The fifth and final week of the Minor Stars Listening Party begins today with Numbers Don’t Lie, a song about the struggle to not give up. Doing anything worthwhile is hard, and although ultimately fulfilling, there are times when all you want to do is hang it up and call it quits.
Even though I love writing and playing music and I know in my bones that it’s what I’m “supposed” to be doing, doubts frequently creep in. The subtle or not-so-subtle pressures to get a better job making more money, to find a “real” career, to “grow up” – whatever the pressures are, they’re real and can make you seriously question yourself and what you’re doing. But rather than giving in to the doubts or squashing them way down, I put them into this song. And now it’s always a reminder to me to keep digging for the gold, to not give up on the dream.
Maybe it’s a simplistic way of looking at it, but as long as I continue to get so much out of playing music, I’m gonna keep doing it. There are enough people working jobs that they hate at companies and corporations that they don’t care about. But music is something else entirely. So what if for now I have to keep my day job in order to pay the bills – it’s worth it for the freedom I feel belting out a song that means something to me in a dark, dirty club to ten people, two of which might be paying attention. Maybe numbers don’t lie, but they don’t tell the whole truth either.
— Eric
p.s. Thanks so much to everyone for listening in with us this month — it’s been fun! The Death of the Sun in the Silver Sea will be released in January 2010. Enjoy Numbers Don’t Lie, and if you’re around Carrboro on Friday night (12/4), come celebrate Reservoir’s 5th Anniversary with Death Came Down the Mountain, Curtains of Night, Minor Stars, and Orphan (9:30pm).
