Not to me…
I’ve had stalkers. In my younger days, I even had breathless girls calling me and then hanging up. Ask my sisters, they hated it.
I’ve had sympathy gifts – “here, take this microphone you broke, I know you can’t pay for it anyways” kinds of things, or “Here borrow this instrument until I ask for it back” kinds of things.
I’ve been given t-shirts and demos, CDs, and buttons.
I have never had a person run home and bring me a gift of something they had made, just because they liked my music so much.
This happened to me about a month ago, and I honestly lost my breath when I realized what I was being given.
True, honest appreciation, an exchange of one valuable thing for another.
I am dumbfounded. I am honored and rewarded. I think I have been looking for this my whole musical life.
And all it was, was a coffee mug.
A hand-made coffee mug. A defective handmade coffee mug that the potter couldn’t sell because the glaze didn’t match the rest of a set. And I could not be more proud to own it.
The metaphors you can derive from this are endless, powerful, life-changing, and completely true.
Godspeed. -Nate