My children, my art, my life

Oh, man, what a day. I'm so fuckin' glad it's over. Not that it was all bad, 'cause there were some really great things that happened...

Like what?

I got some weed, first off. Second, I played a show at the local coffeehouse -- I mean, it's like five scheduled acts and I was one of them. It's a half hour in front of a great listening audience at this really great location run by really great people.

Is this the place that you said was closing?

Yeah. Turns out they may not be closing. Which would be the best thing in the world as far as I'm concerned, for them to continue. Because this place is a legendary place. It deserves to live forever.

Tell me how you really feel, farmboy.

(laughs) Hey, fuck you, asswipe! I'm being serious here!

So you performed there...

Yeah. I was super anxious before the show. I was worrying about forgetting lyrics and being out of tune because I changed strings an hour before going to the coffeehouse.

But it went well. My guitar stayed in tube, and I only really forgot one line and I recovered okay. The audience liked it and I sold two CDs. The coffeehouse folks gave me $20 and I got $20 more from the CD sales. So I made $40 bucks!

Sounds like a good night.

Yeah, but there's this one thing that bugs me and that's that this friend of mine, another singer/songwriter, decided to give me this criticism about one of my new songs that I totally

disagree with.

So just disregard that criticism. Don't give it a second thought.

Oh, I know. But why does it bug me so much?

What do you think, farmboy?

Ummm...maybe being afraid that my friend was right, but I'm not sure that's it. Maybe it's a feeling like my song was attacked or something. Because I will protect my songs by any means possible. And I think it was like somebody was infringing on my...this is gonna sound pretentious as hell, but infringing on my children, my art, my life.

And you protected your song. Case closed.

What do I do now?

Move on, farmboy. Go do whatever you want to do. You know, you can listen to criticism, but that doesn't mean you have to follow it.

Yeah. I guess I want to be open to criticism because I want the songs to be as good as humanly possible. But I also reserve the right to reject criticism that I don't agree with.

Right!

But maybe I feel bad because I feel like this person felt she knew better about my songs than I do.

Maybe. You do have your pride, you know. You are not without an ego.

But I think you should just move on.

And do what?

Whatever you want.

I can eat supper now?

Sure. It's Friday night, you got weed, you bought some groceries, you can sleep in and you made some money. Just take it easy. You've been around people all day long --

All fuckin' day long.

Enjoy this solitude. You've earned it.

All right. (sings) Marijuana, here I come/Right back where I started from...