The Monkey on my Back

Hal Keely,an old friend and bandmate of mine, once said that being a musician is like having a monkey on your back. Hal was the kind of guy who just oozed creativity. He was a drummer and songwriter, and he composed his songs on a dulcimer, which we would then transpose over to guitar and bass. He even had a solid-body electric dulcimer built by local rising-star builder Ralph Novak (this was in Berkeley, almost 30 years ago--yes the time, it does fly by).
Anyway, that monkey, and the idea of it, stuck with me all of these years. It's maybe a bit of a negative way to look at having the muse be part of your life's calling, but in a way it's quite accurate. There is a certain eccentricity, a certain wobbliness in the life of a musician. There is always the need to give expression to that muse, along with the drawing-down of resources that might otherwise go into doing "normal" things like washing your car on Saturday morning, or hanging out with family, doing chores, going shopping, and so on. It's as if you were a distant star being viewed by an astronomer, and the astronomer were noticing a certain shakiness, a certain tendency for that star to wander off of its predicted path through space. From that observation, the astronomer could deduce that a planet was near that star, circling around it, pulling it this way and that.
The muse orbits us musicians. Some of us just shake and wobble a little bit. Some of us stagger. Some fall down and can't get back up. Sure, it's not just the muse behind this eccentricity. Other life events (like, oh, say, the death of a parent) can produce these effects as well, and maybe even be responsible for introducing the muse into our lives in the first place. Suffering is often the source of creativity: It is what defines us best.
Last night my band played in a local concert hall for a small-but-enthusiastic crowd. The sound was great, we played really well (in spite of the fact that I was recovering from the swine flu, and our leader had a cold), and we had a really good time, followed by a great band get-together in a local bar afterwards. This is the kind of time when the eccentricity suddenly gives way to an arrow-straight path to the heart, when the monkey disappears and we stand up straight, and we know that we are doing exactly what we are supposed to be doing, and there is no doubt.