Since November 2004 I've been playing punk-rock songs on my own, to other people. Sometimes I play an electric guitar, sometimes I play an acoustic guitar. I started playing because I was sick of seeing the same old pseudo-sincerity passed out in little phials to budding singer-songwriters. My outlook was that since I was so bad but ready to pop veins, someone would one day watch me and think "I can do this." That's when I always said I'd stop...
But I didn't... Sometimes I wish I had stopped playing - usually after I've screwed my eyes so tight shut that I can't see straight when I open them, pushed the air out of my lungs so hard my chest is tight and I wonder if this is where I stop breathing altogether, sweated buckets, wrecked my throat and made my fingers bleed for a room of people with this months perfect t-shirt to wonder why acoustic is the new black.
I didn't stop playing because of all the gigs where people stand so close they can feel the heat from your body, for all the times we didn't need a stage and the 7ft guy turned round and made sure the 5ft girl could see the band and not his back, for all the times people I didn't know sung along to songs they shouldn't know, for playing acoustic at the IQ in Boston, for every new friend I've met, for everyone that kept their word or took the time to talk and because sometimes I get to play with people like Chuck Ragan or Mike Park.
I am not going to do much for the next six months. Good plan.
