How To Look At Your Love For Singing Through The Lens of Career
How I finally clarified my troubled relationship with music and the music business and why what I learned might be helpful to you too.
I can’t remember how I stumbled on it.
Maybe I was searching on Google for careers or vocations for singers. The video’s title, Distinguishing Between Hobbies, Jobs, Careers, & Vocation, sounded vaguely interesting. But it was the speaker, Elizabeth Gilbert, that got me to hit the play button.
Elizabeth has a way with words. She’s written one of my favorite books on creativity — Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear. I’ve actually read it twice, something I rarely do since there are so many books to read in the world. Her perspective is always thought-provoking. Since I’m creating courses for singers, I’m constantly thinking about helping them navigate their lives in music. I was hopeful that I’d learn something from Liz that I could share.
But what I didn’t anticipate was that this short 10-minute video would finally clarify my troubled relationship with music and the music business. I’d like to share what I learned because I think it might be helpful to you too.
Hobby
First, Elizabeth talks about hobbies.
With a hobby, the stakes are low. You don’t have to make money or get famous or prove your worth with a hobby. As Liz says, hobbies are “Something to do besides paying bills and waiting to die.” They make you feel good, and “like your life’s not just about the grind.”
Hobbies can enrich your life in many ways, but you don’t have to have one.
Job
The thing you do have to have is a job — a way to support yourself. You’ve got to pay bills and take care of yourself in the material world. I’ve found that often, the material and artistic worlds don’t intersect. And that’s OK. Liz says, “A job doesn’t have to be awesome. It doesn’t have to fulfill you. It just has to pay.”
Side note: She also says it doesn’t mean that you should stay in a job that’s soul-sucking just for the money. If it’s toxic in any way, you need to find another one. That’s not easy in times of upheaval or crisis, like the one we’re in right now because of the pandemic. But life’s too short to stay in a job that’s bad for your mental, physical, or emotional health. If there’s any way out — take it.
The ideal job doesn’t take up a lot of headspace in your life. When you’re not actually working, you’re not thinking about it. You have mental and emotional space leftover to create.
Career
That brings us to careers. Liz says, “A career is a job you’re passionate about and that you love.” But careers take a lot of time, energy, and sometimes money. You often have to pay to learn something that will enable you to have a career.
You also have to love your career enough to make sacrifices for it — work overtime, on weekends, and allow it to take up a lot of real estate in your mind.
If you hate your career, that’s a bummer. Go get a job so you can work to pay the bills and have energy and headspace for what you do love — your vocation.
Vocation
So, what’s a vocation? Liz puts it beautifully:
“A vocation is a calling. A vocation is a divine invitation. A vocation is the voice of the universe in your ear, saying, “I want you to do this thing. I want you to use your talents and gifts to make this thing. I want you to participate in the story of creation in this way.”
The fantastic thing about vocation? Careers and jobs may come and go, but not your vocation. Nobody can give it to you, and nobody can take it away.
And you have to do it regardless of what comes of it.
As the author, teacher, and philosopher Parker Palmer writes,
“Vocation at its deepest level is, “This is something I can’t not do, for reasons I’m unable to explain to anyone else and don’t fully understand myself but that are nonetheless compelling.”
Writing was never a hobby for Liz. She says she felt called to write, every day — and she did — for seven years before anybody cared about what she wrote. Meanwhile, Liz had a job, not a career, because a career would have taken time away from her vocation.
Eventually, she did get a job as a writer — writing for magazines. That’s when her vocation also became a career.
It was then that she realized she had to see her writing through an additional lens — the lens of a career. And she still does.
She has to be aware of her audience and her relationship with her publisher. She has to be conscious of what she puts out into the world on social media and how it impacts her career and sales.
But if her career as a writer ends, she says she’ll keep writing. Because writing isn’t just her career. It’s first and foremost, her vocation. As she so aptly puts it:
“I write every day because it’s a holy calling. Because I need to put something into the world. Because I need to put my handprint on the wall of my life and say that I was here. And I have a commitment to my vocation that says, “I will do this for as long as I breathe, regardless of whether anything ever comes of it.”
So there you have it.
Hobbies. Nice to have, but not absolutely necessary.
Jobs. Have to have one so you can be self-reliant and responsible for your own life.
Career. More than a job. You’re passionate about what you’re doing and willing to spend the extra time and energy to do it.
Vocation. A calling. You have to do it whether or not anything comes of it.
The Tension Between Art & Commerce
So, here’s the thing. If you’re called to sing, if music is what matters most, you want to spend all your time doing it, right? But it’s a struggle to figure out how to make a living out of what you love, what you feel called to create. Love makes the world go round, but money greases the wheels that it turns on. You have to figure out a way to support yourself. Do you really want to ask the thing you love most to support you financially?
And when you do, how does it change your relationship with your art?
When I was a struggling singer in my early 20s, I would have given anything to be a full-time musician. I had a ton of different jobs — I cleaned houses and movie theaters, played conga drums for dance classes, cooked food, and waited on customers in restaurants. But the more gigs we had, the more difficult it was to have the energy to do it all.
And I felt that to “make it” in the music business, you had to be the best. How could I improve my musicianship when I barely had time to practice?
When I finally made the leap to full-time musician, I didn’t make much money. But that was OK. It helped that it was the 70s. Rent was cheap, and my needs were few. Now I could finally focus on my musical artistry and career.
It still wasn’t easy. We slogged it out in the clubs for seven years, four hours a night three to five nights per week. The band went through many ups and downs — and personnel — fifty different musicians in those seven years. We were popular in the clubs, and then we weren’t. We had a series of small wins, but the big win — a record deal — seemed impossible.
Then, through a series of improbable events, basically being in the right place, at the right time, with the right music for the moment, we got that big win — a record deal. We were on Atlantic Records for seven years. After working so hard, after all the uncertainty, we had finally made it.
But “making it” came with a whole new set of challenges. We didn’t know anything, really, about how the music business worked, and mistakenly thought it was about the music first and business second. Yes, the music matters — the music business wouldn’t exist without artists and the music they make, but money is the driving force.
I wish I’d known how to separate and protect my love for music from the pressures of a music career. I knew it was essential to develop a strong sense of self apart from what the outside world thought of me, the music we made, how many gigs we had, or how our records were selling. But it wasn’t easy.
I mistakenly thought — if you’re a true artist, people will discover and follow your creative journey and support you. But music is an emotional commodity. When people listen to music that makes them feel a certain way, they want more of the same thing. If you don’t give it to them, they’ll find someone who will. And who can blame them? I do that too!
That tension between the music you make and what the world wants to hear is what you live with when your vocation becomes your career.
So, if you want your vocation to support you financially, it’s critical to learn how to dance with that tension so it won’t destroy the thing you love to do the most.
So how do you do that?
First, I think you have to separate vocation and career in your mind. That’s why Liz’s talk was so impactful for me. She drew a line in the sand between the two. It’s not a hard line. It blurs sometimes, but being aware of that line makes it easier to work on your career while protecting your love for the music you make.
When my students came to their lessons struggling with career issues, I talked to them about looking at their musical artistry and career through something I called The External and Internal Measuring Sticks.
The External and Internal Measuring Sticks
The external measuring stick is how the outside world measures success.
This is the lens of a career. It doesn’t measure your worth as an artist; it measures your worth through the eyes of others. To have a career as a singer, it’s helpful to be aware of the existing landscape within the genre you sing — who and what you’ll be measured against.
Who are the singers that are well-known in the genre that you’re in? What do they sound like, look like? What kind of vocal mastery do they have? How do they present themselves to the world?
If you want to be a professional opera singer, then vocal mastery is essential. If you’re a punk-rock singer, your vocal ability isn’t as important. What your audience wants and expects from you is totally different.
The opera audience and the punk-rock audience both want to feel something. But the music they use to get that feeling is totally different. If you’re going to have a career singing in a particular style, you need to know what the norms are — how people expect to get that feeling.
Now, this doesn’t mean you can’t ignore those norms, move beyond them, or create a whole new genre. It means you’re aware of what they are to begin with. You know the rules of the game as they stand.
That way, when you don’t “measure up,” you can take a step back and look at the situation more objectively through the lens of career. Why didn’t it work? Was it timing? Quality? Was there something you could have done differently that you could try next to see if you get a better result?
Ask for help. Get feedback from those whose opinions you trust. Yes, it matters how your work is received, but it’s not the be-all and end-all of who you are as an artist.
That’s the external measuring stick.
The internal measuring stick is different. It’s not about measuring up. It’s not about the external world at all. It’s about who you are as an artist. It’s about your desire to become a better singer, performer, and musician.
Through this lens, you ask yourself a different set of questions. Where are you in your development, and where do you want to go? Can you make the sounds you want to — the ones you hear in your head? Are you connecting to the music you’re singing? How do you make a song come alive in each and every performance? Are you present and aware in your body when you stand on stage so that you can fully express?
And what about your connection to your audience? Are you able to communicate in between songs authentically and confidently?
The outside world is oblivious to this part of your development; people don’t know where you started, or how long you’ve been working at it. They don’t see the struggle or how much you’ve improved. All they see and hear is the result.
You will never have control over how others see you. The only thing you do have control over is how you see yourself.
When you’re an artist, you’re always developing, stretching beyond what you know, experimenting, and exploring so you can grow. Creating a safe space for that development is paramount. How you measure yourself against your own growth and artistic goals is also essential.
The Buddhists have a term they use for effort — too loose or too tight. If you’re too loose in your efforts, nothing will happen. If you’re too tight, you won’t be able to move. The middle way between those two states of being is just right. You hold your feet to the fire but with a tremendous amount of compassion. Your effort supports your growth.
That’s the internal measuring stick.
The Dance Between Career & Vocation
The tension between these inner and outer ways of measuring — between your career and vocation — is real. Taking what you love to do, and sharing it with the world is a scary proposition. It’s vulnerable.
When you’re a singer, your body is your instrument. When you take your instrument out into the world, and it’s judged and compared to other voices, it’s a big deal. Whether it’s an audience or a music reviewer, people will voice their opinion. And when they do, they’re not just talking about a thing you made, or how your instrument sounds. It feels like they’re talking about you.
The pain of rejection is real. It even hurts like physical pain because it activates the same parts of the brain. Learning how to feel the blow, and then bounce back, is a practice. When your inner singer has a solid foundation to return to, an inner life that’s deeply connected to music as a vocation, it makes all the difference.
So, when you’re broken-hearted about a failed audition, a show that wasn’t well attended, a bad review of your latest CD — shower yourself with love. Yay for showing up. Yay for even trying. Yay for, as Brené Brown says, “Being in the arena.”
And then, reconnect to why you do what you love in the first place.
As Parker Palmer writes,
“Discovering vocation does not mean scrambling toward some prize just beyond my reach but accepting the treasure of true self I already possess. Vocation does not come from a voice “out there,” calling me to become something I am not. It comes from a voice “in here” calling me to be the person I was born to be, to fulfill the original selfhood given me at birth…”
Elizabeth Gilbert’s talk helped me see that career and vocation are not the same things. A career is not the beating heart of the “true self” I already possess. It’s a part of my life, but only a part.
Is the dance between career and vocation difficult? Yes. Is it worth it? Only you can answer that question after living into your own story. But I would say it’s worth a try, as long as you remember that vocation is the treasure worth keeping. And your mantra, like Elizabeth’s, is “I will do this for as long as I breathe, regardless of whether anything ever comes of it.”
Here’s another article from my blog. Read on to discover how you can learn to listen more deeply to other singers, the world around you, and your own voice.
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