I went to LaRose last night which is right on Germantown Ave. I mentioned it before in an older post, “Oldies n Undies…” or something.
I did a two song set. Those guys like me in there. Every time I walk in it’s like hitting up grandma’s house. I’m just sayin the atmosphere is so friendly and open and full of that warm goodness that only grandmas seem to conjure in their kitchens.
Anyway, I sang and played two songs. Both of them were covers and when I was done the oldest guy in the band sat next to me at the bar. He had been playing his alto sax and took a break for a ginger ale. He started talking to me about music. “You’ve got a great feel for the guitar,” he said. Which was really nice of him to say seeing as how I only ever play 4 chords a song. 6 max. He said I had a great feel for the guitar but that wasn’t all. That complement was administered the way a nurse asks you about all your favorite things before jabbing you with a needle. Cuz after he was done buttering me up he came in for the jab and I didn’t even expect it. Or maybe I did but I was hoping none of those well seasoned musicians could see past my front. “Music is more than chords though,” he said. And I could tell that by the tone of his voice he was a teacher and this was not new to him. I also felt a lot younger than I’ve felt in a while, like a little girl who had been caught hiding in the broom closet when she should have been out sweeping the porch. I felt adolescent… in trouble… seen through. “Music is passion. Without the passion there is nothing. People want to see your passion.”
People want to see your passion. That was the needle the struck the skin, that bled the vein, that siphoned the poison from my heart. Because I knew I had been holding back. I knew that I had refrained from writing, refrained from singing from that special place, and honing my craft because I’d been hurt before and well it just wasn’t worth going back to that place to put back all those dammed pieces.
And then the old man did something remarkable, at least to me. He broke the stranger code and became my grandfather. He leaned in, put his hand on my arm and planted the words of hope into the wound he had dug into my scabbed little heart. “Passion is the side of music that we can’t see or predict or even write. And without it, is music even music?” That was the dare of all dares. He was telling me to make music and to live it. To let it be the breath of life and then told me to blow it coolly into the lungs of my audience. What a dare. What a wish. What a notion…
Without passion, is music alive? And what have I done by separating the two, even for a moment?
