The dust has settled after Monday morning's revelation of the UKSC results for 2010, and - with the help of a distant friend from the Pacific Northwest - I've gained some perspective.
Give myself some credit, she wisely wrote: it wasn't so very long ago that I hadn't written a song in my entire life. True, that. And now I've co-written not one but two songs which have received the accolade of being "good songs that almost made the semi-final" in one of the most prestigious songwriting competitions in the world. So yes, maybe that's not so bad after all.
I've been thinking a lot today about the source of my reaction to bad - or should I say "not glowing" - criticism. I've decided it comes from a long way back, from the time when my mother used to tell me "don't be an also-ran, John." Unfortunately her parenting skills only stretched as far as sharing aphorisms like that with me. Never look a gift horse in the mouth, neither a borrower nor a lender be, you know the kind of thing. While she was off congratulating herself on what a good job she was doing bringing me up, I was left to wonder (a) what an also-ran was - I was very young at the time - and (b) how to avoid being one.
What she meant, I soon realised, was that she wanted me to be a winner. What she wasn't able to do much of was give me, or help me find, the skills to become one. I was on my own with that one. And what she clearly was never able to grasp is that there's one thing worse than being an also-ran, and that is to never run at all. Which is what most people do, and, to a very great extent, what she herself has done. At least we *entered* the contest in the first place. We set ourselves up to be measured. We ran the race. And if it wasn't for "also-rans," there wouldn't be a race to win.
So thanks Mum, but I'll take also-ran for now. In fact I'll revel in it. And while we're at it, if I wasn't a borrower I wouldn't have a house to live in, and not checking those gift horses' mouths just gives people free rein (see what I did there?) to dump a load of old tat on you.
I'll let you know when I think of one of those hackneyed old parental phrases that was worth listening to.
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My mother tended not to want to stick her neck out at all. Don't offend anyone, don't upset the applecart and always Do The Right Thing. She's a timid person and quaked at the thought of me traveling alone, the first time i went away and my traveling partner flew back home the next day. But Mom, i'm on a bus tour. I'm not *really* alone! I think i've learned to be pretty independent in spite of her over protectiveness.
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