Published Wednesday, July 29, 2009 9:52 AM
Updated Wednesday, July 29, 2009 9:53 AM
More specifically, everyone needs an outlet. Mine is playing music.
Oh sure, some can occasionally get a Tatum sighting, say, on a golf course working on my regionally famous whole-body spasm that is my golf swing and exercising my prodigious and highly creative vocabulary of blasphemies, vulgarities, and four-letter hair curlers. And while I haven’t been out in the water nearly as much as I’d like of late, I’m finally at a point where I can start hitting the waves more often, if only they would actually form up and come into out shores more than once every two months.
But my first love is music, always has been, always will be, and there’s no better aspect of it than playing out live.
What possesses people to do what they do? I don’t know. I’m not really one to seek the limelight. I’m fairly sedate in social functions. I was always that kid that sat in the middle rows of any classroom and learned to hide behind the kid in front of me.
This is a special skill all shameless underachievers master in grade school. Basically, you have to remember two important points. One, do not take a seat either in the front or back row of the classroom. If you sit in the back row, the teacher will recognize you for the slacker you are and torture you incessantly, knowing you haven’t done any work since finally getting out of the eighth grade at age 16. If you sit in the front row, she will call on you after torturing those poor sods on imbecile row back there who are only trying to catch a nap before the one they will take in their next class.
No, you sit somewhere near the middle of the room surrounded by others the teacher almost never calls upon, and when she starts scoping the room for a potential victim, you surreptitiously make sure the kid in front of you completely blocks her line of sight to your desk.
But if I could have done Algebra problems with a guitar in hand instead of standing, slack jawed and scratching at the blackboard, I might have been a little more willing to participate.
Another point to remember is that playing music is NOT the same as public speaking. They say people fear public speaking above all other fears, right behind spiders, snakes, clowns and death. I can certainly see why.
I once was asked by an editor at a newspaper I worked for several years ago to go to one of the area middle schools to help with a 9/11-memorial program. I thought I was going to be addressing the school newspaper staff. To my abject horror, I discovered, 15 minutes before the program started, that I was supposed to be the keynote speaker for a program that was to be put on in front of not only the entire student body, faculty, staff, and parents, but was also being covered by several television stations.
Can you say blithering, stuttering, incoherent, mouth-breathing disaster?
Actually, you can skip all those words except the last; the adjectives are accurate but the term “disaster“ clearly covers it.
However, the next year would be completely different. Again, I would be on television, but I would be playing guitar with a band mate of mine in front of the Beaufort Naval Hospital Command. He had written a song called “Let The Colors Fly” which became a major underground hit for the Navy during the first days of the Iraq war. We played it during the next year’s 9/11 anniversary program. There wasn’t a dry eye in the place when we were done. That was pretty cool, actually.
I’ve played gigs in front of thousands of people, in front of three people. I’ve done it for years now and the wonder and thrill of it is just the same as it was 30 years ago the first time I ever got up in a school talent show.
I don’t understand it. I just do it.
I wonder what would happen if we all approached everything in our complete comfort zone. Like, I wonder if I could have gone to job interviews over the years with a guitar in hand, sort of like a Mariachi in a suit and tie?
If I didn’t get the job, at least I could have made a few bucks in tips while I was there.
On the other hand, there’s an old joke about a depression era con man that would offer to jump into your septic tank for dime. But it would cost you 50 bucks to get him to leave your front porch afterward.
Either way, the possibilities are intriguing …