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In praise of ordinary life
Two friends entered the mansion of a successful business associate.
Friend One turned to Friend Two and said: “Wow, this place is amazing! Look at all the stuff this guy has.”
To which Friend Two replied: “Yeah, but I have something he’ll never have.”
Friend One: “Really? What’s that?”
Friend Two: “Enough.”
I’m probably fairly typical as an American in that I am hard-wired to believe that success will lead to happiness – that to be happy, I have to work very hard and succeed in reaching my personal and professional goals.
What gives the lie to this is the realization that despite the many milestones I have reached, or been brought to (good health, loving and strong relationships, the completion of several records that I am proud of, a more or less stable income, a strong sense of community and a beautiful place to live), I scarcely if ever stop and feel appreciation for what I have achieved.
Because I want More.
It’s not greed, mind you. I’ve never been interested in money, and the adolescent dream of fame is well gotten rid of. No, the best way to put it is, a kind of dissatisfaction driven by ambition, competition, whatever.
I think it’s very important to know what vision you hold for your life (or your life holds for you). I pity people who don’t really know why they’re here… what gift they alone can give to a world aching for that very gift.
I’ve never had that problem. Remotely. So why is it so hard to be happy when I feel like I haven’t “gotten there yet”? I cheat myself of all the good things that are hiding in plain sight, staring me in the face. Struggling when I don’t need to tightens me up, makes me tense and unable to receive all these daily miracles.
But once in a blue moon (and it often IS literally a blue moon I’m gazing at) it’ll hit me.
I’m happy.
And that makes me inspired and energetic indeed to create more.
I’m not a star, and it’s very, very hard to get my music heard, and that makes me sometimes sad, or frustrated.
But you know what, So what? I’m doing my job! Giving my gift! Is there anything else that matters?
Here’s the real point of this blog post, the really cool thing I’ve realized: Success comes from happiness – not the other way around!
Where does music come from?
It doesn’t come from anywhere. It’s already there.
Every song that has ever, is ever, and will ever be written exists already - there are only 12 notes, after all (at least in Western music).
I’ve always believed that all possible music - and for that matter poetry, literature, art - is already living and hovering “out there” (as well as “in here”)… just as all colors exist all the time in the spectrum. Factor in the fourth dimension – the space between the notes, and their progression – and it’s clear there’s an infinity of unborn songs out there, waiting for today’s creators, and tomorrow’s, to pull them in.
Every artist, or child, or anyone who aimlessly hums a melody, is simply tuning her or his radio to a certain, individual frequency. When I was 10 and living in England, I was obsessed with a portable multiband radio we had (short wave, medium wave, long wave, AM, FM) - dumbfounded as faraway music simply materialized as I moved the tall vertical tuning line left, and then right, and then left again.
This is how songs are born - fumbling through that dial, more or less alert to “what wants to happen.” Rehearsing a song I’ve already written, or just fooling around on the guitar or piano, I’ll stumble on a “wrong note” - something I didn’t expect to play. And that “wrong note” (or especially, wrong chord) will suddenly open a window I didn’t see before and shine a new light, a scary-good new feeling. A sudden hit of heaven.
It’s chemical. Something like falling in love. (And, like love, once you’ve tasted it, you have to work for it.)
So what is the spark that gives that “something” that’s always been there, lurking around our collective-private cosmos, the power to appear?
That, of course, is the mystery, the miracle - the divine game of creativity. It’s what we all seek. When you look for it, you can’t find it.
Fortunately, when you don’t look for it, sometimes it will find you.
That moment of pure grace when a highly limited earthling stumbles on something, and the first inkling of a new universe – one that’s always been there, hiding in plain sight – crashes through.
Leonard Cohen, as usual, said it best: “Everything has a crack in it. That’s how the light gets in.”
