Why would anyone want to be a musician?

Sure, it's more enjoyable being a musician than being a data entry clerk which is the road that it's lead me to. If I'd not quit my job to become a fulltime musician, I'd have had a Real Career in Advertising. I could have used my savings to buy a house and have something of my own. I made some friends, but most of them turned out to be careerist fake friends. I'm feeling bitter and angry right now about the whole thing, and it's completely destroyed my ability to enjoy music at all. I don't even play guitar any more.

The best thing about this weekend in the country was that I did not have to listen to music or even talk about music for 48 hours. HSA's mum asked me why I became a musician, and I struggled to give her an answer.

I feel the same emotion when I’ve just written something I’m proud of as I do when I’ve made some music I’m proud of.

Personally it’s a stronger emotion when I’ve made music, but I can imagine that for others the reverse might be true.

Also I can't imagine what it would be like being a professional musicican and having to worry about what record companies and fans might expect/demand. Having to work to a time limit or when you don't want to.

Most of the time it feels like so much fun I wouldn't want to spoil it by having to do it. I feel that way about most things.

this is the sort of thing high-school students say and it's guaranteed to make you miserable. you make it a job because you feel you're good at it, there are opportunities to do it and you don't base your ideas of success around how many mortgages, cars kids in private school you have - hell, if this were not the case we'd all be working in the city, making millions and trying to purge our guilt at the weekends by making/listening to/writing about music... and guess what we'd be thinking as we did it... "damn i wish this was my job rather than all that other meaningless shite..."

Hope there is anyway.

Actually, that's deliberately provocative...

I enjoy writing/talking about sex. Should I become a pornographer?

(I'm only half joking on that one. The most popular "creative endeavor" I ever made was basically pornography...)

i don't consider writing to be a chore.

i say this, of course, halfway through typing up a 2 hour The Darkness interview tape. my hands are numb and my nerve endings tingling and my bones all jamming up. i consider typing interview tapes a chore; but i did when i ran my fanzine, and until i garner the charisma and chutzpuh of Everett and can corall students to tye up such tapes, i always will do.

but i love music and i love writing, and i do my very best to avoid writing about stuff i don't like. i don't enjoy writing a bad review (okay, sometimes; i enjoyed placing the Vines' album in a sober and disagreeable context upon release, almost as much as i loved my Kerrang! review being reprinted by NME in their slavish and slathering 8-page Vines special, uner a banner reading 'The ones who didn't get it'), but there's a certain pleasure to be drawn from composing a negative/critical review that discerns what made the record/performance so displeasing and therefore, in a wider sense, setting out what passes for my aesthetic concept. when i write reviews for the Times Play, there's no room in those 100 words for the flights of poetic/narrative fancy a thousand CTCL words could afford, but the joy comes from the haiku-esque act of precis and composure: fitting what you insanely LOVELOVELOVE about a record into 100 words of text sober enough to flow in the context of the surrounding reviews, and with reference point Coldplay fans would understand.

comparing it to prostitution is just sheer hysterics, and also pretty fucking insensitive and pathetic. prostitution physically and emotionally humiliates those involved, and i would never dare compare my experience of being asked to write about, say, The Vines, to people who are forced to sell their bodies and souls for cash. its a pretty fucking stupid analogy, to be honest, and i think you'd do well to step back and get some perspective and a clue, and stop taking everything so seriously.

When I was a session musician, I *DID* feel like a prostitute. I was selling my body - in my time and my ability - and my soul - in terms of my talents and something that I loved. I stopped because it felt icky. I felt gross taking money to play music that I hated, and using my talents to support talentless gits who could only attract a backing band by paying for one. I might have well have been engaging in prostitution. (And I'd have been better paid.)

see: Blag Dahlia, David Yow

Also I can't imagine what it would be like being a professional musicican and having to worry about what record companies and fans might expect/demand.

the best musicians are the ones who care least about such concerns. [/OPINION]

kate, without wishing to sound remotely dismissive or offensive here, your music never seemed nearly as overwrought as this line of self-inquisition would lead me to expect it to be, and i find that really intriguing...

Stevie, for a start, you're posting on the wrong thread, so I will take your pointed rants at me with a grain of salt.

pointed rants? kate, besides editing your copy a couple of times, disregarding your bile towards YYYs and meeting you at a few CTCL dos, i don't know you at all. and i was responding directly to something posted on this thread (i think).

and if its a rant, then its because i find it utterly tiresome and offensive that you would willingly compare the act of performing as a session musician (which i never actually knew that you did) with prostitution, which is a far more degrading and violent experience (few people are murdered for being session musicians, go check the similar facts vis a vis prostitutes). it makes you sound like a spoilt, pouting student who has little or no experience of the true vagaries of the filth and squalor and horror of life as it is lived by people who don't have the choice of 'prostituting' themselves as musicians.

Well, doesn't that say something about your perceptions of me, and your perceptions of my music? Or perhaps you just didn't listen carefully enough?

This is something that I never understood. How I could be so full of bile and filth and self hatred and still be accused again and again of making music that was "too happy".

I think I should go home now. When ILM makes me bawl with tears of anger and frustration it's time to go home.

If you think that musicians are never in any danger because of their occupations, you've clearly never been a touring musician - I've been in some very dodgy situations because of it. But that's right, I don/t have authenticity or a right to angst or misery because I'm not poor. Sorry, I forgot. I'll take my middle class depression and just jump off a bridge instead.

That's a bit strong. At least you're practicing for what you really want to do, what about all those musicians who work for the DHSS, or wait tables, or teach.

the best musicians are the ones who care least about such concerns.

Agreed, though there are some who do it 'for the money' and I end up loving what they do.

kate, without wishing to sound remotely dismissive or offensive here, your music never seemed nearly as overwrought as this line of self-inquisition would lead me to expect it to be, and i find that really intriguing...

Yeah, I find it intriguing too. Artists often express something about themselves in their work even if they don't realise it.

I bought Meet The Lollies a few weeks ago because it's your band kate, and it doesn't sound musically anything like I would expect to come from someone with your tastes.

I don't think it's happy at all.
From the lyrics I heard (and there are a lot of them) it sounds quite bitter, which you don't usually come across as at all on ILX.

I suppose what I'm getting at is, why not form a drone rock band and wail on passionately about DDRboys and guitars and sex and...you get the picture.

Sorry.

again, with a sincere desire not to cause offence or upset, isn't that like bringing a pair of boxing gloves to playtime and running home crying because you've gotten a black eye? if you really want to enter so deep into discussion and debate, you shouldn't take everything STRANGERS write here so seriously. argue back, for fuck's sake, don't weep and whimper; it makes you seem pathetic in a way your talent and demeanour affirm you not to be.

yes, that is a preposition i am dangling there...

if ILM isn't therapy, then i don't know what the fuck it is...

angst and misery are all yours to claim, kate, and you obviously get quite a heady kick out of indulging both. from outbursts like that, it would seem you're humourlessly adept at ekeing misery out of *any* situation.

comparing the plight of the session musician to that of a prostitue is like watching footage of a famine in the Sudan aand saying, "you think that's bad, i had to wait nearly an hour for the pizza delivery boy the other day".

i just think you need a fucking huge dose of perspective, Kate. i'm sorry, but if you want my honest opinion, well, that's it in a nutshell. if you willingly and without irony or self-consciousness make such comparisons or overanalyse the impulses behind creation to such an evidently unhealthy and unproductive extent, or throw such hysterical tantrums when confronted about such comparisons, then you need to take a step back and place your existence, your experience your life in context of the world at large, at how other people live. the wisdom and revelations that'd afford you would blow your mind.

i'm fully aware of how dismissive and patronising that sounds, but dig this: last year i earnt £11,000, or there about (ask my accountant). admittedly, i took a month or so off because my dad passed away, but consider that. and consider how, despite the fact i earn 9p a word off Kerrang!, despite i earn nish all and never forsee myself owning property or whatever, take nightbuses because i can't afford cab fare, all that gnarly shit taht comes along with NOT being rich or financially independent, i don't think i ever really complain about money, like you say all journalists do.

because i don't have to raise any kids on that money, because i live in a decent council house in a safe-ish part of london, because i have some semblence of health and prosperity, am generally happy, whatever... i think i am a lucky motherfucker, and i'll squeeze every last drop of joy out of the life i've chosen for myself, thank you very much.

you've the right to whatever angst and misery your self- and archly- confessed middle class upbringing give you to exploit and indulge. just don't ask me to feel sorry for you, because i sure as fuck don't want you to feel sorry for me.

If you want to get self righteous about how little you earn, let me please point out that last year, I earned a total of £3000. How did I survive? I'm still not entirely sure. So don't try to indulge in a pity-party with me.

The reason I even brought prostitution into this is thus:

I posed a serious question. You may poo-poo at my existential crisis, but over the past half year I've basically had the entire reason for my existence for the past twenty years kicked out from under me. Oh, poor me, pity pity. I am geniunely asking "why would anyone want to do X?" not because I am trying to take the piss out of doing X, but because I am geniunely looking to justify my own fucking existence on this planet.

The answer, again and again, has been "because I enjoy it, I want to get paid for it." My response to that was, somewhat facetiously perhaps "If I enjoy sex, should I become a prostitute?"

I don't want to get into socio-political discussions of prostitution etc. - that is a derrailment of the original topic of discussion. I did originally use it as a metaphor - we don't get into socio-political discussions about murder and assault everytime someone says "such and such a musician makes me want to punch them/shoot them/strangle them".

My argument is that "because I enjoy it" is just not an argument, not a defense and not a rationalisation. There *has* to be something more. Because I often *don't* "enjoy" the things that I do, or feel compelled to do.

Nickalicious' and Charlie's "Because I *have* to" make more sense to me. But this brings into argument the nature of compulsion. Creativity is something that very much came out of mental illness in my own life. I play music, I write, I draw, because I *have* to. But what if the compulsion were not to do something "creative"? What if the "voices" (metaphorical voices in my case, thank you kindly) told me to kill my neighbours? My brother suffers from a mental disease which (somewhat indirectly) causes him to write hateful incitement against Islam and Arabs under the guise of political conservatism. That's his creativity and he gets paid for it.

My inarticulateness angers me again, and I'm starting to cry with frustration.

I don't ask for pity. I do ask for someone to help me understand how other people work in an effort to understand how *I* work. What compells *them* to do it and compells them to go on living, working and creating, can help me to find an answer to that myself.

Do I need perspective? Every time I think about perspective, I want to hurl myself off a bridge with the thought of my own uselessness and powerlessness and lack of purpose or justification. I think about the universe and my place in it and decide that the universe would be better off without some spoiled middle class whinging brat of a student who can't even study.

I hate the English, you ask for help, and they think that you are asking for pity. Well, fuck you, refusing me something I never asked for.

http://www.hiponline.com/artist/music/r/radiohead/radiohead-bio_tile.jpg

I wish you could have heard the songs that didn't make it to the album; the songs that did make me happy. The long, wibbling, textural songs like _It's All Good_ and _Closer_ and _Little Death Machine I Want You_ that didn't make the album because they didn't make the three minute pop tune cut. I'd much rather have been judged on those. :-(

HA HA HA HA HA HA HAAAA! Thom Yorke's eyebrows make everything alright again.

are you not listening? i don't want any pity for it. if money was an issue for why i do this, then i would do something else. it isn't, i can live off that money, so i don't care. if earniing £3000 is a problem for you, then find something you can earn more money at.

You may poo-poo at my existential crisis, but over the past half year I've basically had the entire reason for my existence for the past twenty years kicked out from under me. Oh, poor me, pity pity. I am geniunely asking "why would anyone want to do X?" not because I am trying to take the piss out of doing X, but because I am geniunely looking to justify my own fucking existence on this planet.

i'm not poo-pooing your existential crisis at all. i feel very sorry for you if you are doubting your talent or the reason you make music - though to judge by your incessant postings here that would seem to be a perpetual state for you - as i know how that feels. more speed to your plow, etc. but i'm not gonna indulge you comparing your woes to those of someone selling their body for cash they don't have. bullshit. i'll call it as i see it, and it is BULLSHIT.

did you ask for pity? no. you whined that you were denied the right to pity for your angst and misery because you're middle-classed. BULLSHIT.

you hate the English. cool. whatever. thanks to the internet the entire world can watch you throw your toys out of the crib. ROCK ON.

I am angry and bitter and upset because I have no talent. Why am I compelled to do something I so obviously have no talent for? I originally started making music in order to counteract self loathing, and it only increases self loathing because I am so worthless at it. It makes other people a hell of a lot more happy than it has ever made me. :-(

i think you ARE talented. that's why i printed your Female Archetypes feature when i disagreed with nearly every word of it: because of your skill as a writer. that's why i continue to defend your 'They Came From The Stars' feature on the CTCL webboard, because it was a wonderful feature. Your music isn't my cup of tea, but big fucken surprise. i'm sure you'd hate most of my record collection.

if its encouragement you're after, then you're a great writer - i can go deeper and at length on this if you want. but if its deep questioning of why we do anything, then my personal response is up there - we do these things for inscrutable reasons. and if it hurts so much, with so little payback, to do it, then don't. i can't give you any deeper advice than that, because i've never questioned why i do this to that extent. because i get a fucken thrill every time i write something i'm genuinely proud of, and am addicted to seeing my writing out there somewhere.

http://wrcu.colgate.edu/zine/0101/images/blur.gif

your questions shouldn't be, why am i a musician, but rather, why did i subjugate my talent for reasons not worthy of me? fuck, i sound like one of those self-hep manuals...

I wish you could have heard the songs that didn't make it to the album; the songs that did make me happy. The long, wibbling, textural songs like _It's All Good_ and _Closer_ and _Little Death Machine I Want You_ that didn't make the album because they didn't make the three minute pop tune cut. I'd much rather have been judged on those. :-(

why don't you release/rerecord them now, under your own name? you don't need anyone else to validate your art, and any artist worth listening to knows, in their heart, that that's the truth.

And that, in term, just points yet again towards my utter talentlessness at communication, I suppose. I've failed again. Big surprise there.

Because I am completely insecure. I am unable to believe in anything I create, and I am unable to stand behind anything I've done, and I am a whore (sorry for using that metaphor again, I know it upsets you) who will rent herself out to someone who *does* have the sheer cajones to get noticed.

why don't you release/rerecord them now, under your own name?

Because, sorry to be so awfully middle class about it, but I don't have the *money*. We never had the money to record those songs when we were The Lollies (as much as I hate that album, I'm surprised it sounds as good as it does, considering the conditions under which it was recorded) and I don't have the time or the bloody energy to record them now I've got an awful dayjob sucking up my lifesblood.

It's an endless catch 22.

I'm so scared of criticism I'm probably never going to (or even be able to) write another word after that _Stars_ piece got ripped to shreds.

but you're an absolute *peach* at beating yourself up.

*ponders whether to stab self in the eye with chip on self's shoulder, or kate's overwhelming self-pity*

Exactly.

Kate you should worry less about why you want to do things and just do them. Fuck everyone else. If it's good enough for you, it's good enough.

You don't need money to record songs, not much. They won't be perfect but nothing ever is anyway. I bet you've got loads of friends who could help you with equipment and/or time. There's enough rubbish in my shed to make a half decent sounding record if you've got the attitude and that's not even on purpose.

I'm so scared of criticism I'm probably never going to (or even be able to) write another word after that _Stars_ piece got ripped to shreds

People loved that article (I probably will once I've erad it), it's the most exciting/interesting idea I think I've ever heard of in a music mag and it only works cos you actually went ahead and did it.

Tell me to fuck off, but stop posting for a bit and think about all this? Talk IRL with people you trust, not know-nothing interweb nutbars like us.

*causes gnarly black eye stubbing self in the face with clumsy and blunt object*

"Sure, I could get up at dawn, get in traffic, go to a job I hate that does not inspire me creatively whatsoever for the rest of my life. I could do that, sure. Or I could sleep till noon get up and learn how to play the sitar".

Fair enough, there is a vast amount of bullshit that you have to put up with to work a soul-sucking dayjob.

The difference is, with the dayjob, I leave at 5.30 and the bullshit stops. When you are a musician, the bullshit NEVER ENDS and you have to put up with it 24-7 endlessly infecting and destroying the thing that you love.

I think maybe you've been hanging round with the wrong people.
Also, maybe, being too sensitive, but most creative people are.

Yes. People in the music industry. Indeed.

Plug in a guitar, turn it up and make it SCREAM!!!