MUSICIAN? GET A JOB!!!

What do you think I do when I teach music? 

I answer questions. Millions of questions. I try to stay alert as they come when you least expect it. I try to answer honestly and truthfully. As honestly as you can, answering something like this, ‘Oleg, why do birds poo but never pee…?’.

Sometimes there are questions which put you on a red alert and which you have to answer very carefully. ’My mom tells me to be nice, but she calls my dad very nasty names. When I called my brother ******, she told me I am bold. Am I bold?’. Try to answer this if you can. 

Anyway, one of yesterday’s questions was easy. ‘Oleg, do you like to be a musician?’.

‘Of course I do, I love it!’.

‘Would you ever get a real job?’.

‘What??? I do have a real job, I teach you to play violin and I teach you to keep your mitts off my chocolates,  isn’t that a real job?’.

‘I guess so…’.

Sorted. 

Next question? 

‘Why boys are so annoying?’. Easy-peasy, ‘Because we never grow up, that’s why.’

‘But you’re grown up…..?’

‘Nope, I’m just pretending.’

The first question stuck in my mind though. What is it about being a musician? Let’s leave alone all creativity related matters, writing, rehearsing, performing, recording, touring, glory, sparks, fans etc. Let’s concentrate on how people react to you and how they see you when you are not performing. That’s an interesting one. They never see or treat you as an equal. You are different. You are a demigod who leads a celebrity style life full of concerts, interviews, radio/TV, helicopter rides, mad pool parties etc, or you are a vagabond, a parasite who never got around to get a ‘real’ job and still lives with his mother, surviving on pizza leftovers. (Both parts are partially true, actually).

Let’s talk about stereotypes.

Here’s a few, try to work it out.

My first Irish car insurance interview. I’m greeted by someone in suit.

‘What do you do?’

‘I’m a musician’

‘I mean what do you do for a living?’

‘I play music, that’s what I do for a living’

‘No, you don’t understand….what is your profession?’

’I play violin. And yes, I get paid for playing violin….sort of’

The suit gave up. ‘Look. You play violin, I play violin, we all play violin, but is there ANYTHING ELSE you do, so we can put it in writing? For insurance purposes it’s not the best occupation. It’s not that I encourage you to lie, but might that be you do a bit of teaching on a side as well? YES?!’

He was looking straight at me, trying to telepathically bring the point home. I’m not the fastest thinker on the planet, but finally I got it.

‘Oh….yes’, I said, ‘Of course. I do teach indeed.’

‘Jeeeesus…took you a while, did it?’, said the suit, looking relieved. ‘We’ll put you down as a ‘teacher’ then.

I stop at the petrol station, in the middle of nowhere, fill up, and come in to pay….‘What pump are you? Number 5? 20 Euros for petrol then, and by the way, great gig yesterday!!’.

I come to the gig in a small Irish town. The venue is near the church. There’s a crowd in a front of the church, mostly old folk. I park nearby, get my violin and get out. An elderly couple looks at me with apparent contempt. I smile and ask, ‘Is everything ok?’.

Looking at me like I just made baby Jesus cry, in a loud whisper, ‘A cheek on this fella, I’m telling ya…’ 

Me, very confused, ‘I am sorry, did I do anything wrong? I’m going to the gig, I am a musician.’

The old dude, with venom, ‘You sure look like one…!!!’. 

Still have no idea what I did wrong.

I was stopped at the Northern Ireland checkpoint by five or six soldiers. Not the friendliest bunch, I have to say. 

‘What’s that?’, asked one of them, pointing M-16 at my violin case. 

‘A fiddle’. 

‘What do you play?’.

‘We’re going to the Jazz Festival in Belfast’.

‘Jazz?? You call it music??? Rock is music! Deep Purple is music. Pink Floyd’ is music. Do you know Pink Floyd?’.

It just happened that ‘The Dark Side of the Moon’ was one of my favourite albums, and it just happened that I had it on a tape in my car stereo.

I said, ‘listen to this!’, and pressed the ‘play’ button.

‘There you are. That’s a proper stuff, not your ‘Jazz’ thing. Good man! Go on, drive safely’, said Rambo, taking the M-16 barrel out of my face and waving me through. If I was someone else, I would be subjected to a full rectal examination, but I was a musician and I liked Pink Floyd, so they didn’t even bother searching my car. 

I got stopped for speeding on the motorbike. I was late for the gig in Cork. So, police stopped all traffic and made sure I got to my gig in time.

We were recently given two months to get out of our house, which means that my violin, my notebook, three pairs of socks, four shirts and one jacket will have to find a suitable room. Our Jefe Nick has to find a place for his seventeen saxophones, three hundred books, drum kit,  piano, forty-five pairs of socks and half of the Botanic Garden. I can put all my stuff on a back seat of my car. Nick will have to hire a freight train.

It presents a little problem. Size wise and time wise.

Nick’s wife Olesya is spending hours and hours searching for the suitable place. Or rather for the suitable landlord who’ll take in a bunch of musicians.  They all seem to be overly cautious to let their house to the mob of antisocial elements. After all, what can you expect? Mad parties, drugs, sex and Rock’n Roll, right? 

The reality of having musicians as your tenants is somewhat different. If you’re a touring musician and spend half of your life in hotel rooms, you’ll be very conscious about the state of your own place. It’ll be spotless. The word ‘home’ means something completely different when you come back after spending 2-3 weeks on tour. 

So, let’s have a look at our house. We’re all vegetarians (except of me), we don’t drink (except of me), we don’t smoke (except of me), we’re quiet, because we all are performing musicians and we know how important it is to have peace and quiet when you come home from the gig at 5am. We don’t trash the place, as there’s enough of Rock’n Roll stuff going on while we are touring, and we’re not too anxious to bring any of this madness home. We need our house to relax, to work during the day and to sleep during the night. On top of this, it’s nearly always half empty as someone is always on tour.

Compare this to your average bunch of tenants who have dogs, kids, guests, stereos at full blast, computer games, tenants who watch sports channel on TV, drink beer, trash the place, have fights at 5am, have barbecues which end up with the fire truck arriving in the early hours etc.

Who will you choose as your tenants?

Not musicians, for sure.

Where’s the logic in this? The cat which lives nearby has more sense, even though she still can’t come to terms with the concept of a glass door. She tried to come in through the kitchen door so many times that she must have a permanent brain damage by now. 

Do I like being a musician? 

I love it.