I remember, quite clearly, the moment I decided I wanted to be a rock star.
I was visiting Jack, my friend and songwriting partner, during a school holiday, and we were lying in the dark talking about whatever overintellectual college students talk about in the dark at midnight, and there it was: my life plan. Somehow, I was going to be a rock star. Never mind the fact that I didn’t look the part, couldn’t sing my way out of a paper bag, and hated traveling; I was sold. What followed was a decade or so of fairly predictable misadventures (including getting kicked out of a band because I didn’t have a driver’s license). I did have a nice run with the ska band Agent 13, which took us six years to build and seven seconds to kill; our bass player called me up to tell me that our drummer had quit, and reminded me that I had always sworn that if one of the rhythm section quit, I’d quit too, and since I was a man of my word, I did.
After Agent 13, I sat down for a while and wrote, and played, and finished my dissertation, and otherwise just sort of stared at the walls, musically. I realized, much to my dismay, that being a rock star was a pretty awful idea for a lazy homebody such as myself, and I didn’t really have a Plan B. In the end, it was a conversation with a more successful friend that got me off my ass and back onstage; I realized, suddenly and unsentimentally, that all this friend knew about me was that I sat in my living room and complained about not being famous. This, of course, was not going to hack it.
Which brings me to Sunday night, when I returned home from an extended absence. As my loyal readers will recall, I’ve been away from my desk for a while, and while I swore that I’d go to open mikes and pick up my guitar every day while I was gone, I’m ashamed to admit that none of it happened. We’ve all been there; responsibilities swoon and claim your attention, and suddenly it seems that all your momentum is gone. At moments like this, I feel a little bit like the guy in the living room; left to my own devices, not requiring myself to know any better, I could watch the baseball game, make my dinner, fumpher around the Internet, take a walk, and go to sleep, and come home the next evening and do it all over again.
Until, of course, I pick up that guitar, my beautiful Gurian, and I play one or two of those songs I’m so enamored of, and the rush of arrogance and ambition comes surging back. Sure, Java Jo’s isn’t the Orpheum, and the sound system at TCAN isn’t a Marshall stack; but it’s a hell of a lot closer than a couple pork chops and a game of solitaire. Look out, world. I ain’t done yet.