ordinary, table for one

tal·ent  /ˈtælənt/ Show Spelled[tal-uh-nt]  noun

1. a special natural ability or aptitude: a talent for drawing.
2. a capacity for achievement or success; ability: young men of talent.
3. a talented  person: The cast includes many of the theater's major talents.
4. a group of persons with special ability: an exhibition of watercolors by the local talent.

Talent's a funny thing.  It's a word I've heard a million times in my life, yet its impact and application have changed for me over the years.  When you're a kid, it's something you hope you have, to be able to show off and wear as a badge.  Before vanity kicks in and takes over, it's really our intangible qualities that we hope make an impression.  Parents are kind of nuts about that sort of thing, as well.  How many times have you heard someone proclaim that their baby is already showing signs of being "gifted"?  But, what's gifted?  To me, if you can sit down at a piano at age four and play Beethoven's 'Moonlight Sonata', you're gifted as hell, but can also claim no credit.  You clearly didn't work for that, but are just wired for greatness  I don't think you're gifted if you can put the square peg in the square hole.  I think that just means you're not slow.  Ah, but talent... I think talent implies gain over time.  It means some ass-busting transpired along the way.  But, that's just me.

I'm fairly certain that my brother showed earlier signs of musical aptitude than I did.  He was like the living, breathing version of Bamm Bamm from the Flintstones, as he would bang on anything that could be treated like a drum.  But, he would also sit at out mother's piano and gently play the keys.  He never hit them or clanked around like you might expect a toddler to.  He seemed genuinely interested in the sounds he was creating with his little fingers.  Me, I was off in my bedroom throwing myself around to 'Fame' by Irene Cara, a song that can still send me into impromptu belting in a public place.  Bo and I both played instruments growing up.  I rocked a clarinet for ten years while he made his way through alto saxophone, trumpet and eventually drums.  I remember when he got his first drum kit for his fifteenth birthday; he could already play.  He sat right down and got to work building patterns and making beats.  I was awe-struck.  I've never been like that with anything.  For me, it didn't come as naturally.

I got my first guitar when I was twenty.  It was a reissue of a sixties Fender Mustang, turquoise with a red pick-guard.  I chose that one because it was the right-handed, affordable version of the guitar Kurt Cobain had played.  I knew nothing about guitars, and I think my reasoning was that if I had to start somewhere, it could at least look cool, never mind how it sounded.  Luckily for me, it sounded alright.  I had several guy friends who played, and they were always holed up in their rooms with popular songs they loved, figuring out the parts on their instrument of choice.  I, of course, skipped that step.  I was impatient to get to the good part, where I got to sing songs that I would eventually write.  So, I started there.  I have a list somewhere of the motley and bizarre assortment of songs that I've learned by other people.  It's fairly short.  I've simply got no interest in it.  I don't mean to say that I don't kneel and pray at the altar of other peoples' music, because I do.  I just don't need to sing it when I'm the one on stage, you know?

I've spent the last fifteen years closely examining my guts and writing songs about them.  It's not always been a fun or pretty process, but it's been my process just the same.  Some songs are better than others.  A few of them have changed my life and made me believe that I'm really onto something.  Others have been thrown into the pile of Process Songs, to be revisited another day, if ever.  More than that, I've been figuring out how to sing the way I want to, and how to make guitar fit in with the other two practices.  I make lots of racket, some of it bad, all of the time.  My mother is a natural singer.  She was born like that.  Her voice is majestic and crystal clear; everyone who has ever crossed her path remembers her for it.  At no point did I think mine would ever reach that level of beauty, but I also knew early on that singing would have a different role in my life than it has in hers.  My singing is about telling you something.  It's not about being pretty.  If I sound alright along the way, god bless.  But, I often don't, and have lived with it for a long time.  The message still gets sent, and that is my primary purpose this time around.  I'll be pretty in my next life, maybe.

I recently worked with someone who thinks I'm good at some, but not all, of the things I do.  My ego took a hit at the announcement of this opinion, and it's given me pause.  Going in blind, this person assumed that I was one of those aforementioned Gifted People, but that my gifts were not yet fully realized to the extent that they could be.  (Laughable.)  While I agree that I've got a long way to go, in almost every area of my life, I've already been on the road for a bit, friends.  For starters, I was a positively horrid guitar player in the beginning.  My hands had zero natural relationship to that instrument and it was years before I played anything close to a proper chord.  Singing over said act was even more absurd.  Singing at all was a mess unto itself.  I have tremendous struggles with vocal pitch that have lessened some with years of practice and knowing what works for me - but you should have heard me back then.  My first song had two chords and was dull as a butter knife.  I think the following twenty or so were about the same...  I can assure you that no one in my life mistook me for a special talent of any kind.  But, I stuck it out.  I played, sang and wrote badly until it all started to improve.  If I've been given any gift at all, it's that I am driven to do better, to do more.  Always.

I'm never going to be the best in the room, and sometimes that's tough to sit with.  I play with all kinds of proper geniuses and savants and just straight-up ass-kicking people, people who can play anything.  It's true that if you stand me up next to them, I'm always going to come up short.  Yes, I can put the square peg in the square hole, but I often choose not to.  I think there's something to be said for the weirdos who don't care what fits where.  I say throw the damn peg out and fill the square hole with glitter.  I don't think F chords should ever be played major.  I don't know how to play a single Metallica song - and you know what?  I don't even like Metallica.  Big deal.  Doesn't mean I need to wear a helmet, it just means I don't care about that particular set of rules.  If you desperately need to find someone who fits that criteria, the world is crawling with them.  But, if you're looking for me... Well, I'll be writing my slightly-better-than-terrible songs on my turquoise Mustang, using all the wrong chords.  And I'm taking full credit, too.  My gift is my guts, but the rest is all me.

Thanks for listening,

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