once upon a time, in a rehearsal room far, far away...

Post 30 of 90.

One third of the way...

Today was my day to notice all of the stories I tell myself about my life. The Narrator was constantly chattering, throwing up smoke across the actual field of my real moment-to-moment experience. The little narrative perpetually reeling out is not my life. I am not a character in a book or a movie, although plenty of people enact their lives as if they were.

I've known people who looked to movies and books for permission to enact various scripts in their lives. If some course of action was possible for some fictional character on the page or screen, it was possible for them, and you could witness them processing the narrative to fit themselves and fashion a road to where they wanted to go. They couldn't begin to initiate action in their own lives unless it had been enacted already by someone else outside themselves--original action was impossible. There may be some out there who are initiators, a sort of vanguard who create new narrative possibilities for the rest of us by transgression or innovation, but the rest of us just follow.

It can be dangerous to look in a mirror if you are prone to forget the reflection is just a reflection and nothing more.

But, in my case, I found myself noticing the various states and emotions the ongoing narrative was creating, not all of them good, most of them totally unnecessary and not related to anything happening in the present.

In recent days, I've also been thinking about how I have completely lost interest in ever again being in a rock band, and that I'm losing interest in the rock scene in general. I've not been bothering to go out and see local bands as much as I used to, which was once a prime pursuit.

Once upon a time when I was a little leaguer, I was way into baseball and had the encyclopedic knowledge of players and stats for that era (early '80s), now completely forgotten. Once I could no longer play and participate directly I lost interest. I never got into football as a pursuit, since I couldn't play and participate directly.

So now it would seem I'm staying true to form with my waning interest in the rock scene.

I'm a lot more interested in the writing and recording side of it these days, anyway. I'm getting to the point, too, where I hardly need anybody else to make music in the studio, so why put up with a bunch of drama and fantasy if I don't have to? If I'm more-or-less self-sufficient, what's the point? I can and do collaborate with others--in fact, when it works, I prefer it and have more fun that way--but if it's not working, I'm not locked in and I don't have to pull hair out because one necessary player (necessary in either the political or musical sense, or both) has dug in his heels for some baffling, arbitrary personal reason. And why be in a band if there are no songs already in place to provide the impetus to get out there, and the will isn't there to do the heavy lifting necessary to write some good ones?

Some people can handle collaboration. Some can't. In one of my old bands, whenever we sat down to work on music, we got results. But we also invariably had bruised egos, and a lot of useless nonsense flowed out of this. No wonder so many "grassroots" rock bands have a set of brothers involved. They've usually spent their entire lives up to that point fighting already, so it's not like the situation has changed once they start a band. Anecdotally, they also seem to get a bit farther on average than most other frustrated would-be rock star chumps.

Also, in terms of the band-as-gang-of-young-men paradigm, my old gang is scattered all over the country and no new rock-type gang has arisen to replace it. Besides, a lot of bad rock music has been written and performed in the name of peacocking on a stage with your posse in order to attract females (or display for the ones you already have).

Why add to that?

And if you're going to join a "posse in progress," there is the inevitable question of how to fit yourself into the existing pecking order. This is inevitable in any group, but at least a guitar circle is not quite as much of a "union shop" as a band formed by a gang of guys who have been hanging out since grade school and who really would prefer an unattached male was not sniffing around their turf and upsetting whatever little apple cart they've built to make themselves look impressive to their groupies. If you're already a good musician, that can be even worse in some cases. Also, if you hate being hazed, better stay away unless there is truly something in it for you.

Getting back to narrative, each little group is also often absorbed in the unfolding of their own little story of imminent stardom and glory. Every little gang thinks their story is special.

And very often if you do not at root buy into their little narrative, that can cause even more trouble than if you appear simply to be interested in competing for attention from their groupies.

I also say all of this having been a young would-be rock star twerp with his little group of egotistical pals, and so I have confidence that I know something about the mindset involved here.

A guitar circle is at least a bit more open in concept and design. The better every member is as a musician, the better it is for the whole group. You gain nothing in a circulation by being some sort of gunslinger and withholding help from others.

OK, I like to write, but enough already. I can't seem to stop once I get started.