Gone From The Band

So, I left the band this week. This is therefore the end of the sixth band with which I have been involved. As with most occasions the end of my involvement was largely a result of personal issues.

A band is an interesting thing, a group of possibly disparate people having to work extremely closely together in order to achieve a goal. The risk is that you will look stupid in public, and the gain is that of being part of a team making something beautiful. It gets to be a personal thing, and it's a vast amount of work.

The other thing about a band is the vast amount of work that goes into it in comparison to the stated goal. For example, I attended practice every week for three hours over the course of six months in order that our band could do a mediocre job of fourteen songs, or about 45 minutes of music. I would practice probably half an hour or more a day in between practices. That's a total of something like 200 hours of work for an hour of performance. This is a little high in the long run, but practice is always many times longer than performance in music.

So a band is something that happens in a close, personal environment, whereby the nominal reward is a very small proportion of the work involved. This means that for it to be worthwhile, you have to really like doing it. You have to want to show up to practice, you have to enjoy the people with whom you are playing, and it needs to make you feel better for having played together.

The band that I became a part of had met in church or had been friends with each other since high school. I was an addition to this group, and definitely someone from a different outlook. I am a liberal, atheist guy who has lived in several places in the world, traveled to different countries. These were generally conservative, religious people, who had spent their time in the South and thought this was the best place on Earth. At least this was true from what I could tell. There was a caution to what could be said, I felt I had to censor what I said, and I'm sure that was true in the other direction.

The point that things became difficult was, of course, at a bar with just one of the other members, the singer, and the youngest person involved. I was going to give him a ride home, and so there were just the two of us left. He decided to take this opportunity to really have an intellectual conversation. He explained that he didn't belong to any particular church bu that he was a Truth Seeker. Then he said he didn't buy evolution because no-one had seen an increase in genetic material. I replied that that's what Down's syndrome was, an extra chromosome, and I should have stopped there.

But the conversation continued for an hour or so. He brought up a number of objections, I answered them, he said he would need to see proof to believe it. I was my overbearing self when faced with obstinate idiocy, he was indignant and defensive. I drove him home disappointed at the prevalence of wilful ignorance, that I really couldn't have reasonable conversations about interesting things in Texas. A couple of days later I spent an hour finding about fifteen links that backed up the points I had made and sent them in an e-mail. I thought a Truth Seeker would be able to deal with an uncomfortable conversation and would be interested in information about the truth. I was told that he was proud of himself that I left the bar with all my teeth and bones intact, that if I was ever insulting like that again there would be consequences.

I quit the band. I decided that playing in a band that plays music of which I am not fond was not worth having to put up with physical threats if I don't watch my mouth. The last time I was told to watch my mouth was by my dad when I was a teenager, and he wasn't right either.

So, I wasn't a saint. I wasn't patient, or understanding, or kind. I was irritated by living among idiots and I just said what I thought. I think all of you have seen me saying what I think, and I thank all of you for managing to not threaten to break my teeth.

After I left the band I felt a weight lifted from me, not a great weight, but I felt better as a result, which surprised me.