Why making music alone isn't enough to make you happy....

Why making music alone isn't enough to make you happy

by Minim ^Pro @ 2010-10-18

If somebody asks 'what do you do?' and you reply that you're a musician, you can pretty much guess how the next couple of minutes of the conversation are going to go. The second question will be 'what instrument do you play?', the third 'so are you in a band or something' and they fourth is likely to be some variation of 'can you actually make a living doing that?'

If you are able to persuade them that you're not destitute and can support yourself, they tend to go a bit misty-eyed and say something like 'it must be wonderful to be able to do something that you love for a living'.
And it probably is - but most musicians wouldn't know. This is because most musicians, even (or perhaps especially) professional musicians tend not to be making music that they love. Sure they're working in music, but normally the way they earn their money isn't by doing the thing that they dream of doing.

Examples of this aren't hard to find: the incredible performer playing anonymous sessions for vacuous pop bands, the 'serious' composer who finds himself writing film scores for a living or the jazz musician playing every weekend with function bands because it pays the rent.

The point is this: most musicians are unhappy in what they're doing because they're not doing what they really want to do. It's not enough to be working in the same industry, it's not enough to be around music generally, it's not even enough to be playing for a living if you're not playing the music you want to play.
Just like the author who works as a reviewer, the conceptual artist who works in interior design, the method actor who appears in commercials, musicians who earn money from music they aren't passionate about are invariably frustrated and unhappy.

In many ways, it would be easier to work in a totally unrelated field - that way, at least the music-making could be kept as something pure and special; something that existed only for its own sake and the sheer pleasure of creating it.

Yet if you work as a musician and aren't making the music you love, the frustration and unhappiness in what you are playing somehow contaminates everything else and can suck the joy from all music - perhaps because you're so close and yet so far from doing what you want to do.
Most musicians in this situation would tell you that they have to take gigs they don't want to just to make ends meet; that of course it would be great to pursue their real passions but the reality is that they need to earn money and the bills have got to be paid.

But it occurs to me that the people who seem to be successful in pretty much any field are the ones who are totally unrealistic, who don't embrace the reality of the situation they find themselves in, who ignore all the practical issues in order to focus what they really want to do.

Does success come from irrational behaviour? In order to succeed perhaps you really just have to put all your eggs in one basket, jump out of the plane without a parachute and leave no room for the possibility that there will be any outcome other than success (or failure!)

Maybe true success precludes even the suggestion of a 'plan B'. Perhaps successful people are those who never ask 'what if I don't succeed?' or at least, if they do, they carry on doing what they want to do regardless. Is it possible that you can never truly devote yourself enough to what you want to do if you allow any room for the possibility that it won't work out?

If this is the case, professional musicians and artists who are compromising their true passions in order to scrape a living get the worst of both worlds: not only are they constantly selling themselves short, but they're selling their souls to the lowest possible bidder. If they're going to sell out, if they're not going to follow their artistic passions, the least they could do for themselves is sell out to something they could make some money from doing!

We all know it's not easy to commit to a path that may lead nowhere, it's not easy to follow your heart when it might get broken, it's not easy to risk chasing your dreams in case you fail and they're taken away from you. But if the alternative is to live the kind of life Thoreau described as one of 'quiet desperation', is it really preferable to exist only on the edge of who you are and who you want to be?

Perhaps our dreams may be unrealistic and impractical, but could it be that the first step towards achieving them is to stop putting the umbrella up before it rains?

From: http://playjazz.blog.co.uk/2010/10/18/why-making-music-isn-t-enough-9650859/