Why make music? Advice from author Kurt Vonnegut

McD

When people ask "Can you make money with your music?" I can see that I'm beyond expecting
music to be a source of income, fame, respect or encouragement even.

I read this recently and it really helps explain why I waste so much time making music.

In 2006, a New York City English teacher named Ms. Lockwood asked her students to write to their favorite author and persuade him or her to visit the school. Five of those pupils chose novelist Kurt Vonnegut. Though he never made the trip to Xavier High School, Vonnegut did respond to the students with the following letter. He was the only author to reply.

November 5, 2006

Dear Xavier High School, and Ms. Lockwood, and Messrs. Perin, McFeely, Batten, Maurer, and Congiusta:

I thank you for your friendly letters. You sure know how to cheer up a really old geezer (84) in his sunset years. I don’t make public appearances anymore because I now resemble nothing so much as an iguana.

What I had to say to you, moreover, would not take long, to wit: Practice any art—music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage—no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow.

Practice any art, however well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to find out what’s inside you.

Seriously! I mean starting right now, do art and do it for the rest of your lives. Draw a funny or nice picture of Ms. Lockwood and give it to her. Dance home after school, and sing in the shower, and on and on. Make a face in your mashed potatoes. Pretend you’re Count Dracula.

Here’s an assignment for tonight, and I hope Ms. Lockwood will flunk you if you don’t do it: Write a six-line poem about anything, but rhymed. No fair tennis without a net. Make it as good as you possibly can. But don’t tell anybody what you’re doing. Don’t show it or recite it to anybody, not even your girlfriend or parents or whatever, or Ms. Lockwood. OK?

Tear it up into teeny-weeny pieces and discard them into widely separated trash receptacles. You will find that you have already been gloriously rewarded for your poem. You have experienced becoming, learned a lot more about what’s inside you, and you have made your soul grow.

God bless you all!

Kurt Vonnegut

The act is the reason and the reward.

NeuM

That’s what I’ve found over my life. I create because it’s not only what I do, it’s who I am. From art to music to whatever else I take a great interest in, I pursue it doggedly because I must and I love it. Doesn’t matter if someone else does it better or different from the way I would.

auxmux

Creating is part of being.

bygjohn

Yup, and having spent far too much time on non-creative pursuits during my life, I find myself in overdrive now, having the luxury of early retirement. And one of the things that gives me hope for the future is that there are so many people making music of so many different types, in so many different ways. Same goes for other creative outlets (I include things like science and engineering - no eureka moments without a spark of creativity). At our best we are creative beings.

Mr Vonnegut’s advice is superb.

Krupa

What a great person he was, I was lucky enough to somehow know this one innately; I’ve always been messing about with something or other even before at six I stuck a lovely blue crayon in my ear for safekeeping. The hospital couldn’t get it out, it may still be there 😅