THE BLUES
My friends and roommates, on the whole, are a creative bunch. They might not be Picassos, or Hemingways or Mahlers, but they’re far more creative and imaginative than most Americans. One thing that’s problematic for me, though, is that a lot of them are sort of secretive about their creativity. Secretive might not be the right word - private, maybe. Gen types all her stories late at night, long after I’ve gone to bed. Brian only plays guitar when no one else is home. Peter makes all his music on his 4-track, in the privacy of his apartment. Kate is apparently really good at singing the blues, but God forbid anybody should hear her - she only sings in her bedroom, with the door locked tight. It’s a pretty crappy way of going about things, and I’d love to get all self-righteous about it, but I’m afraid I’m just as guilty. I don’t sing when my roommates are around either. I type most of my stories late at night, and I work on my magazine in the back room of the third floor of the public library. Cometbus said something in a story about how funny he must look when he’s working on copy art - flying from machine to machine, feeding and folding and reducing and enlarging like a man possessed. “But doesn’t everyone look like a madman doing what they truly love?” he said. I finally saw Peter perform his funny 4-track music live, at the bowling alley the other night. He did look like a madman. He made all these weird faces, and when he was playing guitar he did this fucked up thing with one of his legs where it was kind of shooting around spastically and arhythmically - it was awesome. People do funny things when they’re in the throes of creation. I had an art teacher when I was a kid who said I always stuck out my tongue when I got real involved with a picture. I don’t know, maybe I still do that, stick out my tongue while I’m writing. I think it’s fascinating to watch people work like that.
It’s funny to think about what people make public and what they keep private. I feel uncomfortable singing when my roommates are around, but I have no problem hauling my guitar down to Belmont Avenue and singing on the street corner for hundreds of pedestrians. I’m not sure what that’s about. Sometimes you’ll meet a person and they’ll be really shy and quiet and then you find out that they sing for a punk band, and have, like, this alter-ego that can get up on a stage and let all hell break loose - and sometimes the people who are the most carefree and outgoing when you see them on the street or talk to them at a party are terrified of performing in public. There’s this tension where private and public life meet; when you know you’re being watched, it changes everything. It’s a very exciting feeling; it’s also scary as hell. I still get nervous playing for open-mic crowds of ten or fifteen people. When you’re playing for yourself, you can sort of edit. When you fuck up, you can be like, “Well, nobody was around to see it, so what difference does it make?” And that freedom to fuck up allows for a lot more experimentation. It takes a lot of balls to fuck up in public - you can’t imagine your mistakes away when there’s a roomful of people watching you. I guess people that write have it pretty good. They’re able to make their work public and edit out their mistakes - what’s missing is the tension and thrill of having a flesh-and-blood audience. Because it’s great to sing the blues in your bedroom where no one can hear you hit a wrong note or forget the words - but then nobody hears it when you hit that one part just right, when it all comes together, and then when it’s over you think maybe you didn’t hit it just right after all - just your bedroom walls playing tricks on you.
—Liam ‘Idiot’ Warfield, from Muckbound (c. 2001)
