Find what you love and let it kill you.

[catmandu2]

Find the cheese you love and it probably will kill you.

I want David to pen: "The Inner Game of Cheese"...or, "If You Meet the Cheese On the Road...Kill It!"

Btw, (and speaking of chez) my kids have been watching "Wallace and Gromit" (recommended)

[vegas]

His intended audience does not include us.

We have made the step, away from the television, and away from the programmed recorded corporatized music that so many passively absorb. We have taken on the audacious task of entertaining ourselves and each other with home made music.

Interesting observation. I never thought of this crowd in those terms but I think you've found the common denominator for the people who post here.

[JeffD]

I think you've found the common denominator for the people who post here.

I think so. Its why we all like each other. Even if I can't stand your music, I love you for pursuing it with all your passion, and not merely absorbing what the cultural door keepers want us to absorb.

[montana]

My wife and I were both fine arts majors. Got out of college worked hard saved but always played music and painted. Now in our sixties we could retire and now work at art full time.

[Tom Cherubini]

So, Bach wrote 62,400 'pieces', whereas the last revision of the BWV had about 1,120 entries, meaning that apparently %98 of Bach's works have been lost. You've probably misremembered because that's total nonsense. He'd be the Wilt Chamberlain of composers.

I would agree that prolific composers like Telemann (who wrote way more than even Bach) did basically spend much of their lives at writing desks, in a profession that required a steady output, at a time when the musical style permitted a lot of formulaic material, but they weren't superhuman. They seemed to have found time to have lots of kids and write lots of letters and, in the case of Mozart, shoot pool and eat ice cream. For every 'deranged' artist it seems like you can find plenty that just had pretty stable lives and a good work ethic.

You're counting wrong. The stats you looked up disclose the number of complete works not the number of individual pieces. And are you suggesting that Mozart led a normal life??

[mjb128wv]

Love the piece for left hand alone.

[SincereCorgi]

You're counting wrong. The stats you looked up disclose the number of complete works not the number of individual pieces. And are you suggesting that Mozart led a normal life??

I don't think I'm wrong; if you want to provide your source, I'm all ears. Even if you expand every piece out to every component movement, accept as genuine every piece whose authenticity is disputed, ignore that he frequently reused material and put all his sons to work to help with orchestration and copying out parts, Bach just didn't write three pieces a day for sixty years. I don't know if you could even get the dots onto the lines that fast, and you certainly wouldn't have time to revise. Try copying out a Brandenburg concerto with a feather for a pen and see how many hours it takes. I agree that Mozart didn't have a 'normal' life, but he was pretty well-adjusted for somebody with his upbringing. He doesn't seem to have been consumed with 'lust' for playing unless you consider 'lust' to be making a good living and getting lots of commissions. Mozart got to get paid, son. He wasn't a musical graphomaniac.

[OldSausage]

These men are not the same as the rest of us. They are driven by a lust we can never understand.

Says you.

[Londy]

Great read, thanks oldsausage. For many years I have thought being an artist is a curse not sure about a blessing...still can't decide to this day. This world does not make being an artist sexy unless living under a bridge sounds appealing to you. Growing up, we are forced into "the system" by society and forgo the dreams and aspirations we once had as kids...because they are not realistic or whatever reason we are given to go the route of the world. Figuring out a way to survive while doing what you are passionate about is more difficult than it should be. But that's the way of the world. ....ok, I'm done ranting.

[Jeffff]

Sometimes I think that having "something to fall back on" was the worst advice I ever got.

[Matt DeBlass]

Sometimes I think that having "something to fall back on" was the worst advice I ever got.

I always got the "don't quit your day job" advice, but the day jobs all went away over the last few years, and the music's still here.

[AKmusic]

Sorry. I thought the blog was a bit of self-congratulatory romantic crap.

I'm having a hard time imagining who it really helped? A truly driven artist doesn't need that kind of instruction.

Maybe I needed the instruction. With regards to destroying my life and being proud of it (like he did), should I feel inspired to what he did? ...or guilty that I haven't?

Perhaps it's only part of his pyscho-therapy, to say it out loud. Should we be listening in?

Should we listen to him because he has "made it"? Let's forget the fact that any worth given to his achievements come from the same culture and society he is wanting to "stick it to". A lot to be said for that whole "social norm".

And - if his point is that a truly great creative artist is only made through pain and sacrifice, then we need to find the person that almost made it, but lost "his place" to this guy. It seems to me - that person got "killed" a little more by their "love". Perhaps I should emmulate (or at least admire) them instead.

Other than that - it was an intersting read. (Was that too much?)

I think the comments here have been more interesting.

[AKmusic]

I'm having a hard time imagining who it really helped?

Hindsight: I meant "I'm having a hard imagining who it was really intended for." The purpose for writing it...

[OldSausage]

Hindsight: I meant "I'm having a hard imagining who it was really intended for." The purpose for writing it...

Well, look I think you're being a bit harsh on the fellow. I mean, clearly he's taken an unusual route, but the competition is so stiff for what he set his sights on achieving that there's almost no other way to get there. But here's what I think is the heart of the piece, and I think this shows clearly who he's addressing and what he's trying to say:

What if for a couple of hundred quid you could get an old upright on eBay delivered? And then you were told that with the right teacher and 40 minutes proper practice a day you could learn a piece you've always wanted to play within a few short weeks. Is that not worth exploring?

So, I don't think he's saying "you have to be like me or you're worthless", I think it's more like "hey, you can have a piece of what you want if you stop thinking about the obstacles and start planning the steps of how to get there". Which, you know, is all any self-help guide tells anyone.

And it's kind of the thing that most of the people on this board have already grasped and are doing, you included.

[bratsche]

I enjoyed the article, and understood where he was coming from, even if I didn't identify personally with every nuance. The Onion article, OTOH, was just downright depressing and nightmarish, even if satirical.

I may not have reached the ranks of "concert anything" in my average musical career, but know firsthand what the obsessive driven-ness aspect is all about. It made me spend long hours in the practice room as a child and teenager (my parents had to force me outside for fresh air, now and again). It made me move 3000 miles away from everything familiar to me without a second thought, to accept my first (and second, and third) orchestral positions. It made me absolutely not care whether I never had children (I didn't), health insurance (ditto), or enough money for a vacation (never) or restaurant meal (seldom). If I'd had to live a "normal" life working at a "normal" job - whatever that word means - I don't know how I'd have done it. I just never had a driving desire to do anything different.

bratsche

[John Flynn]

I generally like to read these "I followed my passion and became a success at it" stories. I'm clear that I will not take that kind of path in life. That is a choice I've made and I'm comfortable with it. But I find those stories inspiring and they help me "think outside the box" on smaller scales in my own life.

There is a career/life planning exercise I picked up from a career counselor that I've found useful in my life. We all do this at least subconsciously, but this is just a way of being more systematic about it. You put three columns on a piece of paper (or a spreadsheet). The first is "Things I like to do," the second is "Things I'm good at" and the third is "Things I could make a living at." You fill in the columns and then prioritize each item. Then you try to find connections. If you find something like "playing piano" as a #1 priority in all three columns, you have a shot at making a choice like the guy in the blog made.

That doesn't happen for many of us. Most people wind up with three columns without a lot of connections. But that's OK. The exercise then becomes can you plan a life for yourself that allows you to do what you like to do and apply what you're good at to making a decent living. So using myself as an example, in the first column, I put down as high priorities that I like to play mandolin, I like to be involved in my church and I like old-time music. In the second column, I have to put a low priority on my mandolin skills, though. However, I'm good enough to play in church music groups and participate in old-time jams. But there is no potential for anything musical in the third column. Even some of the great church musicians and old-time musicians have day jobs and I am just competent, far from being great.

However, in the second column, I'm really good at an in-demand management consulting specialty. I don't "like" to do it, but it's tolerable and it provides me a lifestyle that has the time and money to do some of what I like to do. So even though I have other career options in the third column, that is my best bet for making a living. I'm not doing "what I like" for a living, but I am doing something I'm good at and I don't mind doing, and most importantly, it's a lifestyle that allows me to have the time and the money to do what I like on the weekends. It's what works for me.

This exercise probably doesn't tell me anything I don't already know in my heart. But I do find it useful to clarify my thinking about my life choices.

[OldSausage]

There's another Onion article in there somewhere: "Find what makes you a living and you can tolerate, and let it kill you"

[stevedenver]

Sometimes I think that having "something to fall back on" was the worst advice I ever got.

im torn on this, i went to law school, despite a fierce love of music, and a semester at Berklee. Really torn. I have a comfortable life, paid mortgage, sent kid to prestigious schools, and can afford now to have the instruments i couldnt afford, and have a good deal more time to play in a band, and hike too.

dont know what id do if i could change history, but one thing i do know, is to be good , imho, you, no, I can't be in two places at once. There was a decade i pretty much didnt play my guitar more than every week or two, maybe less.


i have learned that if you really try, really really focus, youre more likely to succeed, but it isnt guaranteed.

i do know for dead sure my hourly is lot higher and 'gig's more consistent as a lawyer. Given my present band relationships, i dont t know if i would have slept any better or had more peace of mind being a muso. I deal with a lot of the same crap i do as a lawyer , mediating, organzing, rehearsing, dealing with egos, etc

otoh, i have consciously not provided the 'fall back' pressure on my son, nor have i needed to subsidize him since his recent graduation and living on his own

-he plays music and has a corp. day job-hes 21--i have told him of my thoughts-things he might not think about so early in life, but i decided to let him make the call.

[Jim]

I got a Rad. Tech License so I'd have something to fall back on while working as a CW guitarist. then girlfriend got pregnant, became wife and Rad tech became main gig. I continued to play though it was nothing professional for ten years while kids were little, I worked nights. ect. Devoted a few hours a week to it even when there was no forseeable performance. I salute those who give up everything else for their art, but, my real respect goes to those who keep at it while finding time to support a family and take care of everyone elses needs too, even if it means compositions only come about 3 times a year instead of 3 times a day. I do wonder where I'd be if I'd forsaken all other goals and just persued the one, but, life is good.

[JeffD]

I do wonder where I'd be if I'd forsaken all other goals and just persued the one,.

There is a central lie in what adults told us as kids. Or at least it wasn't the whole truth.

They told us "you can be anything you want". Which, within a range, is true. But what they should have said is "You can be any ONE thing you want. And choose as early as you can." Because for many the truth is that by the time you have found your level of competance in your life's work, what ever level that might be, you are too old to start something else with any hope of becoming amazing at it. Its too late, at 35, to discover that you are never going to be really great at mathematics, but you could have been a world class bicycle racer. Time and tide, time and tide.

I sometimes wonder if we in this country are doing any kid a favor encouraging a long childhood in which they are to "find themselves". All that time we could have started becoming amazing at... something. No violinist I have ever met doesn't wish he started earlier.

I could'a been a contender.

[JeffD]

Now the arguement from the parent's side is that if you could have been world class at something, it would have been evident by the time you were ten years of age.

i.e. no you couldn't a been a contender.

[SincereCorgi]

They told us "you can be anything you want". Which, within a range, is true. But what they should have said is "You can be any ONE thing you want. And choose as early as you can."

I don't think I necessarily agree with that, though, because you can't really choose your aptitudes and weaknesses. If some sage grandfatherly type had told me at age 7 that I could be any one thing I wanted, and I had taken it to heart and solemnly decided that I would be a major league basketball player... all those years in the gym shooting free-throws, videotaping myself, money for sneakers, special coaching.. I'd still be a dude who's 5' 10" and doesn't have the twitch muscles and nervous system to excel at high-level basketball. There are a lot of occupations like that. I think sort of the point of the original essay, though, was that if you love basketball and you're not 7' tall and 16 years old, you can still play competitive pick-up basketball in your community instead of watching TV.

[Astro]

The ultimate reality: Any famous Artist is eventually just as dead as their non famous, non artistic shoe cobbler cousin and posthumously could care less if you loved their symphonies and thought they were a remarkable genius.

Point is, life is short and then you die.

So better to spend your precious time here in something that fulfills and completes your life, rather than something that dominates it and takes it over. There is a fine line there that is a quite important difference and many a famous unhappy person succumbs to the later out of ill-percieved drive for narcissistic fame or for seeking approval of the masses or for other misplaced reason. Happily there are a few famous artistic achievers, and even more unfamous hobbyists, in the "fulfilled life" category which usually means they discovered its more important to care about something outside ourselves and even outside our creations or talents. For too many high achiever artists, nothing outside their own self absorbed pursuit mattered to them and that is an unfortunate waist of a life even if others find its end product entertaining. If thats what it took to pursue their art, then the cost was too high. If they led an unfulfilled life, no matter how famous, in the end they waisted their precious time for nothing more than to provide a source of entertainment to others. Sure what they left behind can have a positive impact on others beyond entertainment. But not as much as does a positive personal relationship to ones friends, family, and children. So if the art pursuit requires ignoring a truly fulfilled life, its still probably not worth the price from a cultural benefit standpoint and certainly not worth it to that artist. One could argue that for some, being self absorbed (they would call it art absorbed) is the only way they could have a fulfilled life. That may be true for an autistic savant I suppose. But for most all others, I'm just not so sure I buy into that argument.

[catmandu2]

I'm not going to critique doctrinal society here--we can find transcendence through ostensibly mundane pursuits as well (there is "heroism" in this as well...I'm sure most of us are aware of the challenges of "family life" and the heroic proportion sometimes required). Although, it's the archetypal struggle--"rational" vs "the irrational" (vonnegut's harrison bergeron's dilemma was having to choose between an aesthetic life, or "family life")

In my observation, any endeavor undertaken in "ultimate" passionate and committed fashion becomes a meditation (all life is a meditation, but the experience of engaging pursuits--be it work, play, love, leisure--with such fervor typically allows us to apprehend the subtle and profound most vividly). Iow, when we engage activity with religious zeal--as is the subject matter here--we tend to broaden our perspective: enabling greater insight, sensitivity to subtle dynamics, vivifying of particulars, etc (this is one of the functions of art, for example)

As joe Campbell would say: without the devotion of a monk, he would not attain the monk's enlightenment; however, he would still find great joy and satisfaction in relative superficial experiences

[OldSausage]

Yeah, superficial experiences. That's my passion.