Re: Why SHOULDN'T musicians be paid?

[Daryl Shawn <highhorse@mhorse.com>]

Warren, thanks for sharing this stuff. Myself, I feel very strongly that 
musical creativity is absolutely priceless. I can understand the 
immediate impact of someone so callously dismissing your efforts, but 
hell, you're not another pizza boy! And what gave that dude the right to 
say what he did, not being a personal friend for one thing, and most of 
all not having HEARD your music?

There are a bazillion guitar players, and composers...a bazillion 
writers...a bazillion painters...a bazillion, if you will, breathers. To 
justify waking up in the morning I need to believe that I can contribute 
something, even if it's a droplet in this sea. And as long as I'm still 
getting blown away by other people's music, or get extreme enjoyment out 
of creating some tiny musical fragment that seems to be my own, it's not 
an effort to believe that.

As for being a retired millionaire with time to do music, well...think 
instead about having lost (that's how I perceive it) the last decades by 
devoting your best hours and creativity to making money. My brother is a 
talented writer who worked for several years on an excellent manuscript, 
which he couldn't immediately find a publisher for. He gave up writing 
for the time being, choosing instead to concentrate on family life and a 
new full-time job. He is continually trying to justify his choices, 
telling me how many writers seems to be publishing their works for the 
first time in their fifties and sixties, after raising kids and/or 
making enough money to retire. This may be true, but it breaks my heart 
to think of all those years spent waiting to create, and hoping to end 
up with some imagined comfortable environment where, finally, one can do 
their art, starting from scratch without the benefit of the years of 
experience they'd have had otherwise. I'm guessing there are a lot of 
people in this situation who get so used to the comfortable lives 
they've created that they have, in the interim, lost their desire to put 
in the late nights and long hours and sweat required to bring forth an 
original creation. I wish he didn't feel like he had to choose one life 
over another, but instead, found a way to integrate his creating even 
into a life which doesn't afford him that many hours for it.

Now, can you do better at Garageband than a teenager? HELL HELL HELL 
YES! It's all about the musical ideas, my friend. Browse Myspace, and 
see whether the easy availability of musical tools has made us awash in 
art of undelineated high quality. Is it important or meaningful that you 
be able to do your stuff? I say, again, hell yes. I think it's the most 
important task in the world. Anyone can make money, anyone can be a 
pizza boy, anyone can try to make music, but only a few people have a 
talent for the original creation of the latter.

I don't have a concrete point here, really just reactions to your 
well-expressed views. Ultimately, I'm just glad you're still playing - 
and for what it's worth, it'd be upsetting to me if you quit.

Daryl Shawn
www.swanwelder.com
www.chinapaintingmusic.com
> Rick, I think the sacrifices you've made in pursuit of your art are 
> inspiring, and (what I see the most) your efforts to facilitate and 
> promote the art of others. And maybe I was out of line calling you on 
> your phrasing and should have just left that to Travis if he wanted to 
> respond. I've had my years of sacrifice in pursuit of art, too, and 
> decided that for myself, I needed to "focus", if you will, on a 
> "less-focussed" view of life. Perhaps the need for money is the 
> universe's way of forcing us to engage with others on THEIR terms, and 
> just maybe in one possible broader view of things, that's a good 
> thing. We all have a lot of hard choices to make in the 
> art-vs-income/time category. In another life I'd take your path. I 
> find much to envy in it. But I wouldn't trade right now (well, OK, I 
> probably would for a *while*), and I'm sure you wouldn't either.
>
> And, I have to admit, my view of my own self-worth as a musician was 
> pretty permanently undermined that evening in 1987 when I was sitting 
> working on music (for my MFA from Mills, which I quit my corporate job 
> to pursue - I would now be a retired millionaire with all the time for 
> music in the world had I not done that) in an Oakland pizzeria, 
> waiting for dinner, when the 17-year old server kid came by and asked, 
> what was I doing. I replied that I was a composer, working on some 
> music, and he said, "oh, well, who isn't?" And, you know, despite the 
> obvious differences of years of experience and study and dedication, 
> at core I felt that he was essentially correct in his attitude. He was 
> me 20 years earlier. It was shockingly humbling. So yeah, Rick (tho 
> you didn't say this to me, it felt like you did), I don't put that 
> much external value on my own musical creativity. To me, that would be 
> like putting value on breathing. If people choose to reward me in such 
> a way that allows me or encourages me to do more of it, that's a 
> special blessing, not specifically related to anything that I can 
> perceive or measure except perhaps better politiking than I can 
> manage. If not, well, I'm just another pizza boy doing my best to have 
> fun.
>
> To shift to the present day:
> Now I look around and see that the tools of production have been put 
> fully into the hands of the proletariat, and the means of distribution 
> are close behind. I think this is a good thing, but highly disruptive 
> (to a system already dysfunction to the point of disease). Can I 
> possibly do better with Garageband than a teenager with hours every 
> night to surf the web for beats and samples? Not likely. Is it 
> important or meaningful that I be able to do this? Also, not likely.  
> So I do two things - I make the recorded art I want to make and don't 
> expect anyone to even really want to listen to it (at any price, 
> including free), except under rare circumstances, and OTOH I cultivate 
> skills (fingerstyle-jazz guitar playing) that are giggable and 
> not-easily-duplicable. But, really, gigs are not the true motivation 
> for doing the guitar practice, anyway - I'm doing it because I have a 
> singer that I love listening to and accompanying, and this is how I 
> manage to do more of it.
>
> So, I guess the point is that we all create our own survival 
> strategies in a world that makes its own inscrutable judgments about 
> which forms of virtue will be rewarded, and what forms those rewards 
> will take. And I do wish it were otherwise, but it doesn't seem 
> constructive in my life to wallow in that wish too frequently.