I'm 24, going on 25 and only this year have I finally cracked the nut on songwriting. My output in the last couple of months outstrips absolutely everything I've done in my 11 years of music. A couple of weeks ago I got to see the greatest band in history and existence, The Hold Steady, for the 3rd time. During the show, the leader singer doing a little intermission banter gave a brief history of his music career, I wish I'd recorded it but you'll just have to make do with my paraphrasing, it basically went like this:
"I'm 39 now. When I was 30 I worked in an office, and I was bored, so I called up some friends and started a band (cue applause). And the last 8 years of my life have been some of the greatest"
30? Maybe there's still hope. I think realistically I gave up on ambitions of a successfully creative life in music when I was 16, but now with the wisdom of all my years and finally the ability to pen a song from beginning to end (and even sometimes manage to record them) I've realised that success is relative. If I write a song from start to finish, that's a success. If I show it to my friends and they like it, that's a success. And if it goes no further and I'm content with that, I think that's the greatest success I can hope to achieve. Contentment can be the road to complacency, but so what? Contentment is nice, utopian even.
But songwriting isn't everything, and something I always knew but rarely acted on is the true message of Craig's little intermission speech: it's never too late to start. Hell it's why I started this blog. It's never too late, if you want to do something, do it, who knows? You might surprise yourself and be a worldwide success in 8 years, and if you're not, be content with your own successes.
This post is a little bit optimistic isn't it? I'm such an enigma. Stay tuned.
1 comment:
That's heartening to hear... I didn't know he was almost 40.
I often feel like music is a young person's game, and I sometimes feel like I'm getting too old to do it when I play on bills with certain bands where they're like 19 or 20 and don't realise how amazingly shit their haircuts are. But then I take stock and think about the reasons why I do it, and as long as you're always doing it for yourself then I don't think there should be any problems.
I'd like to hear your stuff, you should chuck it up on the blog :)
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