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.
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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