Disclaimer no. 1: me no blog, but I’ve been told that I can do better, so I’m hoping that blogging will suffice. Lisa Volle, who runs Third Angle (a contemporary music group in Portland) suggested that I write about whatever comes to mind. “Anything goes, Brian,” she said, “be your awesome creative self.” Well….if I must…..
As all my students know and joke about, I’m always very busy. Admittedly, I’m one of those people that is chronically busy (if not masochistically so) but it’s also the nature of my gig.
What gig, you ask?
Well, that’s a touchy subject for me right now. Had you asked me a couple weeks ago, I’d say that I was a professional musician. I’m classically trained, I teach music at the University of Oregon and I perform all over the place with music ranging from the most conventional music out there to music that challenges music itself. Most of my work involves sound, of course, but there are pieces I’ve done that make no sound—still, I consider these pieces “musical” if only because it is sometimes the absence of sound that seems musical to me. I’ll save you the post-modern tirade (I’m told that post-modern tirades as blog posts is passé) and just say that, in almost all my work and life, Iproceed with the sense that I’m a professional musician.
But as of today, I’m not sure. Or maybe more to the point, the IRS isn’t sure. I’m being audited for 2011 and 2012 and have been told that my work isn’t work; it’s a hobby. That’s right: according to the IRS, I’m a hobbyist.
The IRS makes their claim that 1. I made very little money 2. I spent an inordinate amount of time making this “very little money” and 3. it’s logical (given 1 and 2) that I must be deriving some sort of personal pleasure from it all. These are all signs, apparently, of a hobbyist.
Why does the word “hobby” bug me so much? Am I still a professional musician? Was I ever a professional musician? Was it a “hobby” to do more than 100 shows in 5 countries over the years in question? Is “personal pleasure” to blame for the staggering number of hours I practice, travel and perform?
I mean, WTF. Personal pleasure? The argument is obviously bizarre, especially when we’d all hope that everybody gets some semblance of “personal pleasure” from their job. And it’s even more bizarre to see “personal pleasure” as the ultimate reason for a several thousand dollar bill from the IRS. The Pursuit of Happiness is one thing, but if you actually experience happiness (mistakenly or not), then that puts you in a higher tax bracket.
But I think I’m also wondering something else: if I’m truly a hobbyist, did I pick the right hobby? Is personal pleasure what drives me to work on all this crazy music? I’veheard of all sorts of hobbies that sound cool, but I never considered music to be a hobby. Does that mean that I majored in Hobbies at The Juilliard School?
Don’t get me wrong: I do get personal pleasure from music. It’s just that it hasn’t ever really felt like a hobby. It sometimes feels like a ton of work—I mean, like a TON of work. Whenever someone on the plane finds out I’m traveling as a musician on a gig, and they say something like “Oh, it must be so great to be living your dream,” I find my voice changes to something between a frustrated Darth Vader and a Jewish mother from Brooklyn with too many kids on her hands, and I say, “Oh, you have no idea.” And that’s not an unfair correlation actually—it’d be like telling a mother that raising kids is like a hobby. Or maybe that Darth Vader’s light saber is not deductible because he’s a hobbyist.
But what do I know about hobbies? I vaguely recall some questionnaires in my life that I’ve filled out—you know the part asking you about your hobbies, or what you do for pleasure? I’ve NEVER filled those parts out. I never knew what to put. From now on, under Hobbies, I’ll put “Musician” and under Current Job, I’ll put “Hobbyist.”
Disclaimer no. 2: I will not be coming to some grand conclusion about how my work is really much more than whatever a hobby is. And I promise to not even hint at anything that tears at your heart-strings and makes the sincere case that musical workers/hobbyists should be more respected or understood.
I’m not putting too much weight on what the IRS says, but, nearing 40, I’m in a particularly vulnerable state. Maybe you know what I mean: the motorcycle shops catch my eyes more often these days; thoughts of writing my memoirs have crept in; I cry when I watch movies on airplanes; I think about weight-lifting. So when the IRS says that my work is more akin to a “hobby” than “work,” I can see it for the silly game it is, but I’m also slightly shaken.
“Well, fuck that,” I catch myself saying; “I’ll show them and work harder.” Or hobby harder…
Enter my focus at the moment. And my desk. On the left, I see the letter from the IRS stating that I’m a hobbyist – and on the right, as humbling as it is to admit here, is evidence of my preparation for an upcoming performance I’m working on right now. Clearly a message from the universe, my preparatory materials are popsicle sticks, craft paper and glue.
Oh, the timing.
The piece is John Zorn’s Cobra. It’s a musical game piece, an improvised work where the conductor leads the musicians through an elaborate set of cues. It lacks a musical score per se; rather, there are slightly cryptic notes from Zorn and others that have been handed down in different underground circles, and a tradition of wackiness that infuses the entire sensibility. My job? I’m the conductor. Sure, Cobra is insanely virtuosic in a non-conventional way. It’s the kind of piece that the bulk of my academic research focuses on—and I’ve worked with some of the best-known artists in this field of music, i.e., experimental—but let’s be frank: the universe is trying to tell mesomething.
I’ve spent the day trying to get the right-sized popsicle sticks and perfectly colored craft paper to create some of the cue cards. I actually used glue today. Who uses glue?
Yeah.
But I’m feeling OK with all this now. In fact, I’ll say this: when I perform this piece, I think it will prove that I can hobby with the best of them. In fact, no offense to other kinds of hobbyists out there, but I was pretty damn good as a professional musician, and now as a hobbyist, I would venture to say I’ve got to be one of the best of all time.
If Iwas top 10% as a pro, I bet I’m in the top 1% as a hobbyist.