Fade.

As I mentioned in my last few posts, I was at Beyond Festival last weekend. There's still at least one more post I'm planning to do from my time there, maybe two. Then I've got another random one, because there's been too many weighty ones recently....anyway. It was pretty awesome, but there was also something that got me thinking.

Before it was Beyond Festival, there was one called Black Stump, which was pretty much around the corner for me. And each year, I'd apply to play there. Each year, I wouldn't get in, but I kept trying. I'd had friends play both there and at Easterfest, so it was something I really wanted to do. Playing in the talent shows at them was fun, but not really the same as having your own slot.
This year, I didn't even try applying to get in. It was out in Canberra, and I wasn't sure exactly how I was going to get there - whether I'd end up carpooling, or bussing it, or something else. Keyboards are not conducive to either, unless you've got a van. So I just volunteered to do sound. Ended up doing the sound for quite a few different performers - one of which was a young girl, about 16, who was playing the guitar and singing with the skill of some of the people I did a uni course of music with. And she played the keyboard as well (one of my only two keyboard players the whole time).

It got me a bit....thinking, I guess. Not the right word, but I'm running with it. Since late high school, music is something that I've been interested in really focussing on in what I do. I did something fairly radical in deciding to do it as my uni degree, when most people expected me to go for something sciency. But I didn't do much in terms of gigging. I went around a few different songwriter's nights and open mic nights, but that was about it; there wasn't a lot near me. Transporting a keyboard isn't fun. I also wasn't keen on playing in bars and pubs - partly because they were bars and pubs, which I just generally didn't like (not being a drinker), but also because that's where you play covers, and I wanted to play my own songs. Not that I couldn't play covers. But I wanted to perform my own songs, and share the stories that I had written with people. I think I did busking two times with my ukelele in Camden, and that was about it - got maybe $10 in shrapnel off it. I never really looked into getting a busking permit, which I'd need for busking in Campbelltown (where I live now) or in Darling Harbour, for example, which is usually where you see them. Besides which, I don't have a ukelele any more!

I kept writing songs, though. Here and there, I recorded bits and pieces, some at a pretty good quality. (Though not compared to what they expect for radio, for example.) I've currently got over 200 songs written, three albums released, and ideas for at least six more albums ready to go. I am, however, terrible at selling myself. Always have been. I hate trying to put a price on myself or what I do, because for me there really isn't a price. You can't put a number on it that accurately represents what it's worth, and what I've put into it. (Reason #3897 why I hate money and wish it didn't exist - but that's for another post!) So I ended up not going very far at all; I don't have many people that know about or listen to my music, and very few that I don't personally know. Whereas I know quite a few friends that have done quite well - a couple from school, but mostly from uni (funnily enough, being a Bachelor of Music). And there's always the niggling thought - could that have been me?

Then I see a 16-year-old, that's already doing as well as some of my friends that I know. And it makes me pretty seriously question if maybe I just never put enough effort into it. I divided my attention too much; held to my idealised view of how I wanted it to be, and wasn't willing to compromise. So this is what I get. And now it's just too late.
And part of me really hates that and is scared by that, because these are stories that I think are important - stories that I want to be able to tell, and share with people. I don't want to think that they have no purpose or meaning, that these stories will just fade out of existence like nobody knew they were there in the first place.

Then another part of me takes rather a different tack. It says that I'm putting way too much of my identity into this, and if I'm so scared by the idea of it fading away - then maybe that's exactly what it needs to do. Maybe I'm too tied up in the idea of being a singer, being a songwriter, being a performer, being a musician, being a pianist. My identity needs to come from God, not anything that I do, not any skills or talents or passions that I have. And that's super-duper hard for me to think about it like that. And I know that there's certainly some truth to that - that I have been finding a lot of my identity in this. And so maybe that is what I need to do. I don't know.
Perhaps my songs were only ever cries for attention from a place of unhealthiness - feeling unseen, and unloved (ala Shake It, for those of you who were at the album launch; for everyone else, I'll link it here once I get that song up).
And perhaps I'm too good at saying "Yeah, I've got problem X, Y, and Z" but never actually doing anything about it. It's one thing to say that you're struggling with something. It's another to actually take action. As pretty much anyone who knows me well enough can tell you, I'm terrible at being proactive. Absolutely terrible.

I don't really have any answers at the moment. Perhaps my chunk of time at the end of this year/start of the next will help with that. I'm not sure. But this is a song that I wrote while I was away on Black Stump around this whole question and issue.

If you have any comments or thoughts on this, would be more than happy to hear from you! :)