Last year I was floating around looking to fulfill a thing that had started to really dawn on me: I was playing songs at open mics, and I was good. Like, people were noticing me and telling me I was good. And I could feel it. I think once this would have been a really hard thing to have seen, just because: how can you tell the difference between that and ego1? Open mics are full to the brim of white guys my age clearly convinced that they are The Talented One here and it's just that nobody can see it. I felt I could tell the difference between other people seeing that I was good and just me thinkin' it. And I felt I was bringing something to new to my singing (and later my songwriting). So I thought I'd start expanding and experimenting. At the time I was in a band with my friends, which I'd started it with this intent of exploring this new musical level I thought I had, but which I was realizing was untimely. I was playing with four other people, all lovely, but who were happy to hang around and play music and maybe do a gig for our friends now and again and I was realizing that I wanted something else.
I went to the Open Mic at Conor Byrne's once, last winter. It is the place to see and be seen amongst (mostly white, mostly indie, mostly young) musicians in the city, so far as I can tell. It went for 5 hours, from 8:00 until 1:00; you drew lots from a bag to determine which slot you would take. There were, I dunno, fifty acts? I got to go in the first five because I was a first-timer. I covered Drift Away and then played the song I had just written (which is, in retrospect, one of my weaker songwriting outings. It's an okay song). I went back to the bar, not really having any sense of how it had gone. Then this guy came up to me and proceeded to introduce me around to all the regulars. He gave me a sense of the place and the people, and was stunned when I told him I was 52. Takeaways: 1) I got noticed at the place you go to get noticed, and 2) I was way too old for that crowd. I haven't been back since.
In the spring I heard that Seattle Folklife was taking submissions for acts; I ended up booking a slot based on a title and a YouTube video of me playing guitar in my basement. They gave me a stage and an early Friday evening slot which, to me, seemed pretty damn plum. The only problem was that I didn't actually have a show. I had a title, Surviving The Robot Apocalypse. I had originally thought I'd maybe give some kind of talk on AI and art. Then it turned out they hadn't booked me into a presentation room, and basically the only thing I could think of to do was tell stories, sing, and play guitar. The show was born of necessity; I went through a couple of rounds of scripts with my wife and settled on three stories and a tag about the meaning of the show, and that was kinda that. A bunch of people showed up. Many of them seemed to be genuinely moved (it is a show that, as its thesis, acknowledges that we are at the edge of apocalypse and there might not be much we can do about it beyond stop and make art in the face of the chaos). I've been doing the show since and lately it has started to pick me up and carry me along instead of vice versa.
Which brings me to last night's show, a house concert in the back yard of some long time friends' (both of them former members of the band I broke up with to go solo). Part of the point of the show is that it is (as I have in fact said in the show) what I do instead of writing a Substack. A rather surprising outcome, which I absolutely did not see coming, is that the show is what I do to think my thoughts. I, like, think performatively. Literally (literally). Last night felt like a new pinnacle, in terms of my own performance, of the experience of the audience, and of the things I thought via this thought process that I have (re)discovered2.
Let's start with the audience. I'm a little bit isolated from them behind sound equipment and also my need to constantly look down at my lyrics and chord charts (more on that in a bit). But I also could tell that they were with me, that I had them. I'm sure it didn't hurt that they were sitting in a gorgeous backyard on a perfect evening with food and drink and interesting people and it was...well, I hope, one of the best evenings they have spent in a long time. Use your imagination and put yourself there -- outdoor concert in perfect weather, and you're seeing somebody you've never heard of but it turns out they're pretty good3. Are you there now? Great. Here's the thing I realized this morning as I was thinking about the show: I wasn't.
I wasn't at an outdoor concert because I was Working. Don't get me wrong, my experience was euphoric (I was also high -- also more on this in a bit), but it was in no way like being at an outdoor summer concert drinking wine. The state of Working is one I came to understand (over an embarrassingly long timespan) from my wife; she, as a full-time novelist, has what most human beings on Earth would consider to be a dream job, and she, also as a novelist, works at it incredibly hard. I think it's just difficult for people to imagine taking your work brain and using it to make art. I sure couldn't, and I didn't used to Work when I performed. It's an ability I've only discovered recently.
On pot: as I've said, it's the drug that I use to do my Work. This is the second show I've done high. Last time I took an edible half an hour before show time and I never really felt it kick in while I was playing. My work brain somehow absorbed all of the cannabinoids or something like that. But, especially in the second half of the show, I got to a place of, like, total musical transcendence. I'm very much a (physical) feeling kind of guy, and it was like I was working the perfect muscle at the core of my being, like I was pouring energy into...out of?...my center and it was returning to me in perfect symmetry (man, words are failing me. Have you been to the place I'm talking about?) The normal head high only kicked in after the show was over.
This time I took the edible an hour before show time and it kicked in right as the show was starting. I started with what's probably my most technically challenging song (Sweet Time) and I had a brief moment of worry that I wouldn't be able to move my fingers nimbly amidst the blowing of my mind. But it was fine. It was great. I don't know how you feel about pot; I grew up in the Just Say No era4, so as a young person I strongly absorbed the message that drugs will ruin your life no matter what. Then I started to read and understand that there were, you know, different kinds of drugs and actually lots of adults did them and it didn't ruin their lives. I also came across the literature of enlightenment that wanted to claim that drugs were cheating. They would claim that yes, you could reach a state of transcendence with pot or LSD or MDMA, but it wasn't real. Or it wasn't repeatable, or you'd destroy your brain before you ever learned how to seek truth. Or that drugs are taking you away from, like, truly being present. These things are not my experience. Being high and being present are really, really synonymous for me5.
On the show itself: the first five or so iterations of the show were heavily scripted. Then last time I set out notecards with titles on them that the audience could shout out in between songs. It worked fine in the bar; at the house concert it worked fucking great. The cards went with stories or sometimes songs, but in general they were an excuse to engage with the audience. And then there's me as a performer. This is subjective, and it's possible that nobody can tell the difference between me now and me then besides myself and my wife (who, in the break confirmed that yes, she could tell the difference), but I am committed to the performance in a way I didn't used to be. I believe. I'm up there working. And I feel it.
And finally, there's what I learned. In the macro, this show is how I do my thinking; I have long been of the mind that humans don't think of anything sitting in rooms by themselves. They do it when they are in dialog with each other. That might be in reading books, it might be in conversation, and, in my case, it might be in the process of making art (Naomi Alderman, in the very last episode of her BBC Radio 4 Series Human Intelligence, stated the same thesis. I heard it the next morning while I was walking the dog. I'm right there with you Naomi). I have, with Surviving The Robot Apocalypse, built a thinking machine. It can think thoughts that I, working by myself, cannot.
In the micro: I need to memorize my songs. I need to stop looking down at my music stand. It's both for the maintenance of my mind as it ages (as I younger person, pre-Pandemic, I never needed music. I could do entire shows from memory without issue), and for engagement with the audience. And it's also the thing I realized (or perhaps it was told to me by Naomi -- it's hard to know): one of the ways we will survive the robot apocalypse and adapt our minds to the internet is by the specific practice of the skills that the robots automate. The robots now automate reading and writing? Very well, we must practice reading and writing. The robots serve as our memory? Very well, we must practice memorization. Not only is it important for maintaining our minds, it will expand them. It will help us to find those new skills, new things that the mind can do in this context, things that currently we are unable to imagine.
- Claiming that you've transcended your ego is in fact an act of ego, so, you know, there's that problem.
- I discovered it for myself from, I guess, first principles, but it is obviously gotta be as old as the troubadour, which is an old, old human profession
- I know it's me saying this, but trust me: I was pretty good.
- So many words I could write about the DARE program and how full of lies it was. I mean, I guess they could have told me that heroin was good for me and that would have been worse. And I understand that they all meant well. But, boy...bad education is bad.
- The highest I have ever been was on my wedding day, and I wasn't on a goddamn thing other than the act of marrying the love of my life in the presence of friends and family.
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