I Want To Be Great

Conversations We Had That Never Left Us

Eleven years ago, in the midst of one of our many all-night conversations about who we would be in life and what we would do, a friend turned to me and made a bold statement.

“I want to be great,” he said.

The words, nebulous as they may have been, stuck with me for some reason.

I think about them quite often, when I’m in the middle of something I might not want to do, or when I’m in the middle of not even being able to do something I don’t want to do. Or, when I think about throwing in the towel on this life altogether, because it can often seem like the world’s too wonderful and beautiful to experience all at once, the way I want to, and so I’d rather not have it at all.

Then I remember how we once opened the world up because we merely dared to believe in ourselves. Maybe we weren’t great yet, we put our passions and intentions before our skill sets, and thus we went on to live out our dreams too early, before we knew what those experiences really meant. Maybe the world that once rewarded passion, foresight and leadership ceased to exist, and was replaced with one that championed mediocrity, automation and protocol.

Me, I lament the world’s lack of appreciation for the things that once made us immortal. The lack of care for the things that made us great. I have no doubt that I still want to be great. I’m just not that sure that everyone else isn’t great, too. Or, that anyone really cares anyway. That I somehow awkwardly define it in relation to everyone and everything else, that’s the part I try to let go of. Because it’s childish to be so caught up in what drove me at age 19, and well, things just change.

In my many pursuits in music, I have managed artists. One artist was a nobody from nowhere whom I decided to work with based upon the ironic disposition that he was not very good and that people like things that aren’t very good. I got him a show opening up for a major artist at the Best Buy Theater in New York City. It was November of 2010.

The artist he was opening for was far from his prime but still a formidable draw, and it meant a lot that I could get my client this show. His name was on the marquee outside the theater in bright lights. This kid was from the smallest state in the Union— and nobody knew he was, really— but there was his name, shining bright out onto the street in Times Square, in the center of the city that is the center of all cities. It’s where people have come for over one hundred years seeking the spotlight, all because there‘s a little voice beating inside their chest, telling them they can have something more. Telling them they can be great. It’s the same voice that beats inside mine.

And the strangest thing happened that night, as I walked around backstage, before the concert, after the concert, and as the evening wore on and I eventually went home. I felt so numb to the experience, as if it was just merely a routine thing, a precursor to something else. I wanted to feel more, but the history baked into the walls that surrounded the venue didn’t offer any respite. I’d been there many times before, and after all, they were just walls. The crowd was the crowd and the stage, it was just a stage. After ten years in music, the show was just a show. Nothing was all that different. When I opened the venue doors to leave for the evening, the night was still dark and cold, and I was still alone. I took the ferry back to Staten Island and walked back to my apartment, closed the door behind me when I walked in, and sat down. It was a routine that would have been the same no matter what I’d been doing earlier in the evening.

It was then that I realized that being great isn’t everything. Maybe it was nothing at all.

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