On Being a Musician

I didn’t mean to become a musician. Music chose me – it intoxicated me – you know it’s true. This happened often enough that one day in 2009 I decided that I ‘was’ a ‘musician.’ Before that it had been a passion or a pastime, a way of sharing my thoughts with song and capturing a friend’s attention for half an hour.

Life became harder once I decided I was a musician. Before that things had flown into formation – James Fahy and I almost accidentally launched the weekly garage open mic night, Pedestrian Orchestra, which chaotically introduced us to the more social half of the ripe music scene in Canberra circa 2009. We floundered enough to conquer the stages of the legendary CMC and Phoenix Pub, and couldn’t help but charm any audience with our organic banter and heart-wrenching renditions of our first good songs. It happened like magic. But when drunk on the experiences I decided to ‘be’ a ‘musician,’ things suddenly became a lot harder. Now why would that be?

Certainly, the act of labelling myself a musician changed the way I acted. I saw a musician as someone who stood astride a special podium in our world’s public spaces. Almost like a modern shaman, someone who could enrich the lives of many by directing our combined attention toward the most innate and sophisticated thoughts and feelings; like a psychologist-priest, unraveling our personal complexes with melody and a message that speaks to the deepest core of us all. I saw a musician as someone who could truly hold space for the masses, while remaining grounded, present, and in touch with what is actually relevant.

I plunged into my field like a stone into the sea. Everything I did was aimed towards success in music. My hubris expanded massively, as did the expectations I put on myself, and even the importance to which I ascribed my contributions to the arts… Within 6 months the organic life-force that enlivened my songs had taken on the church-like masquerade of an empty ritual. I began to drift into conceptual adventures, taking on strange challenges of creativity; could I write a song live on stage – and have the audience believe it is a prewritten song? I swore to stop writing pop songs for a year and tried instead to write a film score. Wonderful explorations, sure, but boy did they alienate me from the simple joy of sharing music with friends.

After several years of being a ‘musician,’ yet having made very few advances in the business of music, I began to fully see what I had lost by so zealously calling myself a musician. I was still one to pick up a guitar and play at my most entertaining for the good people, the eagerness of an amateur had never left me. But I realised to my sadness that once I called myself a musician I had stopped trying to be other things. I had failed to pursue a balanced life because all I needed was to make music – as seriously and as much of it as possible! When I began to expand my self-description to include more diverse activities – Cook, Group Leader, Accountant, Cleaner, Gardener, Friend – many of these amateur persuasions of mine brought me happinessess that I had missed.

Once at a festival a musician friend told me his tent had blown away during the day. I gave him my condolences, and asked if he’d pegged the tent down. He hadn’t, but showed no remorse at all! When I began to give him a bit of a hard time about this, he responded, ‘I don’t care about my tent. I’ll buy another one. And I’ll find somewhere to sleep tonight, I’m a musician.’ His blasè attitude and reliance upon his musical prowess really brought home the lesson for me.

The modern myth of the musician has a dangerous imbalance. When we see a super-talented (or at least, super-sexy) musician on YouTube, doesn’t it really seem like they have their shit together? We ignore or forget that a celebrity must sometimes care for a sick partner, wash their clothes; that they too must participate in the domestic aspects of life that we all share. Our blindness can give a strange impression that to be loved and acclaimed for the performance of an art form makes up for failings in other areas of life, and that these weak spots can be forgotten or the slack will be covered by someone else. Basically, that if you’re good at music, you don’t have to worry about the rest. It’s like a get-out-of-jail-free card – except that life isn’t really a jail, is it?

In the case of the uber-successful, I’m sure that having someone round to wipe your nose and order uber eats could be a common story – and hey, we all know people who haven’t got their shit together and rely on those around them to stay afloat. But in my case, attempting to build a career in a very competitive industry was made much harder by the single-minded and somewhat inept manner in which I took on the role of ‘musician.’ It wasn’t until I learnt how to thrive in roles linked to music, but peripheral to it, that my income became steady. Teaching, MC’ing, Mixing, Stage Managing, Performance Troupes and Production have all become solid jobs for me.

By calling myself solely a musician, I had cut myself off from these rich avenues of creativity and human interaction, and they pretty much all pay better than my performances as a ‘musician’ – for the moment, anyway. It’s taken a couple of years for me to really broaden how I define myself, but I actually feel more balance and strength in calling myself a musician than ever before.

So I call upon those interested to expand our cultural image of the successful artist. We’re all people, we’re all faced with the challenge of finding inspiration within a balanced life. The single-minded obsessiveness of an auter will always have a natural advantage in the arts, where a single project or exhibition could require 6 months of undivided attention to accomplish. But just how much of a grip the artistic workaholic has on the more mundane parts of existence will say lots about the kind of people which decide to stick around in their life. In my experience, people will stick around a genius for a long time to see what comes out. If that genius has empathy and the ability to contribute to other’s lives like a normal person too, people don’t just stick around, they become a community.

I relish when people ask me what I do. After admitting that I’m a musician and I live the dream, I have a lot to talk about. Because the truth is, there’s actually quite a lot to it.