Vaporized - Part Three
January 16, 2006 09:23 PM Work
A Different Shaped Guitar
In 1975, after seven years as a musician, I was performing more and earning more than ever. I’d opened shows for some top acts, and been invited to open for more. But the clubs I performed in were changing. Most had installed sound systems wired to a turn table and opened more of their space to dance floor. They hired me to perform on Tuesday or Wednesday nights, and weekends became reserved for a new craze. Disco.
As a single acoustic artist, performing thoughtful folk songs, I received more and more requests to play mindless, danceable tunes rather than the quiet, introspective ones I preferred. Never much of a performer, I felt compelled to change. But I didn’t want to change. I had worked hard to develop the expression I loved, and had no stomach to focus my talents on good-time dance music. My agent said he could sell anything I wrote if it was danceable. I took a heartsick stab, producing only a few silly parodies.
I wallowed in the certainty that the identity I had so painstakingly created was losing its relevance. I was at the peak of my capabilities, but I could see no future from those heights. I reluctantly decided to enroll in a university. I’d study marketing, perhaps get involved in the business end of the music business. I justified the move by explaining that I was just taking up a different shaped guitar, and this fantasy helped me engage with something approaching the passion I’d found in my music. In the three frantic years I spent at University, I discovered other identities for my talents and myself.
I remember my last concert, given at my university in the first quarter after enrolling. It was pure magic. The audience was suspended in the room, entranced and timeless. I was a master at work. The following Monday, I arrived as an apprentice for my eight o’clock class, my mastery stored away in the basement with my PA system and microphone stands. I knew that I would never again sit on a quiet stage and share my stories in that way. I opened that introductory accounting text as if it held some secret for my survival, and attended to the lecture as if I were part of an audience listening to a real master.
I had not been vapourized. I saw the handwriting on the wall and bailed out while the bailing was still pretty good. Many of my fellow folk singers lagged this change curve and found their audiences shrinking until they had no choice left but to choose anything else.
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