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Ginger Says – Anyone can walk it for a while. Anyone can talk it for a while. Only the very special few can be it forever
By Ginger | August 14, 2000
Patience (a truly ridiculous concept).
And the Lord said something like, “if you hang about for ages, until whatever it was that was so important seems such a distant memory that its importance has become diluted to the point of ‘oh what the fuck, eh?’, then you shall get whatever it was you wanted in the first place.”
And you also learn the valuable lesson of having to sit on your bored duff like a piece of furniture, whilst having proved that boredom didn’t make you go out and murder someone or do your body weight in drugs, therefore you’ll get into the house of God without a bad rep to contest.
Patience has no natural place in the western world, where competition and social placing are the common denominator of the masses. To win, but how long the race? “Is it really that important to be great? Maybe if I’m just a little better than everyone I know, maybe I’ll look pretty fucking cooking then, huh?” Unfortunately the judge, in this particular competition of will, is you. And you’re judging yourself… shit, how do I cheat my ass out of this one?
Patience sucks. It sucks big cocks.
Patience is hanging out in a gym for a little bump on the upper arm, and for that ugly stomach to be a little less ugly. Patience is fishing. Patience is waiting for paint to dry. I hate patience. Patience is waiting for something that you are so sure of happening actually happening. Even if it means waiting for much longer than is classed as sanity. Even if it means suffering the shit and arrows of outrageous misinterpretation. Patience… I shit it.
Unless, of course, it pays off.
That is one motherfucker of a day to reckon with. It’s a large anticlimax when it eventually drags its ugly phizog round your pad, granted. But the only thing that matters is that you are going to live an awful long time, and to make that time more bearable you must figure out how to maximise it wisely. And usually on a strict time budget. ‘Cos, let’s be honest, wasting time rocks. It’s fun and takes zero discipline. And I’m young for shit’s sake… I’ll worry about not being able to walk when I’m too old to walk.
But no, this isn’t the way we live a life. This is the way we live a piece of our life and blow the rest in the inevitable event that our existence becomes so dull that we talk constantly about a ten year period like it will make up for wasting the other 40 or 50 years. Ouch! Anyone have a life plan to be the most boring fucker that they, or anyone else, knows? Didn’t think so… otherwise you’d be reading someone else’s ramblings. And they wouldn’t rock. And I do. Read on.
Patience is only the waiting time. The real deal is the idea from which you are prepared to invest this time. The pure germ. The nucleus that is inherently you and the only reason for being such a presumptuous prick as to expect your ideas to manifest themselves as anything other than giant excreta biscuits. Does the waiting scare you? Maybe your original idea stinks and you should start again? Stop the waiting? Try something more likely to succeed on a less demanding basis?
Y’know, underachievers are pretty dire, but mid-achievers still make the rent, right? Are you happy being grey? Of course you aren’t… you’re here to make something happen. And only because no one is doing it your way. Sure you wanna get a few pages of those history books to yourself, but that’s not the reason for doing it the hard way. Well, not the only reason.
In life there are doers and there are followers. Then there are the many that for whatever reason don’t get the recognition they deserve, thus leaving a legacy that no one would trust to be worth anything. In this day and age Leonardo Da Vinci wouldn’t have become the legendary morose genius that he did after death. He would have had his name scratched from the records on the grounds that there were American students selling paintings in greater numbers.
I was once foolish enough to believe that if you didn’t succeed in your early twenties you would have officially blown it in this business – not understanding, of course, that people buy records (OK, bloody CDs – I’m never gonna feel easy calling them that. It’s still ‘Hammersmith Odeon’, ‘London Town and Country Club’, ‘Marathon bars’ and ‘records’ for me) at all ages and therefore there is a fine living to be made for the rest of your life. And the longer the cooler.
A year ago I was frustratingly trying to put together a band to record and tour my record. Had I succeeded you would have been looking forward to me and a bunch of my mates playing some tiny clubs on our way to retirement at the edge of a darkened bar, somewhere you don’t know your way around after dark. The patience I learned when putting the sounds on tape (OK, OK… digital computer memory or whatever the fuck it’s called now) gave me time to think about the likelihood of being in a real band again and playing some BIG shows in BIG venues. The patience of sitting on this album until the right deal comes around for it means there will more than likely be a single and video out of one of the new songs (probably Walk Like A Motherfucker), songs that wouldn’t have been around if I hadn’t had the patience to find the right management company with cool ideas.
By the time the band have actually formed it will be a thing of great splendour with no holes in the armour for journalists to penetrate by means of dismissal within the first two years of our tenure. The musicians in the band will have also been waiting for a gig like this for some time. And with their patience having been paid off you can bet real money on this being an intense experience unlike anything in this genre of music before.
I do not want to be in a band as good as The Wildhearts. It will need to be better. Much better. In every way. Even down to the commitment and passion… and this is not an easy task. I have never in all my years met a band that could walk in the shadow of The Wildhearts when it came to sheer passion. Oh, I’ve met loads that thought they could (even some that were convinced they actually were), but those bands have since split up and now they don’t even speak to each other. It’s true that things like passion and conviction are judged on time and not mere words. In the end it all comes down to time. What you are / were / will be is all about who you are when your time is up. You will not see your true effect in this life… or at least not within the portion lead by ego and bravado.
Anyone can walk it for a while. Anyone can talk it for a while. Only the very special few can be it forever. Those are the guys that legends are made of. As anyone with children will know, the time it takes from conception to collection is one filled with fear, hope and endurance beyond anything they have ever known. And when the day of ‘the drop’ actually arrives every memory of the hardships is forgotten in favour of something bigger.
Being a musician (and at times a frustrated one) I can easily compare the patience needed for a successful and happy pregnancy with the same patience needed to succeed in this or any business. The demands, compromises, control and sense of the ‘bigger’ picture are all startlingly similar. Not everyone makes good parents and some people make real shitty rock stars / musicians. Divorcing oneself from oneself without losing one’s essence proves two things:
1) That the essence was still strong enough to shine through.
2) If you are that good, you can never forget about yourself no matter how hard you try, so you don’t lose out on anything!
Patience equals cool. Cool will get you through times of no luck better than luck will get you through times of no cool. The bottom line is this: if you are going to get it you are going to get it. And if you aren’t you’ve got nothing to lose… it might still happen! Patience only works with the right tools, and only you know what tools suit your style.
Waiting rocks. Well, it’s a drag too. Anyone can get, but only the truly patient can plan on getting. And keeping. And doing it all again when they feel like it.
Here’s to waiting… but hopefully not for too much longer.
Ginger
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