So far, I haven’t really dug into the promised darkness. In order to understand that darkness, we have to go back a ways. As far back as I can remember, I liked to sing. When I was little, I would listen to records, so I could sing along. When I was seven or eight, my best friend moved to California, and I was very sad. There was no song that expressed how sad I was, so I just made stuff up and sang while I cried. It never occurred to me that I was doing something unusual. And maybe I wasn’t. Maybe that’s a normal thing for kids to do.
I continued to make stuff up for years, but we’ll never know what they sounded like, because it never occurred to me to record what I made up or write it down. That didn’t happen until I was twelve, and those first attempts at songwriting are lost in the sands of time, and trust me, the world won’t miss them. The earliest stuff that I wrote, that I still have copies of, still aren’t all that good, but I wrote them on a computer, so I still have a record. I was 14 years old when I wrote “With the Wind.” If you are unfamiliar with it, you can find the song on Lost and Found. I didn’t change a single lyric.
My point isn’t to brag about how awesome I am/was. My point is that pursuing a music career seemed as natural as breathing. Of course, there were obstacles. My parents were not big fans of my career path. They offered no support for that pursuit- not anything like the tens of thousands of dollars they shelled out for me to go to college. But I was not deterred. I took a year off from college to play music with my band, Satori, and that effort was an absolute failure. I was not deterred.
The years rolled by, and still I was not deterred.
When I signed with Velour Records and toured with the Navigators, I felt that my future was assured. Finally, things were going where they were supposed to go, but about a year into that effort, all the momentum evaporated, and all the support that I had built up vanished. I was in my early thirties at this point, and I had never wanted to be a one-trick pony- the one trick in this case would be my being a working artist. I wanted to have a family. I wanted to have a relationship, and it seemed like not only would I not succeed in music, I was in danger of being unable to have anything else in my life either.
I’d love to say that I had decided to leave my music career behind me, but the truth is, it had left me behind unceremoniously. I simply acknowledged what everyone else could see. The decision didn’t seem final until my wife got pregnant. With a baby on the way, I began to see that I had a responsibility to my unborn child. I had to find a career that I could support a family on, and that was not music.
It wasn’t just the lack of commercial success that gnawed at me. I was still that child who sang in order to make sense of the world. I created, not as a choice, but because that’s who I was. And who was I without that? It wasn’t clear.
While I functioned in the world, and it’s quite possible that my friends might not have noticed it- or at least discussed it- I felt like a broken person. I pushed all those feelings down as deep as I could, because I didn’t know how else to cope with my loss. There are support groups for people who lose someone they love, but there is no support group for people who lose their dream. Most people in such dire straits might see a therapist, but in the absence of a career- it would take me several years before I became a classroom teacher- I could not afford that luxury.
During this time, I was two people. One of them was responsible and dutiful. In order to get through my day, I had to create a narrative that I had a new purpose and that I needed to be responsible. I went to graduate school so that I could get a degree. I took care of my daughter and later my son. But buried deep there was another person. My shadow.
He wanted to rebel against my choices. He wanted to sabotage this man who was trying to do right by his family. Fortunately, my shadow was not very good at his job. He never crashed my car into a wall. He never stopped me from picking up my kids from school. But while he was not successful at doing permanent damage, I was aware of him. He wasn’t a complete failure. I walked around with a lot of anger. I had a very condescending attitude towards people I disagreed with politically. And he seemed to come out online. I was not an easy person to live with, and having moved to a new city as an adult- albeit, one that I had grown up in- I was not making new friends easily. I did not come across as someone you might want to know either professionally or personally.
At the time I wrote this song, I probably thought I was just writing a clever song or something, because I didn’t heed the lyrics of the bridge:
How I wish I could be, I wish I could be
How I wish I could be, I wish I could be
A glimmer in the sky
A twinkle in your eye
A sunset on the ocean
A beacon in the night
Or maybe I did understand. The mind is a moving target.
If you haven’t checked us out, and you want to know what my band sounds like, this is a good place to start, since The Navigators and I are all on here. Now the way you are supposed to record a band is to get everyone together arrange the song and then record it. Instead, I had a version of the song, and one by one, Glen, Tim, Woody, Mike, Danny, and Tonya replaced whatever I had done. Gloria Marshall also sang backup on this one, so I guess there’s a little something extra.
What I didn’t know when I wrote the song, I have come to see quite clearly. It’s actually two things. First, it’s not the measure of our success that defines who we are. It’s the measure of the people in our lives, and I’m very fortunate that way. If I have a superpower, it’s the ability to get great musicians to help me out. I’ve joked that I’m glad that everyone in my band is a great musician, because I like them so much, I would want to be in a band with them no matter what.
The other thing that I have learned- that hopefully the release reveals- is that we have no control over how the world receives what we create. I believed that the failure of my music to find its audience was not a personal failure, and that I shouldn’t punish myself and abandon what clearly feels like a deep purpose. The creation is the point. I’m supposed to do it, because that’s who I am. I’m still working to support my family, and I don’t expect that to change, but I am not just here to raise a family. I have a purpose.
I never entirely gave up on music. I wold play the occasional show, but it wasn’t until my son asked me why I hadn’t played in a while that I had a very different take on what it meant to be a father. Yes, I do have to make sure that my children have their needs met. And that costs money. But part of being a father is also being a role model- a kind of absurd hero. I may not play in a stadium to thousands of adoring fans, but I can be who I am, and I think that’s something every child should grow up knowing. They can be who they are- whatever that is.