Everyone who aspires to accomplish something significant in their life, whether it is on a personal, intimate level, or on a grander society affecting level, lives with hope. Hope is the engine that gets us out of bed in the morning. Without it, our lives will descend into a kind of mediocrity, a listless, unfocused, pointless, directionless, stumbling and bumbling enterprise without purpose and without any sense of worth.

But hope without deliberate intent will die. Hope without action, based on intent, will die. Hope without a plan directing the action, based on intent, will die.

Hope all by itself has no life. It becomes an abstract idea, a distant shore with no means to cross the void that separates you from the promises that lie in that distant place often called the "undiscovered country". For it is our hope to achieve a goal and nurture a dream to become reality. But without our material participation, hope just exists without purpose or reason.

When I first began to play music with other people, forming the first band, the reason was to create something in the hope that others would like it enough to lend their support. But the deeper hope, the deeper desire, was to achieve the thing hoped for, not because it would bring fame, fortune and success, but because deep within my heart and soul, even my spirit, I needed to do this.

So, when that first band fell apart, I helped form another band. It was a better band, and the hope for that band was to achieve the goal of performing, recording, touring and bringing happiness to the audiences. This band was really good, and improving all the time. Everyone was of one mind - a very important aspect of making anything work - and committed to doing whatever we needed to do in order to make it work.

When that band broke up, I took it personally. I know, I know, bad idea. I lost hope. And so I drifted for a while. I continued to write music, get better on the guitar and joined a couple bands that were money makers. But they ended badly due to internal strife between some of the members. And none of them resulted in people staying connected and working together again.

Then, after a few years of this, I found a bass player who was like minded. I contacted a drummer who I had worked with in the past and he was available. We formed a new band, and so hope was restored. And intent was entered into with deliberate action to be successful in achieving our goals. We found a great singer and had the core band up and running.

It took only one gig to know we had something special. This was the band, that one in a million combination that could actually achieve real musical success.

We went into the studio and cut a high quality demo. We managed to save money because we knew the studio owner, always a plus. He was happy to help us create the best quality demo we could afford. It cost $250.00 for four songs, front to back. This was in 1980. Today, the cost is probably about the same, but the quality of the gear available today, in some cases, far surpasses what we were working on. We used a 3M 16 track into two C-24 consoles made by Tapco (really quiet boards for the day). The microphones were the usual assortment of Shure, AKG and Sennheiser, etc.

We continued on, playing concerts, perfecting our show, writing music and being really focused and united. Then we moved to California. And within six months it all fell apart. We lost focus, the unity began to fracture, and then the singer left to be with her boy friend in San Francisco. I seized the moment and began to redirect the remaining three of us back to the original plan. But the bass player decided to leave. The drummer and I sat in the studio in the end and looked at one another and wondered, "What just happened?"

The drummer had decided he was through, too. So that left me alone. I regrouped and made a decision to leave town and try to refocus on the deeper elements of my musical life. I settled in a new city and began to meet musicians. I found a gig within a couple months and began to tour again. I needed to get "seed money" to start up a new band; touring was the best way to do that because it kept my hope alive, my chops up to snuff and got my face - and my talent - in front of audiences.

I won't lie to you, money is a factor in success, especially since it is the life musicians choose, the career track for what we call 'professional' musicians who earn their living playing music, writing music, recording and selling albums, and all the accompanying stuff that goes with this life. But because the life of a musician is not easy - particularly for those who are "working" for a living in bands, playing clubs or cruises and other kinds of venues where touring like a "rock star" is not part of the equation - earning a living has its costs. And we can't all get the dream contract. The fact is, 99% of working musicians will never see any kind of "real" record contract.

Musicians and bands have begun to learn that you can produce your own work. It's expensive if you want "industry" level quality. But the good news is, costs have come down significantly in the last twenty years. So, while the big record deal is not practical, many bands still pursue recording their music and marketing it independently.

And it is this ability that now exists for the majority that have no "shot" at the big record deal that brings hope to their lives in a way not previously possible.

Because you don't "need" that big deal, your hopes of success can be achieved independently. It's still hard work, perhaps harder than anything you've ever done in your life. But it's your life, your dream, your desire, your hope that is fueled by the possibilities of chronicling your songs for others to hear and share.

Self publishing has been called "vanity" publishing, especially for book writers. I suppose it applies to music, too. At first, yes, there is a vanity issue. We love our music. We want everyone to love our music. But the reality is, vanity has little to do with it if you're serious about making your mark.

So now bands can still be in the clubs and cruises, but they can market their music to a built in clientele, the people who come to the club, follow the band, take the cruise, who have never heard you before. If they like what you do, they will buy it, listen to it and, hopefully, recommend it to their friends.

And, in the rare cases that it does happen, someone that is in the Industry may hear your music. The hope of that kind of success remains kindled, if even on a remote chance, and can drive a band forward to continue to work hard, regardless of that possibility - but precisely because of it, too - to learn to write better music, play their instruments better, to continue to improve every day.

I have often said, and continue to maintain, that good music will find an audience. Why?

People are curious. People want to hear something fresh, something new, something unique. And they are constantly searching for it. The Internet makes that search easier - and more overwhelming, too - because of the diversity and availability of so much music. How do you rise to the top of that heap? much of which is filled with crap.

Look, it's a simple fact that with the cheap recording gear now available, the computer based recording capability that is under a hundred bucks on virtually any computer with a pulse, anyone can record anything. And they do. And the "quality" of the sound - not the music - is at a level rivaling that of major recording studios from the early 1980s.

Someone with the motivation, if not the talent, to achieve some kind of success can now do so. They buy the gear for under a grand, grab some friends and create a song or two, record them, mix them, create an MP3 of them, then put it on Youtube or their social network to be shared with everyone. And some of this stuff is catchy, if not very good. But, and here's the awful part of this, the general public has been listening to so much garbage like this for so long that even some of the crap being released is getting a lot of attention.

So, to answer the question: How do you rise to the top of the heap? How do you get heard?

You persevere. And perseverence requires Hope.

If you know your stuff is good - and I mean people not your friends are saying it is good, people you don't know are saying it is good, the chances are, it's good.

You have to create a tangible product, one people can hear and touch (in the case of CDs) and, most importantly, buy. Sometimes you give a song away as a teaser. Those freebies will pique the interest of people to want to hear more - especially if it's good music.

And you have to get it where people are going to run across it. If they can't find it, they can't listen to it.

BUT.... you cannot depend upon immediate success. You cannot expect instant fame - or fortune. You must play the Long Game. The Long Game is where your hope must reside, where you must steel yourself for the duration, which means "as long as it takes". If you really do have something good to offer, your success rests in your unquencible determination, fueled by your hopes and dreams, to succeed.

The depth of your hope, the perseverence of your hope, the unsinkable nature of your hope is what will get you through the roughest of times and help you bridge the void between the here and the undiscovered country of your hopes and dreams.

And it is our dreams that fuel our hope.

Never stop dreaming.