Memoir Handbook #7 It’s Not the Success

It’s the Failure

The courage to fail is more enviable than success.

It hit me one day as I was washing my hands. Flowing water inspires thoughts of crystal clear clarity, and there it was, plain as day. I have failed, even in public, I will again, I don’t care, and that is something to envy.

I haven’t just made an album that flopped, I made an album that was virtually ignored, by music business standards. Then another, and another. I can’t even remember how many. 8 or 9. I was writing for the people who showed up at shows or wrote me emails and thanked me for the right words at the right time. That mattered to me, so I kept going.

One after another, without having a major label hit single or a career thrill to report. In Nashville they say “she couldn’t get arrested”. That was me. But I didn’t care. I was just moving forward. Enough people were gathering and buying CDs after shows to justify continuing the journey.

I didn’t compare myself to giants or place my work in a context that would render it unworthy of my attention. I sensed that was cruel and I knew it would make me stop working. I didn’t care, I was just thrilled to wake up with melodies in my head and be surrounded by people willing to play music with me. I felt my voice was a gift from God, I didn’t do much to learn how to use it. It was just there, surprising me too, and I never got laryngitis or lost it as singers often do.

I was obedient to the process of writing down ideas, and I knew substances like wine kept me from hearing melodies. I wasn’t strong enough to avoid caretaking in the lives of those who did like wine however, and codependency proved to be my vice. But at that time, writing and recording kept me out of trouble. I likened myself to Forrest Gump running across the country when it came to touring. In my impatience to share songs combined with label rejection, I found established acts to open for, or booked little venues. I simply left the house with my guitar and figured it out.

I have traveled through cities without speaking the language, moved to a city where I knew no one, drove to cities without enough bookings and found them, agreed to play solo shows before I really knew the guitar. I wanted the job. The list goes on, especially in terms of planning accommodations and travel. It all shaped and enhanced existing strengths. It doesn’t mean I haven’t been a frustrated whiner at times, but I can’t stand excuses (ask my kids). When I say just do it, I’m referring to personal experience.

I once found it odd that the waiter who brought me dinner backstage after my set at Anthology in San Diego complemented my singing. I know this is an almost autistic experience, considering it is rather obvious I would be heard for all in that theatre, (photo below) but I was shocked that he had just heard my set from the dining room. I contemplated how irrational that was. It was the first time I realized that singing made me encounter a holy invisible sensation. Just God and me. I relied upon that bizarre paradox for years. It was really the core reason I sought the stage. Singing felt like being alone with God, and sometimes I forgot that I was being heard by others.

Anthology, 2008, the night the waiter complemented me.

My biggest problem was that I was just making art, and I didn’t care. I didn’t care for instance, when a publisher told me that singing about a broken man in the song Fall For You isn’t appealing. I agree with him now- it is unappealing, but at the time I was just curious about the phenomenon of falling for someone who can’t even be there and still falling anyway. I knew I wasn’t alone. Now here I hear from women who had a Fall For You experience too. (They also weren’t duped into blindly trusting unelected sociopaths in the last two years.) Maybe it was all meant so I could simply prove experience and join hands with them. Maybe we are all onto something.

I didn’t care about appearance or fitness or costumes. I had well dressed friends who would pick stage outfits for me. I forgot to eat because I loved making music, I needed yoga to calm the anxiety I was managing without meds, and playing guitar burns calories. I didn’t place meaning on the fact that I happen to have a gorgeous mother and a good looking Dad, and that this is the body I landed in.

I once had a green room of local musicians howling over some minor GI issues prior to a show. I didn’t care.

Exit In, Nashville, 2005

I felt bad for female performers who couldn’t laugh at themselves, who cared too much about their appearance. Especially on those nights you could feel the audience getting drained instead of fortified by her musical offering, although I may have been guilty of that too.

Once I played a showcase at a club called Third and Lindsley in Nashville. I had written a song called “Red River” that was inspired by a Bible verse about the menstrual cycle being unclean. I thought that was an appropriate item to cover onstage in the Bible Belt. (insert cringey groan here) Never mind having the sense to remember which verse (it’s in Leviticus 15) or that I hadn’t done enough research on Jewish custom in the Old Testament, or searched for any context.

I was more rebellious than I could check, and I was channeling feelings I had about rejection, worthiness and growing up in a religious home through songs, in public. I told the story of the inspiration behind Red River before I sang. That probably got me written off by producers who took the time to drive their nice clean cars with leather interior into town to see some skinny blonde songstress. I beat myself up once I came to awareness about these kinds of public performance errors, but my gratitude for feeling spared now provides belly laughs at all of it. The songs themselves provided a mysterious purification system. However at that time, I didn’t know what to leave off the stage, or the importance of handling emotional wounds in private with safe people. As a songwriter, that safety is alchemical. A song written from pain can be invisibly baked into the lyric of a pop song that gets people jogging in the morning.

I never actually got there as a songwriter until later when I got so tired of my husband’s ex wife dropping by our house unannounced, that I wrote a song called Keep on Movin. It was a bad day turned joyous enough to be considered for a license in a children’s show.

I’m proud of myself for my fierce courage, despite it being rough around the edges. I truly didn’t care about anything but artistic process and raw inspiration. That doesn’t really work with a label that wants to sign, shape, groom and mold you.

I knew that, but I was still letting the world dictate vocational desires, so I kept unconsciously striving for label-worthy approval. I’m still a student of my former self’s flame and moxy, though. I mean, I’m a housewife now. I’ve gained some weight. I don’t push myself as a songwriter as much. Comfort is prominent. I could use a little of my old self. I like the reminder from pictures of what feels like another person in another life; only it’s me, a part of me.

Can you relate? These days, it is your failure that is often the rub for people with whom y’just can’t openly share. They’re a little jealous of your ability to openly flail and fail right now. You fearlessly look outside the chosen approved narrative. You’re willing to be wrong, to find out the voice you trusted isn’t who you thought they were. You do not have to excuse it. It’s not a personal reflection of you, and you know that.

You’ve already moved on, and you don’t care. You’ve demonstrated a willingness to discover in public, on social media or at a party that someone you wrote off actually knew exactly what he was talking about, or vice versa. You adjust and change, admit you were wrong, and you don’t care. You don’t seek the approval of a journalist or politician, you seek the approval of God. The rest is reduced to getting through psychological warfare.

You illuminate truth to someone who relies on identification with a journalist or a politician. You shine light on sentencing the self to a need to be right. You’d rather be happy and free. And so your “failure”, curiosity, and willingness to be wrong is enviable. You don’t give a spit about who’s who when innocent kids are in the equation. Failure is inconsequential.

That’s hot progress right now. It’s simply fire, the fire of purification.

Please note: I’m emphasizing past public failure that is creative and full of heart, not harm. I don’t include public character assassination or alleged malintent of others in this category of public failure. Public accusation is an inexcusable effort to stand in the problem and not the solution when no one can afford further division. Legitimate creative failure is different from this, and it actually informs assessment of others. It also ensures reasoning out concerns in private, which is where concerns about others belong.

As I write this, the Canada-US Freedom Convoy is barreling its way past cheering, free citizens. Meanwhile, Moms on Facebook in Southern California where I live, are checking up on their local gym to see if it is enforcing a vaccine passport system, not unlike the decade prior to the Holocaust. So I’m pretty sure your ability to metabolize past public faults and bloopers, and relate to this essay, counts as effective, enviable redemptive failure. (Not that you cared)

It’s only further revealed your freedom to fail, and that freedom is beyond imperative now. Thank you. Thank you for your ability to fail, and your ability to allow it to inform you of what really matters. It’s go time. Tell it on the mountain.