A conversation had with Jacob whist we were tooling around Houston before the gig on Friday has had me thinking ever since. It was about the sacrifices one has to make in order to pursue music seriously and with the advent of my second coming at IBM, it has me wondering if I'm willing to make them.
Editorial note: From this point forward, the term "musician" will refer to those individuals trying to make music a major part of their monetary sustainment. A "professional" musician, if you will, but not necessarily a signed artist or one with big-label or studio backing of some sort. I get tired of repeating myself.
Being a musician is a big commitment: a commitment to style (hair, tattoos, attitudes, clothing/image), a commitment to learning to play the instrument well, a commitment to the fans, and also a commitment to gear. Musicians don't have company subsidized health insurance, so most of them go without. Gigs pay but they don't pay much once it's all divided up amongst the band members, and even though you may be playing four nights a week, two to three of those nights might be weekday gigs with low numbers and therefore low pay. Everything costs money: gear, touring, recording, threads, practice space. Sometimes shows come up at the last minute and a band that is limited in time is also limited in audience. Particular style choices can be detrimental to corporate jobs (or even some service jobs). Mohawks and tattoos are generally frowned upon by corporate types.
Musicians also tend to have lower-strata jobs tending bar or working retail or service and the like because those jobs can be more flexible (due to fluid schedules) and can be easily blown off in the event that a big opportunity comes along. Some places are more understanding of the life of a musician and are much more flexible to absences on short notice. The problem is, these jobs don't typically pay much. I recall reading somewhere about one band who would get minimum-wage jobs when they weren't touring to barely make ends meet because they could quickly leave them to go back out on the road. There's no attachment to the company or much loyalty, and there's not a career ladder to be left. Jobs that don't require the arduous trek up the corporate ladder structure are a dime a dozen (and pay about that much).
Not to mention the fact that lugging your gear around (especially if you're a drummer) is a gigantic pain in just about everywhere.
All of this flies completely in the face of any type of career job where the work ethic seems to be the unspoken mantra of "overtime is expected". Companies expect their employees to give more and more to them, and that conflicts with the similar demands that music makes on a musician. The career job supplies all those things that makes music possible - money, insurance coverage, etc. - but demands more than its share of time which means that music must take a secondary place. New bands have to start at the bottom of the ladder, which means early-week shows at night; the more popular your band gets, the later the shows get because headliners always go last. That makes it really hard to get up for work the next day, my friends, and that lifestyle doesn't make good bedfellows with a corporate culture that prizes high output over a healthy work/life balance.
So here I am, newly back into the corporate culture, struggling to come to terms with my new hourly status (you mean I have to actually be working at work for 8 hours a day and I have to clock out to eat?), unsure of how much my new team toes the IBM party line when it comes to the unspoken policy of the expected 55-hour work week, and I've just come off of one of the better musical experiences in my life and wishing I could do that for a living. I really like to make music, and I really want to be part of something big musically. Life On Loan may be it; Five Dollar Friend might be it; or it could be some other opportunity with another band that I haven't even thought about yet. I want to be a part of that, but deep down inside I'm not sure that I'm willing to risk the hand-to-mouth potential that being a professional musician requires just to be in the (hopefully) right place at the (hopefully) right time with the (hopefully) right band. I don't know that there is a such thing as a "moderately successful" musician - you either have to make it big or you're always going to have to supplement it with some other work.
There's not really too much that can make me miss an opportunity to play music, and so I know that music is a driving passion in my life. But how much of a passion is it if I'm not willing to risk it all for its sake? Can it move me to the edge, and can I stay there long enough to wait? I had seven months to do that, and I failed to turn it into anything beyond a few experiences here and there. Am I Jack-Black-in-School-of-Rock hardcore? Is that a desirable place to be for me?
I don't know. That's my quandry.
These are not intended to be leading questions, but hopefully food for thought. I don't know an answer to your conundrum. Probably going to be stream-of-conscious-y cause I'm a little sleepy :)
How risk averse are you? How much are you willing to risk for something you want? Are you willing to risk losing the comfort of a scheduled job and the comfort of your accumulated things by pursuing a change?
If I offered you free tickets to a country you've always wanted to go to, but they were only good for the next week, would you take them? You'd probably have to quit your job. If the movie scenario happened and you found the woman of your dreams, but she had to leave for Alaska or something, would you pursue her, knowing that she was *the one*?
Now let me reframe it: why is it a risk to lose your job? Why is it a risk to not have lots of stuff around (because you can't afford it)? Why is it a risk to live, as you put it, "hand to mouth"? Is it just uncomfortable?
There is no intrinsic value in working the 40 or 55 hour week. There is also no intrinsic value in being the rocker that everyone looks up to.
Now the opining: Is your heart's desire to be comfortable? That's a fine goal. Is your heart's desire to play music? That is also a worthy goal.
What have you lost by pursuing the music, living like a hermit, then coming back to the workaday world if you find the music scene lacking? Likewise, what have you lost by continuing in the workday scene and satisfying the musical drive with weekend gigs?
I guess the core notion is that the value in either choice or combination of the choices is put there entirely by you. It doesn't make you a better person to be a "responsible adult". It doesn't make you a better person to "pursue the dream". Any perceived risks of one choice or the other are more or less self-imposed.
Man, I'm a giant hippy.
But I hope this was comprehensible and helps.
It sure was comprehensible and yes, you are a giant hippie. However, that's a good thing here because you're in good company - King Solomon basically arrived at the same conclusions. I was doing some reading in Ecclesiastes just tonight for a Bible study, and the upshot of the book is the very idea of the questions you posed above - everything apart from God is meaningless and so if I'm constantly living for a future that may never come, I'm going to miss out on the joy that is happening today. I'm starting to think that living for the future instead of living for today is an empty existence, and is probably why most of us are never satisfied with what we currently have. Always looking towards an unsatisfied future minimizes the joy that we could have in the now because we're always looking ahead. The future is, in its very essence, something which will never be able to be "caught", and therefore will always leave one wanting if life is lived solely in view of it.
I think your question of "what have you lost" was the most poignant to me, because that's really what it all boils down to - opportunity cost. I think I need to be willing to make those opportunity cost tradeoffs for the now more often than I make them for the future. The different is not thinking so much about what I have lost, however; I think the real difference that will be made in life is thinking about the converse: what have I gained from each day?
I think you may have just stumbled onto the secret of daily happiness, my friend. Of course, without one's Creator as the center of that happiness, I agree with Solomon - it's still going to be meaningless and hard to maintain without a sense of overarching purpose.