Why I Quit Being a Singer-Songwriter: The Long Form

Well, this is going to take awhile to get out the details—at least the salient ones that won't embarrass the innocent and slighty-guilty. This is not a tell-all, so don't ask me to name names. This is just my way of setting this down once and for all.

I really thought I was ready to try to be a professional singer-songwriter. I was feeling my Muse really strongly...maybe a bit too strongly. It was tearing up my soul, and messing with my sanity. Also, I got really sick of seeing my face all the time I logged onto my now deleted MySpace Music profile. I can barely stand the sound of my own voice, much less deal with my mug up there for all to see. Also, my production equipment was only about as much as I could afford...barely at that. I'll be paying that off for the next ten years or so.

Anyway, I was also starting to not like myself very much. I've read somewhere that being a singer-songwriter was a really narcissistic venture, and I guess you kind of have to be a narcissist in order to be successful in the entertainment business. How long can the storm of pain rise up before you start to get sick of waking up with it up to your neck? I just couldn't deal with it. After all, I tend to err on the side of extreme modesty to the point of entropy.

Though I've been told that I have a nice voice, I think I've been using it the wrong way. No, not technically using my voice to the point of overstressing it but using it to support the wrong ideas. How many songs of hearwrenching sorrow can one mind cobble up in a lifetime? It was ruining my mental health, no doubt about that. Add to that a Muse that turned out to be...well, not exactly what I had hoped. Oh, I was inspired to the heights and depths of love. It even hurt me to consider that I may end up spending the rest of my life without a taste of “true love”--if there ever was such a beast.

I can't live in service to what could be about the most hideous fraud ever perpetrated on the human experiment. Real love is about giving and being patient. It's not about torturing one's imagination by hoping for something that turned out to be transparently false. So I have decided that my voice will no longer be used in service for a fraud. When I sing, it will be in service of choral music in the proper settings. My ego isn't quite strong enough to withstand the machine that creates recorded music, and I just don't feel I have the ability to go it alone.

If I do go back to writing songs, it will be of a more spiritual and uplifting nature. I refuse to give my talent as a slave to a lie. If I can't create something that helps people feel that they have something to live for, I may as well not even bother. After all, I can't live the rest of my life writing songs of torment and emotional longing after a chimeral force. My soul needs to avoid that sort of crap in order for me to be emotionally healthy and mentally sound. I have too much to lose, and I just can't put myself on the altar as a blood sacrifice anymore.

If my former Muse happens to read this, let me make this clear: it's not your fault and it never was. I really did have to go through this in order to start realizing what is healthy and what is to be avoided as unhealthy. I'm sorry if...yeah, that's a big stretch there...IF you ended up caring about me. I'm the one who needs to be forgiven, but I won't ask that of you. I never wanted to be a famous sort. I never wanted to be a star. I just wanted to be respected for something in my life.

Just not now. I realize that I am simply not strong enough to deal with being a pro. I am not strong enough to stand on my own, but I don't have the skill set in order to navigate the seas that come so naturally to those who are successful in this field. I'm too damned broken to want to dredge up these old feelings and re-traumatize myself with the abuse I've felt in my past.

I'd just rather slink into the shadows and not be noticed at all. It's better that way. I'd rather be “normal”--if there really is such a thing as that. I'm sick of crying over being alone and in love with an impossible dream that will never come true. I certainly cannot force things to be the way I wanted them to be. I made far too many missteps and once more torched every bridge I tried to navigate.

It is far better to live an anonymous life than to live the sort of life that might end up as a major motion picture. Oofta! I don't need that kind of torture in my life, and my heart is heavy enough without the weight of yet another failed attempt at what I was never meant to become. I know this is a lot to share, and I promise never to speak anyone's name for it was truly all in my head.

Facing reality may be difficult, but it's really the only way. I can't single-handedly create intimacy, and I suffer from a condition known as TMI. This ain't a Twelve-Step meeting, so I am going to stop before I say too much.