Gig Life Quotes

Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semitransparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end.

And in fact the only way I can deal with this eerie situation at all is to make a conscious decision that I have already lived and finished the life I planned to live - and everything from now on will be A New Life, a different thing, a gig that ends tonight and starts tomorrow morning.

As an adult, getting paid thousands of dollars a week to say, “Aye, Sir. Course laid in” is a seriously sweet gig, but when I was a teenager, it sucked.

Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged; but a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end. Is it not the task of the novelist to convey this varying, this unknown and uncircumscribed spirit, whatever aberration or complexity it may display, with as little mixture of the alien and external as possible?

That’s a stupid name! Whirly-gig is much better, I think. Who in their right mind would point at this thing and say, ‘I’m going to fly in my Model-A1’. People would much rather say, ‘Get in my whirly-gig’. And that’s what you should name it.

Boys are adorable. Boys trail off their sentences in an appealing way. Boys bring a knapsack to work. Boys get haircuts from their roommate, who “totally knows how to cut hair.” Boys can pack up their whole life in a duffel bag and move to Brooklyn for a gig if they need to. Boys have “gigs.” Boys are broke. And when they do have money, they spend it on a trip to Colorado to see a music festival. Boys don’t know how to adjust their conversation when they’re talking to their friends or to your parents. They put parents on the same level as their peers and roll their eyes when your dad makes a terrible pun. Boys let your parents pay for dinner when you all go out. It’s assumed.

Thing is, as ye git aulder, this character-deficiency gig becomes mair sapping. Thir wis a time ah used tae say tae aw the teachers, bosses, dole punters, poll-tax guys, magistrates, when they telt me ah was deficient:'Hi, cool it, gadge, ah'm jist me, jist intae a different sort ay gig fae youse but, ken?' Now though, ah've goat tae concede thit mibee they cats had it sussed. Ye take a healthier slapping the aulder ye git. The blows hit hame mair. It's like yon Mike Tyson boy at the boxing, ken? Every time ye git it thegither tae make a comeback, thir's jist a wee bit mair missin. So ye fuck up again. Yip, ah'm jist no a gadge cut oot fir modern life n that's aw thir is tae it, man. Sometimes the gig goes smooth, then ah jist pure panic n it's back tae the auld weys. What kin ah dae?

This misery of a gig called life is just a dream from which we all eventually awaken, he said. Nobody gets left behind. Even the most horrible dreams end.

We ran into them at a Goldfrapp gig. They attended it the way I go to gigs with my own husband now—fun, dinner first, home by eleven, something to do. There’s only a short stretch in your life where you can attend gigs with spiritual commitment.

I later learned that Houston's "gig" was to "trancesport"/transport Cathy and little Kelly to the infamous Bohemian Grove for prostitution.

Life is about women, gigs, an' bein' creative.

Food’s my only bag. It’s my gig, my art, my life. Always has been, always will be. I’m always battling myself – the part of me that says I can and the part of me that says I can’t. My greatest gift has been that the part of me that says “I can’t” is always, always just a little bit louder.

He flushed with sadness, as if every moment of his life were occurring all at once—his sister dying in childbirth, his mother squirming in that one-room flop, poor Danny sliding between wet logs, Gig in jail, and Jules dead—and how many more? All people, except this rich cream, living and scraping and fighting and dying, and for what, nothing, the cold millions with no chance in this world.

Before I’d signed on with Caldswell, my life had followed a pattern: obey orders, climb the ladder, keep my eyes on the prize. It was a good gig, dangerous and exciting with glory as my reward. Most of all, though, it was simple. A path of my own choosing where I did what I loved, knew where I fit, and understood where I was going. Now, though, I felt like a dollhouse in a tornado.

Examine for a moment an ordinary mind on an ordinary day. The mind receives a myriad impressions - trivial, fantastic, evanescent, or engraved with the sharpness of steel. From all sides they come, an incessant show of innumerable atoms; and as they fall, as they shape themselves into the life of Monday or Tuesday, they accent falls differently from of old; the moment of importance came not here but there; so that, if a writer were a free man and not a slave, if he could write what he chose, not what he must, if he could base his work upon his own feeling and not upon convention, there would be no plot, no comedy, no tragedy, no love interest or catastrophe in the accepted style, and perhaps not a single button sewn on as the Bond Street tailors would have it. Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning to the end.

In a way, for women, marriage was like an extended babysitting gig. The woman was committing herself to coddling and watching over a grown man for the rest of her life.

Change is the part of the very definition of life. The world changes, and flourishing demands constant growth and life-long learning.

In everyone’s life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being.

It's been a great gig. In this roistering life there a multitude of partings and meetings- I will look for you along the way-

He had dressed that way when his life had frozen in its place without him being aware that it was happening, so that he still dressed, now, at thirty-two, like he had been waylaid en route to a gig in a filthy basement.

I don’t care what they say about Aretha,” said Billy Preston. “She can be hiding out in her house in Detroit for years. She can go decades without taking a plane or flying off to Europe. She can cancel half her gigs and infuriate every producer and promoter in the country. She can sing all kinds of jive-ass songs that are beneath her. She can go into her diva act and turn off the world. But on any given night, when that lady sits down at the piano and gets her body and soul all over some righteous song, she’ll scare the shit out of you. And you’ll know—you’ll swear—that she’s still the best fuckin’ singer this fucked-up country has ever produced.

In real life, the value capture process is sometimes deliberately managed by elites to manipulate and control others with game design-like tactics. Gig economy platforms like Uber and Lyft use "badges" and rating systems to manage the decision-making environment of their driver employees. Even outside of work, social media features such as likes, shares, and retweets play the role of points in games. Over time, these simple metrics threaten to distort or take the place of values (say, the wish to meaningfully contribute to discussion or to take pride in the quality of one's work) that might otherwise have inflected our behavior on these platforms.

We are here to build the house. It’s our work, our job, the most important gig of all: to make a place that belongs to us, a structure composed of our own moral code. Not the code that only echoes imposed cultural values, but the one that tells us on a visceral level what to do. You know what’s right for you and what’s wrong for you.

Late one night, as he walked back alone from a Kasuals gig, a truck screeched to a halt beside him and a group of drunken white youths jumped out, screaming racial abuse. Jimmy took off across a cornfield, easily outdistanced his would-be attackers and then, rather like Cary Grant in Hitchcock’s North by Northwest, lay doggo on top of Betty-Jean, until they gave up and drove away.

Warren Buffet famously said, “The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything.” On a personal note, I applied this strategy in recent years, and it dramatically improved my happiness. Instead of accepting every offer that came my way, I said no to a bunch of things like public speaking gigs, side projects that were a distraction, people who didn’t add value to my life, and every business opportunity that didn’t perfectly align with my current goals.

I’m about to head out the door to meet Hannah for coffee. Laura has texted asking if I want to take another improv course with her next month, and I’ve said yes. I’m reading the next book for our book club. Paul and his girlfriend are coming over for dinner next week. Sam and I are going to make Thanksgiving at ours an annual tradition. Claude and I are email pen pals now, and he always signs off, ‘I hope that you are well and that you do nice things,’ which I like very much. Lily and Vivian are trying to persuade me to perform comedy again. Probably I’ll just go along to their gigs and cheer them on. And there’s nothing wrong with that. I have a tiny little social life. A new way to experience the world when I want to. I really like my comfort zone, but I also know I’ll be OK if I leap into the unknown or the scary for a little while.

For my speaking gigs, the title of my presentation is always the same: 'The journey of a hero'. I learned from writer Joseph Campbell, that a hero is someone born into a world where they don’t fit in. They are then summoned on a call to an adventure that they are reluctant to take. What is the adventure? A revolutionary transformation of self. The final goal is to find the elixir. The magic potion that is the answer to unlocking HER. Then she comes "home" to this ordinary life transformed and shares her story of survival with others... My journey was like a war movie, where at the end, the hero has been bruised and bloodied, traumatized from witnessing untold amounts of death and destruction, and so damaged that she cannot go back to being the same woman who went to war. She may have even seen her death but was somehow resurrected. But to go on THAT journey, I had to be armed with the courage of a lioness... Individuals on the journey eventually find themselves experiencing a baptism by fire. It's that moment when they are just about to lose their lives, and they, miraculously, courageously find the answer that gives their life meaning. And that meaning saves them. In the words of Joseph Campbell, in "The Hero with a Thousand Faces", "The call to adventure signifies that destiny has summoned the hero. The hero, whether god or goddess, man or woman, the figure in a myth, or the dreamer in a dream, discovers and assimilates his opposites, his own unsuccessful self, either by swallowing it or being swallowed. I still see my younger self so clearly from that fateful day in my therapist's office. She stands up, in tears, on a mound of snow. Pissed off, she shouts, "Bitch!!! I'm not going to be swallowed!

In heist movies, there's always a montage of scenes where the caper crew rehearses for the big day. The greaser person practices maneuvering through a mock laser beam field made up of string. The driver races through obstacle courses, back alleys, and dark city streets. The hacker pounds on her keyboard, staring at screens full of code. The gadget person demonstrates all their clever toys. The key master practices opening a safe. The muscle finds a few security guards to knock unconscious and wrestles guard dogs to the ground. The inside person seduces or befriends the target and gets them to spill their secrets. And the leader organizes it all with the help of her second-in-command. At least, that's the way it works in the movies. In real life, with a bunch of newbs who are scraping by with low-paying jobs, inflexible hours, difficult bosses, and a bunch of side gigs to make ends meet, just organizing a rehearsal heist was one hell of a task.

even. By the time things were done, I was exhausted and depressed and just really, really unhappy. We all were. But it didn’t have to be that way. That experience taught me to take agency in my own professional narratives, and that endings don’t have to be failures, especially when you choose to end a project or shut down a business. Shortly after the restaurant closed, I started a food market as a small side project, and it ended up being wildly successful. I had more press and customers than I could handle. I had investors clamoring to get in on the action. But all I wanted to do was write. I didn’t want to run a food market, and since my name was all over it, I didn’t want to hand it off to anyone else, either. So I chose to close the market on my own terms, and I made sure that everyone knew it. It was such a positive contrast to the harsh experience of closing the restaurant. I’ve learned to envision the ideal end to any project before I begin it now—even the best gigs don’t last forever. Nor should they.

As associate beauty editor, it was my job to represent the magazine at get-togethers like these: to rub elbows and be pleasant and professional. Seriously, it was the easiest gig in the world! And yet it wasn’t always so easy for me. “I’ll take one of those.” I stopped a dude with a tray of champagne. “Thanks, honey.” “Hi, Cat!” a beauty publicist with a clipboard said. “Thanks so much for coming!” “Good to see you,” I lied. Thunder clapped outside. “The gang’s over there,” she said. The publicist was referring to the usual group of beauty editors—my colleagues. They were from every title you’ve ever heard of: Teen Vogue, Glamour, Elle, Vogue, W, Harper’s Bazaar, InStyle, O, Shape, Self. I attended events alongside them every day, and yet I never felt like I belonged. I’d spent years trying to get into their world: interning, studying mastheads, interviewing all over town. But now that I was one of them, I felt defective—self-conscious and out of place in the dreamy career I’d worked so hard for, and unable to connect with these chic women I’d idolized.

At this crisis certain inventions in machinery were introduced into the staple manufactures of the north, which, greatly reducing the number of hands necessary to be employed, threw thousands out of work, and left them without legitimate means of sustaining life. A bad harvest supervened. Distress reached its climax. Endurance, overgoaded, stretched the hand of fraternity to sedition. The throes of a sort of moral earthquake were felt heaving under the hills of the northern counties. But, as is usual in such cases, nobody took much notice. When a food-riot broke out in a manufacturing town, when a gig-mill was burnt to the ground, or a manufacturer’s house was attacked, the furniture thrown into the streets, and the family forced to flee for their lives, some local measures were or were not taken by the local magistracy. A ringleader was detected, or more frequently suffered to elude detection; newspaper paragraphs were written on the subject, and there the thing stopped. As to the sufferers, whose sole inheritance was labour, and who had lost that inheritance — who could not get work, and consequently could not get wages, and consequently could not get bread — they were left to suffer on, perhaps inevitably left. It

When I put together my early bands, usually some other singer who was short of one would take it away. It seemed like this happened every time one of my bands was fully formed. I couldn’t understand how this was possible seeing that these guys weren’t any better at singing or playing than I was. What they did have was an open door to gigs where there was real money. Anybody who had a band could play at park pavilions, talent shows, county fairgrounds, auctions and store openings, but those gigs didn’t pay except maybe for expenses and sometimes not even for that. These other crooners could perform at small conventions, private wedding parties, golden anniversaries in hotel ballrooms, things like that — and there was cash involved. It was always the promise of money that lured my band away. Truth was, that the guys who took my bands away had connections to someone up the ladder. It went to the very root of things, gave unfair advantage to some and left others squeezed out. How could somebody ever reach the world this way? It seemed like it was the law of life. It got so that I almost always expected to lose my band and it didn’t even shock me anymore if it happened. It was beginning to dawn on me that I would have to learn how to play and sing by myself and not depend on a band until the time I could afford to pay and keep one.

Though it finds its baldest expression in things like the Fiverr ads, this phenomenon—of work metastasizing throughout the rest of life—isn’t constrained to the gig economy. I learned this during the few years that I worked in the marketing department of a large clothing brand. The office had instituted something called the Results Only Work Environment, or ROWE, which meant to abolish the eight-hour workday by letting you work whenever from wherever, as long as you got your work done. It sounded noble enough, but there was something in the name that bothered me. After all, what is the E in ROWE? If you could be getting results at the office, in your car, at the store, at home after dinner—aren’t those all then “work environments”? At that time, in 2011, I’d managed not to get a phone with email yet, and with the introduction of this new workday, I put off getting one even longer. I knew exactly what would happen the minute I did: that every minute of every day I would in fact be answerable to someone, even if my leash was a lot longer.

Just after that first gig at The Dugout, our friend Randy Blazak

We rehearsed with Johnny a few times in May 1989 and played a gig in the parking lot at Frijoleros, a local burrito joint. Robin Zander from Cheap Trick, of all people,

I did make some speech along the lines of, this is my life, this is the way we live and shit happens. You don’t live like me. I do what I have to do. If I fuck up, I’m very sorry. I’m just living a peaceful life. Let me get to the next gig. In other words, “Hey, it’s only rock and roll.

you’ve ever had in your hand ever, and more than your dad makes in a year, schlepping and working his fucking arse off. I mean, what to do with it is another thing, because I’ve got another gig to do, and I’m working. But I must say, the first taste of a few hundred crisp new bills was not unsatisfying. What to do with it took some time. But it was the first feeling of being ahead of the game. And all I did was write a couple songs and they gave it to me.

Mine is just one such story; every day, people around the world are making creative breakthroughs that change the way we live, listen, and learn. And although it may seem like these breakthroughs come about spontaneously, born from inspired bursts of clarity, the reality is that most of them make their way to the surface only after a series of disappointments, false starts, and spectacular failures. If you can find a way to smile through the letdowns, learn from the disasters, and—above all—stay loyal to the people you care about, you’ll discover that you’re unstoppable. Life is messy, and we’re all just a bunch of creeps and weirdos. And that’s okay. We are perfect, just the way we are. Now go forth and make art.

Over a generation, America has grappled with one problem after another that could be said to have contributed to the decay of its politics and many people’s livelihoods. The American social contract has frayed, and workers’ lives have grown more precarious, and mobility has slowed. These are hard and important problems. The new winners of the age might well have participated in the writing of a new social contract for a new age, a new vision of economic security for ordinary people in a globalized and digitized world. But as we’ve seen, they actually made the situation worse by seeking to bust unions and whatever other worker protections still lingered and to remake more and more of the society as an always-on labor market in which workers were downbidding one another for millions of little fleeting gigs. “Any industry that still has unions has potential energy that could be released by start-ups,” the Silicon Valley venture capitalist Paul Graham once tweeted. As America’s level of inequality spread to ever more unmanageable levels, these MarketWorld winners might have helped out. Looking within their own communities would have told them what they needed to know. Doing everything to reduce their tax burdens, even when legal, stands in contradiction with their claims to do well by doing good. Diverting the public’s attention from an issue like offshore banking worsens the big problems, even as these MarketWorlders shower attention on niche causes. As life expectancy declined among large subpopulations of Americans, winners possessed of a sense of having arrived might have chipped in. They might have taken an interest in the details of a health care system that was allowing the unusual phenomenon of a developed country regressing in this way, or in the persistence of easily preventable deaths in the developing world. They might not have thought of themselves at all, given how long they were likely to live because of their tremendous advantages. “It seems pretty egocentric while we still have malaria and TB for rich people to fund things so they can live longer,” Bill Gates has said.

Still and again, on the page, I smithereen the five-minute rule; I take my own damned time to stretch and look around. Because music is possible, I want music. Because I skated, I want ice and air for prose. Because plot bores me and knowing doesn’t, I write to find out what I know, or if I know, or if I might know sometime soon. “Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end,” Virginia Woolf wrote, in “Modern Fiction.” She thought it, she said it, and at the hand press she and her husband called Hogarth, the press through which she published anything she pleased as she pleased (after her first two books), she sat with the weight of the words in her hands, the Caslon As and Bs and Cs, and letter by letter she chased haloes.

Women under 30 who don’t have children have closed the pay gap with their male counterparts. Once women have kids, they go to 77 cents on the dollar relative to their male counterparts. Part of our ability to create the same career trajectory for women with kids is to create more options and flexibility around where they work from. Part of working from home is the ability to work at different hours than the rest of your team, allowing for family needs like caretaking, side gigs, or hobbies that contribute to a work-life balance. It may be time to unroll the yoga mat or dust off the drum set in the garage, instead of spending 225 hours, or 9 full days, a year commuting.

The difference between what the movements of the 1970s wanted and what they got was telling. They wanted democratic control over the firm; they got employee stock ownership plans. They wanted less work, a life less dominated by demands of the boss; they got fewer jobs and work fragmented into gigs. They wanted less hierarchical trade unions; they got union-busting. They wanted freedom for creative pursuits; they got, in Fisher’s terms, “managerialism and shopping.” They wanted to change their relationship to the patriarchal nuclear family; they got admonitions to see coworkers as family and the need to be constantly networking. They wanted more interesting work; they got simply more work. They wanted authentic human connection; they got demands to love their jobs.39

Iadmire dogs because they have life figured out. They are here to love and be loved, and that’s pretty much it. There are side jobs they attend to with gusto—eating, napping, barking at squirrels, maybe digging some holes in the yard—but loving others and being loved in return is the main gig, and they know it. They ignore most everything that gets us upset and remain laser-focused on why we’re all here. They’re role models, honestly, and they remind me of what’s important.

I could read it so you don’t have to?” she offers, but I’m already halfway through. I start to read aloud. “ ‘I had this vision for creating a platform that would help people to connect and coalesce around the things that mattered most to them. It was a natural extension of what I’d been doing for years. People used to call me a humanist spirit guide—I guess that’s what I’m bringing to WAI now, just on a larger stage.’ “He doesn’t even mention us. Doesn’t say anything about how Jules and I dragged him kicking and screaming into this. I wanted to create a platform. Cyrus just wanted to baptize cats.” “To be fair, the Cat Baptism is one of the most shared rituals,” Destiny says, trying to lighten the tone. “Eight hundred thousand videos and counting.” I keep going. “ ‘I’m attracted to the solitary life, Jones says. You can imagine him in a monastery, although he’d have to cut off that halo around his head. In addition to creating a social network that millions of people are turning to for meaning and community, he is also taking care of his employees—he has just kicked off a mentorship program to give the women on his team the support they need to thrive in their roles.’ ” Destiny tells me to stop reading. “It’s just bullshit.” I take a shaky deep breath. “That’s my mentorship program,” I whisper. “Cyrus is telling them what he wants to hear. You and I both know that.” I’m stammering now, but I keep going. “ ‘He’s otherworldly but handsome in an almost comical way. His sentences are long, and when you’re in the middle of one, you wonder, where is this going? But he always manages to bring whatever he’s saying to a satisfying conclusion. Everything he says is mysterious and somehow obvious at the same time.’ ” At least this one is funny. I allow Destiny to laugh briefly. I get to the last line. “ ‘I have to say, I’m developing something of a crush.’ ” “Oh, for God’s sake, another woman in love with Cyrus. Take a number, sister.” Destiny leans over, reads the byline. “George Milos. Guess Cyrus appeals to all genders.” As we get up to leave, she says, “I don’t think Cyrus is a bad person. He’s just basking in a sea of adoration, and it makes him think more of himself than he should.” “Where does that leave me?” “You have a tough gig. No one wants to be married to the guy everyone thinks is going to save the world.

They always have one foot in the pre-multitudinal side of the two way mirror. The Pre-prismed, Unseparated, Infinite, Love-emanating, Conscious Oneness side. It’s a pretty good gig if you can get it. Playing in form without getting lost in it. Very low attrition rates. But for us planet-bound, mostly closed-apertured, Greater-Reality-impoverished lowlanders, most of us most of the time don’t have even a modicum of that access. It can be a rough road, and even when it’s not, even when life’s pretty good or better, we’re still mostly really cut off from Greater Reality, from our Greater Consciousness. It’s

We were on a swing through the Midwest, and Brian’s asthma had got him and he was in hospital in Chicago. And, hey, when a guy’s sick, you double for him. But then we saw pictures of him zooming around Chicago, hanging at a party with so-and-so, fawning over stars with a silly little bow around his neck. We’d done three, four gigs without him. That’s double duty for me, pal. There’s only five of us, and the whole point of the band is that it’s a two-guitar band. And suddenly there’s only one guitar. I’ve got to figure out whole new ways to play all of these songs. I’ve got to perform Brian’s part as well. I learned a lot about how to do two parts at once, or how to distill the essence of what his part was and still play what I had to play, and throw in a few licks, but it was damn hard work. And I never got a thank-you from him, ever, for covering his arse. He didn’t give a shit. “I was out of it.” That’s all I would get. All right, are you gonna give me your pay? That’s when I had it in for Brian. One can get very sarcastic on the road and quite vicious. “Just shut up, you little creep. Preferred it when you weren’t here.” He had this way of ranting on, saying things that would just grate. “When I played with so-and-so…” He was totally starstruck. “I saw Bob Dylan yesterday. He doesn’t like you.” But he had no idea how obnoxious he was being. So it would start off, “Oh, shut up, Brian.” Or we’d imitate the way he cringed his head into his nonexistent neck. And then it went to baiting him in a

In those days I used to set up the riffs and the titles and the hook, and Mick would fill it in. That was basically the gig.

Bobby went down in a tub of Dom Pérignon. Bobby Keys, so the story goes, is the only man who knows how many bottles of it it takes to fill a bath, because that’s what he was floating in. This was just before the second-to-last gig on the ’73 European tour, in Belgium. No sign of Bobby at the band assembly that day, and finally I was asked if I knew where my buddy was—there had been no reply from his hotel room. So I went to his room and said, Bob, we gotta go, we gotta go right now. He’s got a cigar, bathtub full of champagne and this French chick in with him. And he said, fuck off. So be it. Great image and everything like that, but you might regret it, Bob. The accountant informed Bobby afterwards that he had earned no money at all on the tour as a result of that bathtub; in fact he owed. And it took me ten goddamn years or more to get him back in the band, because Mick was implacable, and rightly so. And Mick can be merciless in that way. I couldn’t answer for Bobby. All I could do was help him get clean, and I did.

When Bill Wyman left, in 1991, I got extremely stroppy. I really did have a go at him. I wasn’t very nice. He said he didn’t like to fly anymore. He had been driving to every gig because he’d developed a fear of flying. That’s not an excuse—get outta here! I couldn’t believe it. I’d been in some of the most ramshackle aircraft in the world with that guy and he’d never batted an eyelid. But I guess it’s something that one can develop. Or maybe he did a computer analysis. He was very into that. Bill had one of the first. It satisfied that meticulous mind of his, I suppose. He probably got something out of the computer, like the odds against you after flying so many miles. I don’t know why he’s so worried about dying. It’s not a matter of avoiding it. It’s where and how!

When Bill Wyman left, in 1991, I got extremely stroppy. I really did have a go at him. I wasn’t very nice. He said he didn’t like to fly anymore. He had been driving to every gig because he’d developed a fear of flying. That’s not an excuse—get outta here! I couldn’t believe it. I’d been in some of the most ramshackle aircraft in the world with that guy and he’d never batted an eyelid. But I guess it’s something that one can develop. Or maybe he did a computer analysis. He was very into that. Bill had one of the first. It satisfied that meticulous mind of his, I suppose. He probably got something out of the computer, like the odds against you after flying so many miles. I don’t know why he’s so worried about dying. It’s not a matter of avoiding it. It’s where and how! But then what did he do? Having freed himself by luck and talent from the constraints of society, that one-in-ten-million chance, he goes back into it, into the retail trade, putting his energy into opening up a pub. Why would you leave the best band in the fucking world to open a fish-and-chip shop called Sticky Fingers? Taking one of our titles with him. It seems to be doing well.

When Bill Wyman left, in 1991, I got extremely stroppy. I really did have a go at him. I wasn’t very nice. He said he didn’t like to fly anymore. He had been driving to every gig because he’d developed a fear of flying. That’s not an excuse—get outta here! I couldn’t believe it. I’d been in some of the most ramshackle aircraft in the world with that guy and he’d never batted an eyelid. But I guess it’s something that one can develop. Or maybe he did a computer analysis. He was very into that. Bill had one of the first. It satisfied that meticulous mind of his, I suppose. He probably got something out of the computer, like the odds against you after flying so many miles. I don’t know why he’s so worried about dying. It’s not a matter of avoiding it. It’s where and how! But then what did he do? Having freed himself by luck and talent from the constraints of society, that one-in-ten-million chance, he goes back into it, into the retail trade, putting his energy into opening up a pub. Why would you leave the best band in the fucking world to open a fish-and-chip shop called Sticky Fingers? Taking one of our titles with him. It seems to be doing well. Not so Ronnie’s similarly inexplicable foray into the catering trade, always a nightmare of keeping people’s fingers out of the till. Josephine’s dream was to have a spa. They opened it, it was a disaster, it fell apart and went down in a blaze of insolvency proceedings.

To me, the true value of college is not in what you learn but in how you go about learning. Essential, for instance, is keeping yourself open to experiencing unexpected insights, even if they conflict with previously held views. That mind-set will serve you well in school, though really, it’s a mind-set worth striving for throughout all of life.

Over the years, I’ve made a habit of asking professionals with unlike areas of expertise for advice whenever I find myself venturing out of my comfort zone and into theirs for the first time. It’s a habit that’s served me well time and again—and certainly far better than letting ego stand between me and the information I need. There’s no shame in allowing yourself to lean on others’ expertise and become the student again; the only shame would be in not returning the favor should your wisdom be sought out someday. Most people—myself included!—love doling out wisdom, especially on subjects they’ve dealt with for most of their professional lives. It’s a big, confusing world out there, especially in the entertainment industry, and it’s important to actively develop for yourself a team of unofficial advisors that you can turn to for help in navigating the myriad decisions and dilemmas you’ll undoubtedly encounter in life. As

I was becoming all too familiar with the phenomenon that is the YouTube comments section. It was—and still is—a strange, sometimes ruthless place where you can observe our society slowly learning to get used to madness born out of the collusion of anonymity, freedom of speech, and the ability to say something to the entire world at once. Before the Internet, most people didn’t have to go through life reading vile insults directed at them on a daily basis, a phenomenon that is now familiar to most artists who release material digitally. And although reading negative or even downright cruel comments may initially prove disheartening, it’s not necessarily a bad exercise for an artist looking to develop a thick skin.

In some ways, Puddles was made for the modern Internet age. He’s a reflection of our loneliness and confusion in a world that’s come to be increasingly characterized by those emotions. Humans have never before lived in a time of such constant stimulus and abundance of choice, and part of me wonders if experiencing life as one big dopamine rush isn’t making us less happy instead of more so. In the end, aren’t we all just wandering through life with a suitcase and a lantern, searching for a place where we belong?

What we’re told as children about the value of “waiting our turn” doesn’t necessarily hold true when you get off the playground and into the world of adults. Waiting around in the hopes of being discovered as an artist has never been a good strategy. Go ahead and be impatient. We only have thirty thousand days on this planet, give or take, and the typical life span of a career in music is a small fraction of that. You don’t need to do the math to get the message: There’s not enough time to be wasting it waiting for someone else to decide when you’re up for your time in the spotlight.

The only jobs I could get were holding the coach's clipboard or running out of protein shakes. I didn't spend $90,000 for a stupid degree to run around ordering kale açaí green tea chia almond milk smoothies with a triple protein boost hold the shredded coconut. Like strawberry and banana is going to kill you? I had to take this gig just to pay the bills." It was Chloe's story and my story. It was Cristian's story and the story of countless other millennials we knew. We were living a life where our dreams and passions were always out of reach.

The most difficult battles we face in life are those we wage within. Self-doubt, feelings of unworthiness, and fear of rejection: This is the trifecta of demons that holds us back from reaching our full potential. We’re not born with these demons; for proof of this, one need only look at how free and uncensored young kids are. By the time most of us reach adulthood, however, we’ve devolved into a tangle of insecurities and negative experiences. From what I’ve seen and from what I’ve suffered, I’d wager that perfectionism hits artists the hardest. Artists—whose very calling is based on the expression of feeling—tend to be more introspective than your average human being and spend much more time living internally. Releasing a creative project out into the world requires ceding a part of yourself to the world and exposing it to the slings and arrows of external criticism. So, it’s only natural that the artist, aware of the vulnerability and invitation for judgment inherent in the act of creating publicly, would take painstaking care to ensure that whatever is released into the world is as close as possible to “perfect.” If left unchecked, this tendency to obsess and strive for perfection can lead the artist to devote months, if not years, to producing a single flawless creation. The truth of the matter, though, is that our actual creations will never be so perfect as we’ve dreamt them to be; they can only be perfected in the sense that, when released, they exist. Sometimes, it takes losing control to gain control over this obsession with perfection.

A word to the wise: If ever you should feel like you have too much choice in life, remember that life still makes a good deal of choices for you. You can only play with the hand you’ve been dealt, and options that you have in one moment often disappear the next if you don’t make moves to capitalize on them. The beauty in this is that drastic change is the catalyst for personal growth, and personal growth is a vital component of the artist’s life, with each phase of it bringing new challenges, new opportunities, and a new perspective.

Indeed, the people you surround yourself with will become the most important people in your life. If that thought doesn’t scare you too much, you’re probably doing it right.

Freedom doesn’t necessarily come from working for yourself, or from setting your own hours, or even from never having to worry about money. Freedom is a state of mind. It’s the recognition that pursuing what modern celebrity culture has a way of telling us we should want in life—fame, fortune, accolades—will never lead to contentment. Freedom is about surrendering control and letting the chips fall where they may—and knowing that you’ll be okay.

Naskar is made by Naskar alone, not an industry or benefactor - or more importantly, by family wealth. I had a roof over my head, food on the table, and clothes on my back - that was more than enough. I started writing with literally zero dollar in my pocket. Let me tell you how it began, because for some reason, I completely forgot a crucial event of my life when I wrote my memoir Love, God & Neurons. I once met an American tourist at a local train in Calcutta. The first thing he asked me was, had I lived in the States? I said, no. Then how come you have an American accent - he asked. Watching movies - I said. We got chatting and he told me about a book he had recently published, a memoir. I believe, this was the cosmic event that planted the thought of writing my own books in my head - I had already started my self-education in Neurology and Psychology, and I was all determined to publish research papers on my ideas, but not books. Meeting the person somehow subconsciously shifted my focus from research papers to books. So the journey began. And for the first few years, I made no real money from my books. Occasionally some of my books would climb the bestsellers list on amazon, like my very first book did, and that would keep the bills paid for several months. Then the invitations for talks started coming, but they too were not paid in the beginning. The organizers made all the travel arrangements, and I gave the talks for free. It's ironic and super confusing really - I remember flying business class, but I didn't have enough money to even afford a one way flight ticket, because I had already used up my royalties on other expenses. Today I can pick and choose which speaking invitations to accept, but back then I didn't have that luxury - I was grateful for any speaking gig and interview request I received, paid or not. One time, I gave an interview to this moderately popular journalist for her personal youtube channel, only to find out, she never released the video publicly - she posted an interview with a dog owner instead - whose dog videos had gained quite a following on social media. You could say, this was the first time I realized first hand, what white privilege was. Anyway, the point is this. Did I doubt myself? Often. Did I consider quitting? Occasionally. But did I actually quit? Never. And because I didn't quit, the world received a vast never-before seen multicultural humanitarian legacy, that you know me for today. There is no such thing as overnight success. If you have a dream, you gotta work at it day in, day out - night after night - spoiling sleep, ruining rest, forgetting fun. Persist, persist, and persist, that's the only secret - there is no other. Remember this - the size of your pocket does not determine your destiny, the size of your dedication does.

When is it best to give up on a major life goal? Early in my career, I always encouraged patients to keep trying, keep trying, don’t let your depression symptoms fool you into thinking you can’t succeed. Often that was good advice. Some applicants get into medical school the fourth time they apply. Some singers land a gig with the Grand Ole Opry after their fifth year in Nashville. But more become increasingly despondent as failure follows failure. Sometimes a five-year engagement turns into marriage. Sometimes staying another year in LA trying to break into film pays off. But not often. Sober experience combined with my growing evolutionary perspective to encourage respecting the meaning of my patients’ moods. As often as not, their symptoms seemed to arise from a deep recognition that some major life project was never going to work. She was glad he wanted to live with her, but it looks increasingly like he will never agree to get married. The boss is nice now and then and hints at promotions, but nothing will ever come of it. Hopes for cancer cures get aroused, but all treatments so far have failed. He has stayed off booze for two weeks, but a dozen previous vows to stay on the wagon have all ended in binges. Low mood is not always an emanation from a disordered brain; it can be a normal response to pursuing an unreachable goal.

For it matters not, how much we own, the cars . . . the house . . . the cash. What matters is how we live and love and how we spend our dash.

a couple years prior we were hitchhiking to a gig with no gear. Now we were on a fucking tour bus. We could eat for free at a catered backstage buffet. Life was good.

way that you see me? Broken heart that won’t lay down Is this the way you would be free? To take your life without a sound Is this the way that it should be? It’s not the same without you around…oh no-o-o…   It gave me frigging goose bumps. Seriously, I thought I might start crying like I had in college, so I pinched my arm hard enough to leave a bruise. Hearing two extremely talented people—world class musicians—perform my creation to such perfection with such inspired passion… well, frankly, it made me much more grateful to be alive. Not to mention it crushed any remaining doubts I had as far as holding our own against the very best talent the non-country music industry has to offer. Our rehearsal was one of the best we’ve ever had. High energy and inspired play… I thought we better have a frigging shower in our dressing rooms at our upcoming gig if we performed anywhere near this level. We were sweating like pigs, man, but someone told me once that pigs don’t sweat. At least not like us.

Endings don’t have to be failures, especially when you choose to end a project or shut down a business. . . . Even the best gigs don’t last forever. Nor should they.

And you do find those people. Whether they’re your friends, or—often you find these people that are amazing and beautiful and their whole life is about like—there are Foley artists, you know, sound effects guys, and their whole life is about trying to make this perfect “plop” sound. They’re like, “Oh, if you drop a stone in this metal basin with just the right amount of water in it, it will make a perfect “plop’ sound.” These craftsmen nuts, that’s all they do. They’re just geniuses. It’s beautiful. People who want to do the best that they can do even on something that most people don’t notice. And those are the people you want to find.

I was and still am a big Dylan fan and admirer, so I asked Bob Johnston if there was any way he could let me play on just one session. Sessions in Nashville are scheduled so you can fit four into a day: 10: 00 a.m., 2: 00 p.m., 6: 00 p.m., and 10: 00 p.m. As it happened, the guitar player they had scheduled for the 6: 00 p.m. session couldn’t make it and wouldn’t show up until the 10: 00 p.m. session, so Bob fit me in for 6: 00 p.m. I was the hungriest musician in the studio. I hung on every note that Bob Dylan sang and played on his guitar and did my best to interpret his music with feeling and passion. When the session was over, I was packing up my guitars to head to my club gig, and Bob Dylan asked Bob Johnston, “Where is Charlie going?” Bob told him I was leaving and that he had another guitar player coming in. Then Bob Dylan said nine little words that would affect my life from that moment on. He said, “I don’t want another guitar player. I want him.” And there it was. After all the put downs, condescension, and snide remarks, after all the times I’d driven to the hill above my house and shook my fist at Nashville and said, “You will not beat me.” After all that rejection, none other than the legendary Bob Dylan was saying that I might be worth something after all. It’s bits of encouragement like that that keep you going. Once in a while something just lights you up and you say, “Yeah, I can do this.

With their big hit, PiL had reached a whole new generation of fans, and the gig had sold out very fast. But right down at the front were a crowd of about three to four hundred hardcore, old-school punks who had come creeping out of the squats of Camden and Shepherd’s Bush to greet their hero. To

It’s pretty easy to be grateful when the sails of life are blowing your way.

Poverty consciousness results from wearing … blinders to the abundance of life.” — GLENDA GREEN, AMERICAN PAINTER AND AUTHOR

In 1991, a college sophomore studying music in the American Midwest made the mistake of selling some drugs to the wrong person. Until then, he hadn’t done much more than smoke pot and sell some of it to his friends. Petty vandalism at his high school was as high stakes as his criminal career had been. Then, as these things tend to go when you’re just 18 years old, he tried to push the envelope and test his boundaries. He started experimenting with hard drugs like LSD. But he was naive, and the brashness of youth got the best of him. He sold some of that LSD outside his circle—to an undercover policeman. And as if his luck couldn’t get worse, like a scene out of a TV movie of the week, the judge, under pressure to make an example out of this young man, sentenced him to 6 to 25 years in prison. It’s a faceless, timeless story that transcends race, class, and region. A young kid makes a mistake that forever changes their lives and their family’s lives as well. We are all too familiar with how stories like this usually end: The kid spends their most impressionable years behind bars and comes out worse than when they went in. Life on the outside is too difficult to contend with; habits learned on the inside are too difficult to shed. They reoffend; their crimes escalate. The cycle continues. This story, however, is a little different. Because this young man didn’t go back to jail. In fact, after being released in less than 5 years on good behavior, he went on to become one of the best jazz violinists in the world. He left prison with a fire lit underneath him—to practice, to repent, to humble himself, to hustle, and to do whatever it took to make something of his life. No task was too small, no gig was too tiny, no potential fan was too disinterested for him not to give it everything he had. And he did. The story is a little different for another reason, too. That young man’s name is Christian Howes. He is my older brother.

Being the only girl in the gig was tough, so I appreciated Jacob's compliments and companionship. It wasn't necessary though. I could handle Sawyer. I grew up with older brothers and a father who didn't want me working in the family garage. They were horrified when I told them I was going to police college> They didn't think that was right for a girl, let alone a Carleton. I had to wake them up to twenty-first century. Still, there were times when I wondered if my father hadn't died before I graduated high school, he might have been abe to change my mind. Sometimes I wondered if I wanted to be a cop to make a difference or to make a point.

Some of them assumed that they would get the gig without knowing that many of the nuances in Megadeth’s music are found in the picking hand, not just the fingerboard hand.

How do you do? I’m Henry.” So he was Henry Jenkins. “I’m still Jane,” she said. Or, squeaked, rather. He was trying to fasten his seat belt and his look of confusion was so adorable, she wanted to reach over and help, but that wouldn’t be in keeping with the…wait, they were on a plane. There were no more Rules. There was no more game. She felt her hopes rise so that she thought she’d float away before the plane took off, so she pushed her feet flat against the floor. She reminded herself that she was the predator now. Tallyho. “This is a bit far to go, even for Mrs. Wattlesbrook.” “She didn’t send me,” said Nobley-Henry. “Not before, not now. I sent myself, or rather I came because I…I had to try it. Look, I know this is crazy, but the ticket was nonrefundable. Could I at least accompany you home?” “This is hardly a stroll through the park.” “I’m tired of parks.” She noticed that his tone was more casual now. He lost the stilted Regency air, his words relaxed enough to allow contractions--but besides that, so far Henry didn’t seem much different from Mr. Nobley. He leaned back, as if trying to calm down. “It was a good gig, but the pay wasn’t astronomical, so you can imagine my relief to find you weren’t flying first class. Though I’d prefer a cargo ship, frankly. I hate planes.” “Mr. Nob--uh, Henry, it’s not too late to get off the plane. I’m not writing an article for the magazine.” “What magazine?” “Oh. And I’m not rich.” “I know. Mrs. Wattlesbrook outlines every guest’s financials along with their profiles.” “Why would you come after me if you knew I wasn’t…” “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. You’re irresistible.” “I am not.” “I’m not happy about it. You really are the most irritating person I’ve ever met. I’d managed to avoid any women of any temptation whatsoever for four years--a very easy task in Pembrook Park. Things were going splendidly, I was right on track to die alone and unnoticed. And then…” “You don’t know me! You know Miss Erstwhile, but--” “Come now, ever since I witnessed your abominable performance in the theatrical, it’s been clear that you can’t act to save your life. All three weeks, that was you.” He smiled. “And I wanted to keep knowing you. Well, I didn’t at first. I wanted you to go away and leave me in peace. I’ve made a career out of avoiding any possibility of a real relationship. And then to find you in that circus…it didn’t make sense. But what ever does?” “Nothing,” said Jane with conviction. “Nothing makes sense.

through. A professor had met his wife years before at a Dresden Dolls concert, and now she was in a coma following a car crash; he sent me a necklace of hers as a keepsake. These were “real” people with “real” jobs, making society work. And there were a lot of them. I would take in all these stories, and one by one, ten, a hundred, a thousand stories later…I had to believe it. I would hold these people in my arms and I would feel the whole synchronicity of life and death and music envelop us. And one day I turned around and it had just happened without my realizing it. I believed I was real. I had just finished a gig in Perth and was driving to a fan’s house, to crash with the Australian crew, when Neil called me from New York. He said, My dad just died. What? He died. My dad just died. He was in a business meeting, something happened with his heart, and he fell over, and he’s dead. Oh my god, Neil. What could I do? I was about as physically far away from him as I could possibly be. We had only been dating for about three months, but it was long enough to have started falling in love. Do you want me to come to you right now? I’ll get the first flight out, I offered. I’ll just get on a plane and come be with you. No, darling. He sounded like a zombie. Stay there. Finish your tour. Go to Tasmania. No. I’ll come. Really. I want to. No, don’t. I’m asking you

is the strength of the songwriting. Dark Side contained strong, powerful songs. The overall idea that linked those songs together – the pressures of modern life – found a universal response, and continues to capture people’s imagination. The lyrics had depth, and had a resonance people could easily relate to, and were clear and simple enough for non-native-English speakers to understand, which must have been a factor in its international success. And the musical quality spearheaded by David’s guitar and voice and Rick’s keyboards established a fundamental Pink Floyd sound. We were comfortable with the music, which had had time to mature and gestate, and evolve through live performances – later on we had to stop previewing work live as the quality of the recording equipment being smuggled into gigs reached near-studio standards. The additional singers and Dick Parry’s sax gave the whole record an extra commercial sheen. In addition, the sonic quality of the album was state of the art – courtesy of the skills of Alan Parsons and Chris Thomas. This is particularly important, because at the time the album came out, hi-fi stereo equipment had only recently become a mainstream consumer item, an essential fashion accessory for the 1970s home. As a result, record buyers were particularly aware of the effects of stereo and able to appreciate any album that made the most of its possibilities. Dark Side had the good fortune to become one of the definitive test records that people could use to show off the quality of their hi-fi system. The packaging for the album by Storm and Po at Hipgnosis was clean, simple, and immediately striking, with a memorable icon in the shape of the prism.

I did a few opening-act gigs at United Nations and Water the Bush. I opened up for Digital Underground when they came to L.A. and

Directors started to see it too, so I began to get gigs in music videos, not even to dance. I guess the scar gave me a “look,” or an “edge.” It made me look like the tough guy I wasn’t, but I was happy to pretend. That’s all it felt like at first—pretending.

An Opportunity-Minded worker actively connects with others, learns new skills, and seeks out new experiences.

Stupid shit, Dane’s bein’ an ass. He’s about to fuck up royaly, he goes ahead with this gig.” “What gig?” “Met a girl from Plainfield. She asked him out. Kate says she’s pretty wel-known, seein’ as she puts out.” “Oh shit,” I murmured. Joe kept talking. “He wants a break from exclusive to test the waters but he also wants to keep Kate on a string. Kate doesn’t wanna be on a string.” “I don’t like him anymore,” I declared and Joe looked at me. “Won’t be anyone to like, he does this to Kate. She won’t take him back and he’l come back, buddy, believe me.” “She’s hung up on him, you sure she won’t take him back?” “Yep.” “How’re you sure?” Joe took another pul of beer, looked at the yard and he spoke. “Told her I been around, met my share of women, never met any like you, her or Keira. Not in thirty-nine years. Bein’ like she is, she doesn’t need to take shit. Her man doesn’t hand her the world, she throws him back and finds one who wil. No dickin’ around. Told her she needs to look at her Mom and and learn. You had three men in your life, al of ‘em wilin’ to hand you the world. She should accept nothin’ less.” He took another pul of beer then finished. “She got my point.” “Joe,” I caled. “Yeah?” he answered, his eyes not leaving the yard. “Baby, look at me,” I whispered. Joe looked at me. I leaned into him and put a hand to his face. “Sucks for you, you had to wait thirty-nine years,” I told him. “Yeah,” he replied. “But works for me,” I went on and he grinned.

Creative Takeaways Start a side project today and give yourself permission to fail. Is your main gig turning your hair grey? Take out an old idea, dust it off and play with it a while.

It was like somebody had pulled a plug somewhere. The '50s chicks being brought up all very jolly hockey sticks, and then somewhere there seemed to be a moment when they just decided they wanted to let themselves go. The opportunity arose for them to do that, and who's going to stop them? It was all dripping with sexual lust, though they didn't know what to do about it. But suddenly you're on the end of it. It's a frenzy. Once it's let out, it's an incredible force. You stood as much chance in a fucking river full of piranhas. They were beyond what they wanted to be. They'd lost themselves. These chicks were coming out there, bleeding, clothes torn off, pissed panties, and you took that for granted every night. That was the gig.

The other guy on that gig was George Jones. They trailed in with tumbleweed following them, as if tumbleweed was their pet. Dust all over the place, a bunch of cowboys. But when George got up, we went whoa, there's a master up there.

I was in love with the result—the image of me on stage, people cheering, me rocking out, pouring my heart into what I was playing—but I wasn’t in love with the process. And because of that, I failed at it. Repeatedly. Hell, I didn’t even try hard enough to fail at it. I hardly tried at all. The daily drudgery of practicing, the logistics of finding a group and rehearsing, the pain of finding gigs and actually getting people to show up and give a shit, the broken strings, the blown tube amp, hauling forty pounds of gear to and from rehearsals with no car. It’s a mountain of a dream and a mile-high climb to the top. And what it took me a long time to discover is that I didn’t like to climb much. I just liked to imagine the summit. The common cultural narratives would tell me that I somehow failed myself, that I’m a quitter or a loser, that I just didn’t “have it,” that I gave up on my dream and that maybe I let myself succumb to the pressures of society. But the truth is far less interesting than any of these explanations. The truth is, I thought I wanted something, but it turns out I didn’t. End of story. I wanted the reward and not the struggle. I wanted the result and not the process. I was in love with not the fight but only the victory. And life doesn’t work that way. Who you are is defined by what you’re willing to struggle for. People who enjoy the struggles of a gym are the ones who run triathlons and have chiseled abs and can bench-press a small house. People who enjoy long workweeks and the politics of the corporate ladder are the ones who fly to the top of it. People who enjoy the stresses and uncertainties of the starving artist lifestyle are ultimately the ones who live it and make it. This is not about willpower or grit. This is not another admonishment of “no pain, no gain.” This is the most simple and basic component of life: our struggles determine our successes. Our problems birth our happiness, along with slightly better, slightly upgraded problems. See: it’s a never-ending upward spiral. And if you think at any point you’re allowed to stop climbing, I’m afraid you’re missing the point. Because the joy is in the climb itself.

Why is choosing Folly to Understand cries the Boy", Its an old's Man's Gigs said the older Brother".

Bass was probably the King Bees’ closest follower, hanging out with them at Wimpy bars, coffee shops, parties, and gigs. She knew David well; he was likable, cheerful, enthusiastic, but almost bland and boring in his single-mindedness: “All he wanted to do was practice, and listen to tapes or records that he’d got hold of. That was his life. Everybody regarded themselves as an expert in music—but he really was. What made him different was he would pass a party, or anything, up if there was something he needed to do for his music. For the other kids, that was inconceivable.

I’ve learned to envision the ideal end to any project before I begin it now—even the best gigs don’t last forever. Nor should they.

What I have learned from IT is that whatever works. Never works, especially when you want it to work.

For my speaking gigs, the title of my presentation is always the same: 'The journey of a hero'. I learned from writer Joseph Campbell, that a hero is someone born into a world where they don’t fit in. They are then summoned on a call to an adventure that they are reluctant to take. What is the adventure? A revolutionary transformation of self. The final goal is to find the elixir. The magic potion that is the answer to unlocking HER. Then she comes "home" to this ordinary life transformed and shares her story of survival with others... My journey was like a war movie, where at the end, the hero has been bruised and bloodied, traumatized from witnessing untold amounts of death and destruction, and so damaged that she cannot go back to being the same woman who went to war. She may have even seen her death but was somehow resurrected. But to go on THAT journey, I had to be armed with the courage of a lioness.

How does one even live their life to its fullest, anyway? More parties? More girls? More drugs? None of my solutions seemed to fit the bill… I mean, hanging with the loony tunes wasn’t a bad gig for a high school student dead set on self-satisfaction, but what kind of future would partying and drugs bring?

Each of these monumental performances was a highlight of my career, but my anxiety about all of them paled in comparison to how nervous I was for this event [playing with my daughter]. The fact that it was just a gymnasium of parents sipping iced, non-fat lattes while fingering their cell phones made no difference to me. I was there for Violet and it was crucial that this performance go smoothly. So every spare moment I had from that day forward was spent preparing to be her flawless musical accompaniment.... this is the most important gig of my life, I thought.

Brian Wecht was born in New Jersey to an interfaith couple. His father ran an army-navy store and enjoyed going to Vegas to see Elvis and Sinatra. Brian loved school, especially math and science, but also loved jazz saxophone and piano. “A large part of my identity came from being a fat kid who was bullied through most of my childhood,” he said. “I remember just not having many friends.” Brian double majored in math and music and chose graduate school in jazz composition. But when his girlfriend moved to San Diego, he quit and enrolled in a theoretical physics program at UC San Diego. Six months later the relationship failed; six years later he earned a PhD. When he solved a longstanding open problem in string theory (“the exact superconformal R-symmetry of any 4d SCFT”), Brian became an international star and earned fellowships at MIT, Harvard, and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. He secured an unimaginable job: a lifetime professorship in particle physics in London. He was set. Except. Brian never lost his interest in music. He met his wife while playing for an improv troupe. He started a comedic band with his friend Dan called Ninja Sex Party. “I was always afraid it was going to bite me in the ass during faculty interviews because I dressed up like a ninja and sang about dicks and boning.” By the time Brian got to London, the band’s videos were viral sensations. He cried on the phone with Dan: Should they try to turn their side gig into a living? Brian and his wife had a daughter by this point. The choice seemed absurd. “You can’t quit,” his physics adviser said. “You’re the only one of my students who got a job.” His wife was supportive but said she couldn’t decide for him. If I take the leap and it fails, he thought, I may be fucking up my entire future for this weird YouTube career. He also thought, If I don’t jump, I’ll look back when I’m seventy and say, “Fuck, I should have tried.” Finally, he decided: “I’d rather live with fear and failure than safety and regret.” Brian and his family moved to Los Angeles. When the band’s next album was released, Ninja Sex Party was featured on Conan, profiled in the Washington Post, and reached the top twenty-five on the Billboard charts. They went on a sold-out tour across the country, including the Brooklyn Bowl in Las Vegas.

One reason is that we let our fears fester and grow, unchallenged, in our heads. We don’t examine them in the cold light of day and see what they’re made of. Another reason is that we are loss averse. We feel the pain of loss much more than the pleasure of gain. We pay greater attention to potential losses than gains, and we’re inclined to avoid possible setbacks more than we are to seek potential wins.

A friend dropped in on him after a gig and asked what was new. "Nothin' new," he said. "White folks still ahead.

For to be a next event. It depends on this current event success.

My romantic rejections of industry veterans have severely hurt my career—saying no to the wrong man has led to exclusion from professional events, lost contract gigs, my name's removal from my own work, and worse.

At the planning stage, he had suggested to Brook that a female figure should appear in the position of a ‘Sheila-na-gig’, a kind of ancient Irish stone carving of a woman with her knees more or less over her shoulders and her fingers pulling wide ‘a very large cunt’. The Irish name, he explained, meant ‘Woman of the Tits’. The giant phallus could perhaps, he thought, go up into the woman and then be seen on a ‘sort of spider’s web of veins, like the drapery of the placenta’.50

And of course, beginning in ’65, I’m starting to get stoned—a lifelong habit now—which also intensified my impressions of what was going on. Just smoking the weed at the time. The guys I met on the road were, to me then, older men in their thirties, some in their forties, black bands that we were playing with. And we’d be up all night and we’d get to the gig and there would be these brothers in their sharkskin suits, the chain, the waistcoat, the hair gel, and they’re all shaved and groomed, so fit and sweet, and we’d just drag our asses in. One day I was feeling so ragged getting to the gig, and these brothers were so together, and shit, they were working the same schedule we were. So I said to one of these guys, a horn player, “Jesus, how do you look so good every day?” And he pulled his coat back and reached into his waistcoat pocket and said, “You take one of these, you smoke one of those.” Best bit of advice. He gave me a little white pill, a white cross, and a joint. This is how we do it: you take one of these and you smoke one of these. But keep it dark! That was the line I left the room with. Now we’ve told you, keep it dark. And I felt like I’d just been let into a secret society. Is it all right if I tell the other guys? Yeah, but keep it amongst yourselves. Backstage it had been going on from time immemorial. The joint really got my attention. The joint got my attention so much that I forgot to take the Benzedrine. They made good speed in those days. Oh yeah, it was pure. You could get hold of speed at any truck stop; truck drivers relied upon it. Stop over here, pull over to some truck stop and ask for Dave. Give me a Jack Daniel’s on the rocks and a bag. Gimme a pigfoot and a bottle of beer.