Alan and Marika have gone home, for the last time on this tour; I fly back in four days. The shows with Lowen & Navarro were wonderful — we played well, the audience thought so too, and Eric & Dan are good people of the rarest sort, career musicians who have no detectable egos. I want to be like them when I grow up.
Maybe it’s because I’m alone again, sans trio, or because I’m at the end of a long tour, or for a multitude of other reasons, but I’m having one of those moments when you wonder how qualified you really are for your job, anyway. Being a performing songwriter comes with a hell of a lot of scrutiny. Of a positive sort, most of the time, but magnifying-glass-wielding nonetheless. I’m not entirely sure whether I’m up to this. It’s not that I mind having my music (or myself) become the object of debate or critique. But it remains to be seen whether I can push all that aside and continue to write new songs the way I have in the past — without self-consciousness, just writing because I love to, because in some way I have to. In the end it comes down to a dark room with a piano, and the need to find out just how close I can come to touching perfection. You can’t go about such a task with reviews and accolades and forum posts knocking around in your head. You can’t go about it trying to please someone else. A certain purity of intent is required.
Come to think of it, I haven’t sat down and played a piano in an empty dark room in a long time. The only time I touch the keys these days is on stage. It’s like only seeing each other at work. Maybe it’s time to drive into the woods and make out in the backseat.