When you hear someone say,
“Are we having fun yet?”
it’s usually somebody with a sucky
attitude trying to drolly underscore
the lameness of the current
situation. They don’t actually
want an answer—they just want
to bitch about life. But I’m asking
you seriously.
Are you having fun?
In your job? At home with your
friends and loved ones? In your
band, in your studio, or in your
other guitar-related pursuits?
I’m not asking because I want
to encourage the sort of “eat,
drink, and be merry, for tomorrow
we die” revelry that some of
us were warned about in church.
I ask because I want to remind
you that you’re not going to be
on this big rotating sphere of craziness
that long.
I don’t think I’m having a
bona fide midlife crisis yet, but
recently I’ve been thinking a lot
about why I do some things—or
why I do them the
way I do.
Maybe it’s because of how I was
raised. Maybe it’s because I was
the middle child of a very strict
father. Or maybe it’s some complicated
mix of biological, environmental,
socioeconomic, and
cultural factors. But, for whatever
reason, I grew up to be a pretty
reserved guy who thinks things
out and errs on the side of caution,
safety, and protecting myself
from harm, criticism, or other
negative ramifications.
On the whole, I wouldn’t say
that has worked out badly, but
I’ll admit my reserved, sometimes
over-analytical nature has
had its drawbacks. It has kept
me from going for it in various
pursuits—even sometimes in
music—because I was inordinately
worried about consequences or
what people might think. It has
also been misinterpreted as standoffishness
or lack of enthusiasm.
But I only realized this after
taking an honest look at my life,
observing other people’s behavior,
and being willing to admit there’s
room for improvement.
I think a lot of us are like this
in
some way or another. Whether
it’s because of social mores, supposed
morality, or something else,
many of us take certain things far
too seriously. Even if you’re that
guy at work or the party (or in
the band) who seems jovial and
lighthearted, there’s a good chance
you take some things more seriously
than you should. Even if you
grew up in a very permissive and
lax family, Western society teaches
you to get serious once you’ve gotten
out of school—and drab economic
realities like the one we face
now tend to ratchet that requirement
up several more notches.
Hell, even when it comes to
music—which is supposed to be
a source of joy and catharsis—
many of us refuse to have fun
because we aren’t satisfied with
our tone for longer than a few
weeks or months after acquiring
a sweet new guitar or amp. And
even though the average person
may hear us play and think,
“Man, that guy’s really good,”
we’re always thinking about that
screw-up in the last song (y’know,
the one we alerted everyone to by
making a weird face).
Certainly this restless seriousness
can be good when it
drives us to a healthy pursuit of
self-improvement. But if you
never step back and look at yourself—
really probe your behaviors
and motivations—you might
not realize you’ve crossed the line
from healthy to detrimental and
wasteful until it’s too late.
The biggest trap is that we’re
constantly telling ourselves we’ll
live it up once we get that raise,
or get a job we find more interesting,
or get a better house, or can
afford a boat or a custom-shop
axe. Only every time we cross
something off our list, we forget
that we were supposed to be having
more fun and instead start
obsessing about the next thing.
But none of us are going to get
all the things on our lists. Even the
precious few who luck out and
keep getting the things on their
list will never stop adding bigger,
“better,” less attainable things to it.
We’re junkies that way.
So here are some more questions:
Even if your job is pretty
mundane, do you take an interest
in others and try to laugh
and make the best of it? When
you get home from work, do
you wrestle your kids to the floor
and tickle them so hard that,
as they writhe around laughing
hysterically, they kick you in the
crotch or another sensitive body
part? Do you grab your significant
other, plant a huge smooch
on her/his lips, and drag them
out to do some crazy-ass thing
you haven’t done in ages—or
that you’ve
never done? When
you jam with your band, do you
throw in stupid, inappropriate
licks that make your bandmates
laugh and lighten up? When you
gig, do you make eye contact
with people in the crowd and
nod or smile or wink or
something?
Do you ever withhold
judgment of popular new songs
long enough to see that maybe
they’re huge because they’re fun
and make people happy—and
then glean something from them
to make
your music more fun?
I can’t say I’m great at all
these things yet, but I’m working
on them. Decades of habit
can’t be detangled easily from
the experiences and thought patterns
that engrained them in the
first place. But now I know—the
purpose of life is to have fun and
nurture meaningful relationships.
And as they used to say
at the end of those god-awful
G.I. Joe cartoons in the ’80s,
“Knowing is half the battle.”
Shawn Hammond
shawn@premierguitar.com