Ambition

As a writer drowning in a constant waterfall of content, I was having trouble tapping into my ambition. Then an unexpected gift helped reignite a long-last flame.

Circus Lupus at the (old) 9:30 Club, Spring 1992. Photograph by Pat Graham

I don’t believe in coincidence anymore—psychedelics cured me of that for good—but I’m touched that this image recently popped up in my Instagram feed.

It’s a photo of my old band, Circus Lupus, taken by Pat Graham in early 1992, though I’d never seen it before. The coincidence—or not-coincidence—is that a couple of nights before, I’d waited till no one else was home, and then went to the living room to put the first Circus Lupus album on the turntable.

Listening to my own music has always felt slightly self-celebratory, even shameful. But as the songs unspooled themselves on my stereo, what I felt was a distinct surge of pleasure. The music sounded the way I’d remembered it, only better: dark and driving, murky and mysterious. I liked it, and what’s more, it ignited a long-buried ember inside me.

I remembered what being on stage felt like, the way time would compress, a 40-minute set racing by in seconds. And I remembered the feeling of floating a few inches off the ground, carried by sound, alchemized for a precious moment into someone different.

I listened to a couple of songs, then slid the record back in the shelf. I put something—anything—else on, though that hungry feeling refused to entirely let me go. It was only when Pat’s photo popped up, a day or two later, that something clicked into place. Hearing myself—and now seeing myself—as others did completed a circuit, connecting me with that old, searing third rail of ambition. Even beamed across the decades, it rang a plangent tone: How badly I’d wanted to be seen and heard, to set a room swaying and heaving to the pulse of my bass guitar. How badly I wanted to matter.

If you ever spent any time in the punk scene, you know that “the enemy” isn’t the overculture, The Man, radio rock or conformity or any of the other shadow-villains we throw stones at. It’s ambition.

Nothing is more scorned in the punk scene than wanting to “make it,” whatever that means, and it helps explain why so many artists go to such great lengths to hide their calculations (desperately sublimating the urge to name names right now).

I feel a slightly defensive urge to clarify here. It wasn’t fame I was looking for (no, really!). I didn’t want to be adored, envied, or sucked up to. What I wanted was to belong. To know I was a part of something, that I was needed. The problem was that whenever I approached this molten core, I couldn’t hold this dissonance, this challenge to the normal, everyday, painfully insecure self. And so I went underground instead, losing myself in alcohol and drugs to blot out the threat of actually getting what I’d asked for.

Now, as I prepare to release my first book into the world, I find myself back at this portal once again. Sure, I’m doing all the things: Making an editorial calendar, researching podcasts and publications to reach out to. But the real work has nothing to do with list-making or box-checking. It’s all internal: Picking apart the old stories I’ve told myself about ambition, or wanting to share what I’ve done. Examining the old stories that it’s somehow wrong or self-aggrandizing, or that I’ll have to erase or otherwise deny myself to actually realize it.

I’m still not quite sure what compelled me to put on my record the other night, but grateful that I swallowed my self-consciousness and did. Hearing the fierce and feral music I made as a 21-year-old self wasn’t mere navel-gazing; it was helping me find and feed the fire that’s always burned inside me, the one that yearns to warm others just as it once warmed only myself.

I’m fully aware of the hurdles I face trying to share my dewdrop of a story amidst the waterfall of content blasting us each and every second of the day. But this is the water we swim in. It’s time to tap back into that slender taproot of ambition once again, to rewrite the script that told me it was too late, that I should keep my arms clenched around my chest, that nothing would ever work out anyway.

Does this resonate with you? I’m betting it does. I’m not one for New Year’s Resolutions; they’ve always felt a little canned (“Lose those last stubborn 5 pounds!”). But I’d like to challenge you: To shut off the firehose of content (except, naturally, this post) and tap into something quieter, more still.

Or in the words of the archetypal D.C. punk band, Rites of Spring, to go “Deeper Than Inside.” What have you been burning to share, but haven’t allowed yourself before now?

For me at least, reaching for something so ephemeral and forbidden feels like a kind of self-immolation, but it’s one I know I’m ready for. I’m asking to rewrite an old source code, to close my eyes and finally see. If that’s not a perfect metaphor for making art in these troubled times, I don’t know what is.