Music as an instrument of change
I recently attended Tatmagouche Free school, and one of the questions they asked was "What are your gifts in exile?" And, surprising as it may seem to many since I am addicted to play music, I quickly answered that music is my gift in exile. I hate being called or self-identifying as a musician.
Then: What does music mean to me?
Many a person covets the position of musicians, and my dad is certainly one of those. Though I admire musicians sometimes, I do not envy them. And I don't like talking about music. I like playing it, but I hate using exclusive language and talking about it in an elite fashion. And what is there to covet or be obsessed about with music?
What a treat it is to share such a thing, perform an art. Create an intimate moment between you and countless people...but what is the cost? What does music make a musician? What does the industry do to your art?
Certainly, it can make you influential, and give you the chance to express yourself and create a shared cathartic experience, some money and see behind many closed doors... but a day of a musician is not much covetted in my eyes. What is it to play songs over and over, put yourself in an untouchable place, and sell your art almost always in addition to your face?
My Battle between Business, Music, The Greater Good and my own brainhood.
I suppose it isn't really about the music (though it can feel like prostituting your art) its about the business of personality. And I already have a flawed personality which too rarely gets called on its faults due to my relatively pleasant disposition. Ask my sisters!
"Music is spiritual. The music business is not. "
-- Van Morrison
I have visions and neurosis about musicians being douchebags, and so music-centric and self important they don't attend to the most meaningful matters of the world and squander their gift of influence and visibility. I think this idea was brought to a head when I went to the ECMA's in Sydney last year.
But there I realized: Good people still find good people, even in a strange feild of frauds, fiends and friends.
"Music should never be harmless."
-- Robbie Robertson
And!
It made me realize that: I am a musician.
Whew. I said it. Why do I hate that title so much? Even when people say "guitarist" or "cellist" or 'singer songwriter" it gets me perturbed. And feeling a wee bit fraudulent.
"The music business was not safe, but it was FUN. It was like falling in love with a woman you know is bad for you, but you love every minute with her, anyway."
-- Lionel Richie
I was so worried that I would exacerbate my worst qualities through the sphere of performing art: untruths, self-centredness, overly reverent public, living in a dreamworld, any variety of substance abuse, late nights, flightyness.... but these are things I need to work on anyway.
I think I am in a place where I don't have to worry about making myself worse, and I am quite excited to make myself much better. And conquer my self-made barriers.
And! I think, in my own mind, I have accumulated enough social merit and use of myself outside of music, I cannot help but use music and performance and spectacle to assist in helping all things that I think need to happen to make a better world
.
and its okay if I don't have time to teach people how to be good people. I can be a good person, and do the best I can. And it is okay I am not the best and never care to be... I cannot help but be addicted to expressing myself through music, and playing music and hearing it and using it to speak whatever truths need be said, even if I do dress them up to be a lil' differently digested than they might otherwise be. That is art!
The responsibility of being a public figure. It makes me uncomfortable, and I am not certain it is a struggle of my own ego. When talking about music I often quote John Gardner:
"Pity the leader caught between unloving critics and uncritical lovers."
I often catch myself saying "Leadership: sunk!" Because: What place is that for self growth? I need people to call me out on my shit. I outsource for personal growth, because I know I do not catch myself doing those things that make me an imperfect being. It is pathological. AND I already have a problem with people not calling me out enough without putting myself in a place that is more public and less personally accessible.
I have troubles still with the words "leadership" and "leader" and "artist" in a similar fashion. I have gotten the farthest in not thwarting Musician out of all of these titles.
But, if a facet of being me is being a "musician," then so be it.
And in the words of my friend Kev Corbett, "I was made for a position of service, whether monastic, military or politician... but from the juxiposition of music I can serve all of those feilds best." My dad had said this to me before, in one way or another, but I could not hear him at that time. And much of my musical neurosis clearly comes from his own obsessions with music.
I wanted to live my own dream for my own reasons.
I just have to remember that music is not
the most important thing on the planet. It is a method of and instrument of change, and one of expression.
I shall conquer and be made better.
I am going on tour next summer. That is that.
I will try to avoid embodying the following by following those music notes across the country:
And thus I clothe my naked villainy, With old odd ends, stol'n forth of holy writ; And seem a saint, when most I play the devil.
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