Ep. 3: Is Finding Meaning – Rather Than Gigs – the Difference Between Having a Performance Career or Drifting Into Irrelevance?

Transcript

This is a transcript of an episode of Classically (Un)Trained, published on November 18th, 2024.

So much is out of your control.

During your training as a performer, you may have been told that, besides getting your technique down, the way you build a career is by auditioning and then, once working, always being “professional,” which seems to basically mean being prepared, on time, and polite.

Well, if you’ve been out in the real world for a second you know it’s a lot more complicated than just being prepared, on time, and polite, right? There are so many other elements at play – it might be how you look, whether the people in charge like you for utterly subjective reasons, your health.

So, how do you gracefully deal with so many factors just not being up to you?

Well, in this episode I want to talk about just one way of dealing with it, which to me forms the cornerstone of what I think of as, for the purposes of this podcast, a classical (un)training:

Finding meaning.

When I was in my early 20s, I picked up this book called Man’s Search for Meaning by the psychiatrist Victor Frankl. He wrote it about his time in the concentration camps during the Holocaust and the premise of the book – at least the one I walked away with – was that meaning is a primary motivator for us human beings, and that we can face and even embrace great suffering and hardship, as long as we can find meaning in that suffering but that, conversely, lack of meaning can make us suffer even when (or maybe even because?) our lives are objectively easy. And I guess, even though I didn’t act on that understanding throughout my twenties, when I was simply following the script of becoming a classical singer, I carried that perspective with me ever since: The idea that finding meaning was of utmost importance.

The difficult thing is that there’s a reason the verb “find” is used here – rather than “decide” or “choose.” I don’t think you can really choose or decide your meaning. You have to find it – and then accept it. And when everything about your training pointed you to a different meaning – a one-size-fits-all sort of purpose – than accepting a different meaning can be difficult.

And how do you begin finding meaning, anyway?

Well, this is where I hope to collect your stories – as always you can find the anonymous link in the description, or you can just email me directly – but I do have my little personal approach to share with you.

I think there are three paths to meaning:

1) answering a question

2) solving a problem

3) caring for something.

Which is to say, that to begin your journey towards finding meaning as a performer might start with figuring out about:

1) what nagging questions you have that you’re not finding answers to

2) what problem you see, that no one seems to be adequately addressing

3) who you are drawn to caring for

I guess if you want to take this to an even more horoscope-level of cheesiness then you might say that all of us can be divided into philosophers (those of us who find meaning in seeking the truth), pragmatists (those of us who find meaning by fixing things), or caretakers (those of us who find meaning by caring for others). Although, really, I kind of think you can probably be every one of those things at different points in your life.

What’s important to know about meaning is that following it may mean embarking on a task that is harder, and takes longer, than the path you were originally on as a classically-trained performer. I do think that following meaning, though – rather than chasing gigs – can ultimately be in itself the thing we might call a career – although there is also the question of money, or what you can be payed for. But before talking about meaning and money, let me make the case for why you should even go through the trouble of finding meaning over gigs in the first place.

The cool thing about learning a language, is that language classes are a rare occasion when people say things they usually wound’t bother saying out loud. Sometimes this leads to interesting insights.

Take wishes – often used to teach the conditional.

In my Master’s there was a mandatory Italian class specially tailored to opera singers and, one day, we were studying wishes.

What do you wish for in your life? we were asked.

As we went down the line, one by one, every one of us said the same thing: Vorei un ruolo. I would like a role. If I had a role, I would be happy. Se avessi un ruolo, sarei contenta.

If we hadn’t been opera singers we may have said: “I want to play the most difficult concerto for my instrument with this or that orchestra,” “I want to tackle Shakespear’s Hamlet or Ibsen’s Nora at this or that major theatre,” “I want to dance both Odette and Odile with this or that dance company.” But it’s all the same thing, really – an opportunity that you must be chosen for by a few among many.

Why is it so perilous to wish for that?

First off, your chances of getting what you want hang on someone’s opinion of you, which is the case in all careers, but in this case – to a greater extent than with most careers – it’s not just about someone’s opinion of your abilities but also the way you look, your personality, likability, things that are both subjective and out of your control and deeply personal. And you’re often judged by just a small group of people – and, given that some of this does come down to taste, well, sometimes you’re out of luck simply because of the particular people who happen to be making decisions about the jobs available to you at a particular time.

On top of this, anyone will tell you it’s a buyer’s market – for every performing slot to fill there are many performers theoretically capable of filling it. This is only getting worse, I suspect, because the live performing world is insecure overall – all signs point to it being a shrinking market, although in complicated ways.

Now, if you’re looking at it from the perspective of the people casting, the frustrating thing is that while there are many performers to choose from, most performers aren’t very good – they don’t live up to basic expectations, the way most other types of workers live up to at least the basic expectations of their job. Why? Well, I think some of it has to do with performing disciplines just being objectively harder to do well but this compounds with the fact that there are few good opportunities to get good through professional experience in an environment where you can make mistakes, and then learn from them and move on – the extent to which you can make mistakes, learn from them, and move on diminishes the more over-saturated a market is. And, like I said in the last episode about performing arts education, non-professional performance opportunities, in which you are allowed to make mistakes and grow thanks to them, can only get you so far.

It’s kind of maddening, actually – it’s one thing not to be chosen because of your abilities, it’s another to not have the opportunity to hone those abilities, because of lack of opportunity to gain professional experience.

Experience is a currency, and in highly-competitive fields like the performing arts, its a rich get richer kind of deal. I’ve seen this again and again – a performer is pretty much the same or very similar in ability as their colleagues but they get an opportunity, perhaps because they fit the particular vision of the director or because they know someone or had a good audition, the opportunity gives them exposure, they get more opportunities from that and – several opportunities in, they are much better than their colleagues because they have experience and so the originally more or less arbitrary decision becomes retrospectively justified. Now, of course, let’s give credit where credit is due – if a performer doesn’t do well within that initial opportunity, they usually won’t get more opportunities from it (unless there’s something nepotistic going on which there sometimes is). But the problem is, it’s about getting the right opportunity under the right people at the right time – and that is unpredictable. Another thing I’ve seen again and again is that a performer gets cast in something that isn’t actually right for them, or cast to work with people who end up just not liking them (I’ve seen my colleagues get treated with disdain and never re-hired for reasons I simply did not understand – and other colleagues’ shenanigans and imperfections tolerated for reasons I also simply do not understand). But I’ve also seen performers who are average, or even struggle with certain basic technical skills, blossom in the right role – and that opportunity, allows them to be seen at their best, to show their previously untapped charisma, and if that
opportunity is well-timed, this allows them to take off.

But it’s all such a crapshoot – a chemical reaction between your abilities, what opportunities someone has to offer at the point you are ready for them and whether you stand out to them as someone who should get those opportunities, and then whether you end up fulfilling their vision and whether they subjectively like you, which – despite the easy story educators like to tell – is not just about being prepared, on time, or polite. Being prepared, on time, and polite is what success in school is about – real life is a bit more complicated.

So, alright, you might be thinking, I know about all these things and there’s no point dwelling on them – what IS in my control?

Well, the stuff you already know about – your persistence, your willingness to seek out the right teachers and learn from them, your discipline and, yes, those things like being on time, prepared, and polite but for many – for most, in fact – a sense of incredible meaninglessness sets in after a while of doing those things without any indication from the universe that you are wanted as a performer. And that point of meaninglessness seems to set in at a different times for each individual – but it does set in at some point, if your efforts don’t have tangible outcomes.

The psychologist Karl Groos identified this basic motivation, which he called “the pleasure at being the cause.” It’s most clearly seen in babies: when they first find out that by flailing about they can cause objects to fall to the ground their reaction is that of utter joy. It seems like we humans need to feel like we are the cause of things in the world, like we can effect change in the world. And that’s why we need our actions to yield results for us to be motivated to continue them – which is why continuing to audition and practice but not breaking in to a career in the performing arts becomes untenable after a while.

And then there’s money.

There’s been a lot of research on whether money can buy happiness – and by all accounts it kind of can, for most people, though the more money you have the more extra money you need in order to become happier. I do wonder, though, if it doesn’t just come down to Groos’ “pleasure of being the cause.” The way our society is structured, the more money you have the more you can shape your environment – it’s easier to decide to do things when you have money, banal things like going out to eat but also profound things like quitting your job and going back to school. It seems that with money come options – which give you the profound and important feeling of “being the cause.”

And this is the big problem – how meaning and money fit together.

Artists tend to be downwardly mobile – they tend to come from middle and upper-middle-class environments, but end up making money that is more akin to service workers (at least according to some studies – as always, my sources are all linked in the transcript.) It is, on the one hand, a great privilege to be able to pursue meaning within a discipline one is passionate about – but there’s some evidence that meaning within a career is negatively correlated with how much money you can make from it.

That brings me to those two myths about work which I said I would talk about last time: “Do what you love” and “Remunerated work is supposed to be drudgery.”

The myth of “Do what you love” is described, among other places, in Maya Tokumitsu’s book of the same name- she summarises her position as having two main points: first that “do what you love” is “an essentially narcissistic schema facilitating wilful ignorance of the working conditions of others” and second, that “it exposes its adherents to exploitation, justifying unpaid or underpaid work.” In other words, her problem with “do what you love” is that it’s something only privileged people can tell themselves since most work by necessity has to be the kind that isn’t particularly lovable in order for the world to function (at least for now – setting aside AI and robots for the moment) and that the myth of “do what you love” also exposes those very same privileged people who adhere to it to unpaid or underpaid work. It’s this two-pronged thing – a product of a privileged mindset which then results in the exploitation of the people who buy into it.

But something is missing – if anyone actually believed you were supposed to do what you loved, why would you also accept being underpaid for it?

David Graeber in his book Bullshit Jobs explains this: there is a deeply-engrained cultural belief that work actually isn’t supposed to be empowering or fulfilling or interesting in and of itself, if it is to be remunerated. In this way, Graeber connects workers from across the socioeconomic spectrum, actually – he says the the thing people in care work, education, various service work, and, yes, the arts, have in common is that their work has meaning. So, somehow, the meaning becomes the payment, rather than money – that is why seemingly the more useless a job is the better compensated it is which is why nurses, teachers, cleaners, social workers and artists get paid less than lawyers, brokers, realtors, and various managers.

Now, I should say here that I find this to be a very interesting idea and there seems to be some truth to it – but it’s not a total correlation. There are some very well-payed jobs that are meaningful and some pretty meaningless jobs that are badly payed. Within the arts, there is, in fact, a small percent of artists who are payed handsomely for what they do.

But if pursuing gigs – or roles, opportunities, whatever you want to call it – as a performer – isn’t the way and neither is money – than what gives?

That is where finding meaning comes in.

While getting important opportunities in your performance field brings connection, status, and an immediate sense of purpose (I’ll admit that I’m happier, on an immediate level, when I have work as a performer) and money makes you more able to make decisions about your life, and get that all-important sense of “being the cause,” your access to those things is dependent on factors somewhat outside of your control (and apparently there’s also evidence that while money does make you happier, seeking more money does not – so it’s a real Catch 22.)

Your sense of meaning, on the other hand, is more internal – more up to you.

Your sense of meaning can also be what pulls you through the slings and arrows of the necessary pursuit of work and money.

And work, money, plus meaning is what I think a career is. Which is to say, your career is made up of all those things collectively, over time – but any one activity within your career does not have to involve all three.

Now look – I’ll admit that it’s hard for me to always believe that about my own career. Sometimes I feel like I have failed on all counts, because I cannot make a full living as a musician – and it surprises me when people don’t treat me that way, when, looking from the outside, they say: You’re doing it – this is it, what you’re doing is your career.

Since starting to build my portfolio as a more experimental creator and artist researcher, I have done more unpaid work than I did before – I also accepted more ambiguously payment, let’s say, like getting a painting instead of payment (a choice I made because the painting will eventually be worth more than my salary would have been) or getting shelter and food payed for when I performed at a festival. Some would sneer at only getting your expenses covered – but the truth is, the festival is still investing money into you, at that point, and, if you’ve ever been on the other side of arts budgeting, that isn’t nothing.

Yes, you do have to be extremely strategic about what you do for free or for non-monetary payment.

The idea that artists get underpaid because they love their work is real – and what you’ll often hear is artists saying that one shouldn’t accept not being paid, or being underpaid, because this normalises artists not being able to make a proper living. And that’s true. However, it’s also naive to say that stomping your foot for proper pay is something most of us can do – if you’re an established artist and can get away with it, by all means negotiate better pay. Most of us are dealing with a different hand of cards – and the choice is to work for little or not at all.

And that’s where having an internal meaning compass can become your only guide.

So, let’s return to those three questions:

1) What nagging questions do I have that I’m not finding answers to?

2) What problem do I see, that no one seems to be adequately addressing?

3) Who am I drawn to caring for?

Now, make no mistake – once you start following that question, solving that problem, or trying to care for that community there is a long road ahead. I for example, am at the beginning of that road, and there are so many things I don’t know about where it will lead. And, increasingly, I understand that I have sacrificed things in order to follow it.

To give you a case study about what following meaning looks like: My search for meaning started with a nagging question about the value of the performing arts, the one I mentioned in the first episode. This led me to want to better understand how the ecosystem of the arts works and how individual artists can find agency within it. (I guess of the three meaning types, I’m a philosopher with a bit of pragmatist thrown in.) This curiosity led me towards exploring the repertoire of contemporary classical vocal music – which, it turns out, I’m more temperamentally suited for as a singer – and it inspired me to start to form ideas around how a singer might approach creating their own shows which, in turn, made me a viable candidate for a two-year experimental residency as an Artist Diploma student at the high conservatory in Lyon, France. Only a year before being excepted into that program, I couldn’t have imagined so much as applying – I remember reading the bios of the various alumni and feeling they were too cool for me to join them, because at that point I wasn’t doing anything particularly experimental or unique. That’s just to illustrate that these changes of course can really happen fast. During that Artist Diploma I was able to develop my ideas and even share them semi-professionally and, in addition, the director of the program sent me in his stead to a music conference in Bangkok where I got to share my ideas about performing with vocal students and was able to make lots of connections in my field. I also think the Artist Diploma gave me a leg up to starting a PhD at the GLAREAN college, the project of which I designed to be fairly pragmatic – it should result in my collecting tools to make my own vocal-theatre, or poor opera, and share these creation techniques with other singers and composers.

Now, to be clear, besides translating – which I have been doing since I was 18 but which yields less and less income because of the development of translation software – I’ve been working a series of odd jobs, in cafés and restaurants, in addition to giving the occasional voice lesson, since starting on this path. You do have to take some risks in that respect – the risk of making money doing something which is not connected to your meaning in order to fuel the activities which are. This is especially the case when you are reinventing yourself in some way. I do NOT recommend this to everyone – it’s simply what I have chosen to do, for now.

That is how I have started to craft a career in the arts which also has meaning and some degree of control – and certainly I don’t yet know how successful the results of my actions will be and I’m sure there are more pragmatic people who would have a different take or people who prefer the traditional path of exclusively auditioning for payed work, for totally understandable reasons. In this podcast, and this episode, I am simply offering my take on an alternative – one I wish I frankly wish I had been able to consider earlier.

And look – according to the YouGov survey cited by David Graeber in Bullshit Jobs, some 42 percent of people who deem their jobs to be meaningless also find their jobs fulfilling. Maybe because money sometimes actually is enough. So finding meaning is not a cure-all – and certainly it seems to be valued more by some than by others.

I would say this though:

If you value money over meaning – don’t pursue the arts. If you value meaning over money – start by asking yourself those three questions I mentioned and figuring out whether you’re a philosopher, pragmatist or caretaker. Gigs in the arts – those lie somewhere in between money and meaning, but pursuing them – like pursuing money – probably doesn’t lead to happiness, unless you are successful, but success shouldn’t be the thing you have to depend on for happiness. Finding meaning, on the other hand, is something that is totally yours to choose – and, in that sense, you can depend on it.

So, as always I’d like to know about your experiences – have you found meaning as a performing artist in unexpected ways? Are you a philosopher, a pragmatist, or a caretaker? Do you think those are silly categories? Let me know – the anonymous form is linked in the description and I’ll, of course, also be happy to hear from you directly.

Next, I’ll try to share what I know about the big picture – the various forms of arts funding and about something that has been looming over everything I’ve said so far: the internet, which has really changed the game for the performing arts. That’s in the next two episodes.

Footnotes & Sources

The YouGov study about meaning in work.

A summary of studies on money and happiness (on the 80000 hours website – which I recommend checking out, anyway)

The study about artists’ downward mobility (via NPR)

Karl Groos’ idea of the “pleasure at being the cause” can be read about here – but I confess I first found out about it from Graeber’s book, mentioned below. Groos’ is a theory of why and how we play.

I also mentioned two books in this episode, sources for the two myths about work:

David Graeber: Bullshit Jobs: A Theory

Miya Tokumitsu: Do What You Love: And Other Lies About Success and Happiness