Little Stars

memoir

My career in the music business caused me massive amounts of confusion and pain. It’s been a journey I’ve had to wander on my own, through dense forests of hope and emptiness.

One example: in my twenties I constructed a tour for myself where I drove all over the US, mostly alone, and played solo concerts on college campuses. Once in a blue moon, there was an audience. Mostly, there were stragglers passing through a fluorescent cafeteria. Or students off in the distance, looking up from their books, trying to discern where the music was coming from or why it was there at all.

Anyway. Like I’ve shared before and like I feel I have to share again- I had some success. But even the success - the songs in movies, TV, commercials, the few big connections and packed Los Angeles shows- in the end I always ask myself for what? It didn’t sustain me financially- and that was the gargantuan blow to my ego … and my heart. My songs were dangling, Little stars, like fairy lights. I had written them all for me- to get myself through. Every. Single. One. The songs, so deeply intertwined with my soul, that it hurts if I hear them.

Throughout my twenties, I was living in a prism of pain- and yet I always saw a sliver of light. I hoped and prayed my way out of a lot of raw deals. And sometimes, the grace of the universe helped me out with a sprig of magic. A helping hand. A push in the right direction. But not where the music business was concerned. There, I was on my own. I was cold and I was unsatisfied.

I played a show a while back because my older daughter, who is now a beautiful budding singer-songwriter, wanted me to be to be on the bill with her. I got up there, my 50-year-old self, and I pulled out my stars. I didn’t think I played particularly well, after all- it was no longer my norm. I played a new song I had just released called Tide and afterwards a man approached me and told me how much it moved him. Then he asked if I would sing at a benefit he put on every year.- a big event with other local artists. I said I would think about it.

I decided to do it, and began to practice when I could, which was hardly ever. Things that took time away from practicing for the show were: the business I had built as a personal trainer, the early nights so I could wake fresh, being with my family, taking care of my house- and all the other stuff. (If you’re a working adult + parent, you know.) I couldn’t find time to practice for the show and I started to get stressed. I kept thinking to myself - I’m doing this show…for what?!

I texted the man who had asked me to play the concert and said I was sorry but I had to back out. I exhaled a big breath of relief and drove to Home Depot to buy some things I needed to fix up the path that led to my Personal Training studio.

Later that morning, I told my husband I had backed out of the show. I said: “I need to put my energy where I actually get something back.” The statement, at its root, held a very complicated tangle of feelings which were (and are) painfully hard to explain to most anyone, but not my husband.

I’d rather sit in the sunny spot of my living room than play a concert. I’d rather run a mile around the neighborhood or dream about plans for the backyard. I’d rather backpack in the woods with my kids and friends. Look up at the mountains. The rushing of the creek. The concert of the leaves.

That’s how it is today.
(And maybe, unbeknownst to me, that’s how it was back then.)

I miss the singer-songwriter when I think about her. I wonder if I somehow did her wrong. I carry her with me. Maybe one day again there will be a sudden urge to pick up my guitar, unearth a little star, and dangle it from a string where few will know it exists.

Few will know.
But I will.