A New Hope - Robyn Carr Page 0,95

you just ran into them once in the men’s room.”

“Hell, a lot of that is résumé material, you know... I’ve played with some of those famous musicians, you know!”

“Not with, Mick! You opened for a few! You don’t get happiness from your art, you want money and fame. The agent is probably looking for someone who’s pouring love out, not sucking it in. A singer who gets so much satisfaction from his music he doesn’t care if he ever gets paid. All you want is to be a star. Instead of telling this Buster guy how grateful you were for an opportunity to play for him, you tried to show off.”

He was speechless for a moment. “It’s important, you know, who in the business you’ve met, who you’ve jammed with. And if I’m a star won’t that mean I’m memorable and satisfying?”

“You have your cart before your horse. Your priorities are all wrong. You can’t infuse your music with love until you’ve loved, deeply and unselfishly. You can’t bring joy to the music until you’ve poured it into life. Same with grief, agony, ecstasy, fierce desire, loss...It’s like method acting—drawing on your own life experience to relate as closely as possible to the music, to the lyrics. You have to have those feelings in your life before you can have them in your music. Instead of sacrificing for the sake of a good life, life you can bring to your art, you’ve been sacrificing for the sake of fame. As you get older you get more desperate, more arrogant. You’re looking for your break, not your insight. There’s no question in my mind you would do anything to be number one. You’d sell your soul for it. I think you have! And from all I hear, fame isn’t that much fun.”

“Yeah,” he said with a hollow laugh. “Right.”

“Well, I promise you money and fame won’t hug you on cold, lonely winter nights... Buster saw it. Your passion is for notoriety, not for art. It’s empty, Mick. It’s not real. But great music and feeling joy from creating it, conveying authentic feelings, that’s real. You should learn to pull up the emotions of an experience, like meeting or losing the love of your life, and it should be so real you cry! The best sound, the most unique voice, the beauty of your instrument. Emotions you’ve experienced. That’s real.” She shook her head. “If you start with your life and your art you won’t have to talk about all the great singers you met in the men’s room or how many stars have your CDs because it won’t matter. Hard, hard work, focus on real living and real emotion, not on the stature you want. It’s not just marketing, it’s talent. You’re not authentic, Mick, that’s the problem. You have a good voice and a lot of arrogance. And you’re selfish. That doesn’t translate well.”

He was silent, mouth open slightly. He mulled this over. “You have a great strategy there, Ginger. If he thinks I don’t care about success but just want to share my great music...”

She rolled her eyes.

“I think you’re really onto something there, Ginger. I think Buster will go for it.”

“Good luck,” she said, making to rise again.

“Ginger,” he said. “You’ve always been there for me.”

“I know. I did my best. But that’s in the past, Mick. I have a man in my life and I don’t want you to ask for my help again.”

“Who is this man?” he asked.

“His name is Matt,” she said with a smile. “He’s a farmer.”

“Seriously? A farmer? Wow, I would’ve never seen that coming!”

“The smartest, sexiest man I’ve ever known.”

“Ever?” he asked.

She leaned toward him. “Ever.”

“But hey. We were happy once, weren’t we? I mean, I was happy and I thought you were happy. You loved me. You loved my music.”

“Uh-huh. And you loved you. It was very compact. I was almost superfluous. You always had very big dreams. They didn’t leave much room for anything or anybody else.”

He frowned. “What are you saying? That you loved who you thought I’d become?”

“Not really. But I think I might’ve loved who you thought you would become. And I was pretty young—it might’ve been the way you moved your hips when you sauntered on stage with all that confidence. In the end, it was very lonely. I wish you the best but I’m glad not to be in that relationship anymore. It really wasn’t good for either one of us. I’m going now. Don’t