True Dilligence

I'm having a lucid moment; let me take advantage of it. I've just been sitting at my piano (Yamaha keyboard, that is) playing the past 15 minutes or so - first, music that I have to learn because I'm songleading/accompanying at a church service this Sunday; secondly, songs of my own - songs that can always use more practice on the keys. I didn't sing along with them because my voice is shot. I was up late last night (or was it two nights ago?) yell-singing my heart out on a bridge I just wrote for a new song that's been brewing for a while.

As I was sitting, singing, playing, and then just playing, I was reminded that I need to start being dilligent again. Since the holidays, since my gig at the bitter end, I've been "taking it easy" on the music stuff. I haven't made any efforts to line up another gig. The going-to-one-open-mike-a-week thing petered out months ago. I rarely get to Caffe Vivaldi's anymore b/c now I have a steady volunteer committment on Monday nights.

Incidentally, I don't mind that I haven't gotten back to that place. It's terrific - a great atmosphere; fun - like I've said before. But there are other avenues to be pursued at the juncture. My music may be known by only a few dozen (a liberal estimate) people in NYC, but my experience is not limited to what I have accomplished here. I have an EP now - the EP I was talking about doing for a year and a half. I should be telling people about it. I should be pressing lots of copies and making it available for people who want to buy it.

I don't think I was ever dilligent. In the whole time that I've been "pursuing music" full-time - that is, since graduating college in 2002 - I have never totally thrown myself into this thing. I've talked about doing it; I've had intentions to do it; I know what it would mean to do it. Pursuing the music dream with abandon isn't merely having decided to move to New York. In fact, the NYC move was primarily motivated by a reason other than music. What dillengence would really look like would be me developing and honing every aspect of my singer-songwriter identity to the extent at which no more could be done without outside help, likefinally landing a label or a manager. For instance, let's say I really did revamp my website, press 500 copies of my EP, set up the website so people could buy CDs online, took my simple press kit and EP and sent it or gave it out to every potential interesting place to gig in New York. What if I set up a tour in Michigan and rented a car for a week, and then just barrelled through and played a ton of places, built up my following, built a buzz, and then, after all that was done.... THEN I sat down for a break and a little bit of a wait. but not too long of one, because chances are if I extended myself that much, things would happen. Maybe not something as big and dramatic as a major record label deal, but little opportunities would keep emerging. And -besides "little emerging opportunities" - what am I talking about here anyway, gremlins? - the point is I would be doing some really constructive things. I would be doing constructively. I would be DOING my music. Ahh!! What an amazing prospect!

I have not, ever, been truly dilligent in this aspect of my life - the aspect that I claim as my vocation. hey, if I were to give dilligence a go, a real shot for the first time in my life, and it didn't all hang together or it totally flopped, wouldn't that be an amazing sign? God saying, "I have other plans for you. Not this." The clarity provided with a fizzling failure would be a sharp gift - dilligence leading to failure transformed into catalyst towards true calling.
So that, or dilligence leading to a full-time career as singer-songwriter (no longer needing the cheesy phrase, "pursuing music")
A win-win situation.