Tuesday, January 17, 2012

So this promoter walks into a bar…



…and he says, you only have about 400 Facebook fans, so we won’t consider you for our festival.  We might let you come and play-- for free.
Hmmm, (along with some under-the-breath profanities which need not be duplicated here), sez I, my ego bristling.

But wait, I vowed to myself, my New Year’s Resolution, and lifetime resolution, as the new age-etarians are fond of saying, to 
dissolve the ego. 

Getting to that point of needing to dissolve my ego is a bit of a long story, maybe for another blog.  Suffice it to say, it appears to me that we all could benefit by dissolving the ego,  which comprises the brain, judgment, criticism all that fun stuff  and rather work from the heart.  Maybe that’s why we’re all walking around this planet in this lifetime.  Maybe we just didn’t get it last time around…
 
So I decide to go ahead and ask folks to like the music page. First Phil and I sent out a wry little note to our paltry fan base “We Live to be Liked”  which didn’t get too much response. So I look at all my friends on Facebook, about 1200, 1300.  And I’m wondering, who are all these people?  What real contact do I have with them.  I don’t really know most of them at all. And so, I embarked on a project to write each and everyone and ask them if they wouldn’t do me a little favor, and ‘like’ the music page.
 
It’s been a fascinating process.  I've been visiting  their Facebook pages, seeing new babies that have been born, musicians struggling to stay afloat, French people who probably won't understand my post, Dutch people who probably will, folks with parents that had just passed away.   I've been congratulating, consoling, and just being with.  

But each time I got to anybody famous or semi-famous, I was stopped.  I was sure they wouldn’t have time to answer such a puny little cry in the wind. But on I went anyway.  And the surprising thing, they usually all answered, and sometimes I even had a conversation with them.
 
As it turns out the process of connecting with people in this way was far more fun and valuable to me than any festival I might have played.

I’m about halfway through.  So on and on I go wading out in the waters of people, and the circle of friends that is making a small momentary ripple in this vast ocean where we are all the same…