The Glory Is Brief

Over the years I’ve had the pleasant opportunity of meeting and hanging with famous people, mostly famous musicians.  And I have a lot of friends who have done the same.

And the number one thing everyone says after hanging out with a famous artist is some variation of…”They were just so normal and cool and laid back”.

Why?

Because the glory is brief. It doesn’t last.

No one can live inside of it. 

That’s what makes the glory, glory…and the rest of life not.

You can’t live glory…so the end of the day you have to live with yourself.  Glory is brief, who you are is not.

Glory is the sold out audience shouting their affirmation at you. Glory is that one moment in that one song where you hit the note in just that extra special way that caused you to transcend into the next dimension for a moment.  Glory is the line out the door for the autograph signing.

Glory is so brief if attained at all.  It’s there and then it’s gone…and you then return to your norm.

So of course the rockstars we get to rub elbows with are normal, what did we expect?

p.s. In the long run seeking out glory often robs you of being compelling.  While doing the hard work of discovering and developing your compelling-ness could very well open the gates to a few true moments of glory.



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I’m always interested in your perspective, whether affirming or dissenting. Continue the conversation anytime: gabethebassplayer@gmail.com

Follow Me If You Want To...

Follow me if you want to…

…(insert your answer here)

Most every artist is running around, wildly concerned with getting followers.  MORE followers. More Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter followers.

And what is usually meant by followers is fans (although the truth is one doesn’t necessarily equal the other).

But why should we follow you on social media or just in general? What’s the point? What’s YOUR point?

What’s your one sentence pitch?  

And it’s not that you need to proclaim your pitch or verbally state it to your followers…you almost shouldn’t need to…it should just be operated from, consciously and/or subconsciously.

I wish I could reach through the device you’re reading this on and make you sit there until you come up with and believe in your answer to the statement.  I don’t care if it takes weeks or months.  It’s of utmost importance.  Spend all the necessary time it takes.

So

Follow me if you want to…

There’s no right or wrong answer, just a true one.

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I’m always interested in your perspective, whether affirming or dissenting. Continue the conversation anytime: gabethebassplayer@gmail.com

What To Do With Your Tiredness

You’re just going to have to bring your tiredness with you.

You have to tell it to just sit right there next to you while you walk in and do the work. You’re not going to make believe it’s not there or ignore it, and you can’t just make it go away, so you’re just going to demand that your tiredness comes with you.

p.s. If you let tiredness define you, you’re simply giving it power over yourself to do so.  Tiredness needs your permission to define you.  Because in and of itself it can’t.



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I’m always interested in your perspective, whether affirming or dissenting. Continue the conversation anytime: gabethebassplayer@gmail.com

Trusting Speed

We spend so much time working working working so hard, fighting the odds, overcoming obstacles, doing the impossible, digging for momentum, grinding it out every single day, slowly but surely, drip drop, drip drop…

…because that’s what it takes. 

We know the immense amount of work we’ve done, and therefore we know that our career is real and legitimate.

We trust hard work and the long days.

But what about when speed finally finds us?  What about when things are able to happen quickly?  What about when “things are just happening”?

Since we know we can trust hard, slow, long work…it’s easy to then think that we CAN’T trust speed and ease.  Because it’s too easy.  Hard workers have a tendency to be dismissive of the easy.

If something comes easy can it be trusted?

If the doors are just swinging open for you, is someone playing a trick?

If things come easy and I’m a part of easy things, does that mean I’m not going to be considered a hard worker?

When the energy and opportunity move with speed and ease, let it happen.

It doesn’t always have to be a battle.  

Let it flow.

Don’t dismiss it just because it’s going fast and easy.  

It’s going to get hard soon enough again anyway.

You can trust speed and ease.

*But I certainly understand…most often you have to know something in order to trust it and most artist aren’t familiar with speed and ease…and so it’s simply the unfamiliarity with the concept that makes you not willing to accept it.

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I’m always interested in your perspective, whether affirming or dissenting. Continue the conversation anytime: gabethebassplayer@gmail.com

You Can Wander Out But You...

Creating your well thought out, highly detailed plan will help uncover and stimulate the courage and understanding of when to deviate from it, and how and why…and also when to chunk it and start over.

The wanderers will always wander, believing their wandering is freedom.  But wandering only begets wandering…and you end up becoming knotted up and miserable by the very thing you believed was giving you freedom.

You can certainly wander out of a successful career in the music business, but you can’t wander into one.

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I’m always interested in your perspective, whether affirming or dissenting. Continue the conversation anytime: gabethebassplayer@gmail.com

Jim Gaffigan And Red Lobster

Jim Gaffigan is a funny dude and a few weeks ago I ended up watching part of his stand-up on TV.

He was doing his bit about seafood. (You can watch it here).

Hilarious.  And a pretty long bit too.  Basically pointing out that seafood is like eating bugs and the only reason we eat it is for the butter sauce.  

Being that this comedy special was on TV, after the seafood bit it was time for a commercial break.

The very first commercial of the break…a Red Lobster commercial.

I’m not joking!

What in the world?!!! How could this happen?

The commercial is showing lobsters and crab and shrimp in the most sophisticated slow motion way possible, while for the last 8 minutes we’d just been told in a very funny yet convincing way how nasty and disgusting this food is!!

Here’s my guess of “how could this happen?”:  It’s not that anybody dropped the ball…it was simply nobody’s job at the tv station to make sure the commercials played well with what was being joked about on Jim Gaffigan’s comedy show.  My guess is that a programmer just lined up the next five commercials on the list and pressed play, because that’s how the job works.

So it was nobody’s job.

But let’s rephrase it from “it was nobody’s job” to “there was a job opening”.

And a pretty important job opening if you ask me.  There was a need for someone to be the person who made sure the commercials meshed well with the scheduled content…an open responsibility…a chance for someone to take the reins and do something that would benefit everyone (in this case not run the Red Lobster commercial till next hour).

These little branches and limbs of responsibility are being dangled out there, and all of us have the chance to jump if we’re paying attention and care.  Opportunities to play a vital role in a system that seemingly has all of it’s bases covered.

Pay attention. Care. Speak up.

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I’m always interested in your perspective, whether affirming or dissenting. Continue the conversation anytime: gabethebassplayer@gmail.com