is that it takes an amazing amount of perseverance. It’s impossible to not doubt your own abilities when everyone around you has some piece of advice to offer, and the amount of things you “should be doing” is just crippling. And then to add to it, everyone in the “business” feels the need to be an ass hole (as if they haven’t all been there) because you’re “supposed to have tough skin.” There is no other business in the world like that, where you’re told to “have tough skin” while you put absolutely all of yourself out there. I understand why that’s the case, I’m just pointing it out.

It’s kind of like if you had an idea for a unique restaurant that is all your own and means the absolute world to you, so you decide to give it a shot and build the restaurant. Well the whole time you’re building it people around you are saying to you “have you thought about maybe putting a giant character with a burger for a head out front, because that’s what people love to see” or “yeah I mean your food is really good, but anyone can make food” or “have you been to the Chuck E Cheese down the street, now they know how to make a restaurant.” And then on your opening night you have to call and bug all your friends and feel like a whore, just to have all of them call you back saying “when does the restaurant open again, I’m going to try to make it.” Then the critics show up and are really kind of hoping that it will suck, just so they can say it would suck (because that makes for more interesting writing and talking). Then when it doesn’t suck they say “well keep working hard, you’ve got a long ways to go” without offering you anything really constructive that you could really build off of. Then after a while when your restaurant is really popular, all those same people call you brilliant and claim that they knew you were brilliant from the start and point out that you’re starting to go downhill because you’re getting “too popular.”

Those are on the bad days, of course. On good days, the music world is like a giant party where everyone loves being there and you all create a beautiful artistic expression together. The crowd of non-musicians become part of your piece, they become part of the band, and music becomes a spiritual presence that cannot be explained just as it cannot be grasped, and everyone offers the same amount of themselves, and no one compares themselves to anyone else as we are all unique and bring something unique to the piece, and no one cares who “makes it” and who doesn’t. Man those good days are incredible.

At the end of the day, I never doubt why I’m doing this. If I had a choice, I would drop out. Unfortunately I don’t. This is something that’s written into who I am. Still there are days like today when I just wish God would have written it in my heart to be an accountant.