I played a show the other night and got into a conversation with a young man (post-gig) about the future of the music and hospitality industry.
The young man was a waiter, and he demonstrated some tenacious vigour around a key idea to success: consistency.
“When success comes to you,” he directed at me, “It will be because the thousands of hours and songs you’ve already got behind you. And you just never know who is in the crowd listening.”
I liked his intensity. Of course, where the machismo of youth is often short-lived, it’s still cool to hear a young adult busting at the seams. And he seemed convinced that the key was in this idea of consistency.
And I would say that he’s probably right.
Amidst all the changes and disruption that Covid19 and lockdown levels have lauded on us, I have thought about two things: consistency versus the need to adapt and evolve.
Let’s start with the latter. As a musician, it’s been essential to adjust over the last couple of years. It’s either that or die. Every artist has had to reconfigure how to work and earn a living.
For me, I’ve had to make adjustments in other areas too: like parenting and marriage. We evolve and adapt to the season and what’s required of us.
Then there are some things that will never change, which leads me to the consistency tag.
There was a turning point for me a few years ago which was all about the idea that consistency breeds success.
If I go back to my earliest understanding of this, it was my mother recounting Eugene Peterson’s Long Obedience In The Same Direction. It helped that my parents walked the talk. Both still in ministry and both still with a fervent faith. They, in turn, each had good role models as parents. But it’s not only that. Each generation has to decide and has to tough it out amidst new challenges in each season.
In our generation right now, the case could be made for the need for common sense to prevail. On a variety of levels. So I submit this idea: let’s make common sense our consistency in 2022.
I look at presidents and leaders of some countries in the world, and it seems void of common sense that they are elected and somehow stay elected.
Case in point pictured right.
I listen to folks battling their own storm in a tea cup, and I think about how to lift their gaze. As it turns out, some of those conversations are futile – some people just like to have something to moan about. Common sense isn’t even on their radar.
I listen to voices in my own head, and I beat them into submission with a hammer of common sense.
A close mate of mine I was chatting to the other day deals with people in positions of power abusing their privilege, to the detriment of those they are meant to be serving. The kind of injustice that makes you rage inside.
I asked him how he copes.
“At the end of the day, a small but present voice-of-reason is better than the absence of one. I keep at that net.”
Amen, brother.
