Your Creative Attendance Policy

When you're late, you're a lot more than late.

You can’t really be late to your own funeral. But you can schedule your own funeral by being late.

It happens a lot, for a lot of reasons. People like to hear the reasons, because we love gossip. We like to know what your excuse will be. But we don’t care about your excuse. And we don’t really excuse it.

Is that harsh? Good. Because this is important. So, let’s go.

Jesus said, “Many are called, but few are chosen,” and I’m not correcting Jesus, I’m just clarifying a step that’s implied: Even fewer of those who are called can handle having been called. Several will try to justify letting The Call go to voice mail—“I’m not ready.” “I’m not good enough.” “Maybe it’s spam.” “Maybe I’m spam.”

That’s all standard, stock-issue resistance, and when people say, “Half the game is just showing up,” I think this is what they’re talking about. Either (1) destiny calls and the call is answered, or (2) destiny calls . . . and waits . . . and decides not to leave a message.

Being a no-show is one thing, but what about showing up late? I mean, you did show up, so does that count as half of “half the game”? No, it does not.

We have a moral responsibility to each other. We also have a moral responsibility to each other’s time. Why? Because we don’t get that much of it. Embedded in assignments, meetings, song forms, lengths of albums, shows, and sentences is an implicit deal between both parties: don’t waste my time, and I won’t waste yours.

Lateness breaks that deal. It’s a breach of contract. And it’s not just an opinion of one’s own time—it’s a value judgment on someone else’s. It’s like a Participation Tax: Dealing with me means dealing with having to wait for me, which means it’s an insult, ultimately. And if that insult becomes a pattern, it gets baked into your reputation. Reputations don’t un-bake easily, and people who value their limited time will eventually protect it from you—by not meeting with you. Doors will close.

Lateness is a crime that steals from whoever commits it.

Here Comes a List

Here’s a policy that is unwritten and un-policed yet somehow strictly enforced. And to make it sound official, let’s call it “Attendance Policy for Musicians.”

This is what it looks like.

1. If you’re late, you’re off the gig.

2. If you’re not the second coming of John Lennon and JohnColtrane combined and you’re late, you’re off the gig.

3. If you are the second coming(s) of those two, then you’re on the gig until you slip, or tastes change, or you get lazy (or lazier). Then? You’re off the gig.

4. If you were going to deliver a track or a song to a publisher or music house for placement with a client or artist or brand or anything, but you were late? You’re off the gig.

5. If you’re late for the gig, know that music people—cowriters, bandleaders, booking agents, publishers, frontpeople, managers, composers, producers, rhythm sections, wedding bands, inconvenienced brides—will talk, because it’s a small, small world, and everybody knows everybody. You will then get a rep, and you’ll be considered unreliable, and you’ll be off gigs you didn’t even know you might have had. By not getting that call? You’re off the gig.

6. If you’re not the second coming of Mozart and Maria Callas, no one will care that you’re off the gig. No one, that is, but you. Why will no one care? Because:

7. The line of people hoping for that gig extends beyond the limit of human sight.

The difference between that happening and not happening is this:

Be. On. Time. For. The. Gig.

What Does All This Mean?

It means that “attendance” is being taken from now on, and the “pop quiz” is every second of every day. We don’t know how much time we have left, but we do know that, in the end, we’ll have either done what we’d hoped to do, or not. Life is musical chairs; the song just stops.

People who understand this deserve to work with people who also understand this.

An enhanced excerpt from Music, Lyrics, and Life, available in print and audiobook.

Signed copies are available at 25% off on Bandcamp with the promo code: substack2025

…or, if this is all too much capitalism, you could just buy me a coffee.