Music Before the Money

When we were kids one of the best ways to get audiences was to bring our guitars to the local park and jam. We’d sing the old folk tunes and the newest Neil Young songs. Cat Stevens was popular and The Beatles never went out of style. We’d get a good little crowd of people our own age and we would leave when the sprinklers came on at 11pm. Darkness was not an issue.

Carrying a guitar was a noble enterprise, as if you were a modern day Don Quixote and your chords would stop windmills from turning. If someone sang harmony it elevated the impromptu gathering into a concert. We would also take this show on the road. I remember a park in Whitefish, Montana where the youngest person there was 30-ish. I guess the older people wanted to hear what we had to say. The Vietnam War was still on and we had a pile of anti-war songs in our basket. Even “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixing-To-Die” by Country Joe Macdonald and the Fish went over with the older crowd. Donovan’s tunes went over too as did Joni Mitchell and Neil Diamond. But the most response we got that year was “Mr. Bojangles.”

Then during the last week of August the guitars scattered as we all went our separate ways. We would get back together in later years in various versions but only once was everyone there. I wrote a song called “Guitars in the Park” about this time period. It was just before we started getting paid to play - then the music changed.

But as noble as I make it seem it was also a selfish endeavor. Girls liked music and playing in the park was a great way to meet them.

A few years ago I decided that, since writing wasn’t making me as much money as I had hoped, I would invest for the future in properties. After a couple of years of this I was not so enamored with bricks-and-mortar as I had been when I started. Tenants and mother nature take their toll on rental properties and I began to develop an admiration for the stereotypical landlords in the movies who believed in “debtor’s prisons.”

It was around this time that I began to develop a pain behind my right eye. To combat this I went to pain-killers (the off-the-shelf kind) and one day I took so many that my hearing decreased to whispery tones and I was seeing in tunnel-vision for a while.

Needless to say this was the stress I was attracting by worrying about the properties and I began to combat this by breathing exercises and selling a property. The pain went away but still lurks in the background. I know this because I feel the twinges every now and then.

I have had several episodes where my body has informed me that there was something wrong. Back aches, flu, etc. There was one time I got pneumonia and stayed in bed for three days. There was a chair by my bed where I kept apple slices because that’s the only thing I could keep down. During that time I spoke with personages from my past, both living and dead, because actually I thought each of them was sitting in the chair on the apple slices. When I finally got better I felt great mentally as well. I guess there must have been a lot I wanted to say to those people and, based on results, my body decided to get sick to make that happen. This has never happened again.

The next time you get a pain before you try and get rid of it think about what is going on in your life. There might be something that needs attention.

Many of the comments I receive from would-be writers is that they haven’t got the time to write. Kids, work etc. and that they are too tired when they finally get any time at all.

I remember a story about a nobleman (France, I think) in the 1800’s who began writing under most peculiar circumstances. In the manner of the time he and his wife treated dinner as a formal affair and would dress accordingly, taking great pains to be absolutely perfect. The gentleman in question would always arrive first and have to wait for his wife before he could begin to dine. Sometimes the wife took fifteen minutes, sometimes she took an hour. He could never know for sure so he made sure he was there at the same time every day.

The man liked to write so one dinner time he came with pen and paper and began scribbling down his ideas. Of course he would put this away when his wife arrived. This practice before dinner went on for a long time until, one day, he had a novel finished. The novel, it is said, went on to be published and, as a result, he became a famous author of his times.

I really can’t remember the origin of the story. It’s in one of my many “Even-You-Can-Be-A-Famous-Author” books. But it’s food for thought. At a conference a few years back I met an author who got her start writing in a small room under the stairs. It was the only quiet place in the house. Another scribbled while waiting for her kids to finish their music lessons.

Eskasoni native Rita Joe, heralded as the “poet laureate of the Mi’kmaw,” always instructed her audiences that no matter from what background you came, or economic situation you faced, anyone can find the time to write.