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Her Wild Technicolor Carnival Ride
Music is a harsh mistress. She gives and She takes, like any other
all-powerful force of nature. I’d have it no other way. But if
you’re considering a career on Her wild technicolor carnival ride, you
should understand that you don’t choose Her, She chooses you. If you feel
like you even have a choice, just thank your lucky stars and
call it good, because it means that you can do something else for your living
and have an actual life, keeping Her at arm’s length as a passionate hobby.
She’ll bring a wonderful presence of grace and beauty into your existence,
instead of being the sweaty 300-pound leather and vinyl-clad dominatrix
hell-bent on your ruin with an iron-spiked whipmace, which is exactly what some
gigs can feel like to those of us who never had a choice at all.
And if She does choose you, you really do have
zero say-so in the matter. There’s nothing for it but to obediently join the
other helpless drooling victims stumbling and lurching along Her road, hands
outstretched toward Her promised land—that glimmering distant shore of musical
perfection that never gets any closer, whose golden sands no musician
has ever trod. Like all my brethren, I’ve longed to squish that sand
between my toes my entire life—just one perfect note, that’s all I ask—but it
will never know my footprint. Though We The Hapless know exactly who and what
we are, we will never know perfection. She dangles it perpetually,
tantalizingly near—close enough to see it, smell it, almost taste it—but always just
out of reach. What a damned bitch She can be…and what an impossibly lovely
goddess.
And we pay a very real price. It’s typically a poverty-laden life,
survived by the teeth-gnashing, bare-knuckled determination that gets you
through the darkness to those fleeting moments of light and exaltation that She
knows you crave, which can’t be experienced any other way. She’ll give you
just enough of a win to get you through your next black tunnel to your next
shining fix of validation and its glorious electric joy.
You’d better enjoy surfing on the wild waves She throws you
into, because your loved ones won’t. I sometimes hear Her cackling laughter
from somewhere in another room as my best laid plans go tumbling into the
abyss, nonchalantly tipped off the counter by Her cat. You may think that
the most important thing one needs to survive on Her road is talent, but that’s
just a prerequisite. We’ve all got that around here. What you’ll really need is
a deep and unfailing dark, sardonic sense of humor.
To be on Her road is to know harshness, danger, loneliness,
challenge and MANY long years of solitary practice. You’ll get used to
sewing your arm back on and healing yourself when you need a doctor, giving
gear precedence over decent furniture or a decent car, and the concept of a
vacation will be completely alien to you. You’ll spend the winter holidays
away from your family and miss weddings and funerals. Your loved ones will
neither understand nor approve.
But also on Her road you’ll find the understanding and camaraderie
of those of your kind, who do get it. Your musical brothers and sisters will be
right there with you even during your solitary practice, because we all know
what we all go through. We all recognize it in each others’ eyes, and
share the great unspoken inside joke, even if we’ve never met
before. We understand each other’s struggles, pain and shining golden victories
better than our families and spouses do. And that can only be called some kind
of great, shared love.
It’s an uncomfortable truth that many of us never find a happy
relationship outside of music, because She simply demands too much.
Non-musicians can’t wrap their heads around never being able to call in sick or
take a vacation, whereas to most musicians, taking sick days and deliberately
taking time off work sounds absurd and alien, professionally dangerous and
monetarily frivolous.
I missed my daughter’s sweet 16 because I was in the middle of the
ocean on a four-month cruise ship gig. I missed being with my two brothers at
my Mother’s bedside when she passed. I walked around for 12 years with
three undiagnosed fractures in my neck, causing neuropathic mayhem until it got
sorted out by three C-spine surgeries and two more procedures down my right
arm, all because I hadn’t had access to what society considers “normal” health
care. This sounds like griping, but it’s not: I’m elated to even be alive, and
to have the lofty honor of being chosen to be a musician. I just want to make
it abundantly clear, in case you or a loved one is eyeing this road as a
potential path in life: This is a toll road, and the toll is heavy. Choosing
this road doesn’t really even compute, because it makes no sense unless
you have no choice. And if that’s you, then you already know who
you are.
Depending on the gig, while performing our services we may be
tolerated or we may be adored, but as soon as the show’s over, when the
meet-and-greet is done and we’re on the road to the next venue, we’re
undesirables. Most of us spend so much of our lives feeling the
disapproval of society and of family, it’s difficult not to buy into it.
Every great musician I’ve ever known has a bit of that scrappy
scavenger just under their shiny, professionally silken
exterior—superpower-like performance skills not quite concealing a finely-tuned
predatory machine, with a slightly hungry air. And no matter how good our year
is going, we’re never any farther than the flip of a card from desperate
times. That shadowy figure of fate is always lurking there in the
corner—just another employee in Her house, and just as subservient to Her
whimsy as you or me.
With all that said, the drawbacks and pitfalls of being a
musician are offset by heady and powerful experiences and rewards that are
simply unobtainable to the non-musician. One night I played a raging,
howling guitar solo in front of a thousand people under a total lunar eclipse
while sailing past an erupting volcano.
She gives and takes, She cackles and nurtures, She creates and
kills, She gives you little moments of exaltation the like of which very few
humans ever experience.
And from my perspective at least, Her wild technicolor carnival
ride is well worth the cost of admission.
--
www.byronfry.com
www.soundcloud.com/byron-fry/sets
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