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Notes from the Field

Reasons Why it is Probably Best to Date a Musician

Rating: 4 votes, 5.00 average.
It is sometimes a mystery to me that anyone can get along with anyone else, considering how hard we all are to understand individually. Dating is a total mystery. Dating a non-musician is an exercise in delaying the first disappointment when she suddenly realizes the truth: you are not a normal good guy who eats and works and sleeps and takes long walks and has an interesting hobby but no other real passion in life than her.

If you date a musician you will not have that awkward moment when you first show her where you live. It can be hard to explain to a non-musician why you have nine mandolins, three banjos, four guitars, a penny whistle, and two ukuleles. All of them in the living room. I can’t imagine how that looks to someone not properly expecting it. Worse than having nine cats I am sure.

If you date a musician you will not have to explain that you are listening to music. It’s not just in the background, no you can’t do the dishes right now. Musicians listen to music differently, we really do. We listen like one might listen to a book on tape or a world series baseball game on the radio.

If you date a musician you don’t have to justify your practice time and explain that no you don’t need away time, you need practice time. I think it natural that someone who wants to be with you is jealous of the time you spend behind the mandolin. It’s that much harder if the someone doesn’t have her own instrument to spend time behind or at least to understand being passionate about.

If you date a musician you won’t have to explain the one side of the phone conversations she hears that sound so goofy – “its two - five – one – one minor” or, worse yet “behind the bush in the garden – haste to the wedding – you married my daughter but you didn’t – squirrel heads in gravy – yea, in that order”.

If you date a musician, another case or two showing up in the living room now and then is no big deal. Seriously. I am not saying you can go crazy, but another musician is likely to understand your priorities and not remind you that you can’t play two mandolins at the same time.

A non-musician will have trouble understanding why you take so long in a music store, but can get through an antique store in minutes.

If you date a musician, your taste in chairs is not a whole discussion. No arms. I don’t want recliners, I don’t want overstuffed chairs to sink into, just give me six or seven Windsor chairs of various ages and colors.

If you date a musician you don’t get a weird look when you announce your decision to drive 15 hours to a hill top in West Virginia to live in a tent for a week.

If you date a musician then your date won't think it odd that you have a collection of friends with whom you have met often for perhaps years, but don’t necessarily know what they do for a living, or whether they have children. I have friends, real friends, with whom I have rarely had an extended conversation about anything that wasn’t music. We don’t talk a lot at jam sessions. But we have played music together for coming on three decades.

If you date a musician you don’t have to worry that she feels abandoned at parties when you sit in the corner with the jammers. I go to parties to play music – not to eat, drink, talk, flirt, or show off my new blazer.

If you date a musician you don’t have to hide your distress over a small cut to a finger on your left hand, OMG, OMG. This better heal up by tomorrow, I am playing the square dance and the fiddler can’t make it so I am the strong melody lead.

At the end of the day, its probably best if she is a banjo player. Anyone that can take playing the banjo seriously has got the right combination of sublime and ridiculous, serious and silly, reverence and sarcasm, darkness and light. Likely a good catch.

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Updated Apr-08-2015 at 6:00pm by JeffD

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Comments

  1. LongBlackVeil's Avatar
    Great stuff! i liked the whole thing but this one made me chuckle

    "A non-musician will have trouble understanding why you take so long in a music store, but can get through an antique store in minutes."


    i often drop into antique shops, ask if they have any stringed instruments. They more often than not, dont. So i maybe take a look at any artwork they have, say thanks, and bye!
  2. JeffD's Avatar
    Don't get me going on antique stores. I could do a whole blog on them. Ahhhh!
  3. Andy Boden's Avatar
    On the rare occasions I do find something vaguely musical in an antique store it's usually a poorly constructed GSO (guitar-shaped object) with a real guitar price tag.
  4. roysboy's Avatar
    I've found jams akin to attending support group meetings . You're there for one reason and it ain't the coffee . You need to be surrounded by others who understand your affliction without judging it . Folks who don't care if you are a pastor or an axe murderer long as you come to pick and MAYBE sing. They don't know or care or even ask if you live in town , in your truck , under a bridge or under a tree stump . On one hand , I LOVE this about jams . On the other hand it really can feel a tad cold .....like if a robot or a zombie could pick Gold Rush they'd be just as welcome to your chair .
  5. JeffD's Avatar
    I dunno about cold. To me a musical interaction feels like an interaction of any other kind - I mean, there is a kind of intimacy there, a kind of fellowship. The beauty of it is that you don't have to have something to say. It may say something about me, that I enjoy being with people I don't feel obligated to talk with - that we have a way to be with each other, and interact, without yammering.

    We did have a case, years ago, of a fellow who showed up at our jams regularly, from somewhere more than 2 hours away, and it took us many many months to discover that he slept in his truck after the jam and went home the next morning.
  6. Nashville's Avatar
    Funny! And it all hit home for me.
  7. DataNick's Avatar
    Well said Sir, well said!