11 Things You Should Know About Your Musician Friends
Musicians can be a lot of fun to hang out with, but sometimes we can make for challenging friends. Here's a list of ten things you should know about your musician friends – because, hey, we need all the friends we can get!
1 We're On Different Sleeping Schedules from You
The reason we won't meet you for coffee at 8 AM is not because we are lazy or don't want to spend time with you. It's because we went to bed at 4 AM after working all night. We'd be happy to have coffee with you at noon
2 Our Workday Never Ends
This isn't a complaint, by any means, and it feels weird to even call what we do work. However, being a musician requires long hours of concentration and devotion – and inspiration is unpredictable. We'd love to always be able to facebook message you or meet you for happy hour after your work day ends,but sometimes ours is just beginning.
3 Anything You Say or Do Can End Up Immortalized in a Song (Whether You Like It or Not)
Remember when you looked up, big moon eyes filled with tears, and poured your heart out to your musician friend? We do too, and because we love you, it was very moving. These moments often inspire, as they are the gateway to understanding the human condition. Don't be angry if your deepest trials inspire a song. We musicians cannot help ourselves – we are no match for the will of the muse.
4 Sometimes We Need to Disappear
"Hey, we hung out every single night last month and I've barely seen you in weeks. Are you mad at me?"
The answer is no!
Our social schedule is really more cyclical than anything. We spend long months immersed in our work – writing, recording, and then touring. When it's over, we just want to soak up "real" life like a sponge. But, like a sponge, we can become over saturated with ideas and feelings. At that point, the reclusive writing/recording/touring process begins all over again. Be patient with us during this time. We still love and cherish you and hope you are there for us when it's all over.
5 We Feel Things Deeply
Most healthy people do feel things deeply in their life from time to time. However, musicians take this to the extreme. So please bear with us if we are shouting from the rooftops with joy one day and then wallowing in the misery of an unjust and unbearable world the next.
Do we write songs because we feel things more deeply, or do we feel things more deeply because we write songs? Only the universe (and our therapists) truly know the answer.
6 Our Finances Are of the Feast or Famine Variety
Why, yes, that WAS your musician friend buying rounds of drinks for everyone at the bar last weekend and sporting a new pair of $300 boots – the same friend who cannot afford to get their license plates renewed this month.
In our minds though, those two things have nothing to do with each other. They operate independently in two separate universes. This is why we are musicians and not accountants.
7 Our Self Esteem Levels Fluctuate Wildly
We are sensitive creatures. Whether we show it or not, we crave acknowledgment and approval. So, when we play you our new demo, please listen to it and pretend to care.
If you start a conversation in the middle of it about what you did that day or start checking your Instagram, this can send us spiraling into a state of self doubt, humiliation, and re-evaluation of our entire life's purpose that can manifest into a true existential crisis. You don't want to do that to us, do you? Just listen to the damn song
8 We Don't Work Well With Structure
Maybe it's all the years of touring – of being in a different city every night, never having a routine sleep schedule and constantly negotiating different personalities that creates neural pathways in us that reject structure. Even the structure we create for ourselves is unstructured.
But never fear, some of your musician friends are actually dependable human beings and can be trusted to deliver if you allow them to work within their own comfort zone of controlled chaos.
9 Dress Codes Don't Apply to Us
Before you invite us to a wedding/funeral/Bar or Bat Mitzvah/Sunday church service, please realize that we are likely to show up with dirty hair, scuffed shoes, duct taped jeans, and some type of black designer jacket. But don't fret, just introduce us as your "musician friend" and the looks of disapproval will dissolve into big smiles as everyone knows musicians are exempt from formal dress codes. In fact, most people would expect nothing more or less. It's one stereotype we've all learned to be okay with.
10 We Like to Drink. A Lot
Wait, doesn't everybody?
11 We Love and Need You
Musicians' lives have a lot of ups and downs, but through it all we need and cherish our closest friends.
So, next time you get mad at your musician friend for being a habitually late, broke, moody, self-absorbed, unkempt, absent opportunist, just remember this list and remember we love and need you.
Omid 'Sekou' Wisdom on FB
