This is about the people you surround
yourself with and how they have an uncany ability to raise you up or crush you.
Last night I remembered why there is talk of social circles and how networking
works. I have always been afraid to show people what I can do because there are
few who believe in it. Its tough to believe in your own work when you know its
not about whether you love it to death but if someone will one day fork over
some money to witness what you've created. It’s not just a selfish desire to
create, it the need to give a voice you've heard from silent people back to
them.
When I sing a song about a prostitute who is proud of what she does, then
the man who sells her and holds mostly resentment now for his place in the
world, and finally the women whose husbands’ seek solace in the paid company instead of
their wives, I am trying to tell a story that has no voice behind it. By no
means am I a crusader or vigilante justice-seeker, but I know from experience
the important of being told you are not alone. It can be an amazing thing when
someone connects so deeply to what they have heard, and if that is something I
am capable of, who is to say that is not noble? I think the most respectable
choice anyone can make is to choose to do the things they are good at because
it scares them to try, to be vulnerable to criticism. And maybe there is a part
of me who just wants to show the bastards I'm not just a struggling student
with a splintered definition of family and a guitar my dad bought for me. Maybe
I am a little bitter, a little vengeful. But I'm not just vengeful for myself,
I want to get stories out there and make people feel because I know they need
it. I might be righteous in my attempts to be the hero, but if I have seen the
power of these things then I can't turn my back on my ability to do them.
Outside of arguing for the arts of film, music, theatre and all that, is the
truth of the situation that doctors are necessary for the human race, but how
are musicians not? They don't physically save lives? How many kids wrote to
Metallica after Fade to Black saying they put the pills away and saw what
they'd be missing if they went through with it? And how many people marry their
husbands and wives and have that terribly fluffy but lighthearted romantic tune in the memories of that first date? To say that music has the power to
help change the world is not a refutable thing anymore when we have Marley and
the Beatles or Elvis, and Michael Jackson, breaking down racial and political
barriers, and even the early jazz greats like Coltrane and Miles Davis in our
canon. So it's a triumph that these people exist and can create such a staple
in our lives as we grow up.
And for too
long young people with gifts and passion have been discouraged because the
business is shark water.
Well my question is :why did they decide we wanted to
be in it just for the business? I do not believe there is such a thing as
selling out, because if you truly love something and can be paid to do it, why
wouldn't you do whatever you could to get that out there and get your pay? But
equally as important is our desire to be respected by our peers and to have
affirmation that what we do matters to someone. Aside from the arguments of
validity between the kinds of music or film that we make, aside from the pigeonholed
groups of fans we are told to sell to, there is a simple question: Does it make
an impact you can be proud of? Does it reach someone? Did you get a solid buzz
getting up there and wailing?
Money is a necessary evil, but so is music. It hurts when your
fingers bleed but if you are playing to ears that truly hear you, the
commitment is not lost on them. And to say you want to make music, to make
films, is not an unattainable goal. It's not outside your reach. It's not
invalid. It is worth your time and within your grasp. It will take all the work
they say it will, and you will always have to learn new things about how to get
your music out there. But if you are willing to, you do it. Because music and
filmmaking and theatre are breathing to people like us. Why do we do it?
Because we can't NOT. So do it!
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