Hi all,
I'd like to know how many members of the list are full-time musicians or
self-employed artists. And are you happy? Care to start a thread on this?
How many are musicians for a living? How many are musicians but still work
elsewhere?
I've been wrestling with corporate America's ego for a month, since being laid
off my fool-time job.
After checking my corporate grooming in the glass darkly, I have gone to
several interviews for positions seeking "motivated IT professionals with
proven track records and good people skills." Is there a medicine that helps
you stomach that kind of encounter? Beano and Lactaid together just don't
have have strength to help prevent the "human resource protocol syndrome"
anymore. I even cut off 24 inches of ponytail!!!
For 20 years, I've worked in an office and played music on the side. Without
a stitch of promotion, I've managed to book two or three good gigs, weddings
or special events nearly every week. But it was a burnout of love.
Now, I don't want to go back to work fool-time, especially for a company that
doesn't even have enough imagination to have a name instead of an acronym.
I'm considering taking a part-time advertising job that's creative, but it
will pay an hourly rate of nearly half of what my salary level was. However,
it will pay the mortgage and car payment, so I will only need to come up with
enough money to keep me and my daughter alive.
I'm ready to take in laundry (which is what my Berklee-trained brother called
it when he started accepting guitar students) and actually start having faith
in myself as a performer. Maybe those extra four hours a day will give me the
time to finally work at promoting my music, time to possibly think of ways to
sell my CDs, time to network with people with common interests instead of
people sitting in the same Powerpoint presentation of that neverending
strategic planning meeting, time to work on honing my music beyond Pachelbel's
Canon in D for yet another bridal procession or background jazz piano for a
dinner of doctors who really aren't listening, and maybe even time to wash the
dishes from September-October 2000. (Nah, I'll just hide them in the clothes
dryer a little longer.)
Anyway, I see the list contains so many talented musical people, like Kate
Bennett, Steve Dulson and Michael Paz. Is the muse a good sport about helping
you all pay the car insurance on time?
I've always justified keeping a desk job with the standard line, "I don't want
to be a starving musician." But the indigestion of eating the food of
nonspiritual labor is killing me.
I'd love to be invited to play guest harp on a recording by a friend somewhere
in Tulsa or San Luis Obispo, and actually be able to consider being able to
take the time to do it!
Anyway, I hope a few of you find this worthy of a thread....
Regards
Harper Lou
(Harpist for extreme hire)
