Letters to the Editor
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Musician Versus Scenester
LW, I've been kicking around your story in my mind for a few days now. I live in your town, I am a nonpro musician, I am around the same age, and I too have struggled with "is it too late?" for the longest time (probably at least since I was 20!).
I "pursued" music in a very desultory way in my teens and 20s -- I wrote songs, played guitar, sang, got some good feedback, but I never threw my entire being into it like "real" musicians do.
As I met more and more people who actually did this for a living -- not rock stars, but working musicians -- it dawned on me that the difference between me and them wasn't raw talent, or charisma, or even great looks (theirs, not mine). It was the fact that I wasn't, for whatever reason, willing or able to put every ounce of my heart and soul into "the dream." Professionals don't wait until they feel like practicing; they do it because it's their job. They bust their asses day and night and are happy to do it. They don't feel they are missing anything by doing so.
When I realized this, upon the cusp of my 30th birthday, it profoundly depressed me. For nearly a decade I felt I wasn't worthy of playing an instrument at all, singing at all, writing at all, if I couldn't do it "all the way." Did I miss it like hell? Oh yes. Did it make me profoundly sad not to play? You betcha.
A therapist had asked me years ago, "When you are 85 and on your deathbed, what do you want most not to have missed?" and I had replied, "Making a great record." Yet I couldn't even bring myself to listen to music during most of my 30s unless it was by dead people, who it would have been much harder to envy. Young, pretty, talented women singers, in particular, drove me C-R-A-Z-Y. How dare they be so good, so pretty, so focused, so successful? How dare I suck that bad by not being one of them?
Eventually it dawned upon me that there were different levels of participation. I needed to separate the desire I had to be a "scenester" and the depression that I wasn't one, from my natural desire to create and sing and compose. I needed to realize it didn't have to be all or nothing. So now I'm doing it. I'm recording. I've added drums to my instrument repertoire and boosted my keyboard skills.
Every once in a while I'll see lists of "hot local bands" in the Willamette Week and get a big-ass unhealthy dosage of Youth Envy, but I don't let it sandbag me for years on end like I used to. It will be what it will be. My first job now is to make myself proud of what I can do, and let the chips fall where they may.
Now, I don't know boo about industrial/goth music, but I assume you do and that there are local bands making this music whom you admire and whose shows you go see -- or want to go see. So go see them. Regularly. And don't leave when the show is over. Hang out. Talk to them as a fan. This is Portland, not L.A. or New York, they will be happy to talk to you unless they are four-star morons. (No band can ever have too many fans, especially those who make music for a smaller, more specialized audience.)
Offer to schlep equipment if your back can handle it. Be genuinely curious about their creative processes and what equipment they like and where they most and least like to play. And talk to the bands' other fans too. You needn't let on that you are an aspiring musician right away unless you feel comfortable doing that.
Hey, you might even want to write some music-magazine articles about them, do some interviews, it's a great excuse to find out trade secrets even if you don't get paid for the stories. Find out on the basis of real participation, not fantasy, whether this "scene" is really where you want to be.
As for your work environment, maybe you've had enough of it; although I concur with other posters that there is typically more to "office drones" than meets the eye, there's also such a thing as work environments being geniunely toxic or simply growing stale, and I think this does affect highly creative and sensitive people more than most. Nothing wrong with moving on if that's the case.
But it's true, even the music business (hell, especially that!) has its share of poseurs and lifeless drones. People squelch themselves to fit in wherever and whenever. Some are more comfortable with it or more adept at disguising their discomfort than others, that's all.
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R U a highly sensitive near-genius?
You are a highly sensitive near-genius IF:
-you are not successful, and are surrounded by idiots
-you ARE successful, and are surrounded by idiots
-the fluorescent lights hurt your eyes "more than most"
-you have worked with animals
-your hobby is a "project"
-you ask strangers for permission to do shit
If you answered yes to any or all of these: start a band. Better yet, make a solo album!
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This is why God invented Youtube.
You're itching to perform. For an audience. Without risking starving to death. Proceed to Youtube.
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Truncated Q&A
Dear GothChick:
I'm, like, this totally aging goth who is, like, so NOT a corporate c*cksucker, but I work in this stupid office with stupid droning robots who shop at stupid Target instead of making their own sweatshirts with patches from bands like The Cure, or Siouxsie and the Banshees. Not stupid sellout bands like Offspring.
So I want to start a band because I clearly have genius taste in music since I was listening to Sheep On Drugs before anyone else, and I met Bauhaus at a party in the 70s, but I'm worried people will laugh at me because I'll only have young hip and fabulous friends.
-That old guy in the cape at the club
Dear Old Guy,
If you think you're better than droning robots, why do you care if they laugh at you? Are you still smarting under the sting of the Junior High lash when you wore the neck brace, and everyone said you were ugly, so you decided to wear black and be angry instead, and point and stomp your way to personal fullfilment?
My dear, it hasn't worked. The rest of us grew up, still listen to Pigface and Spahn Ranch in our cars and are happily employed with successful careers we enjoy, because it's better to go to work all day and be happy than go to work all day and be miserable. And we have fulfilling relationships with other human beings, without feeling like we have to prove we're somehow superior because we're not that gawky pre-teen anymore. Some of us have even started wearing color. Today I'm wearing green. And I not only love my job, which does happen to be in a cubicle, but I really like my coworkers too! One is a former punk-rocker. Today she brought her daughter in to the office, and she drew us all pictures. Later we joked about the bad Chinese food down the street! Scandalous! Fraternizing with other folks in button-down shirts and ties! Horrifying! Oh, but wait. I am not so afraid to like people and learn about them now that I am more fully evolved than I was as an angry goth-industrial point-and-stomp girl.
Also? Goth-industrial is golden oldies, my dear. And I'm in my late 20s. You were the old guy when I was new on the scene in my teens. And, my dear, the 20-year-olds in the scene then were not your friends. They were the ones laughing at you. You actually didn't make enough of a blip on anyone's radar OUTSIDE the scene to merit a guffaw. So really...nothing to worry about then. Start your band! Off you go!
Signed,
Sister Un-Mercy