CABARET

Last Thursday, I had the unique opportunity to see songs that I'd written performed by entirely different other people. I had put lyrics from a friend of mine to music and recorded them (8 songs in total). She assembled a band, rented out a space in hell's kitchen and put on a show where she performed the songs and interspersed them with monologues.

For awhile, I've been experimenting with the idea of making music for other people. This was my first project of crafting songs completely as a technician, which is a huge jump from writing songs to express myself creatively. It was an alien abduction to sit anonymously in an audience and watch the music spill out to the crowd without any personal control over how they'd be conceived.

To my surprise, I reacted very selfishly - I wasn't concerned with how people would take to the songs. I wrote them for my friend, and she'd already told me she was very happy with how they turned out. I also wasn't concerned about how she'd perform. I was way too worked up over the very irrational concern that the band play them right and sell them with the same conviction I invested in writing them. And the band was fantastic - they learned the songs in 3 weeks, performed them very faithfully to my arrangements, and put on a great show.

But I had a severe case of the nerves letting go of these songs. Do plastic surgeons feel like this, building the perfect nose, and then telling their patients not to become boxers or deviate their septums? I found it hard to let go.

I also realized how talented I am at ripping off Pat Benatar songs and Aerosmith power ballads, and how much more 'successful' I could be if I did so on a regular basis. Look out, mediocrity.