The Awakening....

Waking in Tandem

Insofar as I’ve spent a good bit of time away from the topic of music and the music industry and the effects it’s had on my life and the lives of those around me for quite some time now, I’d ask your indulgence to let me reprise the issue one last time.

To be frank, I had no intention of talking about my memories or experiences in the music business at length ever again. In fact, as these words put themselves down on paper before me, I’m fairly certain this tale will have little in the way of recounted nostalgic scenarios. But the notion to return to this area of my life, examine it again from the angle where I now sit, came about in much the same way a lot of my creative fits arrive; music.

I was riding home from my cushy job in Georgetown one afternoon and I realized I was listening to a song on the radio from much the same genre as the musicians with whom I’d worked. I quickly realized that not once during the enjoyment of said tune had I analyzed the technical, vocal or instrumental aspects of the tune. *!* That hadn’t happened to me in years.

A week or so later, I had a phone conversation with Liam, the former singer of my last and most favorite client. He and I traded stories of life after the industry. He told me of his most recent visit back to see his former band mates at CBGB in New York City. “Hanna you have NO idea how hard it was for me to stand in that crowd and watch that guy sing my music. I was so ready to just get up on that stage and perform.” I told him I understood. But on the inside I was no longer certain that I did.

Liam and I have often, since our coincidental and simultaneous departure from the music industry, talked over a process we’ve dubbed “the awakening.” To explain a life in the music industry, one is better off explaining a dream, a surrealist painting; by comparison to any concrete real life archetype. It truly is a lifestyle of willing suspension of disbelief. To operate and feel at all normal in this business you have to be able to get up every day, look your reflection in the mirror eye-to-eye, and say, we WILL become rock stars. That has a real time equivalent of any other person waking up in the morning looking themselves in the mirror and saying, I WILL create anti-matter out of peanut butter!

But “the awakening” is that procession of time following one’s conscious decision to leave the music industry. It is turbulent, dissociative and mottled with uncertain terrain. Life on the inside of the industry is a lot like pretending you’re a superhero; especially for the musicians themselves. For the crazy working slugs like me, it is a daily grind of demanded perfection, expert timing, cat like reflexes and a necessary superiority complex. Careful, don’t get too uppity, it’s always someone’s pleasure to put you in your place if you’re not careful. Mostly my job was to be the most popular kid (other than the musicians) in town. Popular with the band, the staff, the venues, sponsors, fans, parents etc. Friends of mine from school and life before music would laugh out loud at how many times a day my phone rang on the day of a show (an average of about 45 times). I was the gal with the answers, the right things to say, the right connections and I was always dressed to the 9’s.

For Liam, he was a hero. He could sing, really command an entire room of people no matter how big or small. He’s a handsome devil with a smile that can only be described as devastatingly mischievous and he knew how to use it to his advantage. Women swooned, guys high-fived him and no matter their gender; musicians lauded his vocal range and versatility. A master of his craft.

Larger than life, in our own little microcosm. Helluva darn good way to live.

Until you wake up.

The ironic nature of “the awakening” is that it is voluntary. You wake up from the larger than life microcosmic, super-humanism because you suddenly lack the capacity to continue to suspend your disbelief. Pragmatists wake up a lot faster than the naïve that much I’ll admit. That is what took me so darn long. I love an underdog, but when that underdog perpetually became me, I decided I needed to re-evaluate.

The things one sees in their sleep when the mind is arguing with itself are interesting too. I have few clear recollections of those which called me to take a look at my life and really decide what the heck I was doing with it. But I think, again, through music, a song I heard just recently by a group called Ingram Hill, I have found my credo for leaving the music industry.

I woke up from my sleep to the sound of that voice

From the words that I heard I had no choice

They told me that I had to turn around

My assurance slowly faded down and I wondered

Will I ever make it home, will I ever leave the ground

Leave this place so far behind ,till there is no turning back,

Will i ever make it home, get to where I wanna be,

find the ones who wait for me

..to the place were i belong..

Will I ever make it home

The plans that I had were quickly destroyed

The problem was one I couldn’t avoid

They welcomed me to stay overnight

I’m too tired to complain so I just might

Will I ever make it home, to the place I recognize

Far from here and where I’ve been,

and all the things that I’ve been shown

Will I ever make it home, can they keep me here for good

Where I hardly know a soul,

and my fear keeps going on

Will I ever make it home

The most destructive part about involving oneself in the music industry is that you risk the possibility of involving yourself in a lifestyle which has the potential to estrange you in profound ways from everything you knew and understood before music was a factor in your life. I am no push over, and have long been described by my contemporaries as someone with a lot of business savvy and a cool head. But I was called away by what I personally believe was a divine voice of reason. In the face of an insane dream and a lunatic’s self-image, I woke to the sound of a voice I realized I had not heard in a long time.

My own.

Inasmuch as I had grown bored with politics and school and all the “normal” and “right” things, after nearly seven years, I felt all those things calling after me. I thought myself a quitter. It was the easy thing to just go back to being a bright young girl with the hopes of a career in policy analysis and a life in Washington, DC. It’s safe. Or at least safer than this and that felt like cowardice. I’m no coward.

Yes dear reader, you begin arguing with yourself. Out loud sometimes. But as these arguments continued to rage on in my head as I worked away at the industry which pushed back against the “me-I-used-to-be,” my old self started to get pretty loud and insistent.

It comes to mind that we all have things to which we are called, gifts of intelligence, charisma, pure talent. Ignore any one of these gifts solidly for too long and you may find yourself at the precipice of an “awakening” experience.

I learned, some weeks after Liam announced he intended to leave the band, that he was no fool. The oldest band member at….well he’s older than me, Liam had been a stock broker and done rather well for himself before abandoning his lucrative job situation to move back in with an ailing father and give his dream of musicianship one more try.

What both Liam and I learned as we literally walked out the door of the industry together was that our old selves had decided we were more that person than we
would ever be those personalities we had cultivated as music industry professionals.

When you laugh as much, work as hard, lose as much and toil as relentlessly as Liam and I did, side by side with the rest of our project mates, being asked by your own self to give up the ghost is aggravating, and very depressing. Waking up only days after I tendered a letter of resignation to the band, I remembered feeling hollow. Several young bands came clamoring to my proverbial doorstep for my consultancy and the temptation was so great to re-involve myself that I even gave in once or twice. Or at least I tried to.

A funny thing happens when you decide to pursue “the awakening.” Like the song said, ‘leave this place, there’s no turning back.’ It’s a strange built in caveat. Liam shared with me how he chuckled at the fact that his present girlfriend has no concept of him as, Liam, front man of a successful semi-national rock act. I share that melancholy bemusement.

For me, coincidence, God, fate, kismet, whatever you wish to call it, places physical road blocks between myself and my former industry lifestyle. Timing issues, miscommunication and even Liam’s former band breaking down for the first time ever has kept me from seeing them play live for more than nine full months. This fact blows my mind. But in the end, I suppose it’s the same clear message.

I have no choice. I had to change back and my assurances regarding becoming a professional handler and publicist for a rock band have all but faded to a pleasant memory which now feels more like a dream or good movie I saw long ago. I hardly remember the self I was in that time. The only remembrances I retain are in these pages.

These days I don’t spend any time really with people I knew in the industry. There are the few and far between catch-up phone calls to the select individuals with whom I have an actual or intellectual bond. But in reality it is impossible to relate to those who have yet to awaken. It is a cave analogy for the musically inclined. And I am one of a number who have left the darkness of the endless string of walk-in closet sized clubs, smoke filled parties and long car rides to return to the desires of my true heart. I am a professional business woman, a linguist, a political fan, and an active Christian.

Am I any better on this side of Aristotle’s proverbial cave? I’m not for casting dispersions on anyone’s lifestyle. But for me, I know I am right where I need to be and that’s enough.



Dedicated to The*Pennyroyals. My smile never fades at the memory of your music. You are amazing.