On Loving a Musician

Are you in love with a musician? Perhaps even considering moving in together and sharing a life?
Congratulations! You have made an excellent choice. Before you commit, however, there's a couple of things you should know:

1. Musicians differ somewhat from a normal person. Living with them you'll notice they keep very different hours - not exactly your nine to five schedule. Most of the work happens in the evenings, so if you're hoping to have nice harmonious breakfasts together at seven, dream on. Your musician will be fast asleep at that point, and the most you'll get out of them early in the morning is a kick in the face for having tried to wake them up. In the evening they come home late, very hungry. You should always have some food ready, or at least a snack and a glass of wine. This is a safety measure you'll learn not to laugh at as the years go by.

2. After teaching it is impossible to smile and have a polite conversation. Do not be alarmed if your musician comes home grumpy and silent - it doesn't mean they hate their job. Teaching is very energy-consuming business, and it's quite normal not to be able to sparkle immediately after. The batteries need to be recharged before a normal level of communication can be achieved. (The aforementioned wine may speed up the process.)

3. The amount of work varies a lot, and the mood swings accordingly. One week your musician will be super busy, full of enthusiasm and excitement - and then there'll be days of Netflix, pure procrastination, and sighing over a career that has "passed them by". On the latter occasions you can try to be supportive, but your musician probably won't respond that well to phrases like "honey, if you actually practiced or tried to contact someone instead of watching Orange is the New Black and eating only cheese, things might improve". There will come a time when you'll be wise enough to save your breath and, seeing the first signs of a Netflix coma, go stay with friends for a week or book a hiking holiday just for yourself. A good relationship needs distance, you've heard.

4. Before concerts your musician can turn into different kinds of weird. Sulky, angry, weepy, deeply concentrated and quiet, overly cheerful and loud, obsessed with their hair... Again, the best advice you can get is to ignore them and remember that the concerts pay their share of the bills.
Another thing to know about concerts is that you'll need to attend. Your musician might say that you don't have to go, it's not that important, but they don't mean it. You do have to go. After the concert there will be either ecstatic rambling about touching people's souls, or angry muttering about how nobody appreciates art anymore. Agree with everything that's being said and whatever you do, do not try to be reasonable. Reasonable doesn't go well with a post-concert adrenaline rush.

5. If you expect your significant other to be mainly making music, practicing and performing, you're so mistaken. Your musician will spend way more time writing stuff - concert advertisements, program notes, emails and texts to students, emails and texts to colleagues, invoices, grant applications, tax return forms, unemployment benefit applications, blogs, biography updates, website updates, and so on. The music is the icing on the cake, and the cake itself is other things.

6. If your musician is a pianist, they'll spend an equal amount of time attaching sheet music together with scotch tape. (Like this: Put two sheets of music next to each other - put tape up, down, and center - realize the papers aren't in the right order - swear - repeat.) You'll feel sorry for your musician and to help them you'll buy them an ipad for their birthday. They'll use it to play solitaire, keep taping their scores like they've always done, and next year you'll just buy them more scotch tape.

7. Music is not a sport, you say? Think again. As your musician gets older, the amount of money spent on physiotherapy, massages and the like grows exponentially. Saving for a trip to Thailand? Not in a million years. Saving for a Tempur motor bed? Yep, already opened an account. You think you don't have to worry about these things before your musician is 60+ but you're fooling yourself. The moment a musician hits 30, they start going on and on about the benefits of yoga and ergonomic pillows - and all they'll want for Christmas will be gift cards to chiropractors.

8. You will not choose a single piece of music for your wedding. That's for sure...

9. ...but you'll be the one buying the house.

On Fear

​Dear reader, I'm scared. Worried, stressed, and anxious about The Career Of A Freelance Musician. I live with a man who has a Nice Normal Job, and while he sleeps peacefully, I lie awake thinking about how nobody will ever hire me again.

You know the feeling when you're wide awake, it's way too much o'clock, and you have super constructive thoughts on failing at life? Night is obviously the worst time to think, so I'd strongly recommend you to sleep instead if you can. If you can't, here's two things to do instead: play solitare (there's an app for that, no need for actual playing cards. Very handy if you want to stay in bed while someone next to you is sleeping and would little appreciate lights being switched on) - or read a book. No time to think when doing either. I've tried the Constructive Method of writing my worries down, but that creates an uncomfortable paper trail - read in daylight, all those very serious concerns and fears look more like ramblings of a delusional half-wit.

When there's a quieter period in my calendar, it easily feels like the quiet will last forever. That's when I'm most worried, anyway. Busy is good, even if it sometimes gets close to burnout. (No more of that, now. That's a whole other blog post.) So, ladies and gentlemen. In order for you to feel better about your  saner selves, I'll share some of my delusional ramblings with you. Here are some thoughts that, after midnight, have entered my drama queen of a head:

1. Oh no, I don't have almost anything this ________(insert the current time of year)! I have done my last concerts in life and I'll never get to perform again.

2. They have finally caught me out: I suck at teaching, and I'll soon be fired if all my students won't quit first.

3. People practice and work insane hours and never get tired, and they still go to the gym, only eat beans and have calm, enlightened minds. I'm the only musician who feels worn out after teaching, and who doesn't always (usually) have the energy to excercise and socialize, and who eats popcorn for breakfast.

4. X years ago in that project I  ________________(insert a thing you should've done different), and now everyone that was there hates me and thinks I'm an incompetent nitwit.

5. Next year I can't be a pianist any more because nobody wants to play with me, and I'll probably end up working as a cleaner or cashier except they won't hire me because I'm too lazy and I'll die alone and unemployed. 

6. Everyone else has so many fancy gigs - they all work from morning till night and then party like crazy. I must be the only person in the entire music industry who has days off and watches Netflix.

Don't get me wrong - a lot of the time I'm optimistic about the future, grateful for the projects I've already done, and happy with the stuff I'm currently working on. I know very well that some have more and fancier stuff, and others less. I also know that You Should Not Compare Your Life With Other People's. But seriously, who doesn't? Another wisdom I've heard is Just Work Hard And Things Will Happen. No Need To Worry, Regret, Anything.

Bullshit, I tell you. I exist, therefore I worry. 

Conclusion: A part of being a freelance musician (for me) is being awake on some nights playing solitare on my phone, whilst posting only happy stuff to Instagram. And somehow life just happens to continue, and there just happens to be new mornings, opportunities, and ideas. And new exciting games in Google Play for the sleepless nights to come.