If I don't belong anywhere....maybe I belong everywhere

I had my first show in 6 months last night. It was way smaller than I had hoped but to be fair, I could have promoted it more and I could have pushed the venue to promote it more.

It was a really amazing night, but it filled me with complicated emotions and made me realize some things about myself, and some challenges that I'm facing. I will focus on the positive aspects of the night in time but first I want to work through these complex emotions.

Only 5 people showed up aside from my partner and the couple who runs the shop. This was why I was a bit nervous about having a solo performance without any other people playing before or after me.

I always have some kind of goal in mind when I agree to perform. In the past it was not worrying so much about my playing and just accepting the outcome of my practice, whether I played well or poorly. It was being able to play without feeling nervous.

This time my goal was to be able to feel just as at ease talking and interacting with the audience instead of being like Robert Smith from the Cure who literally said nothing but "Thank you" when I went to see them.

Once I got comfortable enough to play on stage 4 or 5 years ago, I started to hide behind my music. I said very little because I didn't feel like I had anything interesting to say, or I felt that isn't why people came out, they came out for music.

But as I've started to see myself more as an artist than a musician (however talented or untalented I may be), I realized that I have every right to speak as much as I want when I perform. Of course I will try to make it meaningful and in harmony with the music.

Every tool I have, every color that I can paint with, I will use how I see fit. That was the goal of the night.

And from that perspective, that night was an absolute success. I think aside from one tiny mistake which led to 3 minutes of awkwardness (which I won't even bother mentioning), it was a solid night and I painted the best picture I could have given what I had to work with (the amount of practice I put in beforehand, my mindset, the people who came, the venue, and presentation).

I see every night as a piece of art that I'm sculpting, hopefully with some level of collaboration with others. That is the only reason I bother to join or hold events like this.

I woke up this morning with an immense sense of vulnerability though, and it was brought on by last night.

That feeling clearly comes from my place in my community and the relationship I have with people, the way I interact with the world, essentially.

The realization could be summed up like this: I don't make things easy on myself, but this is the only way I can create what I aim to create.

Abstract, yeah, I know. I'm trying to find the words...It's very hard to express exactly what this is about but it all comes down to group dynamics.

I've never felt comfortable as part of a group. It's not the idea or the reality of being part of a group, it's the tendency of people to stick to a group or else seeing the group dissolve. I find that most groups where the members don't give a whole lot to the group tend to fall apart. If you come and go, it's much harder to have a meaningful relationship with that group.

I would like to be a part of a group where the personal bonds don’t need constant watering, and I’ve only maanged to build individual relationships like that.

By my very nature, I float between groups. I build bridges. It's what I do. It’s what I enjoy. But in order to build bridges, you have to leave home sometimes, and go out and explore. You have to spend time with other communities and constantly make new realationships.

I LOVE this. It's what I live for.

But the result is that I can never seem to maintain any kind of meaningful influence in a group. The best I can do is create sparks and light fires that I won't necessarily be able to settle by.

To put this in less metaphorical terms, half of my social circle is "punks and hippies and weirdos" and the other half are people who are working normal jobs and living fairly regular lives but are open-minded, and don't judge me or these artist friends yet they are very immersed in mainstream culture just because of work.

I feel an intense culture shock with both kinds of people, as much as I love them as individuals.

With the hardcore artists (who I refer to as punks and hippies, because most of them are either activists or what some people would call "free spirits" who don't think about money other than for survival), I don't have the stamina, time or patience required to become a core part of their society. So I am always on the periphery.

That's fine, but it puts me at a disadvantage as an artist.

They meet 3-5 times a week and shoot the shit or watch the same bands and always try to be a part of everything the community does. They drink and smoke and stay up all night and generally don't have many friends living normal worker bee lives, except for the 30% of them who are actually worker bees but who have their lives completely divided between work and play, sacrificing sleep in order to play because they can't sacrifice work.

I don't have tattoos, I no longer drink, I've never smoked cigarettes, and I am tired of staying up all night. I don't seek comfort of being accepted by the group. I want to have meaningful conversations and to collaborate in creating stuff, shooting the shit feels like a waste of time to me.

I've overcome the addiction of constantly needing to have people around or needing to feel like I am part of a group. But it feels like this has cost me a lot of support from this kind of group.

Only spending 2-3 nights a month with these people resulted last night in none of them showing up for my show. That kind of hurt, not in the sense that I take it personally, but in the sense that I don't feel like they have my back. I know that they would if I worked hard for it, but I don’t want to work for it. That doesn’t feel natural to me.

It makes sense in a way, I haven't contributed my time and energy to the community in the same way that many other artists have, and I don't live like they do. But they are the closest thing I've found to a family in the city, so I feel a little bit exposed to the elements, just being a 3rd cousin or something like that.

The friends I have who are office workers and not part of an experimental artist community are all great people and I love them as individuals, but when I gather them, I start to feel like no one there understands my world, and I am a foreigner among them, even though in a sense I become the de-facto leader in such situations because I brought them all together.

It's a bit hard to describe why if you aren't living in a truly underground or "counter-culture" society. In working society, it's normal to praise people a lot, to make yourself "presentable", to know some "normal things" (popular TV shows, pop music, celebrity culture), and to show a bit of enthusiasm, whether it's forced or real. I don't think any of this is exclusive to Japan. (In the most stereotypical working environments its a bit more extreme but with my friends and acquaintances, it's a fairly standard level of "accessibility" that you'll find across the world).

Of the 5 friends who came, 2 of my favorite students, 2 friends from over 10 years ago and another floater like me who is bridging very different communities herself, I love all of them as individuals. Bringing them together also made me happy.... but it was also challenging. Not bad, and I hope we do it again but...a bit differently.

Being praised that much made me uncomfortable. I couldn't tell if they really enjoy my music and my writing or if they just don't know many people who have self-published their own book and jammed with serious musicians before and can play a full set of original songs.

Knowing whether or not it's real is definitely more of an issue in Japan, and perhaps it's because I haven't spent enough one-on-one time with any of them (outside the two students during class time only). I don’t think any of them intends to be dishonest or misleading, but I know they’d all feel horrible about saying I didn’t play great if thst was the case.

I remember a experimenta noise artist and drummer friend in Hong Kong once saying “you sucked tonight” and it stung like hell but it helped me grow. I needed to hear it.

It would be a whole lot easier last night if there were one or two other people from that artist world involved, but I've yet to find the personal connection with them as individuals here. I have a few deep personal connections with similar experimental artists in other countries, but as I moved cities 4 times, I've yet to build those relationships with many artists in Tokyo (we mostly meet in those big groups in the regular spots).

I am creating that bridge so it's my job to establish a new kind of culture, or to facilitate their development of a new culture between them, and they've entrusted me with that. I just wish I had a few more people from the other side to join me in doing it so I'm not the sole representative of that world, it feels a bit unbalanced.

I feel like if any of my artist friends from Hong Kong or China or America or Europe, or maybe one of my new acquaintances from the countryside were there it would have been a whole lot more comfortable and balanced to me. I really hope to make more of those deeper friendships with artists in Tokyo, enough that at least one or two will show up to such an event to help me balance that open-minded office worker culture with a more experimental aesthetic and high artistic standards.

I hope none of this came across as degrading to either the office worker friends or the artist friends if they happen to read it. I really truly appreciate the people who showed up and anyone who thought about coming but was too busy or tired or distracted.

One of my students said something to me that was very powerful. She said "You created a new community tonight". When she said it, it was both one of the biggest compliments I've ever received and also very bittersweet. It still feels half complete to me, and I hope they can stick around while I work on integrating everything.

I guess the goal for the rest of the year will be to find the people from the experimental artist world who I can feel a natural bond with, and eventually try bring everyone together so that eventually this "new community" feels more balanced to me.

I know I should be happy that I brought together 7 beautiful people (myself and my partner included) last night, and I will feel the joy of that from now. I just wanted to get this off my chest and organize my thoughts around it.

These "normal" people are actually quite extraordinary in their own way, and I want to help create an atmosphere where they can discover the artist inside of themselves.

The step forward is obvious. Next time I'll ask 2-3 other artists to perform with me. I won't know if people came for me or for the other artists, but that doesn't really matter. It's just about what the night turns into when gathering the right ingredients.

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