Message-ID: <alpine.NEB.2.00.1311020014580.109@panix3.panix.com>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
To: Cyb <cybermind@listserv.wvu.edu>, Wryting-L <WRYTING-L@listserv.wvu.edu>
Subject: Failure
Date: Sat, 2 Nov 2013 00:16:59 -0400 (EDT)
Failure I'm not writing this for sympathy; I've come to a realization about my music, that I've failed at it for the second time - the first was when I played music in the 60s (although the records were re-released several times). What I wrote on Facebook - thinking of quitting music, the cds we're doing are having a hard time coming out, there's almost no audience for the stuff i'm putting online, less in providence, i sit here and practice by myself for no reason at all. we're playing in brooklyn in a couple of weeks and the logistics are costing a fortune and are otherwise horrendous. and there's too many instruments, too much fakery on my part. i could sell or trade everything off except for the shakuhachi and guitar. providence is a good place to think about this stuff; my music feels like suicide... The specifics - having to pay for one of my releases, and the other dragged down by the recording company director; having very small audiences when we play; having to pay far too much for an upcoming gig in NY - my fault since I play numerous instruments and they're hard to move around; having to practice by myself constantly without really having a reason to do it; feeling isolated and hiding behind rare instruments; feeling a bit of a fake when it comes to musical knowledge and ability to hear intervals correctly; feeling more of a fake when I play fretless instruments, always desperately looking for consonance; having to repair and research instruments; feeling like a freak just like I did originally in Providence when I was at Brown University; feeling exhausted having to push myself constantly, by myself, over and over again; and other biographical issues not related to music - feeling forced to leave New York, stressed and depressed from a thirteen-month unsuccessful co-op search in the city; coming down with various illnesses; kicking anxiety drugs; missing the energy of the city; dealing with way over 90-decibel noise on occasion from the bar next door; just growing old and not wanting to start over yet again. So yes, this is whining, I've invested so much in these instruments and the music I can do, on occasion, on them, but there's no deep interest in this stuff, I may be between Fahey and Bailey on a good day but physical improvisation doesn't matter in a digital era when anyone can dial in anything. I've been interested in 'coming up' against or through an instrument, but this doesn't carry over to people actually listening to the results. I have to make a decision here in the next few weeks, the gig with ESP-Disk in NY won't change anything, I'll probably sound exhausted. And the money just keeps leaking out; I feel I'm on drugs, that it's a question of addiction, that I can't afford financially or physically any longer... This is why my music and writing have been screwed up, abrupt, neuroticized more than usual, if that's possible, this hatred of slow suicide, of playing at a hobby I've never been good at. I'm not asking for comments btw, I've got to figure this out myself, I can always hide out in a virtual world or clever text (which this isn't)...