Batman

This alter-ego I have is an odd thing.

One of my friends said to me "You ought to find a way to integrate some of this (music) into (your day job) - the folks at work have no idea what you're doing here".

My answer was, "That's Bruce Wayne - this is Batman".

What I meant was not that this music thing will save Gotham, or that I was scarred as a child by a horrific crime, so I'm pathologically driven to do this to clean up the city. It's just that the two things - music / work - are so very different. I enjoy my work, and I'm adequately compensated for it. It keeps me out of the pawnshop, it challenges me intellectually, it gives me the opportunity to associate with intelligent, stimulating folks, and it enables me to provide for my family.

Music is what I must do because I'm 'bent that way'. It's less like a choice and more like a need. If we had to pay for the privilege, I'm pretty sure most of us would find a way to come up with the money to do so (hmmm, come to think of it...). Playing music with and for people who are into it is just so deeply satisfying, thrilling, moving, fun...

It scratches an itch that you can't get to any other way, and that itch really needs scratchin'.

At the same time, being on that end of the stage lights, the mic, and the 'focus of the room' is a very curious experience. It's very gratifying (but hard to accept) folks saying 'hey you're really great', when you still feel like Bruce Wayne, and yet somehow feel like you're the one having all the fun. Should they really be encouraging you to keep doing it? Right out in public?

So that's why I say that this alter-ego feels so odd. That's why the Batman reference.

In some ways, it has me, rather than the other way around.