Where the Light Is …

So for all of you that have found my post via a tag surf, I’ll debrief you on my current situ.  I recently entered the UK’s biggest singing competition outside of X Factor. It’s non televised, but out of 10,000+ applicants, I was one of about 250 that got through to the Regional Finals.

My Regional Final took place on Sunday night and … I didn’t show up, and I can’t really articulate why. There are a whole host of reasons – like not being able to find a decent backing track, and having had a cold recently, not having enough time to practice … but they don’t really cut the mustard.  My friends and family have been screaming at me: “its your big moment – this is your chance – why aren’t you taking the opportunity?”, but something in me just didn’t really care that much. 

Perhaps it was the seriously suspect voting strategy – where each contestant has to sell at least 25 tickets @ £7.50 a ticket (nearly a £200 entry fee) and the audience gets 2 votes.  It was never made clear to me by the competition organisers how the judges and the audience votes were combined, and therefore led me to believe it was more of a sales competition than talent.  Perhaps it was the seriously questionable “judges” that they managed to scrape together. Jane MacDonald, H from Steps, Cheryl Baker … and a few other non-entities.  Perhaps it was my fear of failing and what that might do to my confidence.

My decision not to go coincided with the arrival of a much anticipated CD, “Where the Light Is” .  It’s a truly fantastic CD of live performances by the legendary John Mayer with a mixture of his self-penned songs and some highly inspirational performances of covers such as “Free Falling”.  It got me thinking about whether John Mayer might have won an X-Factor show or some equivalent.   What with his breathy vocals – and the fact that most of John Mayer’s talent lies in his awesome guitar playing and songwriting skills – he’d probably not have even made it to boot camp.  

Not that I’m comparing myself to John Mayer, but I’d like to think that my talents are more than  mass-market vocal skills. After all, I play piano, create my own arrangement of original songs … so I guess opting out was the right thing for me to do at this point in time.  Even if I spend the rest of my life playing little gigs and scraping the money together to record the occasional album, at least its me.  Pure, authentic, vintage me … and I guess for me, that’s Where the Light is …