Start with You

Go where you’re valued

I love music. I value it deeply. I used to bring it to places where it wasn’t valued. Sometimes that was because a gig paid well, or because I was “supposed to” play there. It hurt.

It took a lot of gigs that hurt and made me depleted of any motivation to do more music before I realized I didn’t have to do things that way. I had the right dance steps, but I was dancing to somebody else’s tune. Other peoples expectations, my own inner critic, whatever. Now that tune is my joy.

Now music has officially become kind of a discipline for self-acceptance. I am following the part of my creative self that brings me joy. I’m trying to stir my own heart. Sometimes that’s tricky, because I want to be liked! But now I need to like what I’m doing first. I’m making sure that I am feeling joy, then my bandmates are, and then we are bringing that out into the world. People who like that like me, like us – not some version of what we think we should be that isn’t actually us. If we can stir our own hearts, that’s the job.

Inevitably some listeners in the room won’t be affected by what we’re doing. They should probably find some other music. The people whose hearts are stirred by what we are doing — those are the people that value what we value. And that my friends, is the shit.

What if I only played the gigs that I wanted to play, or where people asked me to play? In other words: go where I’m wanted, or go where I want, instead of playing the gigs that are a signal to people that I “should” be valued.

I wanna play music for people that like music, especially mine. Not follow me or come to a gig because I played some other fancy gig.

It took me a long time to realize that I need to bring my authentic self into my music and prioritize my own music joy so that if I “succeed” that said success is built on who I really am and what I actually love, not some fake version made to sell tickets. That sounds exhausting.