Bethany Was Here

I was like, “It’s hot here” and then he was like, “ok lets leave” and then I was, “ok.”

Now I live in Nashville.

So I’ve been here for two days and I can’t decide if I like it or not. I love that I’m cold. I hate that I miss my friends and my “west coast” family. I love that my dad is a short flight away. I hate that I feel lost every time I leave the apartment. I love that I’m working from home. I hate that I have to stare at the same, unfamiliar walls for both work and rest. First impression: undecided. And I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.

It’s Saturday night. I’ve had a glass of wine and I’m wearing my pink pajamas that were part of the girls’ uniform this last Christmas Eve. I’ve spent the day with my musician boyfriend running errands, washing our cars in the driveway, and cuddling in front of the tv. An amazing day together having many laughs while being productive and I’m looking forward to an amazing night of laziness. Until he shows me the text. “We got the SSL.” That’s really not much if we’re disecting 3 words and an acronym but for someone with a final on Monday morning on a console that would make anyone shutter (seriously, Google SSL console and tell me it doesn’t make you cringe to think that you’d have to know what each of those nobs does), it’s a necessary evil. A call to arms. And so it is. I’m spending Saturday night alone with wine and Netflix.

Being the girlfriend of a musician means sacrificing your Saturday nights to better the good of the dream and ultimately the future. I really don’t mind it, and I’m sure most musician’s girlfriends will agree, because I know it’s something we have to do - something HE has to do - to achieve the goal. My musician has spent the last 7 months learning, excelling, and satisfying a life long dream to become the music man he is becoming. I couldn’t be more proud of that! Thus, as the girlfriend, I willing give a Saturday night here and there to shows, study sessions, and gear research. If it were not for these nights, he might not be where he is today. What makes it worthwhile for me, at least at this stage of the game, is getting a text from him at midnight hinting at the fact that he too is proud of himself. What’s one Saturday night lost when I know I have a lifetime of happiness ahead of me with a man who has successfully fulfilled his greatest dream?

In all of my Nashville research, I can’t seem to find anything for “normal” people. Not that music people aren’t normal, but they are looking for something very different than what I’m looking for. I don’t want to hear that I need to be patient and work hard and never give up. I don’t need to know that there is a lot of competition. And I especially don’t need to hear that I’ll never make it because I’m not good enough - I’m well aware of what I sound like singing in the shower, thank you very much. So the best advise I’ve gotten so far is that I’ll pay more if I want to be in a trendy area and I think that could be said about any place I wanted to move. I just want to know what it’s like for a non-music-dreamer-chaser to live in Nashville.

I’m writing this having just left the bedroom, ears ringing, during “testing” time. There’s one key thing I’ve learned about the process of the making of an album and it’s this: A musician has some kind of super power that allows him the ability to listen to anything, anything at all, an infinite amount of times. I’m working on enhancing my super power to tolerate it but it just doesn’t come naturally to me like it does to a musician.

At the moment, he is testing a microphone. This mic, he tells me, is an SM7B. He says Michael Jackson used the same mic to record Thriller. Somehow this doesn’t make it any more exciting for me to listen to him yell, squeal, screech, hum, hoot, and holler into this SM7B but I think he’s told me all of this to try to make it more exciting for me. That’s sweet, but it isn’t working. Maybe because it’s almost my bedtime or maybe because I took a Benadryl (which is making my eyelids feel as if they’re made out of stone) or maybe because I want to cuddle and he wants to test. Whatever the cause is, my super power practicing has failed me tonight.

Fortunately for this musician’s girlfriend, what I can hold onto is that once the testing is done, the creating begins. And soon enough the amazing art he creates with said SM7B will be making me smile from ear to ear, as it has so many times in the past.