datamusicata

Last night I was watching an episode of South Park. The one where Stan and Kyle have a rock band called Moop and they get busted for downloading music for free and start a protest to not play music until the free downloading stops. All the stars join them. Meanwhile Cartman decides to start a Christian rock band and make an album that goes platinum. When he is confronted with the fact that he knows nothing about Christianity he replies, “I know enough to exploit them.” Very funny irreverent stuff, but as South Park always does, it got me to thinking about why I am in this business.   And it’s question that I offer to you all today, which happens to be the day of my one hundredth post, so I am feeling pensive and full of questions of self examination. Valuable if it only happens once in a while.  But back to the question.

Why are you in the business of making music? And why are you still doing it?

For me, I think part of it is simply the line of least resistance. I come from a very musical family. Music was always a part of every gathering and, as an aside, my grandfather was an extremely funny man, who did a lot of comedy and even allegedly sold a very famous comedic bit to some famous comics at the end of the depression. My grandfather and my uncle taught me hundreds of the old songs on a ukulele because I was too little to hold a guitar. The point being that it was easy to go that way. Family, circumstance and a natural inherited gift for music and comedy suggested I should go that way.

There was also the enormous attention I got from girls when I first started playing out. At fourteen Karen Edwards had my heart and all my waking thoughts, tho she never knew. And her love of the Kingston Trio and folk music, got me into the acoustic guitar world from which I still derive enormous satisfaction lo, these forty nine years later.

When I first started playing out there were only a few musicians who were actually rich from doing music. Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley come to mind. But most musicians did not get into the business of making music to get rich when I started. We simply loved playing music and seemed to be good at it. The money and the girls that followed further stoked the fire.

Then there was the Beatles. They not only got incomprehensively rich doing this, but they fired the musical core of a generation of people. I don’t think in the history of the world, there have been so very many good musicians. There are guitar players in bar bands right now that in 1961 would have appeared as guitar heroes. Now do you have to do something else besides being good to be noticed. I’d say yes, tho there are plenty examples of people that are moderately gifted who soar to the top of the heap for a minute.

All these thoughts come at you all the time when you are playing and continuing to follow your muse. An inner dialogue of discouragement and negativity that we all must contend with and continue. I find that while that dialogue is going on, I just keep on doing what I was going to do anyway and eventually the dialogue stops. I try to ignore the discouraging aspects of being where I am in life and career and continue to aspire.

So why am I still doing it? There are a couple of reasons that jump out at me. The first being that I’ve been doing this my whole life and I’ve never been better than I am right now. How could I stop now that I am getting so good? And secondly, musicians are famous for following the carrot. I keep thinking that if I keep at it I’ll get to be as good as I know I can be, while cognizant of the fact that the better you get, the more better you need to get to satisfy some kind of longing to get to the place where music just pours out of you unencumbered. And it’s always someplace else from where you are. What’s the phrase? Everytime I think I’m on top of it all—they move it. Some people, like Corky Siegel for instance, (www.chamberblues.com) never seem to practice and are unbelieveably musical. For myself, I know that if I play for an hour or so, the musicality that is inside of me finds its way out. So that’s two reasons.

And thirdly, after all these years of performing and composing and recording, I really don’t want to do anything else more than I want to do this. I have lots of interests but this is what I always opt for whenever the chance for a choice comes up. Can I make a living at it for my whole life? I’ll have to get back to you on that one. Right now, at sixty one, I would say definitely yes.

So ask yourself why you are doing this and why do you continue in the face of diminishing financial reward and fierce competition for recognition. With the internet and computer programs everyone can sound like they are musical whizzes, so the competition appears more daunting than ever. And yet, here you are still writing, still looking for gigs and still recording.

What I know is that following your bliss is more rewarding than making a bunch of money at something you absolutely hate doing. I don’t feel that I’ve wasted my life or that I could have been more successful at something else. I love what I do and I love trying to get better at it and I love it that at my stage of life I still have so much passion for what I do and I love how vibrant and alive it keeps me.

Maybe I’ve answered my own question. So tell me, why are you still doing this?