The Things That Keep Me Up At Night
How can I convince you of what it’s like? There are at least a dozen people that I can think of off of the top of my head that I know consider me foolish, that keep it to themselves their unfailing knowledge that all that my hard work, frustration, and effort will lead to is my inevitable disappointment. All of my choices up until now have been born of idealistic hope with just a touch of desperation, both elements that the rational mind would dismiss as a valid platform of decision, and yet I keep plowing forward, pulling my blinders close and continuing down a path almost certain to fade out completely under my feet. All the practicality that I should have learned in my 25 years of life has been resolutely packed away into a tiny, out of the way corner of my mind and replaced with that desperate hope that I cling to with what is probably an unhealthy resolve.
I don’t know that I can exactly put into words the nearly violent need that music creates in me. I’m not a writer, and whenever I try to explain myself, my words appear to me to be insincere and childish, filled with clichés and hyperbole, but for this I‘ll try as well as I can to make myself understood. With every concert that I attend, I wonder about the people that I’ve come to see. I wonder how they remember sitting out here in the dark watching their heroes and idols perform for them, and I wonder if it was the same experiences that drove them to where they are today. Do they remember the amazing, hedonistic joy of watching a show, completely absorbing the music into every fiber of their being? Do they remember singing their lungs raw, smiling, laughing, crying, and letting the music direct, if only for a short time, the flow of their lives? Do they remember the hollow hunger slowly eating its way through their chest, whispering that it’s not enough just to experience the music, that the pinnacle of existence lies in performing, creating, breathing, and being the music? Because that’s how every show I see leaves me. They leave me exhilarated and deliriously happy, while at the same time strangely detached and unfulfilled, and they almost always leave me holding back tears that are a mixture of delight in the beauty of music and the frustration of not being a part of it.
The most frustrating thing is that I’ve experienced that inclusion, that perfect performance where everything clicks and I’m free to lose myself into the flow of the music, if only a couple of times. More often than not, my mind gets in the way. I notice every mistake I or my bandmates makes, I let nerves get to me and can’t shake them, or I get lost in trying to hard to capture that perfection. But I know that it’s attainable, that it’s within my power to feed that beautiful addiction.
Since starting college, I’ve learned that even that passion doesn’t seem to be enough for me to hold myself to my own promises. Every resolve that I make to try harder, to not make excuses for failing to keep up with what I need to learn, is eventually broken, more often sooner than later. The objective part of my mind realizes that encompassing passion, no matter what the form, is felt by everyone at some point in their life, but the level of distraction that my love of music drives me to makes me wonder if it’s my own lack of self control and discipline that causes me to neglect the people around me in favor of serving my own selfish goals, even as those goals still fail to sufficiently focus me on my studies. It is this lack of focus that I fear will be the reason for my failure, but I can’t seem to put all of my effort into what I’m not sure is the right path. I feel like I’m afraid to learn, because I’m afraid that learning isn’t enough, that I’ll have wasted the ever-closing window of time that I have and have nothing but regrets. Every day is a war with uncertainty, and every day I have to make do with the stalemate of not knowing, but not yet giving up.
So why, you ask, do I continue to clutch at a dream so widely shared and desired, a dream that thousands of more qualified and more talented individuals than I will strive for and never reach, a dream as far away from me as those who live it, and yet close enough to pull on my heart every day of my life? Why do I continue to try even when I can’t seem to focus on the path that I’ve chosen? The simplest answer is need. I know, deep down in the core of my being, that music is what I need to do. I need to feel the stage under my feet and look out to see all the people that I can inspire, can move, can captivate by expressing myself in the purest way that I know. I need to be this because there’s nothing else that I need quite so much.
If that means that I’m immature, impractical, idealistic, and insane, then maybe that’s what it takes.