One of the things I admire the most about Frank Turner (think I’m off to see him again in concert this year) is his philosophy about chairs.
In his book ‘the road beneath my feet’ he talks about his attitude to audience size.
“If more people come, we’ll put out more chairs, if less people come, we’ll take some chairs away”.
This is a guy who went around the country making his name by doing concerts in people’s front rooms to 4 people on a sofa for the price of a bed for the night.
If you love it, it doesn’t matter how big it is.
The paradox there is that if you love it, you’ll probably get good at it and because you’re good at it, it will probably get bigger and in certain ways that can pull you apart because if you’re not careful it will take you away from what you love.
I’m sure Frank Turner loved it when he played at Nottingham Arena or Wembley Arena, but I think secretly he probably loves it more when he plays the smaller stuff (his favourite venue is Rock City).
I feel like I have a responsibility to try to make it better and not make it worse.
I hope that I’m able to have a positive influence on people who want to make it better and to enable them to be better again.
So far, that has scaled to a size beyond that which I could not have imagined but it does sometimes pull me away from things that I love which is talking face-to-face with patients or just working quietly on surgery with the radio on.
It’s definitely a sacrifice I’m prepared to make because I won’t always be able to do the surgery and also it helps me feel that I’m making the most of the responsibility that I have found.
It also gives me peace of mind though.
If it all gets taken away tomorrow, I’ll just do a little bit of patient work, I’m sure someone would have me somewhere, I’ll just put out a few less chairs.
Blog Post Number - 3181
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