Musings on Mediocrity

me and Courtney Love

The woods would be very silent if no birds sang there except those that sang best. - Henry Van Dyke

The other day my mother and I were in the car. I was complaining to her, as usual, about my lack of skill or dedication to any one craft, the lack of motivation I felt to keep making things, or the lack of people noticing my making. She told me this story:

When she was young she had a roommate named Laura Girard. She and Laura are still friends, Laura is known as an excellent chef and overall saint on earth. Laura lived in a house in San Fransisco before she knew my mother. One day a woman moved into this house. Laura was almost a decade older than the young woman, who made questionable decisions. The woman really badly wanted to be a famous musician, though she had no natural talent at guitar or singing, or anything of that sort. She was always late on her rent, and generally rough around the edges. She and Laura didn’t really get along. The woman was Courtney Love.

I sat in the passenger seat, my complaining silenced. The point of her telling me this was clearly to tell me that I should keep trying and if I just want it hard enough, it could come. Also, even mediocre people can be famous if they really care hard enough.

This week I spent my mornings teaching at Rock 101 music camp. Kevin Herig is the inheritor of the Keva Juice smoothie fortune and the founder of this music camp in Albuquerque. The premise of the camp: for one week kids ages 6-11 get together and learn how to be in a band. At the end, they play a song on stage. A whole song!

On the first day, the whole group of instructors played Smells Like Teen Spirit by Nirvana. I sang. Then we had to teach them how to play it. By 11:30 am eight different kids took turns holding my hand on stage and singing with me while their peers played drums, bass, guitar, or keys.

On the second day, I was handed 4 kids and told to mold them into a quasi-band. This was a difficult ask - recall my inner monologue of mediocrity - and I only sort of know how to play drums and bass. But here I was with Taylor (9), Eva (10), Lukas, (9), and Arlo (8).

Eva wears a newsboy cap to camp every day. She has three in rotation, sequined, denim, and purple, and she pairs them with galaxy leggings to match. Eva wants to sing from the minute she walks in the door. Much like my mother, she is “rhythmically challenged”, but with a lovely voice.

Lukas is the spitting image of my ex when he was a little kid. Lukas loves Billy Joe Armstrong, lead guitarist and vocalist from Green Day. He wants to wear his leather jacket and his Aviators every day. When I ask him which song he would like me to write on the list of songs to choose from, he begs me to put Bulls on Parade by Rage Against the Machine at the top of the list.

Taylor is 10. She has an older sister who she looks up to very much. She agrees to play bass instead of guitar to fill out the sound of the band. She wears purple everything and gets very ticked at Eva when she calls her Tracy.

Arlo is 8. He is quiet but gifted on the drums. He can pick out the drum part in the Fleetwood Mac song, even at his young age. Arlo only wants to play a country song with the band, he even tells me, with a cheeky little smile, “I just don’t like Fleetwood Mac that much.” He tells me this after 35 minutes of deliberating with the band (mostly Lukas), about which song we should pick, and finally getting the other three to compromise on Go Your Own Way.

These first three days of the week are rough for me. I feel like I’m failing them when they don’t agree on the song, or when the drum beat is too hard to follow. Do they even like me? On the first day, a boy named Jaiden sang the Nirvana song with me. “I’ll sing if I can sing with her! Can she be my teacher?” I am not Jaidens teacher.

I keep telling myself that it’s only my first week. Eventually, I will win the interns over, and eventually, I will know exactly when to jump in and when to hold back. On this day, I do not know how to help yet, I don’t want to jump in and steal their spotlight, but I’m learning the ropes as a teacher, I’m still making mistakes and I fear it’s painfully obvious.

On top of this, I don’t know any of the other instructors or interns, and they don’t know me. They seem wary of me. They ask me questions and nod when I smile and answer, but they don’t include me in their little jokes yet. Maybe they can tell I’m a mediocre musician.

By day four Kevin, the director had come in and simplified the drum part, and told me to sing and play guitar along with the kids. Hallelujah.

By day five the kids are telling me about their brothers and sisters, and hugging me. They have the song down, well, quasi-down. They still get stage fright, and I have to count them in, but what do you expect? They’re 9 for god sake. I sing and strum with them. I smile and laugh and they sound great.

There’s a band that plays Iron Man by Black Sabbath. Their lead singer is a 6-year-old girl in a sparkly dress. She kills. The band with Jaiden in it plays Believer by Imagine Dragons.

On this last day, Friday, I am sad to leave camp at 12:30. I am talking to people my age for the first time in a month. If you are a reader of my Substack, you know that Albuquerque is not necessarily my favorite place. Today I am not having such a terrible time. No one in Albuquerque awaits my return, but these new people I have met do think I’m funny.

Courtney Love was not as talented as the men who teach the kids at Rock 101, but they all embraced the fact that music mattered to them. The kids in question are probably as talented and will be better than Courtney Love (if they stick with it). I may be just mediocre at the guitar, but maybe if I can care, people will care about me in return. Everybody likes to be cared about. Mediocrity is not everything. It cannot be my blocking point. The woods would be very silent if no birds sang there except those that sang best. The world would be a terrible place if the only people who made art were the people who were best at making art.