Bonding

So we didn't do the show on Saturday...
...but some things are worth more than your first stage appearance...

I'd given up a fair bit of my time and other priorities to set apart time for practice, between Tuesday (when they told me about the show) and Friday. But, somehow, things didn't work out quite the way I would have liked them to. We never had the whole band together at any one time, the numbers weren't being done upto our standards. I was always uneasy about going on stage with this kind of preparation. But there were some silver linings.

I spent one evening with Bean alone. I'd always felt some little tension between us. I think she hit the nail on the head when she said Bean probably felt threatened by my presence in the band. Which would be weird because he was the one who asked me if I'd like to join in the first place! My being older and somewhat more experienced than the others must've made him feel like he was losing his earlier unquestioned authority in the band. Not that I imposed myself anywhere - I'd anticipated this and tried to be as unobtrusive as possible - but there was still some very palpable tension between him and me.

But I wanted to diffuse it, make him feel at ease, and just work on being the best band we could be. And when he said that evening that he really enjoyed the session, when it was just the two of us, it felt good. I've been having freaky, even eerie, coincidences for the past few months. My fascination for astrology and star sign stuff had faded away, but I just asked him out of the blue, looking for SOME sort of explanation. It turned out we shared the same birthday...

On Friday, the session was not going well at all. Tempers were flying and even I lost it towards the end. There was no focus, no sense of priority, and an utter lack of time management. Pretty soon, it became apparent to me that there was no way we could go on stage like this. I took the plunge and mentioned it. The guys agreed reluctantly, but they too saw the truth. Then I suggested that they go on without me. After all, they could do the songs they did before I joined, and they didn't need any practice for those. Without even considering for a moment, they said either I'm there, or there is no show. If we do it, we do it together, as a band - or we don't do it at all.

Many people spend significant portions of their lifetimes trying to belong. Anywhere. When I heard them say this, I was more touched than I'd been in a very long time. For four people, who I've known for about a month and met about 5 times, to feel the same way about me...

Some kinds of friendships are pure chemistry, like between Grinny and me. Some need to be worked at to find the latent bonds. I was actually laughed at by some of my 'hardcore rocker' friends when I decided to join this band. I'm sure I'll be sniggered at by some people who knew me by sight and had some sort of image of me that they respected in some way. I might even be shunned by the rocker people who thought I was 'cool'.

But I CHOOSE this band of four. They are young, but at least they are genuine. They may not be great talents yet, but at least they are creative. They may be naive and gauche about the rocker code (which I will teach them - that's what I'm there for), but at least they are true.And they prefer to make music, not noise.

I see a future for us. And I'm going to show it to them too.

"We who are not as others!" - Sepultura, Chaos A.D.