Failure or Freedom

On Monday night I had a collection of people inhabit my living room. This was to be my first meeting (during my band quest) with people who actually played instruments. After rushing home from work and quickly restringing my guitar (thanks to Melisah who traveled all the way to Covent Garden to get them for me after realizing that 'The Duke of Uke" off Brick Lane was closed on Mondays - I'm pretty sure she punched and kicked the air after walking all that way literally being shown the door"), I had three complete strangers enter my flat and play some music for me. Matt (guitar), Beorn (vocals) and Karisah (violin) were all absoulutely lovely people who were extremely sound musicians.
    We got playing and I picked up some of their songs quite quickly adding my element as best as I could. At stages we played some extremely good music. Their song writing was extremely good and Beorn's voice can be described as "a more moan induced version of Jeff Buckley".
  I really enjoyed playing with people again. I showed them two of my songs, and as most people do they play their most recent as to which they are still most interested in. I played one called "gypsie girl" which has a poppy folk country resonance to it, and I also played my freshest unnamed number which is a scrappy blues driven song about a guy being killed on a ship (I've been freshening up on my World War II literature).
  Once my nerves subsided I realized how different my songs sounded to theirs and I could instantaneously feel my self fill with self-doubt. I'm still not sure why this is, but this is how I felt. I guess you could almost put it down to desperation. I wanted and still want to be in a band so much.
 The next day I messaged Matt and told him it was good (writing this I sound like a desperate teenager) and after a length of time he responded with this message.

Hey man....
was good fun for letting us hang out at your place. I think the general thought was that we were probably coming from places a little too far apart in terms of influence etc. That sounds stupid, especially coz we all really liked your stuff. I think we're just looking for someone with a bit more of a similar approach to what we already have. Good luck, and when you get stuff up and running send me a link.

At first I felt a little cut and was telling myself that I was a shit musician and I may as well give up and focus on teaching. After speaking to Melisah and going for a very intense short run I came out with a different perspective. I felt that if I joined that band, everything I have set out to achieve would become void. I want to start a band from the ground up and not just be a guitarist who sometimes throws in a song. The three people who habituated my living room for 2 hours are great musicians and I hope them well in their success but it would not have been for me.

In the end, it is always hard to be rejected in any forms of life especially when the form is your absolute passion. However, rejection occurs for many reasons. Some people dwell on it and give up and some people re-adjust what they are looking for and regather their insight and move on. I choose to be the latter.

More to come

love


Life’s real failure is when you do not realize how close you were to success when you gave up.