Being A Writer Is Painful

Being an artist, being a writer is painful.

Always another blank page waiting for you, wanting to be filled up.

Connecting to songs and letting songs go.

Digging for the moments.

From down in the dumps all the way to cloud nine and back and forth, everyday.

Listening to others and listening to your gut.

Pushing for what you believe even when you’re not totally sure.

Rejection after rejection.

Success…..nope, actually more rejection.

Knowing you have it. Forgetting you have it. Wondering if you have it. Finding it. Losing it. Rebuilding it. Knowing you have it.

It’s painful.

But it’s a choice. Never forget that.

And now that we know it’s painful…perhaps the pain will serve as a guide post that you’re on the right track…or at least in the club.

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

Wider Lanes

One possible solution to drivers slowly fading lanes while texting on their phones would be to make the lanes wider.

If lanes were bigger then the driver would have more room to veer back and forth without running into other cars.

But we all know wider lanes wouldn’t fix anything.

Driving straight instead of drifting, that would fix it.


The necessary fix requires me to change my behavior as opposed to having someone else (the department of transportation and bazillions of tax dollars) accommodate it.

If we’re willing to change, there’s no need for accommodation.


And of course this is a metaphor for so many things in the business.

A little change goes a long way.

A little change helps us crash less and cruise more.

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

The Right Size Band

If everything goes fairly well, what is the ceiling for your as an artist?

The easy answer is the sky is the limit.

But think about that…As they’re building the new skyscrapers downtown right now, how tall are should they make them?

They don’t say, “we’ll just keep building till we can’t build anymore or we run out of money or supplies”.

They don’t say, “the more floors we build the more money we can make in rent payments so we project we’ll want to build a million floors high”.

No.

On the one hand it’s true…the sky IS the limit.

But in reality, based on the foundation of what the building was designed to be, it can only get so big.


So based on your foundation as an artist you have a more-than-likely ceiling if everything goes as planned.

What are you designed to be?

It can be huge it can be small. Either one can be important.

So it’s important to know what you’re building.


***Sure, you could be the one bluegrass band who sells out stadiums worldwide. But that’s a different blog post :)

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

Bouncing A Basketball

If I go to the park just down the street and start bouncing a basketball I’m probably not going to get a lot of compliments on my new glasses.

However, if I’m bouncing a basketball, eventually someone is going to walk up to me who is also interested in a bouncing basketball.

Then, after we shoot around for a while I might just get that compliment on my new glasses I want.


If I get frustrated at my new friend for not opening with the glasses compliment then I neither get the compliment nor the basketball partner.


We must understand what our magnet is…not necessarily what we want it to be…but what it IS.

Accept the magnet, learn it’s power and use it to connect.

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

The Little Things

They’re watching. They notice the little things. The little extra touches and changes.

And it’s probably only that small group of fans who notice. But they do, and they care.

And that’s why you do those little things.

If you’re doing them in hopes that everyone will notice, it will feel like no one is noticing.

If you’re doing them for that small group of fans, I guarantee they notice.


*** When I was a kid there was a band I saw a bazillion times and they had a song where after the song was over there was an unscripted amount of dead space and then the drummer would do a fill and cue an extended outro of the song.

Sometimes it was a short dead space, sometimes suuuuuuper long, sometimes somewhere in-between.

It was fun because I had figured out the drummer was the only one who knew when he was going to come in…so everyone else in the band was held in a funny tension just like us in the audience not knowing when the drummer was gonna come back in.

I always looked forward to that little part though. They didn’t do it for everyone, they did it for me.

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

Time Lapse Drawing Videos

Those super fast time lapse videos on Instagram of amazing drawings and artwork are fun to watch.

1. Because I know they’ll only post them if the final product is cool.

2. Because I don’t have to do any of the waiting around. There are no boring parts. They go from a blank piece of paper to a masterpiece in under sixty seconds. Perfect, that’s exactly the amount of time I have to spare.

We all know the real reason those videos are fun to watch is because the artist did the hard part of getting good at drawing, iPhones did the hard part of getting good at taking time lapse videos, and Instagram did the hard part of making the platform that we want to get on everyday.

The hard parts take a long time.

The videos only take sixty seconds to enjoy.

And most people just want to enjoy the video.

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