In the tradition of mediocre white men everywhere, I’ve always been able to rely on a deep well of self-confidence. (Well, except if someone manages to convince me I’ve done something wrong, in which case I collapse like a compromised Jenga tower, but that’s a topic for another time.) I was hanging out with some musical friends the other day, and some of the folks were talking about how they were their own worst critic, and I had to admit that, no, I’m actually my own best hype man, at least as far as songwriting is concerned.
At the moment I finish a song – and it doesn’t matter how good I’m going to think it is in six months – I’m convinced, really, truly convinced, that I’m a genius. My wife, She Who Must Be Taunted, can confirm this; I will invariably dance around the house (or, at least at this point, around the single rehearsal room my downstairs neighbor has banished me to), playing the song over and over and extolling my own virtues. I’m not proud of this, mind you, but it’s like, oh, having carrot-red hair. It’s mine, and I can’t change it, so I might as well lean into it, I suppose.
So you might suspect that my ego doesn’t need to be fed, and you’d be right. But every so often – and I mean, like, once a lifetime – something happens that humbles even me, and one of these somethings happened this past week at the Lizard Lounge.
I’ve been going to the Lizard Lounge open mike for as long as there has been one. The talent pool is frequently intimidatingly high, especially when Tom Bianchi, and later George Woods, was hosting. It started up again about a year ago, with a new host, and I’d gone once, a few months back, and it was excellent, and so I went to the August event (which turned out to be the last Lizard Lounge open mike, again), and I listened to a lot of good songwriters, and then I got up and played “The Sausage”, which is going to be on my upcoming album, and then I sat down, at which point the magic happened.
The person immediately after me was a person named Punky Lee – young, talented, politically conscious. They did an excellent song about an American resident of the penal system who taught other prisoners to read, via the pipes between the cells. But as they were setting up, plugging in their cables, they started singing to themselves, as if they couldn’t help it, the chorus of “The Sausage”, the song I had just played.
Like everyone, I have a love/hate relationship with earworms – but I’ve never been presented with concrete evidence that I, myself, was an earworm for somebody else. I’m content with the likelihood that this will never happen again, but man, it was pretty cool that it happened at all. And yes, enjoying it is vain – the less ego-obsessed artists will tell you that just having someone appreciate their art in the moment is enough, but, like I said, I already know I’m vain. My ego was already the size of a house, and now it’s the size of a slightly bigger house.
As I was leaving the Lizard that night, Punky chased me up the stairs and asked me for the rest of the lyrics to my song, and I told them that I liked their song (which I did), and we talked a bit about the Boston music scene, and I hope I was encouraging to the extent that it was appropriate for a cranky old guy who’s been to too many open mikes. And maybe, if they’re really, really lucky, someday someone will chase them up the stairs and ask them for the lyrics to one of their songs. Because no matter the size of one’s ego, every artists deserves a moment like that. And now I’ve had mine.