I'm Not Really Here
Part I
It was a passing scene in a movie - something urban with snappy dialog.
Her friend swings by some house for a quick errand. There’s a party at the house; she tags along and takes exactly two steps into the house. Friend disappears and she waits, avoiding eye contact. A guy chats her up anyway.
“Oh, I’m not really here” she says.
“No?” he asks, “Where are you - Really?”
I wasn’t going to be a landlord. I’d buy a duplex, do a quick condo conversion, live in one unit and sell the other. But it bogged down in legal crap & I got stuck with a rental property, and tenants. Since 2001, I provide a roof over young people, professionals, families, grad students. I’m not actually a landlord. Well, yes, I write my own leases, advertise vacancies, interview tenants, hire contractors and realtors and property managers. I update electrical & plumbing, hold security deposits & return when they move out.
I buy a second duplex. Real landlords hire a landscape company. They gut a place down to the studs & do a full reno. I neglect the lawn, do basic upkeep.
I failed the keyboard audition for the super-band, but the leader liked me and asked if I’d run sound instead. So I ran their sound system. Within a year, the band leader quit the whole business he built and tried to sell it to me. I didn’t know about all that - Me, have my own business? He sweetened the deal. His management company nagged me - buy his van & sound gear, and be our sound company.
I let him sell me the rig; I have a van of gear and 100 gigs per year - a full schedule, right out of the gate. I have a sound company.
Renee drags me to Office Max to get some instant business cards. I’m stuck thinking of a logo, and tap some choice on the kiosk screen. The cards run out after a few years and I never print more.
I incorporate the business, get more gigs, more clients, hire more engineers and build a team. I buy more equipment, and a second van, and a third, and rent a fourth on busy weekends. I get used to operating on little sleep. I make myself pull over and nap when I’m too drowsy on the drive home. One night I pull over a mile short of my house because I know i can’t make it that far. One afternoon I have to stop and nap on the way to the gig. I wake up from my powernap and know it’s time to pull myself off the gig roster.
I bump myself up to management, to stay back and coordinate, while my guys are out on jobs. I’m running a live sound company. We add stage lighting.
I never put a name on the vans.
After 10 years, I think “If I’d known I would do this for 10 years, I’d have planned more”. I was always working a week in advance.
I have no website, or insta, or even a domain name. I take contrarian pride - “Our website? We don’t have a website. We have a waiting list. Shall I take down your info?”
True, word of mouth kept us busy enough without any marketing. Yet I never put the name out, as if my company would last. Legit audio guys can quote mic models and speaker dispersion patterns.
“What do you think of the new Meyer M75’s?” someone will ask. “that’s a brand, a letter & a number”, I’d reply dryly.
I never take on debt, as a business should. I run at zero overhead; two steps and out the door at any moment. We work out of my garage, no tie to a commercial lease.
I score bigger gigs in the corporate speaking world, I pin lapel mics on former US presidents. Production houses fly me to Denver & San Diego & Maui, and I meet their semi full of gear at the loading dock with a local union crew. I’m hanging their speaker arrays in convention centers. and I am utterly full of shit. The locals know the drill better than I do, so I let them rig the speakers.
I put a pin on a map for every venue where I work. Boston becomes one solid mass of pushpins.
Sometimes I want to get out, but the gigs & clients keep coming. I want to sit somewhere silent and let all those sounds drain back out of my ears. I offer to sell the business to my employees. No takers.
The business doesn’t fit a conventional description, and it’s not easy to sell outside our circle. To run this thing you’d basically have to be another me. Luckily I know a few other me’s in the region. But I can’t sell to them - they’re all trying to close up shop and sell their businesses too. It’s a running gag - “Hey Kevin, would you like to buy a sound company?” “Nope. Would you?”
Standing by the door for 20 years, till I shut it down during Covid, and retired without selling it. When I closed the business, the band whose audition I failed was still my faithful client. They asked me to stay, offered to sweeten the deal, still not seeing the imposter they had all along.
I’m cycling solo for months across the emptiest places in the US. I’m self-sufficient, carrying a complete pack of food, clothing, shelter, spares, and tools.
A serious cyclist has the fancy shoes that lock into the pedals. I only use toe clips. And you wouldn’t catch me dead in the ridiculous overpriced spandex clown suits the fanatics wear.
I cycle 8 hours a day; cover thousands of miles, climb vertical miles.
Then I get the fancy shoes - “clipless pedals”, they’re called.
I am a microwave ready-made-meal cyclist and those are chefs cooking from scratch. I just go across states, they cross continents.
Someone describes me as “athletic”, and I scoff.
I fill out a dating profile. I’m not dating dating, but it’s fun to peek at those dating people at the dating zoo. They sure are goofy, good thing I’m not them. I survey the scene - purely as an anthropology study. Sure I read profiles and write and get someone to write back and we date but I’m not really there. I’d be an idiot to risk that.
Dedicated musicians know all those dropped names and music theory modes and famous albums. And facts don’t stick like that with me. I don’t know who were the side men on so & so album, and I don’t realize that the bassist playing on my weekly gig was also on jazz albums I had on vinyl, when I was in college.
I just noodle on the piano. Adam watches me play, shaking his head - “that’s just noodling?” he asks. I don’t like my sound, but he claims he’d give his eye teeth to play like me. My playing sounds trite to me, and has no chops. Real players practice scales, and shed, and have technique. I’m just good enough to be around actual talent and appreciate their profound gifts.