Why make music?
As the year comes to a close, I am forced to reckon with how 2020 has panned out. Personally, I have always fought inertia. Periods of stillness have a habit of swaying my sanity, and for that, I don’t have much fondness for the holiday period around Christmas. I am deciding whether this is a side effect of being an artist, as we are constantly working, constantly absorbing the world around us to package into the next piece; next performance. Without the stimulus of the world, we feel untethered.
In that case, 2020 sent me into the stratosphere. Without the grounding of regular gigs, rehearsals and studio sessions, it was hard not to feel lost. Which isn’t to say that the same sentiment doesn’t resonate throughout our whole community, although in the arts I feel there is a unique question that vibrates through: if not to perform and to share, why create? Why make music at all?
It’s nihlistic, sure, but it’s a question I haven’t been able to shake this whole year. I don’t want to admit that my sole purpose for making music is for an applauding audience of friends, family and strangers, but it does offer a certain catharsis that was lacking during the lockdown period. Our lockdown felt like single, never-ending day, with repetition bleeding the calendar into itself. To motivate myself for music practice and composition felt like a chore, especially when the flashing lights of social media were always blinking at the periphery. A voice kept whispering “what is the point?”
Eventually, I had to change my attitude. Rather than ask, “What is the point?” or rather, “Why make music?”, I would change the question to “What is my point?” or “What do I make music?” Is it for the accolades, hollering and drunken men asking me if I’ve heard of Clarence Clemens? Or is it perhaps to feed something deeper within me where language cannot satisfy, that for whatever reason demands to be heard? Although the excitement of the former is sometimes blinding, during 2020 the latter is what got me out of bed, to the saxophone in order to compose what will be my debut album to be released in 2021.
A famous quote from 110 BCE by Rabbi Hillel the Elder seems to be the most fitting when paraphrased so: ‘If not now, then when? And if not me, then who?’ The quote speaks of self-love as being the primary focus before being able to accept love form external sources, and I feel carries a heavy sentiment in the realm of the arts. If I do not create for me, then who is it that I create for? And I do not act now on this idea that is contained within me, then when will I? The truth is there is never a “right” time to create. One must simply do what is in their heart to do.
Another quote from the Bhagavad Gita says “You have the right to work, but never to the fruit of work.” In this sense, the fruit of the work is not the outcome, but in the labour itself. Therefore love what you do, and whether there is an audience or not, that will be enough.
