There are very few people I know who wouldn’t agree that money is a pain in the ass. Those who disagree probably have a lot of it. Actually, I think wealthy people are probably equally bothered by it. Honestly, I’ve never cared that much about money, otherwise I’d have majored in finance and jumped straight into Wall Street. Among the many risks of being a musician is a huge financial one, but I don’t care because all I want to do is make music, and if I’m not doing that I won’t be happy. And that’s the point, isn’t it? Every day my heart aches a little more when I’m not able to devote myself 100% to what I love to do. But no matter how little I care about money, I still need (and want) it, and it sure would be nice to have a lot of it. Because maybe money can’t buy happiness, but there is one thing it can buy: Freedom. Sweet, sugary freedom.

The music-money relationship is a tricky one. For a very large portion of people out there that are earning money from a day job, it’s all about business. To make money from music, you inevitably have to turn it into a business, and turn your band and your CD into the product you’re selling. Someone once told me, “make it fun, don’t make it work.” Well, the point of trying to make music my “work” is because it’s always fun. Otherwise I wouldn’t be doing it. Don’t we all want a fun job? That’s all I’m trying to get for myself. When I make it work, it’s the most fun work I’ve ever done. It makes me want to work.

And so we come to the ubiquitous phrase: selling out. It’s one of the most over-used phrases in the music business, particularly by fans. The problem is that there is no actual definition of selling out, because it’s totally different from everyone’s perspective. For a lot of people, selling out has simply become a synonym for success. As soon as a band makes it big, they’ve sold out. As soon as they sign to a major label or appear on MTV, they’ve sold out. But accepting money for your work isn’t selling out, even if it’s a big fat sum of money. The artists who have become rich are well off because they have a ton of fans who shell out cash to buy their music, a T-shirt, a concert ticket, etc.

Selling out to me involves sacrificing your music’s integrity for money. Too often, signing with a major label means you give up control over your own music and have to squeeze into a cookie cutter artistically. Any time you let a so-called authority change the way you go about your art for a few extra bucks, you’ve blown it. If you’re lucky enough that your music already fits the mold of what’s popular, then you’re good to go. I’d love to sign a major label contract today, but only if it meant that I wasn’t a slave to the trends. Fat chance, really. But there will always be some amount of compromise… It all comes down to how much is too much, and what you feel comfortable with.

Basically, I’d love to be making music from strumming my guitar, fiddling with ProTools, and being creative. I don’t particularly care about much more than that. I’d love to be in a successful touring band, or play guitar for recording sessions. It would be fun to write music for films. I’d even enjoy recording background music for SportsCenter clips or TV commercials. But if you ever actually see me appear in a goddamn 1-800-COLLECT commercial (Lit, I’m looking in your direction), remind me to slap myself in the face. With a brick.

One thing’s for sure: selling out is always associated with success. Sometimes, I think, this is a result of jealousy. Think about it: you’d be way more likely to think that Coldplay sold out if they said they like Miller Light than if your local bar band got paid for saying the same thing. That reminds me, I really, really enjoy Smithwick’s Ale, and I could surrrre go for one right now. No? OK, fine. But don’t say I didn’t warn you: someday you’re probably gonna tell me I sold out. But I probably won’t agree with you. And you know what? I’ll just think you sold out for working your 9 to 5 instead of pursuing your dream. So we’re even.

Don’t get any
Big ideas
They’re not gonna happen

-Radiohead

In my apartment tonight we tackled the DVR and watched last night’s episode of House. Hilarious as always. The patient was a soap opera star with some sort of allergy, or brain tumor, or bacterial infection, or… Hell, they go through so many red herring diagnoses I can never keep track. It doesn’t matter, anyway. What was interesting, though, was that the actor on the show (yes, the actor being played by an actor, how meta) was talking about how he hated his job, that he wanted to be in something important, something influential, a show or film that meant something. Any time one of the doctors told him to just quit his soap opera gig, he said “it’s not that easy.” When pressed for more explanation, he had none.

They never really went into any more detail, but it’s an interesting topic: where does one draw the line with how far they can push their art? Or really, where does one begin to compromise with the line someone else has drawn for their art? Wait, that didn’t really sound right and I don’t think it made sense. Are artists here to entertain or innovate? Either/or, or both? If you’re hoping to push the envelope, but just end up in a comfortable gray area that doesn’t revolutionize but does entertain, when should you resign yourself to be satisfied with what you’ve accomplished? Or should you at all?

When House was over, we watched a live Radiohead performance on the Music HD channel. They performed mostly songs from In Rainbows. They are one of the tightest bands I’ve had the pleasure of seeing live, and it seems like they’re just getting better sometimes. The difference in musical contribution to the world between them and, say, a band like Good Charlotte or Nickelback, is like night and day. But the latter two bands entertain large audiences. Some might call it mindless, still others call it greatness. When it comes down to it, they’re both equally valid. But if the members of Nickelback are in the business to innovate, should they accept their place in the music world (which, for the record, is in a spot completely free of innovation), or should they keep pushing to be something they are most likely never going to be?

These are the kinds of questions someone like me who is still waiting to break into the music scene might ask themselves. I would love to be an innovative, revolutionary musician, but to be totally honest I have no idea if I’m even capable of earning such a label. Do the revolutionary musicians even think they’re revolutionary? Maybe they totally do. Maybe Pink Floyd knew they were making history with each successive album. But like the soap opera star said, it really isn’t quite so simple as quitting what you’re doing and jumping right into something influential. When it comes down to it, all I can do is be completely sure with myself that I am making the best possible music I can make. (This could apply beyond music of course… Just making sure I’m doing the best job I possibly can with anything that is meaningful to me in my life.) What more could I even ask out of myself? And that is being said by someone who is harder on himself than any music critic or fan could ever be. I suppose that when all is said and done, it’s not up to me to decide if my music is revolutionary or not. Hell, it’s barely even up to you, either.

Years ago I started having a recurring dream. Not an exact dream, but a recurring theme that kept popping up. I would be driving, but when I hit my brakes they didn’t work. It’s not as though they were cut, but more like they didn’t totally finish the job. I would slam them down but only slow down without coming to a complete stop. It was as if I was driving on ice and I kept drifting even when my wheels weren’t moving, although there was no ice to be found. It was an unpleasant feeling and therefore an unpleasant dream. It happened every couple months or so, which was quite manageable.

But then it started happening more frequently. They would come only a month apart, and then only a week. At one point I had this dream 3 times in one week. It was starting to really bother me and stress me out a bit. Knowing dream research tends to be dubious at best, in desperation I tried to figure out ways to get rid of this dream. I read several theories that recurring dreams are messages from your subconscious, your own body trying to tell you something. That may very well be possible, I figured. Often your body knows it’s sick before you do. Sometimes you refuse to acknowledge things about the way you feel even though you know them to be true. Whether this shit was true or not, I just wanted to try to stop having the dream. So I figured that maybe I should write down everything that pops into my head immediately after I wake up from having it, and maybe it would reveal something to myself.

I didn’t have to wait long to give it a shot. A few days later I had the most intense nearly-lucid episode of the dream yet and woke up immediately afterwards with my groggy half-logical mind full of words ready to leap onto paper. I first wrote a quote that was said by my friend who was sitting in the passenger seat in this particular dream which only makes sense to me now so there’s not much point in writing it here. But here is the rest of what I scribbled down (slightly edited so as to make a bit more sense):

“Life doesn’t slow down, and I can’t stop it
but I can choose the direction
sometimes there are accidents
sometimes it’s good to have someone in the passenger seat
sometimes there are tight squeezes that look like you’ll never make it through
or even feel like something’s going wrong
yet you emerge scratch free
sometimes it seems like there are scratches even when there aren’t
and it turns out it wasn’t so bad
sometimes you have to improvise and go in a direction you didn’t expect, to avoid danger
but you can still get where you’re going.
It never stops exactly where you want it to
Don’t want to hurt anyone along the way
I’m worried about things being too perfect,
so I lose a little control while going with the flow.”

I have never had the dream since the day I wrote that down.

It was from a fortune cookie. it says:

“You are headed in the right direction. Trust your instincts.”

Well that’s good to know.

Unless my instincts are to not trust a fortune cookie.

Life is a fickle thing. What I think is important one day seems insignificant the next. My entire perspective can change in the blink of an eye. About a month ago I was back home in PA for a friend’s wedding. While catching up with someone I hadn’t seen in a while, I found out that a person I went to high school with got paralyzed in a freak accident over the summer. Now he’s 24 and can’t move anything from his neck down. Last I heard, they’re hoping that he’ll eventually get some feeling back in his upper body.

This has been messing with my head on and off ever since I heard about it, much more than some other odd things that have happened to me recently. I wasn’t close friends with the person, but I knew him. He is a cool guy. And when it comes down to it, it doesn’t matter who you are; nobody deserves something like that. All I can wonder is what is next after an event like that? What would I do if that happened to me?

It’s a completely cliche thing to say, but it really does make you think. I know about 2 people my age from high school who have died in drug-related incidents (one OD and one freak accident), and this has messed with me much more than them. Of course it makes you think about the obvious things like what’s really important in life, your friends and your family, etc. But the main thing that has emerged in my mind is one word: fear.

There’s plenty to be afraid of in the world, especially at those times when life seems like nothing but a series of misfortunes. But letting it get in the way of your goals and your dreams is like giving up before you’ve begun. If I am lucky enough to live a full life, then I have a long stretch of time ahead of me. But already that time seems to be passing faster, and I feel like if I don’t grab life by the balls now I may miss my chance. The fear of failure is a very real one for me. Trying to be a professional musician is no small task. I’ve been surrounded by people who have tried and failed, who are trying in vain, or who have already given up. (I’m also thankfully surrounded by a lot of supportive people, too, and I’d like to acknowledge that.) Every step of progress I make, there are new things to be afraid of. What if we got signed to a label and they don’t even release our album? What if our next album gets released and fails, firmly entrenching us in the path of a dead-end band? Countless questions like these are enough to scare anyone away from such an unsure future.

But not me. I have no choice. I have to do this. It’s the one thing I want more than anything else. It’s more than an obsession. It truly is my life. It’s the only thing I think about. Ok, maybe once in a while I think about girls, food, sports or smart-ass remarks, but that’s about it. If you took music away from me, I might as well be paralyzed. And so it comes full circle.

I don’t know what will happen with my friend from high school. I wish him the best, and I really hope he finds what he needs. Everyone’s looking for something, they just don’t always know what it is. I’m lucky enough to know exactly what I’m looking for. I’m going to use my time to put my all into accomplishing everything I know I’m capable of. Youth is an opportunity, not a disability. You can’t let anything petty get in your way when you never know when it will all be taken away. And if down the road I have crashed, burned, and failed, at least I’ll be able to say that I did it without hesitating or half-assing it, and I’ll probably have piled up a life’s worth of experiences along the way. Like they say at the end of Dazed and Confused, all I want to do is be able to say I did the best I could while I was stuck in this place. In this case, “this place” is earth, life, whatever. All I know is this: there is no room for fear.