Holding On

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I’m grabbing some straws from the server’s station, hurrying with a tray of iced-waters to my next table. The restaurant is full and the computers have been crashing all night. Customers are waiting for their checks and other customers are waiting for food. Still other customers don’t realize that their order hasn’t yet been put into the computer and they are going to have to be told that they might miss their movie if they wait because computers suck. It’s not a good night and it’s that very moment, as I’m pulling five straws from the straw box that I’m struck with this thought, “I went to college for 7 years for this.” In fact I say the thought out loud much to the amusement of Toto, my fellow server, who happened to be standing close enough to hear.
Later as I munch a mouthful of noodles with the enthusiasm of a very hungry man Toto laughs again and says, “Angry makes you hungry!”. Anger does indeed make one hungry. On certain days I do get angry and that anger feeds my ambition. It makes me hungry for success.
They say that Rome was not built in a day. Most things that are worth anything were not built in a day. It’s easy to look back and say, “Well, it took time and hard work but just look at it now. Amazing!” It’s a little more difficult to do that when the first bricks are being laid. Sometimes you have to just hold on and be patient. I hate that that is true. I don’t like waiting. But it is true… so what can you do but hold on?
There are days when I have to repeat this sentiment to myself as a kind of mantra. “Hold on, Tim.” “Be patient, Tim.” I feel like that fish in Finding Nemo that likes to say, “Just keep swimming.” over and over again.
This is a song about a guy asking his girl to be patient. He wants her to know that she is awesome and that he wants to take things to the next level but he doesn’t want her to suffer for his dream. He’s asking her to hold on.

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In 2007 I played a gig at a small club called Tanz Café which is Bryanston in Johannesburg, South Africa. After the show I started talking to a guy who introduced himself as Tibi. To this day I still don’t know his full name. He liked my stuff and wanted to record some songs with me so a couple of months later I went back to Johannesburg and spent a couple of days in Tibi’s flat recording. While I was there he played a guitar riff for me and asked if I could write some verses for it. And so the song, “Holding On” was born.
When I was planning the album in 2008 the track “Holding On” was pretty high up on my list of songs that had to be on the album. I was going to include Tibi as a writer in the album credits but it seemed like it wouldn’t do any good since “Tibi” isn’t a definitive name. After trying to contact him several times by phone and e-mail I gave up. I figured that if the song ever went anywhere Tibi would hear it and contact me.

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Yellow Dress Girl

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There’s a photograph of me and her. I’m standing in the back yard of my brother’s home in Johannesburg, South Africa. I’m dressed in blue jeans, a black, button-up shirt with blue pin-stripes and a black suit-jacket. My arm is around her. She is wearing a yellow summer dress with a floral pattern. We are smiling.

I met her at the airport. I was waiting for my mom who was coming back from visiting my brother when she walked through the gate. I knew her from university. We’d both attended the same classes for four years and had hardly spoken to one another the entire time. Roughly 9 years later we met again at the airport.

I liked her. That’s probably the main reason I never talked to her. So when I saw her at the airport I called out after her. She was focused on getting home and didn’t see me. I had to chase her down a bit. I managed to secure her attention and I think for a moment she didn’t recognize me. I had my musician hair and my 3 day beard going (which is equivalent to about 1 ½ days growth on most guys). At university I had always had short hair. I was clean cut. I even went through a phase of tucking my t-shirts into my shorts. I was being the unconventional American at a foreign University but I think I just looked like a doofus.

Anyway..she did recognize me after a moment and we talked the way people do when they don’t really know each other and have never really been friends but who know each other enough to stop the other at an airport and say, “Hey! Gee whizz, it’s been a long time! How are you? What are you doing with yourself these days?”. We exchanged numbers and she had to go. I sent her a text later to ask if she was still single and if she would have coffee with me. I liked her.

When we started dating I was full of myself. I mean that in the best way possible; I had recently begun my journey of being a full time musician. The year before I’d been working with a volunteer organization and I’d toured South Africa as the leader of a team of teens-through-twenty-something-year-olds whose mission it was to save the world from STDs. So I was full of free-spiritedness and the excitement of a new adventure. I’d also discovered that I liked the artistic me more than I liked the versions of me I’d tried on in my previous occupations. I was comfortable with who I was.

Maybe it was my confidence that made the first few months with her so good. I really liked her. I knew then that I was falling for her in a way that I’d never fallen for a girl before. I wanted her in every sense of the word. I wanted to be with her. I wanted to touch her. I just wanted her. I wanted to make her fall in love with me.

That photograph was taken during that phase in our relationship when everything was perfect. I was perfect. She was perfect. We were perfect. So I wrote a song about making that yellow dress girl fall in love with me.

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