ben

hello and welcome.

3 minute read

conviction

Before I tell you to go find your tribe of Patrons, I first need to distill in you a conviction of your own value to others.

While your music is involved, your value comes first from who you are. A musician has within themselves many ways of being our culture is desperately missing. And you can bring them back.

big thoughts

Please allow me to speak on things beyond me to make my point about your value. There are at least four major areas where musicians can bring value: meaning, flow, sprituality, and philosophy. I will attempt to keep this from getting too heavy, but let’s start big:

make meaning

When you think about meaning in life, you have to remember that meaning is a metaphor. The metaphor goes like this: “a sentence has meaning. I want my life to have meaning too”.—John Verveake.

Our culture has a plague of meaninglessness. I felt this growing up. A looming sense of pointlessness.

Despite all odds, musicians often find a sense of meaning in music. Music-making is compulsory. Musicians pursue music against most rational analysis. There is a transcendent meaning compelling musicians.

flow states

The happiest state achievable is flow. We look for happiness in many other ways, but flow is the best for actually granting it. The more flow in the world, the better.

Musicians, through practice and creation, are familiar with the state of flow. The act of teaching others your craft is teaching someone how to enter flow. Even creating music that engages the listener can grant the state of flow.

In the final chapter of the book Flow, the meaning of life is said to be making meaning. This is to say, you have to actively put meaning into your life by crafting a state of long-term flow.

spirituality

Our culture has closed the door to any notion of spirituality. Closing this door has unwittingly severed vital parts of the human experience away from most people. However, there is a window open. Music has oddly maintained some amount of mystery and spiritual connection.

Music is the last place to reclaim a necessary part of human life. The experience of transcendent moments has the potential to change lives. Musicians have a unique position to guide people back to spirituality and to become more whole.

distribute philosophy

Finally, art is how the latest understandings of philosophy are distributed into a culture. Philosophy helps us understand what we ought to do. The problem is many beautiful ideas can not be directly taught to a general audience. But art has the power to allow people to interact with an idea, to experience it.

Is it the pointy-headed intellectual discussion that needs to be had, or is it the visceral narrative thing? Obviously it’s both. You’ve gotta figure out what’s actually going on but the only way it’s going to reach anybody is if you get it into poetry, or music, or narrative, or something like this.—Bret W.

When a musician wrestles with a new philosophy, it comes out in their creations. Once created, others can participate in and be changed by the concept.

real value and worthy work

Our culture neglected many vital aspects of life. However, musicians are uniquely qualified to bring that life back into our culture. Alicia Keys is a fine example.

Being a musician is not easy. It takes countless hours, and everything costs money. Not anyone can do this.

If you are willing to do this work, you deserve to be supported as you take it on.

next

This brings us back to Patrons—your partners. Let us talk about them next.

resources and references