Letters to the Editor
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Forty Six And Never Stopped Rocking.
At 20 most people wonder who they are. Their job is to figure it out.
By 40, if you don't know who you are, you're in tough shape.
If it takes starting a band to figure our who you are, then go for it.
Excellent reply by Mr. Tennis, as always.
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just do it and don't ask if it is too late.
You have a computer and it takes about 1500 dollars or so to print a thousand cds which is pobably ten times as many as you can sell unless you are phenomenally lucky.
Don't expect to make money, expect to make yourself. The time you took writing that letter would have been better spent making some music and uploading it to the web.
Do you really want to do it? Because if you did why haven't you done it?
I was doing industrial music before it was cool and at best it is just angry disco and at worst idle self-indulgent knob turning and distortion whoring. Anyone can do it. So do it and post it on youtube or something.
Now I play theremin, same thing only some folks have talent and skill. Some of the theremin music online makes industrial sound pretty.
Click on my name to see some of my videos. I don't expect you to send me a check. Forget about making money with your art. Art gives you more than money, it gives you your self.
Feel free to dress your self up with some really bad fashion.
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Should we be more worried?
A week after the lastest bitter and bewildered loner goes on a spree at his campus or workplace in America, there are some things in this letter that really bother me. Doesn't this sound like someone else we've heard from lately:
- I have never been very happy with my life.
- I can't keep a job. ["I have worked jobs, such as in retail, the restaurant industry and business offices, that have left me bored, unfulfilled and feeling like my soul has been crushed."]
- I'm grandiose. ["I've been told many times I have a near genius IQ and have always been an out-of-the-box thinker."]
- I lack empathy. ["The people I work with .. are mindless robots who do whatever society tells them to do."]
- I feel alienated. ["I work in 'cubicle world,' with dull-gray cubicles and nasty, mint-green walls."]
- I've tried to get help, but I don't know if I trust the person(s) I asked. ["My therapist says go for it, the world is a different place now."]
- I'm paranoid. ["People will laugh me right out of town ... I don't want to have only 20-something friends and be the laughingstock of the city."]
- "Partnering up with someone ... makes me feel suicidal."
- "I am tired of being unhappy and not being myself."
- "I feel as if I am quickly dying and soon to reach my breaking point."
- "I ...have always struggled to integrate ... into the 'real world.'"
- "I listen to an industrial/goth radio station on the Net."
- I'm a terrible writer. [see above.]
LW, nothing like a little hyperbole to drag people down. It's not only that playing music (no matter how brilliantly) isn't going to change your life, it may not even change your mood very much. Why is it such a crisis for you?
There is no joy in your query, nothing to suggest you even like music.
At 45, yes, you are way too old to have such a hollow and self-absorbed life and still believe starting a band is going to fix it.
The antidote: Once a day for a month, go out and do something decent for someone else for an hour. Anonymously. Try not to think about yourself for the whole hour. Keep trying until you see something positive. Hint: It won't look like an adoring audience.
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Anonymous
Nah, he doesn't sound like he is on happy pills.
That would be goth.
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Mid Life Crisis
Hey LW- I'm in my late 30s and have also been dealing with the mid life thing. Mine is the stage tho - coulda woulda shoulda been a star on Broadway, y'know? It's painful, isn't it?
So a couple of years ago I quit the dayjob and stayed home to work on my second love - writing. Wasn't going to let the muse escape me again. I wrote a really cool non-fiction book, promoted the hell out of it, got an agent, was on TV, in the papers, etc. But every time my book got up to bat - actually got a hearing at a publisher's editorial meeting - it was rejected by some drone in a suit mumbling about making money! What a jerk, right? :)
So here's the deal LW - I spent five years of my life on this thing and here I am dropped by my agent, having spent a lot of time, energy and love on a dream that will never be. I've been rejected by every publisher in NY. I can try again at some other time, but not soon.
Yeah, you can start a band, but what are your real goals? Do you want to make an album and have it go gold? You want to make a handsome living playing gigs? You can try but be prepared to face it if it doesn't work, even as you work your fingers to the bone trying to make it so.
I'm back in the dayjob scene at the same salary I was at when I left. It's not bad, I own a house and all, but if I'd known the dream wasn't going to work out I'd have worked harder at being a drone. Drones make good money, have accumulated lots of time off, and generally feel pretty safe. In fact they're so safe they have time for dangerous daydreams that draw them away like moths to flames ...
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The elite artiste...
When I was younger (in my teens and twenties) I viewed the world as having two kinds of people--true artists and mindless drones. Since I considered myself an artist (theatre is my passion), I felt a great divide between myself and those I worked with at various jobs that I did to put food on the table.
But over the years through working the "joe" jobs and becoming a parent, that divide has disappeared, and I've learned to respect those so-called drones. I've realized that most healthy, happy people have a passion unrelated to the way they earn a living. One guy loves baseball, and coaches a couple of Little League teams every year. Another works as a volunteer fireman and teaches teens how to do the same. A woman sings in a church choir, and they just put out a CD. The list goes on and on.
Nowadays, my husband manages to support our family in a big house with his tech job, and also writes musicals for the non-profit children's theatre company that I direct. He works very hard at writing the musicals, snatching time on the train on the way to the office and late into the evening at home. His stuff is really good, and maybe someday he'll make a living at it. But even if he doesn't, he's still really happy. That's because it's about making the art, participating in the artistic life--not about making money off of it.
In Bali and in certain other Asian cultures, everyone is expected to be an artist. Children are trained to dance the traditional dances, sing the traditional songs, learn woodcarving techniques, etc. When they grow up, adults are expected to both participate in the arts and earn a living some other way.
So follow your bliss, LW, but you don't have to quit your day job just yet! (And don't be such a snob about those drones; some of them might have great sound equipment for you to borrow. . .)