How the hell did I end up here? How does a guy with an intense fear of falling-who gets nervous on a stepladder-find himself on a warm Sunday night in June standing on a small platform 855 feet above the Las Vegas Strip and prepping to step off said platform into, well, into nothing but air?
But there I go, starting at the end again.
The past six months or so have been a pretty intense time of, I guess – "self-awakening" would be a good way to put it. Sometime in the first days of the New Year, as I was doing the typical bemoaning how I never get what I want out of life, I was somehow hit with a revelation. I was not happy. But that was not due to any external forces, be they work or family or friends or lack of band gigs. Somehow, the thought came racing into my head that only one person could determine if Bill Evans was going to be happy. And that person's name is, well, Bill Evans.
I know some of you are thinking, "well, duh!" But for a guy who has been focused on "the outside" for his whole life, this was a very deep realization. And it opened me to things I never would have been open to before. I chanced upon a book that I guess I am the only person on the planet who had not heard of, called The Secret. I read that and talked to some people who led me to the writings of Deepak Chopra and the knowledge that the stuff I wrote off as touchy-feely snake oil BS was understood by sages from Buddha to Christ to Einstein and that it was not hocus pocus-it is quantum physics.
Once it was presented in terms I could understand and believe, I was able to make a small start at putting the principles into action, and to say that everything has changed would be an understatement of epic proportions. I used to operate under the philosophy that my best approach was to expect the worst, and if it did not happen, I got to be pleasantly surprised. It was a bit of a shock to be told that by expecting crap, I was attracting crap into my life. So I have made a conscious effort to expect good things, and an awful lot of great stuff has gone down since.
About three months ago, my wife, who is the production manager for FOH and PLSN and an aspiring concert photographer, started on the same path. As I write this, we are rushing to get the July issue to press, because she leaves in just a few days and will be working as an accredited photographer at Roskilde in Denmark-one of the biggest events of the Euro festival season. In just a few months, she has gone from accompanying me on interviews and shooting those shows to flying solo halfway around the world to shoot one of the world's biggest concert events. I am crazy proud of her.
So what does all of this have to do with the price of a line array, and where does the high platform come in?
While I am proud of what I do and have accomplished a lot, it has not come because I was quick to take chances. The phrase, "leap of faith," was not really in my vocabulary. I was really good at telling others they should jump, but my own feet were staying safely on the ground, thank you very much. And as I stood on the platform clipped into a vertical zip line and waited to step out on the count of three, I was, frankly, terrified. We were given the pass to the Skyjump at the Stratosphere through a Twitter contest my wife won, and truth is, I only agreed to do it because I did not want to be thought of as a coward.
The "controlled free fall" lasts 17 seconds from the time you step off the platform until they hit the brakes and you hit the ground. That is a long time to fall at 40 mph. And after, when a good friend asked me how I did it, I started to explain the mechanics. He stopped me mid-sentence and asked, "No, I mean how did you take the leap of faith to actually step off the platform?" And I could not answer the question.
But it has made me think a lot in the week since.
You know, change can be a very scary thing. And the live audio world is changing at a terrifying rate. We are being asked to stay abreast of and continually invest in new technology, and the music business that is the base of so much of what we do is pretty much in the toilet. On the publishing side, we are going through similar upheavals as content becomes increasingly digital and we have to question the nature of what we do and how we do it and adapt to things like the iPad and other e-readers that will no doubt change the way all of us receive and consume information and entertainment. But this has been happening for a few years now-actually more than a few. The difference for me is that now I am seeing change as exciting and cool instead of a scary thing to be fought at all costs.
I am not saying that it is a good thing to be reckless. Do the research. Read the books. Study the trade press. Plan the work and work the plan. But at some point, the preparation to take the crucial step ends. And when that point comes, it's time to believe and take the leap.
I'll see ya at the bottom. Trust me, it's a very cool ride.
