Stories, Thoughts and Snippets
Independence 1 Independence 2 Independence 3 Independence 4
To my surprise the more I really looked at the girl who had taken me in, the less I wanted to look anywhere else. She believed I had talent, that I had it in me to be great, but she also believed that I had not done it yet, and she also questioned whether or not music was really the medium I should be working in, which insulted me a little at first, but I could not deny the logic of her theory. Strangely she did not seem put off by the idea of supporting me either. She craved a steady male presence in her life, particularly since her father had died, I think it was her father to whom I owed the greater part of my success with her. He had instilled, in both of his daughters, a fervent love of art and culture, and by his example his daughters learned both self-reliance and selflessness. Not to mention that the gentlemen had died in a most pragmatic way; nearly at his retirement, in a non-faulted automobile accident, while on a business trip. He had provided very amply for both of his daughters in his will.
Lucy probably could have lived a comfortable life on her inheritance alone, she likely could have supported me on it as well, but two year after her fathers death she still insisted on finishing her courses in business school, and eventually starting her own company. I knew that in her I had much to lose, but I also knew that if I thought of her in those terms I would doubtlessly lose her. The more I thought of her as something I could not afford to lose, the more I hated myself. Why did you not just live off of your parents, live the life they were willing to hand you if all you are going to do is live as a leech attached to some girl who is living her own version of the life that was waiting for you?
I had the answer that got me by, if I were doing it myself then I would never have the time to achieve the life I truly wanted. All the time that I spent working out chord progressions and scribbling lyrics, she was studying, making connections. So I threw myself into my music, sometimes writing in binges through the whole night, stopping to make love to Lucy when she woke to find me still in the living room, hunched over my guitar, making corrections in my notebook. Lucy was always honest, she would tell me if something were better or worse, and she would tell me what she thought. She always thought I could do better, and I always agreed with her. We even agreed on my most basic problem, I could not find my own voice. I could play anything going on in the scene, usually better than the originals could, and I could write original pieces in someone else's style that might believably pass for their work, but they were never as good as their work because they always sounded like the original artist had just tried to repackage their first effort.
Eventually I was approached to play as a studio musician, and even though I did not consider such work art in any way it did for the first time ensure me a steady income that would allow me to survive, if not flourish, on my music. My time in the studio also allowed me close contact with other artists, some of whom I respected, some not, and I sought inspiration in them. I also justified the studio work by considering it as good recording practice for when I would finally record my own. So I cut back my live performances and worked. The more seriously I took my work, the more seriously Lucy seemed to take me, I began to believe that, as long as I refused to quit, she would not, or maybe could not, leave me.