“Want to know one of the great things about being a musician?” I asked the students assembled in front of me for the first of six school presentations recently: “Gigs rarely start at 8:00am.”
Regarding my invitation to speak here on theme ‘doing what you love’, of course, the fix was in (as it so often is). One of my band-mates teaches in the district, and I’ve backed up his choirs going on five years now—it’s not like I made some exclusive cut or won the Yellow Pages/Google lottery. Just the same, I’ve learned that the narrative can assume markedly different appearances based on what details I choose to omit. For example: “Wes Weddell was pleased ‘Musician’ made the cut at a local middle school’s Career (‘Impact’) Day, and honored to be asked”, read my third-person vain Facebook status that afternoon, rather than “friend-of-a-friend called in a favor”, which would have been no less accurate. One’s a whole lot more romantic, though—and feels a whole lot more validating.
This brings me to what has become one of my stock phrases when describing many facets of the ‘scene’: “It’s not about what you’re doing, it’s about what people think you’re doing.” Problem is, I resent the hell out of this perception, and I still care tremendously about the art itself, while the marketplace tends also to weigh a few other factors that may or may not overlap with my creative skill sets.Read the whole thing here.
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