My roommate and I were having a conversation a few days before the end of exams. We were both stressed out, worn down, exhausted, overworked, and any other adjective that goes along with being a music major during finals. Such times of stress get you to thinking: Why do I do this to myself? Is all of this work even worth it? And if I succeed, what am I getting myself into?
I sat there for a few seconds, curled in a fleece blanket in my desk chair, just thinking. Why DO I do this? Wouldn't a career in something else be more stable? Wouldn't I go to bed knowing all that work would be worth something?
These thoughts lasted less than three seconds.
I believe that any good musician plays music because they have to, because it's in them and it's so ingrained that they can't do anything else. A real musician strives to put himself/herself into the music in every breath they take. A real musician does this because it's who they are. They are, to use a slight cliche', one with the music.
We all got into music for some reason or another, and those of us who stayed probably didn't get into it for the sole reason of "my mother forced me to take piano" or "it was something to do in high school, so I joined band." Those of use who have chosen to do this with our lives do it because music is our way of communicating, of expressing what we feel without words. We take the music someone else has written, use their intent as a guideline, and make the music our own. My hope is that the listener hears both my intent and the composer's and makes the music personal. That's why I do what I do. That's what makes all of these hours that I could have been spending socialising or...whatever non-music majors do with their time (seriously, I honestly don't know right now) worth it. It makes my complete lack of job security okay, because the music is in me and I have to do it.
Now...there are certain personality types that are drawn into being musicians. I'd say that generally we are the misunderstood, artsy, half-crazy ones that are drawn in to spending hours of our lives in a five by five room trying to nail down that passage in La Scala di Seta. I think most of us probably turned to music because it was our way of being understood. The world around us was unrelenting and we found solace, found happiness in music. I think a lot of us who love to perform do it because it's the only way we knew that we could stand out and become known.
I speak for myself mostly, but I'm taking a stab at the general music community. We, as musicians, are needy people. We're artists. We need people to appreciate the beauty in life and the beauty we create. To a degree, we need their approval. We feed off of it. We feed off of pressure and unhappiness and bring it into our music, the rawest illustration of ourselves, and we look to our audience for approval. As performers, that's who we are. Part of the reason we play music is so we can gain that approval we need.
I think that when you grow as a person, you grow equally as a musician. Over the past year, my music-making has become less about "don't you like me" and more about putting myself into what's written on this page in front of me. I hope that in my life as a performing musician I can touch someone with music the way that countless oboists have touched my ears and heart and mind. I won't lie--I still secretly like the attention I get from a solo well-played, even though praise embarrasses the hell out of me.
We play music because we have to. Because we need to communicate--and we need people to hear it.
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