How Does It Feel?

I’m having a hard time adjusting to Los Angeles.  When I left Colorado yesterday, it was dumping.  And there’s nothing like a snowstorm to make you feel fully alive.  The precipitation quiets everything, and in the silence you can almost hear your heart beat, it’s purely primitive, it’s just you and the elements.

Whereas SoCal is all sunshine and traffic.  Back in the city everybody’s got somewhere to go, something to achieve, savoring nature, life, is out of the question.

And I’ve been sitting here listening to songs on my headphones, creating my own reality.  I don’t want to walk outside.  I don’t want extraneous influences.  I want to revel in my own private world.

And listening to tracks I realize staying power has to do with honesty.  And charisma.  My favorite songs weren’t made to be hits, the Top Forty wasn’t even in the equation, even though some of these cuts achieved single success.

Like "Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald".  It sounds like you too are doomed on Lake Superior.  Well, maybe not doomed, but the possibility is there.  The images are better than those in any Spielberg movie.  Gordon Lightfoot nails the experience of the futility of fighting nature.

And then there’s Tom Rush’s "No Regrets".  Breakups are so confusing.  You can focus on blame, but the real issue is loss.  We human beings are really just animals.  We grow close and feel the absence when our partner disappears.  Whether we do the leaving or not.

And then I heard "Like A Rolling Stone".

No, not the famous Bob Dylan rendition, but my favorite version, slowed down, so the lyrics sink in.

I’ve written about Michael Hedges’s version of "Like A Rolling Stone" previously.  But you couldn’t hear it, not the take that rivets me.  There are covers on YouTube, but nuance is everything.  You can play the same song every night, but you tingle when you get it exactly right, you know, and so does the audience…

"It’s nice to be an entertainer, you know it?
At least while you’re on the stage."

Michael Hedges is not plying the boards anymore.  Going home from a gig he met a tree.  But this rendition of "Like A Rolling Stone" is purely alive.  And now through the magic of Grooveshark, our favorite questionably legal music service, you too can hear it:

At some point in the future, rights holders will embrace the ubiquity of music.  Will beat the bushes to get every version available for listening, realizing it ultimately benefits them, and the fight to keep music down is futile.

How does it feel
To be on your own
With no direction home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?

That’s what it’s like being a musician.  It’s a leap of faith, now more than ever.  No one’s interested in you.  You can make an album, but it’s purely for fans, of which you’ve got few.  It’s a calling.  You need to do it, otherwise it’s just too hard.

How can you be so good that people want to pay attention?

You can buy insurance, work with someone already famous, so your music sounds just like everybody else’s, so you can advertise the connection.

Or you can realize you suck and it’s going to take you years to get good and you’ve got to endure the abuse, if you’re not completely ignored, until you get good enough.  And then you’ll only grow if you’re different, and we live in a world where people want insurance.  Self-reliance is a scam people want to employ to cut taxes, but they truly want a safety net.  There’s no safety net for a musician.

I like that Hedges changes the groove, slows the song down until it’s something different.  A relative in whose face you can see the ancestor, but it’s not the same.  There’s more than one way to be original.  Michael Hedges makes "Like A Rolling Stone" his own.

And with the lyrics slowed down, they make sense, they penetrate, whereas they slide by as part of the parade in the original. Instead of someone yelling at you, they’ve got you one on one and they’re all calm and you can’t escape their truth.

And there are guitar accents for emphasis.  And at times Hedges almost yodels, drawing your attention.

And nobody has ever taught you how to live on the street
And now you find you’re gonna have to get used to it

That’s what being an artist’s all about.  There are no guarantees.  It’s like there’s a fork in the road, and you go left when everybody else goes right and all you’ve got are the clothes on your back and twenty bucks in your pocket.  If you go right, you’re on "American Idol", you’re working with Dr. Luke, you’re not living on the street, you’re not alone, you can certainly see the direction home, whereas the path behind an artist is erased, which is why you see old wannabes playing covers when their hair is gray, they can’t go back.

Are you ready for this level of truth, of honesty, of desperation?

Yes, being an artist is the loneliest life you can ever lead.  Even if you make it, only a small circle will know who you really are. But your energy will be so electric that people will be drawn to you, while you’ll be pissed you’re famous and can’t live a normal life.

But you were never normal.  Artists never are.

But the thrill of being an artist is you don’t let others get your kicks for you.  That’s the audience, living through you.  If you’re not on an adventure, if you’re not testing limits, no one cares.

So now you know why we’ve got so few artists.  Because few are up to the challenge.

But we’re beating the weeds incessantly looking for them.  To illustrate life, to point us the right way, to nudge us forward.

When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose

Yes, this is the song with the famous line.  Are you willing to have nothing?  And to stuff down your envy?  Are you willing to put all of it down on the roulette wheel of life, betting on yourself?

We’re looking for a few good men and women.  People who don’t volunteer, who aren’t looking for acclamation, but were going down the road anyway.

You know who you are.

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