Why are all musicians strange?

[queenrock]

Is it me, or are all proper musicians (mainly talking about the classically educated ones here) always weird in some way, why WHY!?

[Bob]

False.  All musicians are not strange.  Some are. 

Because they spend time off by themselves practice, doing mental work, not socializing.  Their brains might be wired up differently.

[tds]

me no strange tho. many others here are

[quantum]

I agree.    

Music 101.  Prof:  "In this class you will learn to become eccentric."

True quote from my first class in uni. 

[thalberg]

Is it me, or are all proper musicians (mainly talking about the classically educated ones here) always weird in some way, why WHY!?

Well, I think that in order to be a good classical musician, you have to have obsessive compulsive disorder.  Just like people with that disorder must check their locks 40 times to see if they're working, classical musicians have to practice the same passage 40 times (a day) just to make sure they don't screw it up on stage.  Only weird people are willing to do this.  Normal people are no good at music because they stick to sane things.

[quantum]

Maybe a Star Trek quote would do well here:

"There is nothing wrong with me.  Maybe there is something wrong with the universe"
(Q)

What if musicians are normal, everyone else is just weird?

[lmpianist]

Maybe a Star Trek quote would do well here:

"There is nothing wrong with me.  Maybe there is something wrong with the universe"
(Q)

What if musicians are normal, everyone else is just weird?

actually that's Beverly Crusher, not Q, from fourth season TNG episode 'Remember Me.'

personally, in the world we live in, I would rather be 'weird' than 'normal.'

[Petter]

Because they are so self absorbed of course....

[shortyshort]

I am not "normal".

I would get upset if someone said that I was. 

And I'm not even a decent musician. 

[indutrial]

I am not "normal".

I work day jobs with a lot of so-called "normal" people and, without trying to be arrogant, they are completely f**king BORING. I can appreciate the joys and rewards of some normal behaviors, like having kids and enjoying the occasional fun family gathering at the holidays. I just can't be convinced that there's any positive in the way "normals" approach things like work, education, lifestyle, and things like the arts.

Work and money are always number one for these people and it becomes both their cross to bear and the cross they hang themselves on whenever you try to talk to them. Everyone's always busy and "bogged down" and the general feel is one of burnt-out-ness. It's probably because too many people acquiesce to whatever shoddy job offer comes their way and obsesses over nebulous things like careers to the point where they lose focus on what the work actually entails. I shouldn't even start to mention how f'd up the financial world has become because of the insane anxieties that normal people harbor over money and material possessions. Us non-normals suffer every day because of A-hole normals have to drive their SUVs 100 miles back and forth to work and behave wastefully enough with everything else to keep the prices of everything soaring.

Lifestyle as a whole amongst normal people is a bunch of pussied-out bullshittery. In the ridiculous effort to not appear too wierd, too leftist, too non-PC, too PC, too geeky, too out-of-touch, too lame, too whatever, (despite what the real situation is) people expend tons of mental and physical energy generating a convincing performance to others they encounter. The sheer amount of BS that runs through society has royally f'd up things like the job market, the college application process, the way parents discipline their kids, and the way relationships develop. Maybe if people decided to be honest with themselves, there wouldn't be things like 60% divorce rates. Usually, a weirdo will be the first to spot the total insincerity in a "normal"-acting person and I'm glad to fall into that category.

As for things like music and the arts, it goes without saying that normal people have absolutely ruined and debased them in every way and that a small percentage of oddballs and weirdos are the only thing keeping them from complete deterioration. I teach guitar and bass for lots of normal families and their normal children. If music and art were in their hands, it would all come crashing down instantaneously. The effort of being normal takes so much individualism and boldness out of the equation that it would be impossible.

I, too, am not even close to being as weird or strange as most composers and musicians I've met and many of whom I admire. I haven't taken the plunge that the best of them often take into complete musical asceticism or brutal instrumental woodshedding and I've always been somewhat of a bіtch to things like family, girlfriend, and financial stability  . Even so, to go totally "normal" would just suck ass from a straw and I'll never do it.

[thalbergmad]

I spend most of my life talking to a mechanical dog, which some of my work colleagues think is strange. I take him on all my holidays and come back with lots of pictures.

I cannot imagine being a nine to five suited ponce, with 2.3 kids and a mortgage.

Bollox to being normal. Let me be anything but.

Thal

[indutrial]

I spend most of my life talking to a mechanical dog, which some of my work colleagues think is strange. I take him on all my holidays and come back with lots of pictures.

I cannot imagine being a nine to five suited ponce, with 2.3 kids and a mortgage.

Bollox to being normal. Let me be anything but.

Thal

A manageable mortgage wouldn't bother me, since I'm getting buggered six ways to Sunday paying apartment rent every month. Speaking of which, the apartment complex I live in is populated with other normal types that really bug the hell out of me. There's tons of white trash in my neighborhood who don't seem to work and spend their entire days goofing around with a bunch of loud-ass muscle cars with ghetto-blasting stereos roaring rap music at full volume. Alongside them are literally hundreds and hundreds of Indian families who all seem to have three generations of family (usually including 3-4 kids, cousins, grandparents, uncles, etc.) crammed into 2-bedroom apartments that are the same dimensions as the one my girlfriend and I share without any extra inhabitants (my extra bedroom is filled with music crap and books).  The husbands in those families seem to work 80 hours/week to feed their hoards and all wear the same bland and lifeless white-button-down/grey pants combination. To hell with that lifestyle. Sometimes I get home and I feel like I live in some kind of purgatory.

[mephisto]

Are anybody really normal? Just think about it: do you know any people you would call normal?

[Petter]

actually that's Beverly Crusher, not Q, from fourth season TNG episode 'Remember Me.'

personally, in the world we live in, I would rather be 'weird' than 'normal.'

I would rather be "Q" then Dr Crusher.

[term]

"Give me a sane man, and i shall cure him" - Carl Gustav Jung

^^

[thalbergmad]

There's tons of white trash in my neighborhood who don't seem to work and spend their entire days goofing around with a bunch of loud-ass muscle cars with ghetto-blasting stereos roaring rap music at full volume. Alongside them are literally hundreds and hundreds of Indian families who all seem to have three generations of family (usually including 3-4 kids, cousins, grandparents, uncles, etc.) crammed into 2-bedroom apartments that are the same dimensions as the one my girlfriend and I share without any extra inhabitants (my extra bedroom is filled with music crap and books).  The husbands in those families seem to work 80 hours/week to feed their hoards and all wear the same bland and lifeless white-button-down/grey pants combination. To hell with that lifestyle. Sometimes I get home and I feel like I live in some kind of purgatory.

Sounds remarkably like the town I live in.

Thal

[indutrial]

Are anybody really normal? Just think about it: do you know any people you would call normal?

I say people act "normal" a lot, but it'd probably be more accurate to say that a lot of people simply expend a lot of energy trying very hard to act normal. No one ever achieves it, but sometimes it makes them act like A-holes to people who obviously don't give a rat's ass about being normal.

I heard a good example of what I'm talking about the other day. Some annoying secretary who works in my building had taken her kid to the local video game store and she couldn't get over the fact that the (a.) a girl was clerking at the store and (b.) she had all kinds of tattoos and piercings. Now I can understand mentioning something like this in passing or casual discussion, but this woman was going on and on about how ridiculous she thought this clerk was for "vandalizing her body" and other such bullcrap. To me, this kind of judgmental arrogance just screams of some nebulous notion of "I'm more normal than that person!!" and just ends up sounding like anxious self-esteem boosting.

Being a musician and music teacher (a self-employed one at that) has brought me no lack of smug comments like "why don't you get a normal job?" and "wouldn't a normal life be better?" from people who think that having some 9-to-5er at whatever place first offered them work after college somehow equates the normality they speak of. I've worked as a temp in positions like that and it is plainly obvious that everyone's trying to out-normal each other by being over-the-top polite and over-the-top enthusiastic about things they don't really care about. I don't quite enjoy the idea that doing what I'm naturally good at deems be abnormal in a society that includes so much acting and double-speak, not to mention loads of professions that have nothing to do with anything people study in college. It's so easy to find people who studied English, history, biology, business, mathematics, etc.. working in positions like Admin. Asst., Data Entry Clerk, Asst. Project Evaluation Co-Manager and basically doing work that requires the mental capacity that the average high-schooler totes around and is just as experience-based as working at McDonalds.

[tds]

"Give me a sane man, and i shall cure him" - Carl Gustav Jung

^^

"Hah!" - Ludwig van Beethoven

[a-sharp]

Hey speak for yourself!! 

[tds]

strange is no strange when no strange is strange.

say it 2 urself and repeat it 5 times.

[healdie]

Many great performers/composers have been suppescted to have been on the Autistic Spectrum (Mozart, Beethoven, Glenn Gould) I am too (Aspergers Syndrom), and this is mainly a social dissorder and makes us behave in what people often call wierd, but i don't like the word Normal i prefer Neurotypical, I hate all forms of Social Situations and i can't cope in loud busy enviroments, and i am obssed by music so i have few conversations about anything else this makes me and others different from the Neurotypical person

[tac-tics]

The only musicians I know are the few teachers I've had (I've only been playing about 3 years). I thought it might be a coincidence they were all really strange apples.

I guess what I have to do now is to go off, find a pretty, young musician who's eccentric as all hell, and date her ;-)

[queenrock]

Many great performers/composers have been suppescted to have been on the Autistic Spectrum (Mozart, Beethoven, Glenn Gould) I am too (Aspergers Syndrom), and this is mainly a social dissorder and makes us behave in what people often call wierd, but i don't like the word Normal i prefer Neurotypical, I hate all forms of Social Situations and i can't cope in loud busy enviroments, and i am obssed by music so i have few conversations about anything else this makes me and others different from the Neurotypical person

This doesn't suprise me, i always thought that to be that good some of those people must be autistic at least slightly. I think many of us probably are, if not just very slightly.

[lucylucy]

you said "strange"...
but what is strange ?
someone said that the act of people said if they are strange or not...but imagine these musician are normal and us strange.
no one know what's the value of the word "strange" each person is saying what they think it's strange....perhaps it's normal.
LOLL IT WAS THE SUPER POST MADE BY MEEE
XXX

[rc]

10 points to Indutrial for excellent ranting skills, 2 points to lucylucy for such a ridiculous way to end a post

Yeah I don't approve of how a lot of the people I know live, maybe my greatest judgement is that I wouldn't accept it for myself.  Most of the time I just 'live and let live'.  If they want to play that game, it doesn't have to affect me... 

I lucked out and found an apartment with nice thick walls, and affordable!  They have a good screening process to keep bad tenants to a minimum, and so don't have to make as many repairs thus don't have to charge as much to cover it.  The way some tennants treat the property makes me sick.  I heard of a guy who was being evicted and wanted to make some money before he left by having a big party and letting people smash windows for $20/window.  Do they have any idea how much windows cost?!

...There are also a few people whose approach to life I greatly admire even though it's not the path I'm walking.  One family, a pretty 'normal' working class bunch, doesn't seem like anything special at first glance but as I got to know them I was impressed at how well they functioned together...  How they would resolve their issues with each other and help one another out, it was family living as a high art!  All the kids are growing up as very balanced individuals, genuinely good people not just amongst themselves but towards everyone around them.

My ranting skills could use some work

[Petter]

Allthough Lucylucy was the one that made most sense.   

[queenrock]

you said "strange"...
but what is strange ?
someone said that the act of people said if they are strange or not...but imagine these musician are normal and us strange.
no one know what's the value of the word "strange" each person is saying what they think it's strange....perhaps it's normal.
LOLL IT WAS THE SUPER POST MADE BY MEEE
XXX

Ok i really didn't understand most of that lol 

[lostinidlewonder]

Solo musicians can be very selfish. Everything they do is for themselves. All their planning is for themselves. They find it difficult to think about how others do things, or to even make time for others. Solo musicians are always crafting away at their art but it can become so self absorbing that you can lose the plot, everything you plan is for you and not for anyone else, so when they must consider others outside of a musical context they can be lost.

Some musicians have a desperate need to be appreciated, they find their ability to "stand out" (for themselves or others) in this world through their music. To really do something special with music requires a lot of dedication, sacrifice.

There is like a narcotic drug effect when you are by yourself and you play something incredible on the keyboard, you feel some kind of secret experience that is just between you and sound. It can seduce you and make you oblivious to the world around you.

Music becomes a medium for your expression and can take away from other forms of expression or control of expression outside of music. A musicians choice of repertoire I believe highlights some insight into what kind of person they are from within.

[a-sharp]

That's very insightful. I guess that's why it can be both interesting, exciting, and often difficult to have relationships with other musicians...

[piano_ant]

I have never met one person who isn't strange in some way....

[lucylucy]

Allthough Lucylucy was the one that made most sense.   

Thankkks