12/12/08

If You're Looking for a Magic Key you can Stop the Search

The music industry isn't some magical place where you're either in or you're not. Over the past few months, I've finally gotten my first real taste of the industry I've dreamt of belonging to my entire life, and as exciting and educational as it's been, it didn't give me the magical key to the over-sized gates I always kind of imagined existed. Like Heaven, only for the living. Nope, sorry to burst your bubble. It's not there. Anywhere.

This industry, I've found, is just like anything else in life. It's exactly what you make of it. Opportunities don't fall at your feet. You can't sit in your room writing songs and storing them on cassette tapes, expecting your big break to come. You've got to go out and live it like you go out and live life. It's there.


I'm currently preparing for the biggest move of my life-- I'm going to Tennessee. I've got it better than a lot of other people who make this move do, because I've already got friends down there. I already "know someone who knows someone..." and that list of connections connects me to some pretty amazing people. I could probably get to Kevin Bacon in three people. Forget six. Six is for normal people. For the un-privelaged, you know. No, I'm special, because I'm connected.

But so are a lot of other people. There's no magic key. There's just trial and error. There's the realization that the magical place doesn't exist-- but maybe you can create a place just like it for yourself. A place that belongs to you, and only you. Build relationships, take every opportunity you can get, and do your very best work, all the time, no matter what. And that's what I'm planning on doing.

The fact is, I've already got so many ideas, so many leads, so many different paths I could take. This move has been 22 years in the making. It's my time. In this crumbling economy we're facing, people think I'm crazy for choosing this particular moment in my life to move out of my parents' home to take myself all the way across the country. Maybe I am. But I'd be lying if I said I hoped for things to work out. I don't have to hope. I know they will.

The music industry is suffering, just like the rest of American industry as a whole. But the ones who survive are the ones who are so excited to be a part of it, they can hardly contain themselves. They're the ones who have passion, drive, dreams that must be lived out.

I'm not saying it will be easy. I know it won't. It's not like I have a magic key to the gates of Music Heaven. No, I just know that there's me-shaped hole in the wall somewhere, and I'll find it, no matter how long it takes.

-Courtney

Can Courtney make it? Judge for yourself.
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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

She's definitely got the pipes for Nashville. Good luck!

Anonymous said...

It seems like a lot of people are doing the Nashville route. Not just country artists. The Effects from Tulsa just made the move there.

Anonymous said...

Nashville has got a huge music scene/industry. Maybe even bigger than LA or NY, I think?

Anonymous said...

Elvis.