People Who Have Songs

Playing Tate Street Coffee was a great deal of fun. Many thanks to everyone who came, including the gentlemen who are collectively the Space-O-Nots, who sat right in front and sang along to Jonathan Coulton's "Re: Your Brains" and "The Horseshoe Crab Song" (an original, of course).

I admit that this was my first... well, my first "real" gig as "Em, the singer/songwriter." I'm not sure exactly why it qualifies as "real," it just... does. Playing for an hour on my own in a public establishment... I've done it before, but only as a classical guitarist. It's never been an hour of my own stuff.

Nervous? Yeah. About my playing? No. Mostly I was nervous about the fact that I was unleashing my own writing on the world. Playing classical repertoire is a much different experience... you end up playing stuff by a lot of dead white guys. Sometimes they're not dead yet. Sometimes they're not guys. But mostly, yeah, dead white guys. Not your own stuff. The stuff that's your own is the technique and the interpretation of the music. And trust me, it's not that people are not judging -- people are totally judging. People can (and will) tear you a new one over technique and interpretation.

Playing your own stuff... flawless technique is nice, but you can interpret your own music however you want. People are judging your playing by a different standard, maybe trying to relate, maybe just appreciating the musicality of it... maybe listening to the poetry of the words (if applicable). So while I'm used to the stage... it's a whole different world.

And I think that I think too much about what people think. I have songs, and I've watched other people who also have songs -- more or less studied them and tried to find out what it is that people with songs do.

• People who have songs tend to showcase said songs, usually doggedly.
  
• These songs tend to become precious to the communities in which the person belongs.
  
• Occasionally, a person who has songs will rise into the consciousness of wider and wider communities,
  
• but the common thread running through all people with songs is that they never cared much about that bit. They only had their songs and a desire to share.
  

I guess I always had songs, but I never much had the desire for sharing 'till now. If I had to guess, I would say I probably only have God to blame for that. I can't logic it out how it comes to be that desire grows where no desire has ever grown before, or how love multiplies in a world that seems to crush love underfoot at every turn. All I know is, it does.