Showoff!

There’s this friend of one of our kids. He’s good at the piano. Like, really good. Better than I’ve ever been, by miles (or whatever unit you use to measure piano virtuosity…ivories? baby grands? pretentious coat tails?). I suppose saying he’s better than me is not much of an honor for him, but I want to be upfront about my, uh, beta-ness to his alpha-ness from the get-go.

“You should hear Marty¹ play the piano!” Holly exclaimed after Marty had been over to our house while I was at work. “He’s good. Like, really good.”

About a week later, I walked in and who was playing the piano in our living room? Yep. Marty. He was wailing (or whatever the piano-playing equivalent of “wailing” is). His fingers were dramatically Jim Carrey gif-ing.

It was impressive. Like the old Dire Straits song goes, “Oh yeah, the boy can play.” As a musician, I felt zero competitiveness with the kid (under the ol’ apples/oranges/mangoes/jackfruit corollary). I was in real and uncompetitive awe. But as a parent I have to admit that Marty’s wunderkind-esque playing reinforced some feelings of personal, parental failure as far as my own kids’ musical endeavors go. I’ve tried quite hard to not shove my personal interests onto my kids or to otherwise live vicariously through them, but rather to let them find what makes them tick and support their love of that. Which means, as much as I would love it and have occasionally attempted to subtly will it into existence, we don’t sit around in the evenings and sing our favorite songs together in six-part harmony and take turns calling out songs and taking remedial-but-heartfelt instrumental solos like some combination of a 2020’s Partridge Family reboot and a Telluride Bluegrass hootenanny. No, it means I find myself at a whole lot of dance competitions, yelling stuff like “Get it, Penny!” in a foreign-timbred singsong voice I never knew was in my arsenal. It means I found myself heartily booing wrestling heel Roman Reigns once live at a huge WWE event with the rest of West Valley’s E-Center. It means I know more about vascularity and musculature and pre workout and post workout² than I ever hoped to.

That was a detour. I wasn’t trying to virtue signal but rather to convey my titanic feeling of failure every time someone meets my kids and, knowing my love for music-making, innocuously asks them, “So you must play (instrument) or sing…” only to be met by my kids’ tight-teethed grins and nervous shrugs. Did I not push hard enough? Too hard? Do I not adequately model the joy of making music? Or do I overdo it? Did I do something wrong? DID I DO EVERYTHING WRONG?

(Being a less self-examining parent sometimes sounds nice.)

Back to Marty.

So Marty is a true blue pianist. Like, really good. A natural but also somebody who knows what significant practice can do. It’s the earned confidence of Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 hours. He’ll rattle off Chopin. Ragtime. Blues. He seems to simultaneously relish his talent and treat it like Good Will Hunting³ looking at complex math equations, this thing he could shrug off, rattle off with nary a thought.

And then he says a whole lot of f-words.

A few weeks later, Marty’s over at our house again. He sees me on the couch, laptop resting on my lap, and very conscientiously asks if I’m still working. I tell him it’s fine and he’s at the piano again.

”Here’s a song I just wrote this morning,” he announces dryly before launching into…

Chopin.
Ragtime.
Blues.

This time, though, I skip my usual self-critical parenting moment and, well, ashamedly, I feel some irritation slipping in. By-product of a rough day at work? No. Hangry? Possibly, but I don’t think so. I just start to feel this…itchiness. That feeling where something is annoying but you don’t want to outwardly betray that you feel annoyed. So you pretend to be engrossed by something on your laptop. You avoid eye contact. Check your watch. Examine the wood grain of the floor. Take an inaudible cleansing breath. Actively disassociate. He’s playing loudly and dramatically and keeps at his game of “I Wrote This” (to be fair, he knows we know). I find myself cringing inwardly to the point where I feel like maybe my very soul might collapse or my nerves might be coming unwound, sparking and flopping about like wild electrical wires.

Soon, my nerves, my uncollapsed soul, and I have abandoned the couch. We’re downstairs folding laundry to the tune of, I think, some wildly uptempo, hammer-handing Gershwin. And it dawns on me (what had already dawned on you, since you are more astute, dear reader): this reaction of mine is not about some kid’s piano prowess at all; this is a me problem.

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So I have this weird thing. A duality, let’s call it.

I really love to play music. With people especially. And even for people. I think of myself as more of a musician than a performer, but I won’t pretend that performing isn’t part of the equation. I love it all in different ways, for different reasons. But…

I guess the start of my weird thing is: I don’t want to appear too eager. I don’t want to volunteer it. For whatever reason, doing so just feels too….needy. Too…ego-driven. I want to come across as chill⁴. All of this is not just posturing or try-hard brand-shaping, though. There’s something in me—if I were from the Midwest I would think it was some version of Midwestern humility but I’m not—that feels genuinely weird WANTING the attention like that. I’m happy to play⁵ and even enjoy it, if asked. That’s the big key: wait for someone to ask. I don’t mean that snootily, like “make them ask” or (feigns British accent and sighs dramatically) “if you insist.” Because that approach feels untoward and presumptuous and conceited and overconfident and otherwise constitutionally icky⁶ to just be there, champing at the bit, song at the ready, like a dog enthusiastically panting at the door, tennis ball dripping in its jowls, when its owner gets home. Please ask me to play. Please, please, please.

Is that weird? Is it more cocky to need, to want, someone to ask? Would it be more selfless and less weird to be out there just offering up my talent wherever I go?

Maybe that’s part of the problem. On the one hand, I don’t view myself as tremendously talented and absolutely don’t see what I do musically as something anyone would be clamoring for. Just practiced and seasoned. An acquired taste, maybe. But then, on the other hand, sometimes I wonder why Paul McCartney isn’t calling me for pointers.

Duality.

About a month ago, the head of HR at my place of employment reached out to me personally on Slack.

HER: So I kinda need a big favor. And by helping me with this big favor, I will be in your debt.... bigtime.
ME: uh oh. How can I help? (Hoping that it’s some quick turnaround work thing)
HER: Well.... it would be really great and awesome if you would share a talent at the Talent Show. It seems like such a shame that you are so incredibly talented and for you not to share something.....
ME: (probably too quickly)  I CANNOT DO THAT
HER: PAAALEEEAASEEEE?
ME: I can pretend to try to juggle plates and have them shatter everywhere.
I can give a standup routine that will offend everyone and/or bomb. But I don’t think I can play a song. Honestly, i feel bad being weird. But 1) it's better to be weird now than to make it weird for everyone later, and, 2) I literally had braced myself for some HR firedrill where my whole team would have to work late and WAS TOTALLY WILLING TO DO THAT. Can I please do that instead?
HER: You don't even have to perform live. We could share a recording of a song you wrote or a prerecorded song.....
ME: It would honestly be bad for everyone. You’d all feel my discomfort for weeks afterward. It would affect productivity. People would be too distracted to work, thinking instead about how bad they felt when Paul was so weird. People would start to measure time by BPPTTS (Before Paul Played The Talent Show) and APPTTS. Years later, in support groups, they would talk about like the day Kennedy died or the Sopranos finale, like one of the rings in trees that shows you which year the forest fire hit.

And…scene.

Any questions?

Yes, you in the khakis.

“But, Paul,” you ask from the unfussy and practical comfort of your khakis, “didn’t you just barely tell me that all someone had to do was ASK? She asked. And you turned her down. That’s lame.”

First of all, that’s not a question. Second, you’re correct it is lame. Third, let’s make this worse. I didn’t just turn her down. The part I left out of the mostly-faithfully-reconstituted Slack exchange above is where I also offered her up the names of some of my coworkers who are musicians to try to buy some goodwill/immunity. So, depending on how you look at it, I sold out three coworkers to try to buy my freedom. (One of them looked at it that way. Another was excited to perform. So…duality.)

Fourthly⁷, the one who opted not to play (the great 26Fix, no less) reached out to me, also on Slack. Her initial response was more game than I was, willing to maybe work up a duet cover with the two of us. Ultimately, we both copped to the fact that we simply, really didn’t want to do it. Here’s one thing I wrote in our exchange:

“I think it (the invitation to perform, the pressure to do it) comes from a good place. People who don't have a certain talent—like, say, me watching a drummer or somebody who’s a math whiz—might be kind of awed by those who do and thus think that we're all clamoring for a chance to shine our little lights. But what they don't realize is that we might have a pretty specific vision for what performing looks like (Velour, The State Room, Kilby Court, Twilight Concert Series, etc) and, conversely, when a situation might be less-than-ideal. It’s why some people are happy playing loud bars on a Friday and some people love to busk on street corners and some people will perform at the drop of a hat. I guess I have some pretty specific ways that it works in mind.”

Duality.

(For what it’s worth, the coworkers that performed at the talent show were really good and nobody needed my insecure, overthinking, sad sack old dude songs mucking it up.)

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In high school, I remember sitting at the piano in my friend Julie’s living room. She and her mom (and sometimes her little sister) asked me to sing a few songs and I happily/sheepishly obliged, flattered that anyone thought it worth asking while simultaneously hoping I was good enough and not just being humored.

That’s the situation thing again. The ask was there. The thing I’ve landed on here, I believe, is even bigger, though: the listening.

Not that people at the talent show wouldn’t listen. But I’d feel like they were obligatorily listening, obligatorily clapping, obligatorily saying “good job” afterwards about whatever harrowingly personal original song I decided to play.

Listening with intent. That’s the thing. That’s where the magic resides, for me. Almost every great show I’ve ever played has been the result of inspired musicianship/songwriting/performances intersecting with an audience that was onboard and ready to be part of something.

Maybe it’s a whole Middle Child Who Needs To Be Heard & Understood thing, I dunno. And, yeah, I know it’s an awful lot to require just to go play some dumb songs. It’s demanding. I guess it’s what you could call my Emotional Rider.

A Rider, for those unfamiliar, is what an artist/band requires of the local promoter when they arrive at the venue. Some riders are legendary (usually for absurdist reasons), like Van Halen famously demanding a backstage bowl of M&Ms with no brown M&Ms, or Eminem himself requesting very specifically six Lunchables (three ham, three turkey, to get even more specific) or Prince demanding no stairs for his hotel stays. These are extreme examples, but the basic premise is that most artists have some baseline requirements to come to your venue. It’s always part of the contract and different artists, who spend their lives on the endless road, like to roll up to new cities with some familiarity, some consistency. The Rider does that, so there’s always a bottle of their favorite whiskey or a couch or pinball machine or whatever.

Me? I don’t need Lunchables or meticulously sorted candy. I just want people to listen (and maybe some water or tea). Not that I need to hear pins drop or anything. Just listening. Is that so drastic?

I’ll play (and have definitely played my fair share of) shows that aren’t listening slam dunks, meaning there’s a chance my songs will get trampled by conversations or, worse, indifference. I had a whole weekly residency at a swanky hotel for awhile where, any given night, I might either play to a rapt lounge or barely hear myself over drunk apres-ski boisterousness. The difference there was 1) I knew what I was getting into, and 2) I was getting paid. So, yeah, I guess money talks. Though, at that gig, I would play mostly covers because my ego always felt better, like “if these rich frat boys will bark and holler all over a Bob Dylan song, then who cares if they don’t listen to mine?”

Similarly, I’ll take the risk of not being listened to if the opportunity is good, like opening for someone I admire or playing for fans of a like-minded (or like-sounding) artist. The audience will sometimes get onboard and sometimes they won’t. But the chance to share a stage with a hero or convert some new listeners makes the gamble worth it.

I mean, I played a show once where the 14 year old girls—who were crowding the stage with their moms in anticipation of some piano guy crooning his hit love songs—literally turned their backs to me and the rest of the band, and proceeded to have conversations that were louder than our onstage monitors. That gamble didn’t pay off, obviously. You win some, you lose some, as a girl who was breaking up with me once infamously said on her way down the driveway.

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So what about Marty? Well, I think I was pretty explicit about how this wasn’t actually about Marty. It was my own neuroses I was/am working through, not some teenage piano prodigy’s. But if you ask me? I’m all for the kid with no weird neurotic hangups about listening and intent and when to show his talents, how to show his talents, where to show his talents, and the unnecessary ceremonial heaping of 89 prerequisites on any performance. The way I see it? Marty’s good.

Like, really good.

1. Not his real name. He’s a good kid. I’m not out for blood here. Just using him as a way to discuss my own rampant neuroses.

2. In fact, I’ve spent the majority of my life contending that gyms are “fake exercise.” Manufactured ways to make your body do things that a) people used to just naturally do over the course of a day (lift heavy things, get your heart rate up), or b) sports or outdoor recreation activities could accomplish with more joy. I’ve never understood someone who can run more than a couple miles on a treadmill. I get. SO. BORED.

3. I know that’s not the character’s actual name. But you know who I mean. C’mon. Why are we even bringing footnotes into this?

4. Remember what my therapist said, literally within minutes of meeting me? “I’ve known you for 10 minutes and I can tell you: YOU. ARE. NOT. CHILL.”

5. For the most part. As I’ll detail farther down in this post, I was recently asked to play at my day job’s talent show and declined. Like I said in my Desolation post, I prefer to seek out situations that are most likely to highlight what I’m good at and benefit what I do. The Work Talent Show did not feel like one of them.

I’ve happily played my share of wedding receptions, funerals for loved ones and loved ones of loved ones, wedding dinners, and so on.

6. Yes, “constitutionally icky.”

7. Pretty sure that’s not a word. “Lastly” would have been better.