All you English, Philosophy, Music, Art, or Theater majors can say it with me. On three, ready? One… Two…

So you’re getting a Music degree, eh? You going to be a music teacher?

I thank God that I never grew so frustrated with that question as to shout back, “no, I’m actually learning this shit because I intend to use it.” It seems unfathomable to most people that a degree in anything but Engineering, Business, Law, or Medicine could ever be used for a wage-earning skill other than teaching that skill to others. I didn’t take more than two decades of piano lessons just so I could be another part-time piano teacher.

Photo by Peter Alfred Hess

Do people ask Education majors if they plan to teach other aspiring teachers about how to teach? That concept just seems too recursive for me to focus on right now, so forget I even mentioned it.

My problem isn’t with the act of teaching; I have great respect for those with the patience and knowledge to make someone else smarter. Teaching anything requires a skill set I simply don’t possess and the great teachers wield it with all the skill of Stevie Ray Vaughan on a guitar. No, my frustration lies with the question itself. Roughly translated, it reads something like this:

So you’re getting an English degree, eh? You know you’ll never actually earn a living as a writer, so what’re you going to do to pay the bills? You going to be an English teacher?

There are a very small number of people who will become “famous” thanks to their artistic endeavors, but everyone has to earn a living. Those aspiring programmers I knew ended up in jobs ranging from network admins to gas station attendants. All of us have one simple task before us: Create something of value and earn compensation for it. Artists, for the most part, are entrepreneurs by definition. Everyone else can work for an established company and climb a ladder or start their own law firm or software company if they’re brave enough. The fact that no readily available corporate structure exists for artists (there is no mail room or reception desk for Philosophy majors) doesn’t mean they won’t earn a living from their art.

Don’t torpedo someone’s aspirations simply because you’re too narrow-minded to see their path to success.

If you find yourself confronted with a young artist and feel the urge to ask The Stupid Question, ask yourself a couple of questions first:

1. Are they getting an Education minor? If so, go ahead and ask, it’s no longer a stupid question.
2. What do I do for a living? How would I feel if people assumed the only way I’d be able to use my education was to teach it to others?
3. If everyone who got one of these degrees just taught English or Philosophy or whatever, who the hell is writing the books that I read? Who’s making the music I listen to?
4. Do I want a piano shoved up my ass? (This one’s really just something I wished people would’ve asked themselves before asking me this question in college.)

There is one place, however, where I feel a harmony of mind and body. I “zone out” and get into the kind of headspace one reads about for ice skaters and athletes, maybe even zen meditation. While I may be tall enough to do the March Madness thing, my meditation is not basketball. I meditate in front of hundreds of people with a keyboard and some pedals.

When I’m playing a song onstage, it reminds me of my brief stint in martial arts; there is a defined, practiced form with a beginning and end. Assuming I’ve rehearsed (which, for some songs, is a big assumption), there is a clear path through this form, like a stone walkway through an arboretum. Every step is familiar, yet every session reveals a unique experience.

It is in this space that I feel like a warrior on a mountaintop or a bird circling overhead. This is where I am no longer an awkward geek that bumps his head into doorways. Practicing my kata on the black and whites transforms me, if only for the length of one song. (This may be why I tend to write 13-minute numbers like A Cautionary Tail.)

I don’t know what it takes to make you feel the same way, but chances are good you do. You’ve experienced that headspace before at some point in your life. Maybe you can’t make a career out of it like I have, but if I can offer one piece of advice in an email, find that stone path and walk it.

Daily, if possible.

Sketch by XieteXinco

Yes, I know, I’m usually the first to bitch about the fact that Hollywood couldn’t find an original script if you stapled one to the forehead of every director in California. There is nothing new about the story or the characters in Avatar. Most of the plot points are so obviously foreshadowed that at times I wondered if James Cameron forgot his audience had to be teenage or older. In some cases the reveals were as obvious as Chekhov’s gun. For those that don’t know the reference:

If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off.
From S. Shchukin, Memoirs

And yet, it was a perfect film.

The Art of Storytelling is not the Art of Writing. Storytellers, like great opera singers, find greatness in the delivery, not necessarily the creation. After all, when we were kids we wanted mom or dad to read the same story to us again and again. It’s not like we forgot the ending after 24 hours; we fall in love with the way the story is told. It’s also why the jokes you heard last night are never as funny when you tell them to someone else.

Script by Matt Bateman

The delivery of a familiar story- be it a fairy tale, a movie, or a song -can often mean more than the content of the story itself. Parents had been reading the story of Snow White to their children for years, but Walt Disney told an old story in such a fantastic way that it founded their entire empire. I know a lot of my music touches on all-too-familiar themes: Love, insecurity, politics, Ninjas… but if I can tell my stories with half the skill and passion as Cameron’s Avatar, I might just make it in this business yet.

Now go hug a tree and start working on your storytelling.