xtcian

8/15/02 So the story goes

8/15/02

So the story goes like this: my mom was contacted by two different would-be composers who knew she was a respected, published and recorded musician, wanting to know how much it would cost to get their own choral works recorded. Now, put aside that this is a little like asking Gaugin to help you paint your porch, but whatever: this is the business she wants to do, and doesn't mind holding a few hands along the way if it means some income. Plus, these guys said they were "totally funded and supported" by "eager patrons."

To digress, my mom is one of the great choral composers of our time, selling millions for Hal Leonard Publishing, and basically writing, editing and creating music for about 90% of the series kids use in music class today. If you're under 30 and reading this, you've sung one of my mom's songs. The are two reasons you don't know this, and one is because she decided to have kids (five of 'em, your author included) and follow my dad's career trajectory into the high faluting world of conducting. The other is what I'll get to in a minute.

Anyway, so these schlubs get my mom's email, which includes detailed accounts of how much it costs to have a small chamber orchestra buttressed by synthesized instruments, a choir, a conductor, an engineer, studio time and tape. What follows is a month of silence - finally one guy writes back and says he's "still trying to secure support," which is Artist for "I'm full of shit." The other has the temerity to go onto a public internet discussion group and post that "some delusional producer" has given him an estimate that was apparently "so far out of line" that he was looking for suggestions on how to make it more "bare-bones and cost-effective."

Forget that this asshole is the one that came to my mom (not the other way around), forget even that he is so outside any kind of community of recording studios as to be soliciting advice on the god-damned internet from strangers. What pisses me off is that he is so set on ham-and-egging his project that he's willing to disrespect the only good advice he's going to get on the subject, dismissing studio costs as "delusions." What he's really saying is that musicians and technicians can fuck off with their high prices; he can find someone to do it on the cheap.

Coming from a self-appointed "musician," this could be construed as self-loathing, but it's just a small example of a disturbing whole: artists just aren't fucking valued in this country. I know, I know, it's a terrible cliché and not worthy of argument, but I'm completely disgusted with the way artists are viewed in contemporary American culture; it's almost as shameful as the way we treat schoolteachers. Making music or movies or ceramics has long been scoffed at as "not a real job" and yet these folks hone their craft hours a day longer than investment bankers, dentists, and office assistants combined. Most artists in this country are forced to make suck-up, sycophantic deals with the vainest, most full-of-shit people just to get 1/9th of what Canada gives to its artists just for being Canadian.

These people who came to my mom (I'd call them "musicians," but real musicians know how much toil goes into even the smallest of recordings) most likely have other jobs where they can haggle their costs down to where they think they've totally fucked the seller. Artists will usually accept the haggle, going down into the financial gutter simply through lack of choice, and impending rent. I've seen truly brilliant minds take on the most cerebrum-dissolving jobs just so they could keep living in their shitty East Village apartments. The only artists in the world - besides the 50 famous ones - who are paid what they deserve are TV writers (and all of them long to be in movies). The rest keep struggling until the realities of health insurance force them into some suck-ass day job.

But we're not letting our mom get involved with these morons. In my opinion, they were lucky to have even gotten an email back from her like all men without vision, they have no idea how close to greatness they got. My mom is capable of such beauty, of breaking your heart within a few measures, writing songs that are simple, surprising and inevitable all at once. I haven't heard everything that is on her website, but her music is so sure, so enveloping, that you feel like you're in such good hands. And of course, she has to pound the pavement for work.

When I get my money, I'm going to put her up in a studio on top of our hill, with a giant window and a black Steinway grand, so that she can make all the music she wants and not have to sacrifice her art at the altar of her kids, her husband, or random bozos on the internet. She should, after 55 years of writing music, be able to do it just for the sake of doing it, smile, and tell everyone else that it is now her job.

mom at Silver Burdett, constructing the music schoolbook series in 1987