An old Spanish teacher of mine once remarked:
"Hard work beats talent if talent doesn't work hard."
Yes sir. Es verdad (you can see how far I got) but only up to a point. This statement must have had some resonance with me, how else would I still remember it a decade on? However, unlike a bloodied, patriotic central midfielder I've never known a musician who'd appreciate being regarded as purely "a grafter".
Let me put it this way:
"I loved his last album. It's so....tireless".
For me, there's always been an allure in making it look easy or, at the least, making it look like it's not been too hard. I don't want to be told what it took the songwriter to get to the last chord, I just want to get there and figure it out for myself even if I'm wrong. And I'm certain I don't want to see where the last brushstroke was. She came, He saw, He painted.
We know now this is rarely the case. We can swim a mile in unreleased sessions, we can drown in re-take's and deleted scenes. We can see it took a great deal more than a suitcase and a train leaving a station and, at times, I don't think either of us are the better for it.
I once went to a show of a band who now sit pretty. Sometime during the set the singer announced:
"This next song is a love song I wrote about...(name). So if you could all be quiet as it means a lot to me".
No thanks. I'll cry elsewhere.
The best an idol can do is inspire whilst letting you know that you need to figure out the slog for yourself. It takes time for the strings to hurt your fingers and to know that not everyone is going to love your sound. Further still to know you might not have any talent. What's the point in aspirations otherwise?
This takes me back to school.
When, on the one occasion they ever did, the careers councillor came in to ask me what I wanted to be when I was older. I answered, with all the seriousness a Derbyshire youth could muster:
"A Stuntman".
I wasn't fooling around. I genuinely thought I had what it took. I'd taken a few fierce dives onto my twin brothers mattress and I had, however shakily, climbed my neighbours fence to recover a pathetically directed frisbee and I was sure that was solid enough for a entry level position. What more could they have asked for?
The careers councillor, as they often do, was there to advise me otherwise. In this instance, he recalled seeing Sly Stallone in the film Rambo and then looked upon me, a twiglet of a boy. On turning to his computer and discovering that it could not tell him the number of GSCE's required to get from one to the other, he suggested I look into Puppeteering. I suppose it was snazzy enough.
I have to concede that, at the time, I was distraught with the outcome of this encounter. My family, who to their great credit have supported me through even more ludicrous ambitions, gave me no solace. They were quick to remind me that, at age ten, on a trip to the local swimming baths I had wailed:
"My shorts are drowning me!"
A stuntman never admits he is tall enough to stand up in the shallow end.
Perhaps I wasn't cut out for it after all.
Looking back though, I think this taught me never to listen to anyone whose job it is to tell you where you are going wrong. As mentioned, I think it's better to do it badly and figure it out for yourself. Life's too short for an encore anyhow.
That's me preached out.
I leave you, fittingly, with a man who did it all with a flick of the wrist.
A 4 minute 18 second song written in 1 minute flat.
Lots of love, legwork, longevity or, else, lazybones,
NDK
xx
PS.
Fear not.
On asking a dear friend of mine what he told his careers councillor he wanted to be. He replied:
"Paul Gascoigne".
Bob Dylan - True Love Tends To Forget
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