I’m going to do this in a few parts, because if I try to get it all out in one shot, I’ll be up until 5 AM (something I’m trying to avoid these days) and I’ll lose you all about a quarter way through.
So, let’s address what’s on my mind right now first.
My name is Scott Crawford, and I’m scared to death of making music.
Let that sink in for a second. Snicker if you will, get angry if you like, or react in the manner of your choosing. I’ll wait while you’re doing that. Got the initial reaction out of your system? Good. Let’s continue.
To elaborate some on that first sentence, the second half of 2006 was not a good time for me. I was under a tremendous amount of stress, both personal and professional (most of the latter brought on by some terribly unprofessional, inconsiderate people who shall remain nameless, though I’m somewhat certain they’ll read it at some point). On the evening of December 19th, about a song or so into a show I was playing, opening for Nanuchka, it all came to a head, as I began suffering a panic attack on stage. I’m reasonably sure I’ve told this story somewhere before, but I’ll continue nonetheless. It hit me at that moment that my performance was essentially me reliving every bad thing that’d ever happened to me, set to music, and all I wanted to do at that point was die. Somehow, I got through it without ending up in the fetal position, a straitjacket, or worse. I focused as intensely as I could on the sound of my vocals (as was rarely the case, the sound person made me sound better than I had any right sounding that night), and when I started to stagger, become short of breath or lose focus on what I was doing, I exaggerated it, to do the best I could to make it look like “part of the act”. It was one of the hardest things I ever had to do, at the end of a year full of a lot of the hardest things I ever had to do, and when it was done, I never wanted to be on a stage again.
From there, I cancelled my next show with Nanuchka (apologies to Bruce at The Loop Lounge; the respiratory infection I cited as my reason for cancelling was obviously only half the story, though it did take me two months to get over that, too) and had my friends in Strange Things Done In The Midnight Sun replace me on that bill, which, I am happy to say, seemed to serve as a springboard to good things for them. It was a really dark time for me. On New Year’s Day 2007, while driving from Manhattan back to Queens, where I was living, I actively considered driving my car off of the 59th Street Bridge. To inject just a touch of levity into this really bad situation, I still can’t figure out how I would’ve gotten the car off of the bridge, exactly. Those who are familiar will know exactly what I’m talking about.
Since that happened, I’ve moved away from New York, back home, and I’ve spent the past year trying to get my life together, with results ranging from “total, abject failure” to “not so bad”. Thankfully, it’s leaning more toward the latter these days. However, music is still really tough for me. Since that night in December, I’ve performed in front of an audience, and only a virtual one at that, twice, for a grand total of about 7 songs between the two attempts. I was very tentative in doing so, and I have no plans of doing so any time soon. I catch myself thinking about it, or hear myself say or type it and feel like a total whiny crybaby, but my music, which was so important to me for so long, has become really painful for me, and I haven’t found a way out of that yet.
To elaborate on why I feel like a crybaby, I knew a guy named Pat Briggs, once upon a time. Some of you may remember Pat as the lead singer of the band Psychotica. I spent a lot of time around Psychotica as a tag-along (my girlfriend and her friends were huge fans, and eventually good friends of Pat’s) during a good chunk of their existence. I never got the impression that Pat cared for me much (as I said, he was close to my girlfriend, and we were on the outs for a lot of the time I knew him), but I will say that Pat taught me more about being an entertainer, the privilege of being an entertainer, and having respect for everyone who has the guts to step onto a stage than anyone else I’ve ever known, and he did it totally by example, and probably completely inadvertently to boot. (Pat, if you do ever read this, thank you so much.) It really is a privilege to entertain people, to gain and hold their attention, and to get the opportunities that these things afford a person, and while I’m having a really hard time even thinking about doing it these days, there’s also guilt attached to my not wanting to do it. Just to cite a quick example of why: how many of you have ever heard of a band that talked about how great it would be to play a club in New York City, just once? You know, like the one I fell apart on the stage of? So many people would kill for the opportunities I’ve had, and yet, when people ask me when I’m playing a show again, it makes me feel like someone just died. And then it makes me feel guilty, because all those people want to do is be entertained by me, which on a surface, not-dealing-with-it-like-a-crazy-person level, is such a fantastic honor.
So, that’s kind of where I’m at on music. I’m even having a hard time working on other peoples’ music (I’ve been dragging my feet on a reworking of Richard Hackley’s “Bald Mountain Party” for a long time, and there are other people interested in working with me who I haven’t gotten back to), even though I’d be more in the background in those situations. I’m doing a few things that’ll hopefully get me thinking musically again (I have a hand-me-down sampler coming my way this weekend, and I did set up a Facebook page for my music, finally, though there’s nothing on it yet…), but they’re far from a guarantee.
I don’t know if any of you have ever dealt with this before, but if you have, any insight you have on how you did deal with it would be greatly appreciated.
More about where I’m at in other areas of my life soon.
