Kill the dream

I was hanging out with some friends in a bar last Sunday when a guy that we'll call Mr. Tuesday (we forgot his real name... not that it's worth remembering) stepped on the stage with his guitar and started singing. Just auditioning for a regular gig, the manager explained. He was... uh... how do I say this... not very good. The ensuing experience was excruciating enough to inspire a deliciously mean rant from catinamosh.

The truth is, despite the headache that stayed with me for two days after his performance, I don't think he is that bad. He certainly isn't that bad of a guitar player. He may not even be that bad of a singer (at least not as bad as William Hung). But I guess "not that bad" just isn't good enough when you step up to a microphone in front of a crowd.

A microphone works just like a microscope. Everything--every missed note, every bit of wrong pitch and bad timing--is magnified a thousand times. Under a microscope, a barely noticeable speck of dirt instantly becomes a colony of a million bacteria. In front of a microphone, a mediocre singer instantly becomes a horribly bad one (or, as catinamosh puts it in his rant, worse than the sound of donkeys fucking).

Parents nowadays like to feed their kids crap like "you can be anything you want to be if you just work hard." So now we have a whole bunch of young people like Mr. Tuesday who floats from audition to audition while dreaming of fame and fortune.

Are they working hard in pursuit of their dreams? I guess so. Will their dreams ever come true? For 99% of them, the answer is nah. Most of them just don't have "it"--the talent, the charisma, the connections. But, of course, the nice people around them keep cheering them on. "You're great! Keep singing! And oh, don't worry about the blood coming out of my ears... totally not your fault."

Crushing dreams is cruel for sure. But sometimes, it is the right thing to do. Sometimes, you have to kill the dream to save the dreamer. Will someone please save Mr. Tuesday?