I'm Not Really Here, Part II
Part II
Previously: Part I
When I was younger, I had a bonafide ambition - to write software. I planned and expected it - this was no path I simply stumbled onto. This was my identity.
It was misery and failure. Once, my group was shuffled around the campus of our large thinktank. “Everyone pack your offices.” Instead of staring at my screen that day, unable to start, I assembled boxes, packed them efficiently, taped them shut, labeled them with a black sharpie, and stacked them in a pile. Afterward I looked at the pile of boxes and thought, “This was the best, most satisfying, productive day I can remember.”
The universe was telling me something I wouldn’t hear. And if I did, what was the message - I should be at a moving company? However inane the universe may seem, if you argue, you lose. A live sound company and a moving company share 80% of their DNA, and you’ll never catch someone from either who’s not carrying a sharpie.
You’re not a software engineer, you’re a logistics guy. You’re not a pianist, you’re a sound guy. You’re not a sound engineer, you manage sound engineers.
Pay attention: your software bosses were exasperated with you, your audio clients love you. Software was dead ends; Audio brings a stream of new opportunities.
I let the stream of opportunities carry me along. It becomes a river, then a whitewater. I heave on the oars and swerve around disasters.
Your first time in whitewater, all you want to do is hold on and survive. If you make it past the first few rapids, you begin to learn the rhythms of the swells. You cooperate with currents, not simply endure them. Not every bounce is a surprise, your tension eases, and by staying loose, you absorb impacts with grace.
You pass the wrecks of others who crashed out, stronger rowers than you. It’s not elite skill taking you past them, only good sense. You simply keep your eyes downstream, and don’t steer into obvious catastrophes. You’re just careful enough.
Whitewater is an invigorating shock on the skin. It slaps you, steals your breath, the cold sandy river scrubbing and cleansing you. The flatwater becomes boring and you’re impatient for the next good tussle the river can offer.
One day you realize you’re reading the river in a glance, the way a real chess player sees the whole board as a system of structures, not individual pieces. The river slows in your eyes, you see things before they happen. When you can predict waves, it’s like commanding them.
You’re dancing. You belong there.
And then March 2020.
For many people Covid meant working from home, or no more than 2 people in the office elevator, or marathon shifts in the care industries. For us, it wasn’t a layoff, we watched our whole industry erased in a week. We were in the business of packing hundreds, even thousands of people in one space breathing the same air. Every lighting tech, sound guy, stage manager, roadie, camera operator, set builder, video engineer, rigger, every professional I knew lost their livelihoods in an instant. Almost none got unemployment pay. At the time, we had no idea when, or if our work might return. Did we just lose our jobs, or our careers?
I stayed home for a couple of weeks. I hadn’t been so idle in 20 years.
The whitewater has dumped me in a cove. It’s unsettlingly peaceful, at first. I’m drinking hot tea on a river’s beach, wrapped in a thick, comfy robe. Getting used to the quiet, enjoying the glow of a fire.
The worst case is averted. There will be a vaccine. Live events will return, someday.
I see the river still rushing past my beach, and I know, as clearly as I’ll know anything:
There is not a fucking chance I’m getting back in that torrent. I entered it not knowing what it was. I deeply loved it, and I never want to do it again. I know too much and the river petrifies me now.
Thank goodness something made me stop, when I couldn’t stop on my own. Stay out, while I’m still in one piece. I’m done.
By late April I cancel all my client commitments, including the band whose piano audition I bombed, to start the whole ride. I trade in the three vans for a little EV hatchback.
After the vans and some of the latest gear, the business is essentially worthless, and I’m freed from my burden. I can stop trying to sell it. I had been struggling to extract the value from the company I made, and now there is none. It’s bewildering how happy this makes me.
I find myself in a strangely undemanding spot in spacetime. I survey my surroundings - there is no immediate obligation of school, or job, or the next gig, or finding a place to live, or family to support. No one is nudging me to start a business they need me to start.
I decide to write.
Life’s next chapter is on pause, awaiting definition. I make a website. I just want to write and create good content. SEO & engagement & subscriptions & thumbnails & metrics are a distraction. Let those bloggers worry about that bullshit. What to call the website? What’s it about, Why are you writing? Who are you writing for? What brand name do you print, on the side of the van?
Well, there’s gig stories and cycling stories, and AI stuff and sciencey explainers and apps I wrote.
I spend a couple years not starting the site, not knowing what it is. What should it look like? How to decide on the best design, that looks beautiful and clear, with a style that represents me? I don’t know, I tap on some choice from a template chooser. It’s lots of things, whatever. It’s a smorgasborg.