For someone who considers himself a
writer, I don't really write that much. This bothers me a little
bit. Well, more than a bit, I suppose. I know for a while I was
busy, but that's really not much of an excuse. The thing that gets
me the most is, I think about it all the time. My brain has been on
fire recently. I'm getting ideas at work, getting ideas at home,
getting ideas late at night, getting ideas early in the morning. The
part that rings strange for me is that over the weekend, I was having
a conversation with this person I know, a person I would almost put
in the “friend” category, and he asked about my band. A couple
of things were strange about this: 1) The night prior to our
conversation, Susan and I, and a bunch of people we know, went to the
Casbah for their 25th Anniversary party. For years it has
been the Mecca for local music. I used to hang out there all the
time. We had some people we know playing that night, plus we ran
into all kinds of people that we've known, and hadn't seen for a
while. It felt like a reunion of sorts. It was an excellent show.
We hadn't been to see a show in a long, long time. 2) I enjoyed the
show, as I just said. But it was the first time, that I can
remember, that I was not itching to get up on stage. Under most
circumstances, up until this point, I have always wished to be on the
stage, as opposed to being in the audience. It felt weird to be at a
show and not really think about my band playing at all. Although my
band mates were present, and I found time to talk about us with them,
I still didn't really have the same overwhelming desire to play out,
that a show usually causes in me.
Now, as I finished that last paragraph,
I was reminded of something that I think needs clarifying, if not for
you, then at least for myself. I have been thinking about my band a
lot recently. But we're at some new level now, where I'm more
interested in making good music than playing out. I'm more excited
about the craft of writing and recording good songs, than about being
part of a scene. I've listened to our rehearsal discs more in the
past couple of weeks than I probably did all last year. It has
reached a new level for me, I can see the songs we're working on now
as different from our past musings. And I think that is a big part
of it too, making some kind of separation from the silliness of old.
I've always had a bit of a “tongue-in-cheek” style, which will
probably never completely go away, but I'm thinking about it
differently now. This I know. So of course, I had to talk to my
band mates about it. But there was something specifically different
about being at that show. And I think the thing is, and I only
thought of this while I was writing, that the bands we saw were
getting together for a reunion show, whereas my band is still
ongoing. We have continuity. They may have been locally popular 25
years ago, but we still go at it pretty much every week. We are
still getting better, we are not done. I don't really know what that
means, except that we talk about the music, not just the show.
That's important.
Okay, I got a little sidetracked, but I
think there's still enough room to salvage this. I did not go into
all that detail with the person who asked about my band. We were
drinking, and sometimes it seems like if you're in something like a
band, then that's all they have to talk to you about. I always
believe in being honest, but sometimes you can't be sure if they're
having honest intentions. So, I told him a little bit of what I just
told you, about thinking more about making music, and less about
playing music “out.” I ended up revealing to him the fact that I
do miss being on stage. I do almost no entertaining now. That used
to be all I thought about. I told him, as I'm telling you now, that
I feel I'm in a weird place, because up to just a year or so ago, if
someone had asked me what my dream is, I would have had an answer
ready for them as they finished the question, without hesitation.
But now I don't have any idea what I would say. I still want to be a
better person, a better musician, a better writer, but the dream
isn't really there. Or if it is I haven't necessarily discovered it
yet. I didn't tell him the whole writing bit, I learned a while back
when my process first started, that you have to be careful how much
you let people know. But I can tell you. I woke up this morning at
7 am, unaided, thinking about writing. I started this by 8:30 am,
after trying to convince myself to get a little more sleep. All I
can think about is writing, or at least getting the ideas out of my
head and on to paper. I'm not sure if that's the dream, but it's the
reason I got out of bed.
Daughn
