The Three Wise Men

Once upon a time in a galaxy far far away there was a boy who wanted to play the banjo. So he took lessons for a little while and then he sat in his room for a year and practiced the same song over and over and over, until he got bored with the one song, so he told himself that he needed to find others to play with because he could learn faster and he liked other people a whole lot. So he started hanging out with the first wise man, who played guitar, and they started playing together at lunchtime and they invited some others to coma and play with them. And then it moved to the boy’s house where the boy could invite even more people to come and play with. The first wise man encouraged the boy to continue on and learn new songs and get better and faster and when the boy suggested that they go play at a local open mic, everyone seemed to want to do that.

                Then one day, the boy heard a bunch of home-made songs at an open mic and he thought, well, I can do better than that, so he went home and took an old poem that had never quite worked as a poem and re-wrote it as a song. He stole the chord progression from an old folk song. People seemed to like it. He gave it to the group of people who came to his house to play and the first wise man rewrote it a little and they started playing it and they played it over and over again for the next three years.

                So the boy wrote another one. The wise man, this time said he didn’t like it. It sounded too much like the first one. He didn’t want anyone in the group that played at the boy’s house to play it. He wanted them all to play thirty year old songs because that was what people wanted to hear.

                The boy wrote a parody song for a friend’s retirement party and the first wise man decided it wasn’t politically correct, so he re-wrote it and wanted the boy to play his version, but his version wasn’t funny or even fun, so the boy refused. So the parody was never heard of again.

                The boy just kept on writing songs and the first wise man would pretend not to ever hear them. The first wise man decided that he didn’t want to play with a group of people that played so much, so he quit playing with them. Even to this day, when the first wise man comes around when the boy is singing his made-up songs, the first wise man stares off into space and pretends not to hear them. He never applauds and never says ‘well, it looks like you are doing your thing’ or ‘not bad’ or ‘I still don’t like ‘em’ or anything. The wise saw the boy’s CD recently and let out an “oh” by accident.

                The second wise man was recruited by the boy to be the replacement wise man to the band that had formed. The boy thought this was great. The second wise man was really talented and the boy thought he could guide them. At first it was all good. Then when the boy tried to get the band to rehearse one of his made-up songs, the second wise man would start a conversation with another band member so then there were two band members not rehearsing the song. When asked to help with the song, the second wise man would say that he couldn’t hear or understand the song, so he couldn’t help. The boy knew it wasn’t true because the second wise man had actually played the same song with him at a jam party the month before and had really done a good job at playing the song off the cuff. But now every time the boy asked to rehearse the song, the second wise man would distract another member or interrupt in the middle to point out how the song was wrong. So the boy gave up trying to rehearse the song and just put it on the song list and after playing the song badly for 3 or 4 times in public the band decided to learn it.

                And when the second wise man showed up to play in public, he didn’t seem to have much trouble playing the song.

                Meanwhile, the boy discovered that people liked his home-made songs. People would come up after he sang one and tell him how much they liked it. Videos of just him singing his home-made songs were getting him booked into clubs – almost wherever he wanted to play. People hearing him rehearse in public places applauded and asked him for another one.

                The second wise man just wanted to play thirty year old songs, so the boy obliged him, even though they were songs he didn’t love, because he could sing and the second wise man didn’t . Eventually the second wise man quit coming around much, he would show up to perform once a month for half a set. The last time, he sent text messages on his phone throughout his playing and the boy had to elbow him to get ready for his solo. The boy had all of this on video, but never put it up in public because he didn’t want embarrass the second wise man.

                So, like all the times before, the boy went around to everyone that they were playing with and asked for opinions and everyone said it was a shame, but the second wise man wasn’t adding much and it was hard rehearsing solos for him, when he wasn’t there to play them.

                The third wise man had been hanging around for a while. Everyone knew he played well, but you could never tell because he always sat in the back at jam parties and never played loud enough for anyone to hear him. The band finally and repeatedly asked him to join and he did. He seemed like a nice enough guy. Quiet. It turned out he played rather well. But, because he never rehearsed and he played by ear it took him a little while to learn the songs the band played. That had happened to the second wise man as well whenever a new song was introduced. It took them both a while because new songs that were younger than thirty years old were not anything they listened to. But they were both talented enough to pick them up.

                The boy had had some experience with the third wise man, and so he should have known better, but maybe he thought it was a one-time aberration. The boy had discovered that one band member could get them a large hall with a stage for free, so the boy had a notion about putting on a show. He worked out the details and got everyone lined up and was about to set it off, the third wise man intervened and sent long long emails saying how it wasn’t going to work and he was in charge of it now and they weren’t going to put on a show, they were going to have a jam party instead.

                The boy let it go- there were other fish in the sea- you win a few you lose a few. After the third wise man joined the band, the band was approached to do a wedding reception. When the boy approached the band to see if they were all in, the boy got another long long email explaining how the band wasn’t ready to play a wedding- that they all had to learn to play thirty year old songs and all of the songs the band did play were terrible including all of the boy’s home-made songs.

                The boy told him to fuck off, which the third wise man did, after sending another couple of long long emails telling the boy how fucked up the boy was. The boy decided it was his home-made songs that the wise men couldn’t handle. The boy has decided that he has had enough of wise men to last a lifetime, or at least thirty years when these three wise men will be dead probably, along with their sixty year old songs.