Artist Dates

I read once in a moderately famous-for-musicians book that it's really important for anyone embarking on a freelance career (which I guess is me, though "stumble" rather than "embark" is more apt) should make artist dates for themselves.  An artist date is an hour or two once a month
where you meet up with someone who inspires you, who gets you feeling jazzed about various projects, or who doesn't care about your projects at all and just wants to listen to Schubert.  And it's important to actually schedule these rather than just expecting or hoping that they'll happen because sometimes the inspiring people are also the busy people.

Dream bus! Note the flames. And the lizard.

Well, I had a lovely artist date tonight with an old friend with whom I used to team up and fight crime.  It was great not only to catch up about what's been new and exciting but to actually have a sounding board for future plans and dreams.  In business talk, by which I mean an article that was photocopied for me once, organizations discuss getting "the right people on the bus".  This friend is most certainly the right people (hell she's usually driving the bus) but she also understands the kind of buses I like to build.  Or order?  Or ride?  I'm losing this metaphor a bit.  Whatever, she just gets what I'm trying to do in the world.

In my job and in my head, I often feel a dichotomy between the Big Plans I make for my future career and my artistic mission and the Really Little progress that gets done when I'm slogging through the daily stuff.  Whether that be practicing my horn just for the sake of practicing (hello audition-less horizon...) or composing a thoughtful email when all I want to do is watch Netflix, it's just hard to fit it all together.  I think musicians are lucky to have a daily job that culminates so beautifully in a meaningful product (e.g. a concert), but there are parts of my life that never seem to culminate.  And maybe they never will culminate. 

But somehow just having to articulate those artistically unfulfilled areas to a friend feels like a small accomplishment, a la "The first step to solving a problem is admitting you have one."  And having thought-provoking questions thrown back at you is another small accomplishment, which in fact cancels out the earlier accomplishment.  I guess what I'm saying is, on the slippery sand dune that is PROGRESS (however one defines it), it's reassuring to discover someone else's shoes are filled with sand.  And maybe you're even climbing the same dune?  And you can roll down it together some day, which believe it or not actually makes the sand dune start to hum.  True story.

Been there, sort-of hiked that.