It’s good to be ambitious. Ambition is one of the first steps in success. You can rarely have any type of sustainable success without the ambition to do what it takes to get there.
However, having too little ambition is just as dangerous as having not enough. Having too much ambition leads to failure – at least by the standards that you have set forth. I do this all of the time, knowing that I will fall short of my goals, but also understanding that setting the bar higher will have a better yield than if the bar were to be too low.
And this is fine …as long as this is out of the public eye. Prior to releasing my album, Deconstructing the Temporal Lobe, I was rather naïve to what all was involved in the CD releasing process. As a result, I was wrong with nearly every estimate that I gave people for a CD release date. I wanted recording to pressing to be in little more than a month. Well, it was something like 4-5 months, and even that was pushing some limits.
Being wrong like that, in addition to being embarrassing, can also ruin your public image and your credibility. Since that, I have, on occasion, made such a blunder as to project a time frame for my second album. It builds hype, but when those times come and pass, hype dies and so does your credibility. But I think I’m getting better. I’ve been a lot more conscious as to what I say in regards to anything uncertain. Ask me today when the second album will be out and I’ll flat out tell you that I need to make time to get into the studio and need to pull together funds as well. There isn’t a projected date because I haven’t scheduled my studio time yet. It’s pretty simple. I haven’t even planned the album out yet. These things are mildly important…
So what got me thinking of this was the 1st annual Reading Poetry and Street Music Festival. The day-long event in downtown Reading was an effort to build community and to celebrate art, in conjunction with the global initiative, 100,000 poets for change. The festival was a great initiative and great to be a part of. In terms of exposure, it was rather weak, about the same exposure that I would get at an open mic. But that’s not what it was about. It was about building the city and celebrating poetry and music. And that’s what it did.
However, this post is about being over-ambitious. Though the festival was a great effort by many, it was incredibly over-ambitious. We’re talking 75 artists on 3 stages, street vendors, and part of a main street closed. For the first year of a volunteer-only funded project, that’s absolutely insane. That sounds more like the goal of an event that has been going on for 5-10 years.
Their main problem was going too big. All of their bases were covered, but on a small scale, not to the scale that the event was built to. It caused a compromise in things like publicity and technical planning. Publicity was rough, but thankfully everything worked out technically and it was a nice day, not rainy like the original forecast.
In being so ambitious, they also didn’t get to adequately qualify the artists. With something bigger like this, where everyone needs to do their part, I think it is even more important that some sort of contractual agreement be made between the event and the artist. I made a point to collect contact info in case of any issues, but other artists just straight up didn’t show. That speaks poorly for everyone. The only times I have been running late for a gig, I have made contact with someone at the venue so that I could get in and set up right away. I’ve never missed a gig.
These types of issues (no-shows, late acts, acts that went over their time limit) resulted in everything being about an hour behind schedule by the time I got there (from my other gig that morning). Which is to be expected …but could have been avoided.
As far as performer quality, most everything was decent from what I could see or hear. I enjoyed the 2 acts before me. Actually, the act right before me was a small band that had joined up with a drum circle for some on-the-spot collaboration. That’s what this was about. It was neat.
But when I first got to my stage I was nearly scared off by the act that was up. Some cross-dressing guy in a tight black dress and heels …with a whip …who was whipping people in the audience, singing about child abuse and the like. Yes, there is a fine line between art and perversion, but regardless of where you want to draw that line, a “family-friendly,” community event should not involve something like that.
Sometimes coming up short of your expectations is where you need to be. It helps you to learn. Sure, the attendance could have been better, acts could have been better organized, and the event could have been better publicized. I don't think anyone ever expected things to go down seamlessly. Really, you shouldn't. I’m excited for where this will go in the future. It’s part of a big effort to revive a city that needs some help. I hate cities, but if I'm going to live this close to one, I'd like to see it through that the city move in this direction. Reading won’t roll over in one day, but these are great endeavors and big steps forward. It’s great to see something so boldly ambitious.
