Last night I went to see "Crazy Heart", the new movie in which Jeff Bridges plays a 57-year old formerly successful country singer, whose alcoholism is progressing while he's falling in love and watching his younger protege Tommy Sweet (Colin Farrell) achieve stardom.
A charismatic performer with a handful of hit songs, Bad Blake manages to pull himself together (more or less) onstage, backed by pick-up bands in bowling alleys and tiny clubs. But between gigs he's bored, drunk and bitter, enlivened by his new love (Maggie Gyllenhaal) and her little boy, but not much else.
Disillusioned by the fact that he's not headlining for big crowds in huge stadiums, he's oblivious to the enduring admiration of the fans who gather in the rooms he's actually playing...and blind as well to the awe-inspiring beauty of the American Southwest that accompanies him on his solo drives from town to town.
While most of the singer-songwriters I know never have played huge stadiums, many of us share some of Bad's self-defeating characteristics. Whether or not we abuse alcohol or drugs, we're prone to self-pity and apt to wish we were somewhere else. We often compare ourselves to others, even if the other singers we're comparing ourselves to are only marginally more successful than we are. Many wind up in financial trouble, relationship trouble, or both.
In Bad's case, his early career success is enough to provide him with at least some financial options (opening for Tommy Sweet at the stadium, writing songs for him to record). But artists who have never achieved any level of commercial success--and there are many more of them these days--are at risk of the same kind of depression and addiction problems as Bad Blake, but with less likelihood of a happy ending. Reflecting on that, I wrote this lyric last year:
There I go, corkscrew down
Another go-round in a same-song town
There I go, whining again
Stuck in the mud of the might-have-beens
I’m making a mess of my melodies
Investing in my insecurities
Like all of the wasted and wannabes
Don’t count me among those casualties
Bad Blake I am not: no hits, no stadiums in my past or future, and no alcohol or drug problem...and yet I know how he feels. So, what do I do about that? Here are a few things that help:
- Practicing gratitude: for life, for love, for my existing audience, for music, for the beauty of each day
- Caring for the people I love, including myself
- Eating well, exercising
- Meditating and deepening my spirituality
- Living by the Serenity Prayer: "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference."
These mental and spiritual health habits (which Bad Blake starts to use at the end of the film) also help me see that I'm not "bad" at all (as neither is he) if I do not achieve whatever success I had hoped for in music.
To quote one of the fine songs written by the late Stephen Bruton for the film: "I used to be somebody, now I'm somebody else". The challenge facing many of us is not figuring out how to achieve fame and fortune--but how to live well, even if we don't. To simply live well as a loving, responsible human being--neither larger-than-life nor smaller.
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