An Uncommon Tune

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Posted by john timpany on Wednesday, April 27, 2011

There is a whisper in my mind that tries to hide from me when I live life like others, that reminds me the moment I begin to relax, “With practice you can be the best.”.

It’s waiting for me, it will sum me up like a score, and it will set me apart from all others like me, and it will identify me as the greatest I can be. All I have to do is find it.

I pushes at me continuously like a hungry lamb nudges its mother, and it’s always hungry, its’ just that sometimes its easier to ignore than others.

At times I view it like a ghost in a mist; and not part of this, my real life of work, love, trials and money, but then at other times I have to embrace it. It is my very reason, my being, my soul and my drug. It owns me, and I have to give it every part of me until it has finished.

It has no understanding of time or want; only passion and need, and it embraces me as fast and as tight as death itself. And it is just as selfish.

I become lost to a world of four notes which can slip by again and again hour after hour until another four notes emerge to a point where time has no meaning, people have no meaning, and day to day things like mealtime, bedtime, morning, night time, late nights and no nights have no meaning.

Only the notes remain. Only how easily, correctly and comfortably one note follows another note has meaning.

It’s cathartic. It’s painful and it’s uncompromising.

After years of experience, I know that the pain pays off.

I know that what is hard now will not just become easier, but will become fluent by the blood, by the sweat and by the burning tears when the struggle seems too much.

Most people live their lives hoping for something so inspiring to creep upon them and change everything like a suitcase full of money; to give them a sense of purpose as if it were a divine intervention. That the nine to five was eight hours of vacuum until those imaginary and ritualistic chains of financial entrapment fell off and the Jekyll & Hyde metamorphosis could take place; and in this dream a more dynamic, more imaginative, more expressive and more explosive them took stage front.

Wouldn’t that be wonderful?

But the road isn’t that short, and it certainly isn’t that easy.

I was born with that road map inside me.

I miss what I think others may have as much as I believe others may miss what I have. I miss the acceptance of a life whose purpose is to have kids, have a steady job, a steady marriage, a steady car, a steady house, a steady mortgage and all the steady trappings.

I miss the normality of it all almost as much as I despise the normality of it all.

It seems that sometimes there is no common ground, no halfway point, no meeting of the two styles of living; but mine is not a style. Mine is just a compulsion thrust upon me without the greatness and with as little compassion as a serial killer might have.

Passion without compassion.

I am not me. I live a dream of me as though I am in a cocoon struggling for the change of who I can be. I have no idea who I will be only who I can be, but somewhere in this struggle is a sense of worth. The sense that the new me has to be worth more than what once was, but you just can never be sure.

I could be a failure.

Failure is a freeze away as stage fright grabs your mind and locks it so tight that any note beyond is so far out of reach that it is a cry away. But you can’t cry, and you can’t reach it, so you freeze.

Like a rabbit caught in the car headlights.

Scared witless while hundreds watch on and no one understands.

So despite the note after note for hour after hour, when you could have been out having fun like any normal person, you pay the price for your foolishness. You get “Booed” off stage.

But life is a mosaic, and the at next gig the audience love you and you are the gift their ears have waited for, and encore follows encore with standing ovations. That night sleep escapes you just as it did the night you were booed off stage.

None of it makes sense, yet everything is perfectly clear. You just have to get better at doing the good bits right.

I have never done a perfect gig, and I never will do.

I am about as stable as a reed in a storm and as reliable as a pavement drawing in the rain. I have a heart almost as big as an ox and I can see your pain before it creeps up on you.

I know the truth in you before you tell me the lie and I can see just how tall you could be if only you stopped telling me how short you were. I have little idea of my strengths, but I sure do know my weaknesses by now. I have long since learnt to stop listening with my ears and to stop looking with my eyes. I can feel without stretching forth a finger.

I still have very little idea as to who I am and none as to why I am.

My name is John. Like you, I am a musician.

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