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There, I said it

In the last little while, I've been playing music more frequently than ever before - working with three different bands, doing gigs of my own, practicing and pushing my limits a lot. It feels great; in fact it feels like I'm on the cusp of actually becoming a musician.

I know that technically speaking, I am a musician already because I play several musical instruments. But until recently, I have never really felt I had earned that term: I didn't have the chops, I hadn't paid my dues, and I was far too aware of my own failings. 'Musician' isn't just a term to me; it's a title. It's not to be thrown around lightly, let alone haphazardly applied to oneself...

Lately, though, I've been sensing the approach of a great epiphany like the one I had about five years ago. At the time, I was almost entirely inactive as a performer. I had gone five years without playing a solo gig, and was unknown outside of Nova Scotia where I'd made some modest inroads years before. All I had done, musically speaking, since moving to Toronto was to write, and write, and to write songs and more songs.

I'd always written songs, but now I was writing in earnest, and I was starting to take some real pride in what I wrote. And one day, after laboriously entering every song I'd ever written into my computer, I printed up all the lyrics in chronological order, and it made a pile of paper about an inch-and-a half thick.

The simple weight of that stack did something important for me. I looked at that sheaf, and all the hard work and emotion and thought and time it represented, and I said to myself, quietly but with conviction, "Newland, you're a songwriter." All the demons of self-doubt couldn't shout loudly enough to drown out that thought, and anyway, the evidence was in: obviously, I write songs. I'm a songwriter. There, I said it.

More recently, after dragging myself back onto the stage to do justice to these little gems that had meant so much to me, I put gig after gig after gig onto my concert calendar, and grew, and learned, and gained confidence on stage, and eventually took a look at the long list of performances over the past few years and concluded, almost reluctantly, "Newland, you're a performer." Imagine the noise the demons made then. But who could argue with the evidence?

This morning it's the muscles in my right arm and upper back refusing all argument. I jammed for about 5 hours last night with a group of pretty good musicians, mostly playing stuff none of us had ever played before. We made some magic and we played some crap, but the point is that we did it. I did it, and I'm doing it: Five hours of music last night. Four the night before that. A couple hours of playing each on Saturday, Friday, Thursday, Wednesday... and I've got instruments within arm's reach right now. I play them throughout the day, snatching moments to make music. Come to think of it I've been doing that my whole life.

Well, that's what I do, right? I make music. I'm a musician. There, I said it. Now if I can just keep doing it for another forty years or so... I may even decide I've earned it

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