You can only be so efficient.
You can only perform so well.
You can only work so hard.
The real leap is being the person who can get others to be efficient, perform well and work hard.
If you only focus on you, you will max you out.
If you focus on others, there will always be more.
A big major car dealership in downtown Nashville closed a few months ago and will be replace with condos and retail space.
No one complained.
It turns out being around for decades doesn’t always equate to much of a connection with the customer…and I don’t think connection with the customer was ever what the car dealership was really going for.
We want to be missed. We want people to complain or be sad or upset or wistful when we have to close the shop. If that’s really what we want, we have to start building it now. And if we build it good enough maybe we’ll never have to close the shop.
Things don’t run their course. The band, the relationship, the project.
We simply decide to stop putting the necessary energy into it to keep them going.
Things don’t have an inherent course of their own. And things don’t have an opinion or get tired or burnt out or lazy or lose interest or get a new dream or desire.
People do.
So when the thing is over let’s be honest about why it’s over. It isn’t the thing’s or the course’s decision.
There’s infinitely more music that is fulfilling to play and sing than there is music that is enjoyable to listen to.
That’s probably the way it should be…and it probably tells us something important about what music is for.
Music is a gift to the maker of the music. First and foremost.
Every musician has spent countless hours being deeply moved, inspired and fulfilled by music played behind their closed doors. Music and moments that no one else in the world will ever hear…or ever needs to hear. It feels amazing in the moment and that’s enough. It doesn’t need to be good enough to share with the entire world.
But if you want a career in this stuff…that’s the hard part. It feels good to play and sing but does it feel good to listen to?
Looking back it all makes sense.
Whether it’s your own life up until this point or watching a documentary about someone else’s…it all adds up.
Except…in present day you’ve got a substantial amount of confusion. Things aren’t adding up. Lots doesn’t make sense. The narrative seems lost.
But someday when you look back on today, today will all make sense too.
No need to over complicate the path forward. The next step is often times the next OBVIOUS step. It’s the step that will make sense when you look back on this confusing time.
We all have a sense of the sadness and heartbreak that exists just beneath the sunny skies of even the best artists instagram page.
It’s the dichotomy that draws us to artists. Even if it’s never explicitly spelled out.
Because whether we consider ourselves artists or not, we all know what is to express something and have it get taken the wrong way or completely crushed or ignored or laughed at.
And so artists who are out there in public putting heart and soul into the world on a regular basis…we can all sense how heart wrenching that is…and we’re drawn to the boldness of the fact that artists do it anyway.