I am the NPC in someone else’s game

Thoughts on disrespect of other people’s time

Which one here is me? Am I even there?

There was a time when I was a pathological latecomer. Back in my teenage years, me and my two best friends used to meet at an agreed spot to walk to school together and more often than not they had to wait for me anywhere between five and fifteen minutes. The two of them eventually started telling me a false meeting time about a quarter hour earlier than the actual time they were going to get there and I honestly can’t blame them.

Maybe it’s the way humans are built, but the indignation caused by my tardiness only gave rise to a special kind of mischievous arrogance in me.

“You don’t understand, only people with an optimistic outlook on life are consistently late - they tend to underestimate the difficulty of getting somewhere and are generally more easy-going!”

That’s what an Internet article said, how can it be wrong?

Disclaimer: I have dropped the habit since then. Even if it doesn’t always work (cause old habits do indeed die hard), I try my best to make my appointments on time. There is nothing glorious about making others wait.

Except that’s not the musician way. A classic musician is the epitome of unreliability and disregard for those who had the misfortune of turning up in their orbit. Musicians like to think of themselves as these untameable free spirits - societal norms aren’t made for them. Their lives are ruled by the flow and they couldn’t care less if that flow sweeps someone off their feet or gets someone hurt. I’m not trying to generalise - I recognise this is a tired old trope but then again - it wouldn’t be there if it didn’t have some merit to it.

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In the last year alone I’ve had the following interactions with musicians (a non-exhaustive list):

1. A guitarist leaving the recording session midway through the take because he didn’t feel like continuing

2. A collaborator urging me to leave my job IMMEDIATELY and come to his town because “things are gonna start happening any second now”, then having me spend five months in said town with zero action and zero results

3. A friend asking me to play in his live show and failing to come up with anything meaningful for me to do on stage - after all, there was only a month to do so, what can possibly be done in a month?

4. A session musician turning down a paid gig last second because his friends don’t like me

5. A producer trying to get his budding love interest to give paid “expert” commentary on my songwriting during the recording process

But as annoying as all this ridiculous stuff above may be, the story that sent me into the biggest fit of rage is about a guy simply being late.

This happened about a month ago but it still ignites a giant all-encompassing fire in my… heart. At that time I was actively trying to assemble a live band for my new solo project. It so happens that most of my musician friends are already involved in about a dozen projects each and have no bandwidth to entertain my little tunes, especially seeing as these little tunes are not for the faint of heart and music theory expertise.

So apart from asking the people I already knew I decided to register with an app for finding music collaborators (the name is “Vampr” if you’re interested). I am sure the idea behind the app is great, and I’m even more sure there’s a non-zero number of people who it helped find just what they were looking for. But my experience with it has been slightly different, at least so far.

Seeing as I was essentially out of options, I decided to give it a try. A couple of days in, I connected with this guy, let’s call him N., for the sake of anonymity. N. is an indie musician who has listed every skill I could dream of on his profile - he’s a guitarist, a bassist, a drummer, a singer - you name it, he can do it. He has a collaborative project that sounds 99% like Tame Impala and solo songs with key changes that actually seem thoughtful. He is looking for like-minded people to discuss music with and is open to joining a project.

So far, so good.

- Let’s meet and see if the vibe checks out?

- Let’s!

We quickly agreed to a coffee at a cafe called Bonanza on Saturday at 2:45pm. What could possibly go wrong?

Only that I didn’t know there was more than one Bonanza in Berlin. And upon checking the map on the day of, already outside my door, I frantically texted him asking:

- Which one is it? There’s more than one!

The answer?

- Obviously the one closest to my place

- Oh, but that’s the furthest one from me, it’s a whole hour away, there’s no way I’m gonna make it by 2:45pm!

- No worries, I’m comping vocals for my song right now, so I wasn’t gonna be on time anyway!

Excuse me? “I wasn’t gonna be on time anyway”?! Dude, I have my own vocals to comp and generally a million better ways to spend a Saturday than being squished flat in the weekend metro rush.

Alas, I realised that if I insisted he come to a Bonanza closer to me the whole day would probably be irrevocably wasted in waiting. A blissful thought caressed my mind: I could just ghost the guy and never show up! But then again, that’s not me, I can’t bring myself to do that. And what if he ends up being the sweetest human being to ever grace Berlin with his presence, just a bit caught up in the whole music thing? You know, artist, blah blah blah, creative free spirit, blah.

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So I thought stomping my way towards the metro station, punching in the address of the most obscurest farthest-off Bonanza into my Google maps. I was gonna be there by 3pm. Alright.

I opened Vampr to text N.:

- Hey, I’m gonna be there at three sharp!

- Oh, alright, I’ll be there at 3:15 then!

Oh no, he didn’t! He didn’t just explicitly tell me he was gonna knowingly make me wait a quarter hour at a god-forsaken Bonanza drinking their fancy sour-as-my-corporate-life special brew and catching all those slanted condescending looks for putting a teaspoon of sugar in my coffee? Truly, I’m an NPC in someone else’s world!

The cafe was a ten minute walk from the metro station and I really did my best to make it more of a twenty minute walk. I responded to a couple of friends on messengers, looked around for graffitis and street art, took pictures, stopped by a park. It was with great effort that I managed to arrive at the meeting spot at 3:20pm, twenty minutes past my initial projection.

And guess what? He wasn’t there! The “main character” still wasn’t there!

Some ten minutes later, he did eventually show up with the whole “Oh, silly me, I’m never on time, isn’t that cute?” spiel. By that moment, there was only one thing I wanted to know:

- Do you have a day-job?

- No, I’m not working at the moment, so I can spend all my time making music!

Good to know, main character, good to know! Good to know I’ve sacrificed one of my only two free days per week for a greater purpose.