One of the underrated benefits of having a blue collar job is that the people you work with, when they find out you have any kind of smarts or talent (and if you are doing a good job working with them), will often encourage you to go to school or perform or whatever it is you need to do to use those abilities. And hard, repetitive work gives you plenty of time to think.
Agreed. Will never, ever forget laboring on a road construction crew as a teenager and some journeymen (who were making really good money, driving fancy trucks with all the other toys too) giving me crap as I was working my way through college during the summers. This salty old operating engineer (who I'm pretty sure was an ex-con) overheard them one day. He came right over and basically said something to the effect of "that's kid's smart, he's doing that so he doesn't have to do this for the rest of his life." I never heard another word after that. When I came back in the following years, that engineer always asked me how school was going. Not to demean those journeymen at all, they were making the best of their skills. But rather to illustrate that that old engineer was just what you describe.
I learned so much doing a variety of blue collar jobs. Teamwork when there are real stakes on the line. The true meaning of meritocracy. How to develop relationships with sometimes difficult people under difficult circumstances. And some sympathy for what blue collar, working class life is really like.
I worked in a steel mill, plastics factory, construction, demolition, road crew, and that was consistently my experience. (Not that I didn’t get “college boy” ribbing when I was being stupid.)
That's another you learn though too. How to take a ribbing from working guys (yes, usually, when doing something dumb). And give it back to them too. And you learn when to just shut your mouth and learn from someone who is skilled. All valuable workplace skills.
Many Many years ago I worked at a HUGE Aerospace company. Having been a musician & always a creative & artistic person I really lucked out as to where I ended up at this place .In a very demanding ,creative & Physical position. But on my job I was a pretty quiet ,reserved Kid. On the weekends though - I still pursued Music. This was way back when there were thousands of PAYING gigs. I regularly played Fri & Sat nights in a very busy & Popular Chinese Restaurant & Bar. One time we were there for over a year.
When some of my coworkers came in ,they were quite impressed as we were Very popular at this place. My Standing at work instantly went up with most everyone. My immediate Superior told one of the higher ups they were going to see me perform & that He should come. He asked him "Who did you say? Repeat -Mr Smith ? Quiet Mr Smith?". He plays in this band come out & see". They didn't really believe my boss ,but they came out. They were Flabbergasted. The place was packed. Everyone had a great time. From then on - Both my work life & Life on the weekends became very good. It was amazing.
Of course ,over the years the gigs disappeared ,bands got smaller ,& as many of you can attest to I'm sure - what was pretty good pay In the 70's is still the same or less - if you even get a gig. Too bad ,but it was great while it lasted.
Very similar experience for me. For many years I played in a few different weird hardcore bands while I worked as a geotechnical engineer. My coworkers thought I was Clark Kent by day and Superman by night.
Arguably the smartest human I ever met (I collect smart humans) had a PhD in engineering (NYU), a law degree (Columbia), would have had a PhD in math, had he ever bothered to finish his dissertation, was licensed to practice law in five states (NY, MD, NJ, CT and DC), could read, write and understand 13 languages (the only language he could speak without a strong accent was Yiddish) and had been a literal rocket scientist, leading a department that designed ICBM guidance systems.
He worked as a *clerk* at the *Post Office*. He liked this job, because it made few demands on him and he could sit and read five or six books a day at his desk, when not delivering indifferent customer service.
The contrast between his qualifications and his chosen work makes his story all the more intriguing. Thanks for sharing this remarkable example of someone truly marching to the beat of their own drum, Feral.
Every person with creative aspirations and pursuits has their own list of muses who worked at the Post Office. Some achieved measures of notoriety, much less a livelihood from their creative pursuits. Around the time I was finding out about taxi driving minimalist composer and ensemble leader Philip Glass and schleppinig my own and friends' vinyl LP's, cassette, reel to reel and book\periodical\'zine libraries around the East Village, I picked up on the poetry of Charles Bukowski from his Black Sparrow paperback writings that circulated in a kind of Used Underground (more accurately cardboard books) and from lit 'zines that often served as our currency.
Went on to eagerly seek out Buk's prose, fiction and essayed ruminations on his own creative muses drawn from his life trying to make a buck and feed his habits of drinking himself into stupor while often simultaneously gambling on horses. That of course led me to his seminal such work POST OFFICE, which Wiki labels as "... an autobiographical memoir of Bukowski's years working at the United States Postal Service. The film rights to the novel were sold in the early 1970s, but a film has not been made thus far."
Too bad none of the truly inspired creative aspirants who did hit it big have yet come to terms with Buk's estate and made POST OFFICE into the film his cinematic writing suggests. Back during the 70's and 80's of my own coast shifting and blue collar youth, Buk was a writer that most came up in the paperback transient shelving of those I shared housing with. Glass's music and way off-Broadway, indeed East Village indie stage projects with his early creative collaborator, leading avant-garde playmaker JoAnne Akalaitis also contributed to the glorious variety and range that the so-called Minimalist composer and musician along with ensemble leader came to embrace.
Probably also a reason I kept meeting folks either as roommates or neighbors in low-income housing and apartment life who might not have any vast collections of books or records yet seemed somehow to know who Philip Glass was well before the creative cabbie became an iconic presence in the alt publications we gathered and lost ourselves in like the Village Voice, SoHo News, LA Weekly, Venice (was that alt weekly called the Beachcomber or part of the Chicago READER group of alt weeklies?) and Bay Area alt press such as the Bay Guardian and SF Weekly along with their own low-rent alt theater enclaves of blue collar creative strivers and survivors fostering dreams and aspirations along with many rough drafts of creative works that may or may not ever surface the way Glass's works in and on many different stages and less rigorously formatted community radio airwaves have surfaced in his admittedly more disciplined and from his perhaps more gifted inner life that he clearly hasn't felt compelled to ever cut himself off from or otherwise compartmentalize into a phase that one can discard the way biographers, historians, cultural participants and marketing professionals along with aesthetes seem to shed.
Thanks Ted Gioia for all that you do covering and adding to the many muses you've written about and drawn inspiration from in your deep dives. Your own memoirs in process and being published as you live and work are scrolling vast to epic lengths of imagi-native pleasure.
I must say, Mitch... Your reflection on creative muses, from Bukowski’s gritty realism to Philip Glass’s minimalist compositions, paints a vivid picture of the rich, underground culture that has shaped so many artists.
Also, the way you weave together your own experiences with these influential figures highlights the powerful impact of those who work outside the mainstream, often in unglamorous jobs, yet leave a lasting mark on the arts.
Dear Sol, Thanks for your kind comment. You reminded me that I actually did review a terrific use of Buk's verse and his mytho-poetic life-style in an underground stage play of improvised design, movement and dance here in PoTown, Ore by a very underrated underground filmmaking and theater as well as musical troupe led by the creative couple of Antero Alli and Sylvi Alli.
Not likely they will ever take their students on the road with this production now long gone, but here's my review of the wondrous work-out my noggin' got trying to make sense of their movement, dance and sense-datum as well as Sylvi's remarkable 3-woman choral accompaniment live from back of the theater. She also markets her recordings for these film and stage productions on the Antero & Sylvi Alli Vertical Pool Productions web-site where you watch their productions archived for free:
Satyagraha was my first date with my wife. We saw Einstein for our 20th anniversary and (finally!) Akhnaten for our 30th to complete the trilogy. Einstein is the best show we’ve ever seen, and Glass has been the soundtrack of our marriage. I wrote a set of variations on his Opening to Glassworks. Our grown daughter listens to him constantly.
But the huge omission from this eminently shareable article is a shout out to all the artists who are tireless and brilliant working “day jobs” all their lives who never get that big break, but keep doing their art nonetheless. In a world where artistic success is routinely, without a second thought, connected to financial gain and/or audience size, we should all tip our hats to the thousands who do it - and are really good at it - that will never be heard of. Those thousands keep the cultural blood pounding in complete obscurity.
"You feel a calling in music or some other creative pursuit, but don’t have a trust fund or family members with deep pockets. You don’t want to sacrifice your hopes and dreams—but hopes and dreams rarely pay well by the hour. So we find other ways to survive"...
Eyes watered reading this one, Prof. Gioia!
I have mad respect for writers/artists/creators/musicians like you described. Steven Pressfield is another one. He used to drive a semi. It was his think tank for future novels. He didn't reach commercial success with his writing until he was well into his 40s. Never give up on your creative endeavors! It's communion with the divine. There is intrinsic value in what you do. I believe music, and vibrations in general, are incredibly healing even if I don't fully understand why. We aren't defined by our jobs or careers. We are defined by the type of person we are.
What a much needed boost during a dim week in the news. <3
Go in. Go so deeply in that you hit the bottom and only reconnect with that small circle that will sit there with you as you rebuild. I’ve wanted to be a “singer” since early childhood. I wanted to use my voice to make my mom happy. Could I ever make my mom happy? Make my dad care about me? Then, as I grew it was to show my peers I wasn’t weird. I wasn’t too quiet or strange. I can be accepted. This is my story. What exactly does it mean to one to “make it” in the music business anyway? So many artists I admired in the 90s couldn’t wait to be free of their recording contracts. The very thing they hustled for a decade before! I don’t want that. I don’t want bot streams. I love my family. I don’t want to be an absent wife or mom. All that, but I still want to sing. I deserve a space to sing. What is that space? What I’ve learned is this: we are what we think we are. Our thoughts manifest into behaviors which turn into art. What do we have to prove and why? I no longer feel like a slave to my wounds of worth when it comes to feeling like I must prove something. Freedom. Art is freedom. Knowing your mission or what drives you helps you understand. I was trying to win approval from rejection I received in my formative years from family and peers. Once I got to the root of why I wanted to be seen and heard as a “singer”, I learned that I can be a “singer” on my own terms. This is why art is so healing. ❤️🩹 You’re forced to grow. Those of us who’ve been bitten by the music bug know it won’t go away no matter how hard you try to stuff it down, so you might as well just do it!
If no one feared the judgement of others, think of how much art we would see. It all starts within. These are my thoughts & opinions on sharing original work…
Tendency to romanticise work here, which in reality is often soul-destroying. Most artists take up day jobs through necessity, not because it will lend them a little grit, develop their character or art, or distance them from the precious and entitled. When the offer to go professional arises, how many say ‘no, I’ll carry on with the toilet cleaning for a few more years as it’s good for the soul and show readers of my biography that there’s more to me than meets the eye’? No offence to Glass of course- but how do you think he would have responded to the dishwasher critic if the latter had said ‘ah! I get it! All this socket tightening, pipe organising and flow regulating actually contributes to your music!’
It could be argued that it is better to take a day job that has nothing to do with your art, to keep the latter free from taint. In practice, it is not so straightforward. Your paid work may require a certain level of dedication and devotion, spilling over into your free time. You may need invest yourself in it, but little by little this changes your priorities. Rather than risk this gradual atrophy of your artistic instincts or abilities, it may seem better to at least do something that allows you to keep your hand in, like teaching. Of course, some may find that soul destroying as well. Perhaps it depends on who you are working for. How much choice do you have there?
And then there’s the assumption that there are just three ‘blocks’ of time to consider here- sleep, work and art. So who does the shopping, cooking, cleaning, raising children etc.? What about the innumerable other details of daily life, all sorts of matters coming out of nowhere, often with the power to derail? We should do better than respond like the grinning manager of a harried workforce, throwing out slogans like ‘discipline’ or ‘time management’. If your position is comfortable enough to envisage simple solutions to the art-work balance, you are fortunate. Modern life, for all its lip service, is anti-art. It is a luxury for those that deserve to have time left over to practice it. Today’s pro artists are either very fortunate or they must train like athletes, with all that that entails. The inefficient oddballs, the borderline cases, the awkward eccentrics- these are not favoured by today’s economy. What do we lose?
Of course, if we have to work, we should make the most of it. Any experience can be valuable in some way and changing base metal into gold is alchemy. But there’s no point pretending that work is a lifestyle choice. For many, work is hell!
Yupp like when thinking of the life of Tolkien, I don't think we'd have the books if his wife didn't keep the house running for decades. And as I understood from what I've read, that's partly why he distanced himself from the kind of grind be had been living earlier, and devoted himself to his marriage for the latter decades of his life.
Like many people, I was first introduced to Glass' music through the Godfrey Reggio film Koyaanisqatsi. The music was such a revelation that I immediately went in search of anything and everything Glass did. Glass was a huge influence on me. As a musician and filmmaker who still needs to work 'straight jobs' in my late 50's it is a bit of a consolation to know that even someone as deeply gifted as Glass had to pay the bills in a similar way.
I find comfort in this. Maybe because I worked in warehouses as a young man. It does establish (?) a link between the ‘culturally significant’ creators and the wider world.
I live in Norfolk, CT which is home to Yale's Chamber Music Festival every summer. If you are unfamiliar with this, it's a program where top young musicians (college age) study with some of the best professional musicians in the world, including the likes of the Tokyo, Emerson, and Brentano string quartets. Both the Fellows (students) and the professionals perform several times a week for the public over a period of six weeks.
All of which is an intro to say that in this year's festival the penultimate program for the season was titled "Composers with a Side Hustle." They performed works by Philip Glass, Charles Ives, and Alexander Borodin. While the day jobs of Ives and Borodin were hardly blue collar (Ives was an actuary with a very successful career in insurance; Borodin, the prominent 19th century Russian composer, was an important chemist who did groundbreaking work), their "side hustle" was actually a hell of a lot more time-consuming than the cute title implies. These guys worked their asses off with work days that left little time for anything else -- including sleep.
I didn't know about Philip Glass then, but as a young cat, I counseled a musician who wanted to make "His Art" that he should get a government office-type job. The sort where you work 9-5, no nights, no weekends. You won't get rich, but you will have health insurance and other bennies and won't have to worry about where your next meal is coming from.
Not only that, but once you leave the office for the evening, your time is your own. You can make any kind of art you want during that time. Your boss doesn't care, and even if he did, The Union will protect you. You are as close to "free" as anyone who isn't independently wealthy can get and can do whatever you want when you aren't on the clock.
Naturally, this musician did NOT want to hear that. He wanted the Hookers And Blow lifestyle, not a cozier version of "The Office" and he felt that he was entitled to those things because he was an Artist, damnit!
Apparently my mother's cousin Marcus Raskin gave Glass piano lessons while both were students at the University of Chicago. Raskin had been a child prodigy who later left Juilliard to go to law school at Chicago, and founded the Institute for Policy Study (his son is Rep. Jamie Raskin of MD).
That makes me happy. I wish my mother were alive to know this! She and Marcus grew up together; his father was a plumber, and his mother wouldn’t let him play baseball with the other kids because “your hands!”
Thank you for this beautiful piece on my favorite living composer. I have a story to share as well. Glass was on a European tour with Kronos Quartet back in 2016. After Budapest, they had 2 gigs in Bucharest, on the 4th and 5th of July. They played Dracula soundtrack to the restored movie with the same name. On the 4th, all politicians and VIP morons attended the concert, but on the 5th (when I booked my ticket) the amphitheater was barely one third full. Glass played with his elegance and rigour, just as he had the day before in front of a massive audience. I have and will always appreciate his humble way of giving music without craving the fame and glamour other artists cannot live without.
Admirable, yes. But I still think we should ask some questions. How many people today can live and support a family working 20 to 25 hours a week? These jobs today either don't exist, pay worse, and cities became relatively more expensive.
But the most important question is, why do we insist on working to make money as the organizing principal of life? Yes, we probably need to work, but there is nothing that forces us to finance our lives with the fruit of our work. That's an arbitrary social norm. I'd be more than happy to put in my 20 hours and contribute to society in any way, if that left me five days to invest in my creative pursuits, family, friend, and personal interests.
I spoke to Steve Reich at a talk about working as a taxi driver and moonlighting as a composer and he made an interesting point. He said he was able to be a cabbie in 70s New York because there was 'more money sloshing around' but now we live in a 'tighter economy'. I greatly admire what Glass and Reich did, but I think today, in New York certainly, they wouldn't have been able to be parents, cabbies, and moonlight as a composer. Even though what they did was heroic, what is not often enough stated is the failure of New York's classical music scene to have not incorporated and supported them much earlier. If they hadn't been so dogged, it would still be the case that every major classical movement would have originated in Europe.
I met Philip Glass in Malmö, Sweden, in 2019 and conducted an interview with him. He's a very modest man. Among other things, he told me, "Don't believe in my popularity. That doesn't reflect in my music."
Another composer who worked blue-collar jobs is Steve Reich, who is also crucial to Philip Glass' story and deserves an honorable mention. At one point, they even had a moving company together. On the other hand, composer John Adams drove a forklift.
I appreciate the backstory of anybody. I live in a small community and often you get the backstory and memorials, which is very sad because you find out things about people that you would’ve engaged them with. Summer poets, playwright, artist, or just interesting people. But understanding what’s behind a creative person in terms of their daily life I think it’s good
Their work doesn’t come from nowhere.
I probably heard Philip glass before this, but I remember him his score to the movie, Koyaniswatsi. I was thinking a lot of that movie showed people laboring. You mentioned the rhythm of laboring and his music. No doubt a lot of rhythm comes from workplaces.
One of the underrated benefits of having a blue collar job is that the people you work with, when they find out you have any kind of smarts or talent (and if you are doing a good job working with them), will often encourage you to go to school or perform or whatever it is you need to do to use those abilities. And hard, repetitive work gives you plenty of time to think.
Agreed. Will never, ever forget laboring on a road construction crew as a teenager and some journeymen (who were making really good money, driving fancy trucks with all the other toys too) giving me crap as I was working my way through college during the summers. This salty old operating engineer (who I'm pretty sure was an ex-con) overheard them one day. He came right over and basically said something to the effect of "that's kid's smart, he's doing that so he doesn't have to do this for the rest of his life." I never heard another word after that. When I came back in the following years, that engineer always asked me how school was going. Not to demean those journeymen at all, they were making the best of their skills. But rather to illustrate that that old engineer was just what you describe.
I learned so much doing a variety of blue collar jobs. Teamwork when there are real stakes on the line. The true meaning of meritocracy. How to develop relationships with sometimes difficult people under difficult circumstances. And some sympathy for what blue collar, working class life is really like.
I worked in a steel mill, plastics factory, construction, demolition, road crew, and that was consistently my experience. (Not that I didn’t get “college boy” ribbing when I was being stupid.)
That's another you learn though too. How to take a ribbing from working guys (yes, usually, when doing something dumb). And give it back to them too. And you learn when to just shut your mouth and learn from someone who is skilled. All valuable workplace skills.
Facts upon facts.
Many Many years ago I worked at a HUGE Aerospace company. Having been a musician & always a creative & artistic person I really lucked out as to where I ended up at this place .In a very demanding ,creative & Physical position. But on my job I was a pretty quiet ,reserved Kid. On the weekends though - I still pursued Music. This was way back when there were thousands of PAYING gigs. I regularly played Fri & Sat nights in a very busy & Popular Chinese Restaurant & Bar. One time we were there for over a year.
When some of my coworkers came in ,they were quite impressed as we were Very popular at this place. My Standing at work instantly went up with most everyone. My immediate Superior told one of the higher ups they were going to see me perform & that He should come. He asked him "Who did you say? Repeat -Mr Smith ? Quiet Mr Smith?". He plays in this band come out & see". They didn't really believe my boss ,but they came out. They were Flabbergasted. The place was packed. Everyone had a great time. From then on - Both my work life & Life on the weekends became very good. It was amazing.
Of course ,over the years the gigs disappeared ,bands got smaller ,& as many of you can attest to I'm sure - what was pretty good pay In the 70's is still the same or less - if you even get a gig. Too bad ,but it was great while it lasted.
Very similar experience for me. For many years I played in a few different weird hardcore bands while I worked as a geotechnical engineer. My coworkers thought I was Clark Kent by day and Superman by night.
Oh, that is funny - exactly the way it was
Charles Mingus worked in the post office, Albert Einstein was clerk in a patent office. You do what needs to be done in order to pay the rent.
Arguably the smartest human I ever met (I collect smart humans) had a PhD in engineering (NYU), a law degree (Columbia), would have had a PhD in math, had he ever bothered to finish his dissertation, was licensed to practice law in five states (NY, MD, NJ, CT and DC), could read, write and understand 13 languages (the only language he could speak without a strong accent was Yiddish) and had been a literal rocket scientist, leading a department that designed ICBM guidance systems.
He worked as a *clerk* at the *Post Office*. He liked this job, because it made few demands on him and he could sit and read five or six books a day at his desk, when not delivering indifferent customer service.
The contrast between his qualifications and his chosen work makes his story all the more intriguing. Thanks for sharing this remarkable example of someone truly marching to the beat of their own drum, Feral.
Every person with creative aspirations and pursuits has their own list of muses who worked at the Post Office. Some achieved measures of notoriety, much less a livelihood from their creative pursuits. Around the time I was finding out about taxi driving minimalist composer and ensemble leader Philip Glass and schleppinig my own and friends' vinyl LP's, cassette, reel to reel and book\periodical\'zine libraries around the East Village, I picked up on the poetry of Charles Bukowski from his Black Sparrow paperback writings that circulated in a kind of Used Underground (more accurately cardboard books) and from lit 'zines that often served as our currency.
Went on to eagerly seek out Buk's prose, fiction and essayed ruminations on his own creative muses drawn from his life trying to make a buck and feed his habits of drinking himself into stupor while often simultaneously gambling on horses. That of course led me to his seminal such work POST OFFICE, which Wiki labels as "... an autobiographical memoir of Bukowski's years working at the United States Postal Service. The film rights to the novel were sold in the early 1970s, but a film has not been made thus far."
Too bad none of the truly inspired creative aspirants who did hit it big have yet come to terms with Buk's estate and made POST OFFICE into the film his cinematic writing suggests. Back during the 70's and 80's of my own coast shifting and blue collar youth, Buk was a writer that most came up in the paperback transient shelving of those I shared housing with. Glass's music and way off-Broadway, indeed East Village indie stage projects with his early creative collaborator, leading avant-garde playmaker JoAnne Akalaitis also contributed to the glorious variety and range that the so-called Minimalist composer and musician along with ensemble leader came to embrace.
Probably also a reason I kept meeting folks either as roommates or neighbors in low-income housing and apartment life who might not have any vast collections of books or records yet seemed somehow to know who Philip Glass was well before the creative cabbie became an iconic presence in the alt publications we gathered and lost ourselves in like the Village Voice, SoHo News, LA Weekly, Venice (was that alt weekly called the Beachcomber or part of the Chicago READER group of alt weeklies?) and Bay Area alt press such as the Bay Guardian and SF Weekly along with their own low-rent alt theater enclaves of blue collar creative strivers and survivors fostering dreams and aspirations along with many rough drafts of creative works that may or may not ever surface the way Glass's works in and on many different stages and less rigorously formatted community radio airwaves have surfaced in his admittedly more disciplined and from his perhaps more gifted inner life that he clearly hasn't felt compelled to ever cut himself off from or otherwise compartmentalize into a phase that one can discard the way biographers, historians, cultural participants and marketing professionals along with aesthetes seem to shed.
Thanks Ted Gioia for all that you do covering and adding to the many muses you've written about and drawn inspiration from in your deep dives. Your own memoirs in process and being published as you live and work are scrolling vast to epic lengths of imagi-native pleasure.
Keep on doing!
Health and balance
Tio Mitchito
Mitch Ritter\Paradigm Sifters, Code Shifters, PsalmSong Chasers
Lay-Low Studios, Ore-Wa (Refuge of Atonement Seekers)
Media Discussion List\Looksee
I must say, Mitch... Your reflection on creative muses, from Bukowski’s gritty realism to Philip Glass’s minimalist compositions, paints a vivid picture of the rich, underground culture that has shaped so many artists.
Also, the way you weave together your own experiences with these influential figures highlights the powerful impact of those who work outside the mainstream, often in unglamorous jobs, yet leave a lasting mark on the arts.
Dear Sol, Thanks for your kind comment. You reminded me that I actually did review a terrific use of Buk's verse and his mytho-poetic life-style in an underground stage play of improvised design, movement and dance here in PoTown, Ore by a very underrated underground filmmaking and theater as well as musical troupe led by the creative couple of Antero Alli and Sylvi Alli.
Not likely they will ever take their students on the road with this production now long gone, but here's my review of the wondrous work-out my noggin' got trying to make sense of their movement, dance and sense-datum as well as Sylvi's remarkable 3-woman choral accompaniment live from back of the theater. She also markets her recordings for these film and stage productions on the Antero & Sylvi Alli Vertical Pool Productions web-site where you watch their productions archived for free:
https://archive.orartswatch.org/bardoville-review-bukowski-in-bardoville/
https://www.verticalpool.com/vision.html
Go forth and make some stage or poetics of yer own or with collaborators!
Keep on doing,
Health and balance
Tio Mitchito
Mitch Ritter\Paradigm Sifters, Code Shifters, PsalmSong Chasers
Lay-Low Studios, Ore-Wa (Refuge of Atonement Seekers)
Media Discussion List\Looksee
Satyagraha was my first date with my wife. We saw Einstein for our 20th anniversary and (finally!) Akhnaten for our 30th to complete the trilogy. Einstein is the best show we’ve ever seen, and Glass has been the soundtrack of our marriage. I wrote a set of variations on his Opening to Glassworks. Our grown daughter listens to him constantly.
But the huge omission from this eminently shareable article is a shout out to all the artists who are tireless and brilliant working “day jobs” all their lives who never get that big break, but keep doing their art nonetheless. In a world where artistic success is routinely, without a second thought, connected to financial gain and/or audience size, we should all tip our hats to the thousands who do it - and are really good at it - that will never be heard of. Those thousands keep the cultural blood pounding in complete obscurity.
What a beautiful tribute to the unsung heroes of the art world.
"You feel a calling in music or some other creative pursuit, but don’t have a trust fund or family members with deep pockets. You don’t want to sacrifice your hopes and dreams—but hopes and dreams rarely pay well by the hour. So we find other ways to survive"...
Eyes watered reading this one, Prof. Gioia!
I have mad respect for writers/artists/creators/musicians like you described. Steven Pressfield is another one. He used to drive a semi. It was his think tank for future novels. He didn't reach commercial success with his writing until he was well into his 40s. Never give up on your creative endeavors! It's communion with the divine. There is intrinsic value in what you do. I believe music, and vibrations in general, are incredibly healing even if I don't fully understand why. We aren't defined by our jobs or careers. We are defined by the type of person we are.
What a much needed boost during a dim week in the news. <3
Kate! It's touching to see such deep appreciation for creativity and perseverance.
Do you think more people would pursue their creative passions if they felt this kind of support and understanding from their communities?
Ramble before I overthink and edit.
Go in. Go so deeply in that you hit the bottom and only reconnect with that small circle that will sit there with you as you rebuild. I’ve wanted to be a “singer” since early childhood. I wanted to use my voice to make my mom happy. Could I ever make my mom happy? Make my dad care about me? Then, as I grew it was to show my peers I wasn’t weird. I wasn’t too quiet or strange. I can be accepted. This is my story. What exactly does it mean to one to “make it” in the music business anyway? So many artists I admired in the 90s couldn’t wait to be free of their recording contracts. The very thing they hustled for a decade before! I don’t want that. I don’t want bot streams. I love my family. I don’t want to be an absent wife or mom. All that, but I still want to sing. I deserve a space to sing. What is that space? What I’ve learned is this: we are what we think we are. Our thoughts manifest into behaviors which turn into art. What do we have to prove and why? I no longer feel like a slave to my wounds of worth when it comes to feeling like I must prove something. Freedom. Art is freedom. Knowing your mission or what drives you helps you understand. I was trying to win approval from rejection I received in my formative years from family and peers. Once I got to the root of why I wanted to be seen and heard as a “singer”, I learned that I can be a “singer” on my own terms. This is why art is so healing. ❤️🩹 You’re forced to grow. Those of us who’ve been bitten by the music bug know it won’t go away no matter how hard you try to stuff it down, so you might as well just do it!
If no one feared the judgement of others, think of how much art we would see. It all starts within. These are my thoughts & opinions on sharing original work…
Tendency to romanticise work here, which in reality is often soul-destroying. Most artists take up day jobs through necessity, not because it will lend them a little grit, develop their character or art, or distance them from the precious and entitled. When the offer to go professional arises, how many say ‘no, I’ll carry on with the toilet cleaning for a few more years as it’s good for the soul and show readers of my biography that there’s more to me than meets the eye’? No offence to Glass of course- but how do you think he would have responded to the dishwasher critic if the latter had said ‘ah! I get it! All this socket tightening, pipe organising and flow regulating actually contributes to your music!’
It could be argued that it is better to take a day job that has nothing to do with your art, to keep the latter free from taint. In practice, it is not so straightforward. Your paid work may require a certain level of dedication and devotion, spilling over into your free time. You may need invest yourself in it, but little by little this changes your priorities. Rather than risk this gradual atrophy of your artistic instincts or abilities, it may seem better to at least do something that allows you to keep your hand in, like teaching. Of course, some may find that soul destroying as well. Perhaps it depends on who you are working for. How much choice do you have there?
And then there’s the assumption that there are just three ‘blocks’ of time to consider here- sleep, work and art. So who does the shopping, cooking, cleaning, raising children etc.? What about the innumerable other details of daily life, all sorts of matters coming out of nowhere, often with the power to derail? We should do better than respond like the grinning manager of a harried workforce, throwing out slogans like ‘discipline’ or ‘time management’. If your position is comfortable enough to envisage simple solutions to the art-work balance, you are fortunate. Modern life, for all its lip service, is anti-art. It is a luxury for those that deserve to have time left over to practice it. Today’s pro artists are either very fortunate or they must train like athletes, with all that that entails. The inefficient oddballs, the borderline cases, the awkward eccentrics- these are not favoured by today’s economy. What do we lose?
Of course, if we have to work, we should make the most of it. Any experience can be valuable in some way and changing base metal into gold is alchemy. But there’s no point pretending that work is a lifestyle choice. For many, work is hell!
Yupp like when thinking of the life of Tolkien, I don't think we'd have the books if his wife didn't keep the house running for decades. And as I understood from what I've read, that's partly why he distanced himself from the kind of grind be had been living earlier, and devoted himself to his marriage for the latter decades of his life.
What an amazing story. I have so much more respect for him as a composer.
Like many people, I was first introduced to Glass' music through the Godfrey Reggio film Koyaanisqatsi. The music was such a revelation that I immediately went in search of anything and everything Glass did. Glass was a huge influence on me. As a musician and filmmaker who still needs to work 'straight jobs' in my late 50's it is a bit of a consolation to know that even someone as deeply gifted as Glass had to pay the bills in a similar way.
I find comfort in this. Maybe because I worked in warehouses as a young man. It does establish (?) a link between the ‘culturally significant’ creators and the wider world.
The ability to make a living outside of music probably helped him compose without compromise. (Cf. Mike Watt, for one example of I’m sure many.)
But—he could pay for Juilliard by working five months in a steel mill? That was a very different time.
I live in Norfolk, CT which is home to Yale's Chamber Music Festival every summer. If you are unfamiliar with this, it's a program where top young musicians (college age) study with some of the best professional musicians in the world, including the likes of the Tokyo, Emerson, and Brentano string quartets. Both the Fellows (students) and the professionals perform several times a week for the public over a period of six weeks.
All of which is an intro to say that in this year's festival the penultimate program for the season was titled "Composers with a Side Hustle." They performed works by Philip Glass, Charles Ives, and Alexander Borodin. While the day jobs of Ives and Borodin were hardly blue collar (Ives was an actuary with a very successful career in insurance; Borodin, the prominent 19th century Russian composer, was an important chemist who did groundbreaking work), their "side hustle" was actually a hell of a lot more time-consuming than the cute title implies. These guys worked their asses off with work days that left little time for anything else -- including sleep.
I didn't know about Philip Glass then, but as a young cat, I counseled a musician who wanted to make "His Art" that he should get a government office-type job. The sort where you work 9-5, no nights, no weekends. You won't get rich, but you will have health insurance and other bennies and won't have to worry about where your next meal is coming from.
Not only that, but once you leave the office for the evening, your time is your own. You can make any kind of art you want during that time. Your boss doesn't care, and even if he did, The Union will protect you. You are as close to "free" as anyone who isn't independently wealthy can get and can do whatever you want when you aren't on the clock.
Naturally, this musician did NOT want to hear that. He wanted the Hookers And Blow lifestyle, not a cozier version of "The Office" and he felt that he was entitled to those things because he was an Artist, damnit!
Apparently my mother's cousin Marcus Raskin gave Glass piano lessons while both were students at the University of Chicago. Raskin had been a child prodigy who later left Juilliard to go to law school at Chicago, and founded the Institute for Policy Study (his son is Rep. Jamie Raskin of MD).
Glass mentions Marcus Raskin several times in his autobiography, and with deepfelt appreciation.
That makes me happy. I wish my mother were alive to know this! She and Marcus grew up together; his father was a plumber, and his mother wouldn’t let him play baseball with the other kids because “your hands!”
Thank you for this beautiful piece on my favorite living composer. I have a story to share as well. Glass was on a European tour with Kronos Quartet back in 2016. After Budapest, they had 2 gigs in Bucharest, on the 4th and 5th of July. They played Dracula soundtrack to the restored movie with the same name. On the 4th, all politicians and VIP morons attended the concert, but on the 5th (when I booked my ticket) the amphitheater was barely one third full. Glass played with his elegance and rigour, just as he had the day before in front of a massive audience. I have and will always appreciate his humble way of giving music without craving the fame and glamour other artists cannot live without.
Admirable, yes. But I still think we should ask some questions. How many people today can live and support a family working 20 to 25 hours a week? These jobs today either don't exist, pay worse, and cities became relatively more expensive.
But the most important question is, why do we insist on working to make money as the organizing principal of life? Yes, we probably need to work, but there is nothing that forces us to finance our lives with the fruit of our work. That's an arbitrary social norm. I'd be more than happy to put in my 20 hours and contribute to society in any way, if that left me five days to invest in my creative pursuits, family, friend, and personal interests.
I spoke to Steve Reich at a talk about working as a taxi driver and moonlighting as a composer and he made an interesting point. He said he was able to be a cabbie in 70s New York because there was 'more money sloshing around' but now we live in a 'tighter economy'. I greatly admire what Glass and Reich did, but I think today, in New York certainly, they wouldn't have been able to be parents, cabbies, and moonlight as a composer. Even though what they did was heroic, what is not often enough stated is the failure of New York's classical music scene to have not incorporated and supported them much earlier. If they hadn't been so dogged, it would still be the case that every major classical movement would have originated in Europe.
Good point.
I met Philip Glass in Malmö, Sweden, in 2019 and conducted an interview with him. He's a very modest man. Among other things, he told me, "Don't believe in my popularity. That doesn't reflect in my music."
Another composer who worked blue-collar jobs is Steve Reich, who is also crucial to Philip Glass' story and deserves an honorable mention. At one point, they even had a moving company together. On the other hand, composer John Adams drove a forklift.
There's a song about that famous moving company! The spoken intro is Neil Hannon's voice note from when he came up with the idea... https://youtu.be/wmncZG17Iek?si=Tz6E0uvmbjMT3973
I appreciate the backstory of anybody. I live in a small community and often you get the backstory and memorials, which is very sad because you find out things about people that you would’ve engaged them with. Summer poets, playwright, artist, or just interesting people. But understanding what’s behind a creative person in terms of their daily life I think it’s good
Their work doesn’t come from nowhere.
I probably heard Philip glass before this, but I remember him his score to the movie, Koyaniswatsi. I was thinking a lot of that movie showed people laboring. You mentioned the rhythm of laboring and his music. No doubt a lot of rhythm comes from workplaces.
Anyway, thank you this is very encouraging.