, preparing to deliver a great experience to you this fall starting Thursday.
How great?
So great that you will feel compelled to share it with your friends and multiply the size of the audience to some critical, theoretical number that will somehow scale into my being able to deliver music for you in a properly prosperous way. So we can all be proud of our weird taste and know collectively that we weren't crazy, that the music is actually good for the world and worth our commitment to it.
But I'm also processing a lot of misgivings about my choices over the years, how I might have given into my fears more than a few times, with the unintended result of having deprived you and myself of the opportunity to jam together. It wears my heart out, thinking of all the singing we could have done, that we did not get to do during the years in which I just couldn't get it together to go out on the road and play.
To be fair, it's really, really hard for me to go out on the road and play.
It's also really hard to find a voice for the feelings I have about it. But when I make this move to go play after a long time away from it, the grief of all the lost time and scattered energy comes up to shout at me. The battle inside me is fierce, just like any musician's battle to go out and do that which used to be so normal. But today I'd like to testify to a particular facet of my internal battle, something to which I know many of you can relate.
It's about Music + Structure.
For me music equals structure. That's because early in my life my family went through some displacements and some big structure changes which left me feeling mostly on my heels. Some of it was generational but t