The “Call Bill Project” (Wendy)

I have this whiteboard in my office with an ongoing list of things to do for work and whatnot. I have had the bullet item "Call Bill" on the white board for probably a year now. My idea is to, well, do that. It's not as simple as it sounds though - let me explain...

I Heart Bill

Bill was a music friend with whom I used to write, record and perform. He's one of the funniest, most awesomely soulful people I've ever known. I. Love. Bill. But, we always had a stop/start relationship and for whatever reason, we lost touch. I feel immensely guilty about this. Especially because he's had some hard things in his life happen which I have been absent for... I don’t want to assume I’m more important than I am in the relationship, but based on who I wanted to be to him, I have failed and have this need to rectify that.

There's Bill and then there are the other Bills

...And the thing is that Bill isn't the only "Bill" in my life. I have a short list of Bills. Several of them are musicians that I collaborated with and was very close to (sidenote: It’s interesting how, in creative endeavors, you are able to form a unique bond that doesn’t exist in normal relationships – maybe this is why it bothers me so?). But unfortunately, when you're immersed in the network-centric music business, friendships born out of that get convoluted and often take weird and hurtful paths. So friends drop off and you're not really sure if you're supposed to be hurt or mad or just have moved on nonchalantly. Maybe it’s just me and maybe I’m just way too nostalgic. But I even have dreams about these people and our reconciliations.

The Scary Part

So my idea is to resolve this by making contact with the Bills in my life, even though I'm terrified they will hate me and feel like I abandoned them, or just generally think of me as a creep. This is also part of an over-reaching ideal to re-join society. See, a lot, personally, has happened in my life since moving to Nashville eight years ago… I won’t go into the details, but so much of that enthusiastic naiveté I had under my Iowa bonnet has been slowly squashed like a bug in the Nashville machinery. As a result, I’ve become too fearful, too untrusting, too tightly wound, and it’s culminated in some serious isolatin’. So, I’m going against the grain of my escalating introvertness and breaking the cycle even though it scares the bologna out of me (and P.S., I’m not talking the “oh yeah, me too!” kind of introvertedness people claim as they slip into their party shoes and speed-dial their BFF’s; I’m talking a-week-with-no-outside-contact-introvertedness).

In the Immortal words of KISS, "Do it!"

I’m going to reconnect, re-emerge and stop being so scared of people. I’m going to embark with wild abandon and fully flushed cheeks on the Call Bill Project!

{ To know Bill even better, check out this special version of my song "Don't Fall" from my first album (Today). When this version was made, Bill was engineering some background vocals and, as usual, jocularity ensued...(the French man in the last half of the song wasn't actually part of the song ;-). }