To a trained professional, this kind of magical thinking would have been a small signal that my spiritual life was dangerously bordering on a psychotic break with reality. Never mind because, back then, all this crazy God-talk fit perfectly into my hyper-holy, spirit-filled outlook on life.
So, I entered a few songwriting contests. That was the extent of my plan. I sincerely believed God would take care of the rest. At one point it did appear as though God came through in delivering the goods on this far-fetched dream. One of the songwriting contests led to a publishing contract with an upstart publishing firm out of Los Angeles, headed up by a well-known and reputable artist. Soon I received actual correspondence with a real, live music executive and producer - a name I actually recognized from the credits on the liner notes on some of the albums I owned.
First order of business: this guy wanted me to craft my songs to sound more like the Psychedelic Furs. It was the early 80’s, after all. I got right to work.
“Thank You, God!” I said, with a combination of excitement, spiritual arrogance, and a sudden feeling of artistic superiority. I made an effort to not sound too show-offy when I told my lesser-talented friends about my “signing,” as it came to be known. They nodded enthusiastically, saying how they knew I was special all along from the moment they saw me leading the worship team at church. This served to prop up my ego for quite a while.
Unfortunately, within a matter of months, this publishing company went out of business, and that was that. The phones were disconnected. No more correspondence with a fancy LA music producer. I didn’t know what to do next.
Twenty years later, I’ll tell you what I should have done next. What I should have done was to get off my ass, pack my suitcase, move to Nashville or Los Angeles where all the action was, and try beating down the doors of some other, more established publishers and record companies for a couple of years. If it didn’t work out, then, fine. Go to Plan B, back to graduate school. Or even to plan C, which didn’t exist yet, but certainly could have been arranged. At least I would have given it a shot. But I was too afraid and intimidated by the unknown.
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