A Little Disappointed

I posted a new song today. It’s called If You Listen (and you can listen to it here). I’ve worked on it for a couple of weeks now, and found myself feeling a deep sense of pride and accomplishment as I neared the finish line last night. I’m still very proud of what I’ve done. The song is the opening salvo on an album of music that’s going to be based upon the novel I’m writing, Blood & Chartreuse. So far Victoria likes it, and my mother bragged on it a bit.
But for the most part everyone else has been mum on the subject.
I don’t know what I expected, really. Victoria lets me claim her friends as my own, but those people could care less about me. I’m Victoria’s boyfriend, and that’s all I’ll ever be in those circles. That’s fine. I understand that, and don’t have a problem with it. But it’s hard not to be disappointed when you work on something for weeks and no one, apparently, bothers to check it out.
I suppose more than anything I’ve been disappointed by those people who I have thought of as my friends through the years. Not the surface relationships from MySpace and Facebook, but the real world friends whom I have history with. It’s bothered me a bit that none of them has responded. It’s not that I expected lavish praise or anything, but when you’ve worked as hard as I have on something like this and you put it up online so people can finally hear it, it’s numbing to get… nothing. No reaction whatsoever.
I could examine this. I know the song isn’t a catchy diddy. It’s not something that you’re going to be walking around singing. And the lyrics are rather brutal. There’s also a lot of intentional noise and conflict in the song. It’s not something you’d listen to on the way to church. So maybe no one knows quite what to make of it. Maybe they’re being quiet because they don’t know what to say about it. I’d rather believe that than consider the possibility that I’ve fallen so far into the abyss that no one besides Victoria and my mother give a damn about anything that I do.
However it sounds, I’m not down or depressed. I’m just a little… disappointed. Even if someone didn’t like If You Listen, it would be nice of them to say so. Somehow the silence strikes me as if I’ve done some unspeakable thing, and it makes me feel vaguely ashamed.