Gracelessness Pays Off

Before posting this, I would reference my previously stated disgust for some of my blogging tendencies. I have really gotten tired of writing (and later reading) how freaking wonderful or completely shitty everything is. So. Know that this is just an account of a night that I found particularly enriching. Every time in this post that I feel like I am starting to get romantic about my chosen field or sense a threat to end the entry like a Dave Barry column, I throw up in my mouth a little. Sorry for what sounds like self-loathing... It's just a mood.

I’m saving a lot of my thoughts for a post that I will write in a couple of weeks. But I would be feigning a nonchalant mood if I said that things were normal tonight.

As you probably know, in the days A.B. (“After Bowling Green”) I kinda got off of my ass and jumped back into the real reason I was in Nashville. As I was planning this jump, I remembered very clearly something that my former next door neighbor told me after she had gotten out of the middle of a rather rough patch, during which she was pretty much alone all the time. In explaining how she had gotten into some social circumstances that I thought were unusual, she said “I started to realize that, when someone reaches a hand toward you, you had better take it… it probably won’t be there again.”

Among the hands that have recently been extended to me was an invitation to what amounts to a very well-organized pickin’ party. It’s not just a bunch of people sitting around with guitars. It has hosts, guest artists, food, a method of bringing non-featured guests into the show, etc. The invitation went out by email to a list of people who attend a couple’s local weekly song workshop… It wasn’t like someone thought, “Brett would enjoy this.” I just happened to be on the list because I go to the workshop sometimes. I was taking a liberal approach to what an invitation was or was not, and I knew a couple of the featured guests, so I decided that that was as much of an extended hand as I could expect here.”

There are so many things I hate about first time social occasions… the look you get from people when you walk through the door that says, “Who’s the shy-looking bald guy with the fake smile?" The obvious moments of awkwardness when there really is nothing to say after the pleasantries are over just kills me. Not knowing who lives there… forgetting names you just learned… having to ask where the restroom is… those consistent worries about the politics of who sits in the chairs when there aren’t enough, leaning against walls, and whether or not this particular home is relaxed enough to accept the rather unsanitary act of manually grabbing cashews from the bowl. All of those things have always been pure misery for me, and I was dreading them all day long. But I made myself go down there, bitching all the way.

And my fears were, of course, justified (as they usually are… they’re just stupid things to worry about). But at some point, as the picks came out and the results of a few momentary occasions of brilliance were passed on to new sets of ears, it became worth it. The forcing oneself into a closed circle of conversation, the small talk, the moments of unintentional silence, the exit during which you strangely learn that you are now a “hugging friend” in spite of your double clutch as the other party reaches toward you, the nerves that caused you to spill peanuts onto the hosts’ floor in mid-conversation and the embarrassment of sticking your ass in the air in attempt to make sure you got all of them… they became worth it.

For the record, I heard two songs tonight that I had first heard either on my tv or my radio, and I didn’t realize that I knew the writers. I heard one of the coolest elderly voices I have ever heard (think J. Cash). I heard hooks, grooves, chords, melodies, and tongues planted firmly in cheeks. Those things made the trip worth the complications.

When I realized the benefits of the situation, I was finally at home enough that I decided that I will probably put up with circumstances of a similar level of gracelessness again in the near future. And perhaps next time, I will be contributing not only to the awkwardness, but also to the payoff.

If you had told me four years ago that I would put myself through (what to me is) hell in order to get done what I want to get done, I would have called you a fool and I would have been right. I give myself just a little bit of credit for walking into cold situations and repeating it until the people in the circle have no choice but to remember my name. I think it's the only way to do it.

But boy, sometimes it would sure seem nice if the room were as easy as the rooms where I find most of you.