Re: thanks to everyone who contacted me,

I assume Gerry is passing this along from Clif... If so, please pass our
comments back to him, Gerry. Thanks.

Clif,

I have never had much confidence in my playing ability. Even when I was
out gigging from 2001-2004, I always felt like the light was going to go
on at any moment and everybody would know - my bandmates, the audience,
the bar help, the bouncer.

We played a gig one time at a bar. I had pneumonia and back problems and
was plain miserable and heavily medicated.

What I didn't know until later was that one of the founding members of
Molly Hatchet was in the audience. Good thing I didn't know since we
were doing Whiskey Man and I was playing the solo.

Anyway, later on, my other guitarist's wife overheard that other band
talking at a table. The Hatchet founding member was bad-mouthing my
other guitarist as to his ability.

Do you know how relieved I felt that he wasn't talking about me? That's
how lacking in confidence I was - if you didn't say sucked, I took it
as a compliment :)-

As for now, I just play for myself. I'll still post clips now and then,
but it's not a priority for me. What is important that I get to the
point where I can make music all by myself for at least an hour.

You've already arrived at that point and gone past it.

I hope you continue with music, but I don't blame you if you don't post
clips.

I hope you come back here.


GregD


Gerry <somewhere@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
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Subject: thanks to everyone who contacted me,
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but I don't really have any confidence in my ability to make music any
more. I haven't felt like picking up an instrument since that post and
I don't know if I ever will again. There's not much point if what I
put out is probably going to be garbage anyway and I don't have enough
judgment to even tell the difference. Even if I did decide to play a
guitar again, I certainly wouldn't want anyone to hear it. I think
that door's closed and locked.

I'm thinking now that any confidence I ever had in my playing was
probably misplaced. When people say stuff like that, they've gotta be
right. If somebody told any one of you something like that about your
fundamental ability to play anything on any level and they were right
and everybody knew they were right, would you want to play any more?
If I think about picking up the instrument, I think about how poorly I
play, and it just isn't any fun anymore. I have always thought
everybody I ever heard played better than I did. For all I'd know,
maybe everyone does. It's kind of like the Truman Show.

Anyway thanks to all who wrote - I read all the emails. I haven't read
anything on the newsgroup and I'm not going to. I really didn't want
to post any videos at all, and if *** hadn't helped me, I doubt I
would have. I'm not blaming him or anything, I just never felt
anything I ever recorded was good enough to post on a public forum.

I'm not talking to those original posters because they don't know me
and could give a ***, but if any of you have a great deal of skill,
please be careful how you use your words. The ability to make music
is a fragile thing, and you might do some damage to someone that you
can't undo regardless of intention or rationalization of intention.
This might not faze you until years later, but at my age there are
many things I've said that I wish I never had, and I can't do anything
about it now, and I regret it.

As of now, I have a book to write. It's somewhat biographical, but
it's not about music. It's a look back at the past twenty years of my
life and who I've shared it with. I doubt it will ever get published
and I know very few people if any are going to believe any of it but
I'm going to do it anyway if I'm up to it. I've already started.

Sometime last week or the week before I saw a fellow on Oprah who had
written a best seller memoir that was found to be largely fictional.
It got me thinking that one thing I wouldn't need to do to a memoir is
stretch the truth. I'm probably just doing this because I need to, but
if nothing else, it will pass the Oprah test and maybe I'll feel
better when it's done.

Clif


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