I started my academic year last week, heading back to another year of teaching. It happens every year – summer ends and work begins again. I’ve done it many times before, but this transition is always a bittersweet time for me.
I feel good about passing our tradition to the next generation of musicians, listeners, and arts supporters. That’s important work and I’m fortunate to be a part of it. At the same time, summer affords me some artistic luxuries. I can spend a good amount of time solely focused on my craft and the surrounding artistry. I’m not constantly exhausted and I can pursue new ideas as they arise.
Still, I head into work and the time that I can devote exclusively to my own music shrinks. I’m OK with that though because I can definitely create art on top of my teaching job. It just requires a big mindset shift. That’s kind of hard sometimes.
Fortunately, I got hit with a serious dose of inspiration on my first day, largely through a presentation from inspirational speaker Kate Garnes. Through a series of talks with our students, Kate shared ideas about self-worth, kindness, and the realities of being a teenager. She was funny, clever, honest, and insightful, delivering her message with a powerful clarity that cut through the crowd. It was a perfect talk for our students to hear on the first day of school.
But it was even more important for me.
Mid-way through her speech, Kate said something that struck a huge note with me. She was discussing a time in her life when she had hit rock bottom emotionally. She was watching the show Scandal and heard one of the characters say something to the effect of “We are warriors in suits.” Kate took that line and ran with it, proclaiming “I am a warrior.” From there, she approached everyday with the fierceness of a warrior, pushing her way through life with passion and strength. That was her battlecry and it shifted her mindset, eventually turning her life around.
From there Kate turned to us and asked, “What’s your battlecry?”
That question hit me like a ton of bricks. What was the thing that I would tell the world everyday? What was the thing that validated and supported my mindset? Why was this so important to me to have a battlecry anyways?
This question bounced around my brain for days, leading me to a multitude of conclusions. First I thought that I should say something about my artistry. That might get confused with the visual arts through. Then I thought that I should say something about jazz. It’s always been something I’ve fought for, but it just seemed to limit my musicianship to one thing. The list continued through many iterations until I came to conclusion.
“I am a musician.”
It sounds self-evident at first, right? But it was a spot-on statement for me.
For the latest piece of my adult life, I’ve struggled with my sense of identity. I always believed that my life as a musician was a core part of my identity. As I got older, more responsibilities came into my life, taking away from my musical focus; I found that every confusing.
Who am I now? Do I identify as a teacher? That’s what I spend a good chunk of my day doing through ten months of the year. Do I identify as a parent? That’s one of the most important things in my life, but that role is about my family, not me as an individual. How can I identify as a musician when I spend so much time doing all these other things?
I am a musician.
I’m a parent as well. It’s one of the most important things in the world to me. That doesn’t change my status as a musician.
I’m also a teacher. That takes up a good chunk of my time and that’s OK. I can still play music at a hard level.
I am a musician.
That’s actually hard for me to admit, as I’ve struggled with my own sense of self-worth. As a young person, all I ever wanted to do was play music. My work as a musician defined my self-worth. As I grew older and my time began to shift away from exclusively music, I beat myself up about it mentally.
I wasn’t a “real” musician if I spent time teaching. I couldn’t be a “real” musician if I chose to carve time out for my family instead of booking myself with gigs non-stop. I kept telling myself that I wasn’t a “real musician” – that was the loop going through my head. And honestly, that message stopped me from pursuing my music deeply.
But you know what? I am worthy. I am a musician.
I love the simplicity of the statement – it says something without including qualifiers around the statement. I don’t need to prove my worth as a musician. I can simply play music and that’s good enough. I can do lots of different things in my life and still take pride in my status as a musician. That’s more than enough for me.
I am a musician.
I think it’s important to have a battlecry. We need to decide what we believe about ourselves and then tell the world. More than that though – we need to scream it from the rooftops. We need to let this belief be a point of pride and a defining factor for our lives. We need to believe it so much that we become that battlecry, both to ourselves and the world.
We all deserve this sort of self-worth. We all have to good to give the world. Let’s embrace that.
I am a musician.