Between shows and meetings and parties, I witnessed a weird kind of communication breakdown this week, and I thought I’d blog about it. Here’s an example of how it goes down.
Me: Wow George, I really love the way you wear the color blue.
George: You don’t think I look good in any color except blue?
Wa-huh??
Humans have a tendency to think that affirming one thing is automatically negating another. I’m as guilty of it as anybody. A fan came up to me after my last show, saying how much they loved the songs that I belted out like Janis Joplin. In my brain, I’m thinking (So….they must not have loved the mellow songs…in fact…I think they may have said they didn’t like the mellow ones…actually, they hated them...and I suppose they hate me too…well who needs fans anyway….not me….jerks).
How crazy this is, not to mention a huge waste of time. We can read and read and read beyond a compliment until every nice word is in fact a cut down in disguise. And so I’m going on a mission: no summer reading. That’s right. No reading, all summer. Three months. No digging in deep and searching for hidden symbolism or untrue mathematical equations of A=B≠C through Z. I’m just glancing at covers and not turning one page to see what might be on the other side.
I’ll let you know how it goes. Please consider joining me in my reading ban. In the mean time, enjoy the pictures from the Hard Rock Café’s Acoustic Songwriter Series that I played last week with Shelley Miller. We rocked that night. (For those of you not joining the reading ban: no…that does not mean that we don’t rock every night). -Em
