I’m sure you know where this one is heading.

You’re at a party your college buddy dragged you to because he couldn’t bear it alone but he’s ditched you as quickly as he was able to throw his coat on the pile in the guest room. You don’t know anyone else that’s supposed to be there and you’re on your 4th introduction trying to find someone capable of talking about more than just that heavy rain that came through on the drive over while you slowly nurse your first drink, unsure when it’s acceptable as the outsider to jump back over to the punch bowl for more.

This is like a fancy party, I guess, because there’s a punch bowl. You’re dressed well and you might even look a little mysterious in that way that makes bored strangers swoon. Overall, you’re feeling pretty good, but that one question keeps coming up and it’s already starting to wear on you.

“So, what do you do for a living?”

Another dickhead with a bowtie he picked up at the checkout of 7/11 that probably brought a briefcase just to look like he actually had something important to do before coming when you know he spent most of the afternoon with his hand down his pants, spilling chips all over a t-shirt he’s worn 3 times this week without washing and grumbling at the TV while the Ravens fumble what should’ve been another touchdown.

“I’m a musician,” you say and take a sip of your drink. What’s in this anyways? There’s a little bit of pineapple, for sure, but is that also cilantro? Is this a margherita? You’ve never had something like this before. You look back at the guy who hasn’t introduced himself yet but you imagine he’s named Filip; The type of FIlip to correct you and say it’s Felippe to sound more exotic. He looks like he’s waiting for a response.

“Sorry, I said I’m a musician,” you repeat with uncertainty. Is this guy even paying attention? Jesus, what an asshole.

“No, I know, but what do you do for a living? You know, like for money?” he sways his imaginary briefcase full of important documents and letters with letterheads and branded company pens that never quite work right when you go to use them.

“That’s what I do,” you reply, now more cooly as you size up this white collar dork.

“Wow, really?” he says, his eyes filled with genuine surprise. “So have you done anything I would’ve heard?”

Your eyes roll so far back into your head they come back with a piece of cilantro that got stuck to the back of your throat.

“Well, I’m not like AC/DC or something,” you say with a forced laugh that comes off more sarcastically than you wish it had. A small pool of eyes from other party goers have drifted your way having overheard there is something of a celebrity in the midst.

“It’s really hard for people to find success in music, you know… statistically,” he says with a challenging glare. Is this guy pissed off at me all of a sudden? How did I end up stuck talking to him anyways? You have half a mind to dip and go look for your friend from college but you press on.

“Yeah, sure. But, I love it, you know?”

A new challenger steps in before he has a chance to sift through his data sheets for those statistics and analytics he was sure to pull before coming to a Sunday night apartment party. “So do you sing or something? Do you have a band?”

“Yeah, you could say I have a band,” you tell them. “I actually play a few different instruments and put together everything myself.”

“Oh that’s cool,” they say in a way that you’re pretty sure they don’t think is very cool, but that’s okay, you didn’t come to this thing to pitch yourself.

“So how do you make your money then?” Bowtie Bill returns. “Cause streaming services like Spotfiy only pay out like mere fractions of pennies per stream.” He’s done his homework. “How are your streams? Are you on Spotify?” He’s pulling out his phone. Oh for fuck sakes.

Not that you want to get into the nitty gritty of your sales performance before they’ve even brought out any appetizers, but you’ve barely even had a chance to respond before he’s whipped up your LinkedIn and split screened to show your Apple Music page. “This is you, yea?” he says. Is he shaking his head? Why’s he shaking his head like he’s disappointed in me? Is this guy a friend of my mom’s?

“Yeah that’s me,” you say with the little bit of pride you can muster up in the moment. “See, I told you I’m no AC/DC” you jest. You knew you should have spent more time in the last quarter focusing on pushing those god damn streaming numbers like that guy on Threads said in that 3 sentence post that incited 400 violent replies. You’ve got rookie numbers and everyone at this party knows it now. Damnit.

“And it says here you’re a line cook at that Mexican bar up town,” he says before scrolling down to your listed education credentials. You can practically hear the insensitive way he reads about how you’ve only secured a high school diploma and it wasn’t even from a cool arts school and your GPA wasn’t anything to boast about either.

“Well, I used to work there. I haven’t updated that in a while. But I do sometimes bartend at the rock club over on 22nd street,” you admit.

Damnit, why did I tell him where I work? Now he might show up and order a stupid fucking margherita and I don’t even know how to make those, it’s really more of a beer bar.

“Aha!” he says, his mouth agape. He’s navigated over to your Instagram page and seen photographic proof of your bartending. “So you’re a bartender. That’s what you do for a living.” He says this as though he’s had some sort of Galileo eureka moment and you almost wish the apple that fell on his head was the entire tree.

“No, I’m a musician who sometimes bartends,” you correct him. “Music is how I make a living,”

He doesn’t understand.

The small circle of other guests don’t understand.

You have such small Spotify streams and low followers. You’re not a musician. At best, you’re a hobbyist and how dare you try to lie about it to all these nice self-assured people?

Have they refilled the punch? Who cares, it tastes terrible.

“If you’re such a musician, why do you bartend?” someone asks as though they’re incapable of the mere thought of anyone dedicating their life to more than just one area of interest.

You pause. For a moment your insecurities about your unconventional way of life start to creep to the surface. You haven’t followed the same types of steady pathways and corporate ladders that so many others you know have and there have definitely been times of doubt where you questioned your choices. Remember that couple of weeks you lived in your car? Fuck.

But the question Bowtie Bill was asking isn’t “What do you do to make some extra cash,” it was “what do you do for a living?”

Have you ever stopped to consider why our society at large equates the concept of living with the concept of fame or fortune?

What does it really mean to ‘make a living?’ anyways?

“When you’re sitting in your cubicle on the 14th floor of the CIBC building crunching statistics for stockbrokers and inputting data points into a spreadsheet to send to a guy who can’t be assed to export the file himself or, worse yet, doesn’t even have the capability of using that built-in function because he still hasn’t learned how to use his company laptop because they used sundials when he was a boy… do you feel alive?”

The punch bowl shatters.

Someone hobbled into it, but no matter because that wretched combination of tropical juices is now seeping into the carpet where it belongs.

He resists the urge to ask you how you knew where he worked and precisely how he spends his Monday-Friday and occasional Saturday during peak season which doesn’t seem to follow any sort of reasonable pattern and is mostly just a power move by the executives to keep more people in the office to justify the air conditioning cost on weekends.

“How you make a living just means what do you do for work, dumbass,” he says, irritated and embarrassed by the way the buckles on his briefcase don’t latch all the way allowing the blank papers inside seep through the cracks and making him look sloppy.

The circle that surrounds you both now resembles some sort of [redacted] club and you know it’s almost time to leave this sad excuse of a party; your college buddy is off in the corner talking to his ex who left him after he couldn’t get a handle on his whippets addiction and at this point you don’t care if you ever see the guy again even if he was your ride home.

You grab your striped bohemian poncho from the chair you draped it over and let your tousled mane fall over your shoulders and run your hand through it – an action that is more habitual at this point than intentional.

“Listen Craig,” you say.

“It’s Peter.”

“Listen Peter. I don’t really have time to get into all the nuts and bolts about how your entire perspective of the world you live in is a manifestation that has grown through years of capitalist greed, formulated by very rich and powerful people whose continued stockpiling of the Earth’s resources is dependent on your participation in this glorified slave trade you refer to as ‘making a living’, or how they’ve been brainwashing you since you exited the womb to turn you into the completely complacent go-getter your boss likes you to believe you are to make you think you actually have a shot at making that promotion to Director that he’s already stowed away for his unborn son. Let me guess, your parents wanted you to be a doctor but they settled for paying for you to go to business school because blood and bile makes you squeamish? Not everyone on this planet is supposed to be a doctor, Peter and almost no one sitting in a dull office, even those on the 14th floor or even the 67th floor, doesn’t stop for a few brief moments every single day to look out those beautiful floor to ceiling windows and look down at the bustling street below and think, ‘Man, I wish these things opened so I could jump out.’ Making a living, Peter, shouldn’t make you long for death. And when I play music, Peter, whether it’s at a bar to a crowded room or on a street corner to those too busy to stop and watch or sat at home by myself with my dog and no one else around to hear – Peter, I am living.”

---

This dramatization has been brought to you by the Concerned Musicians for Musicians Coalition of Canada.

Your success in the music industry is however you define it. Whether or not you perform live, record in a studio, record from home, have professional mixes or professional masters, have dozens of followers on your social media accounts or none at all, whether you choose to monetize your art or you choose to throw it off the top of a bank like some sort of musical Robin Hood (please, no Grand Pianos as there is a liability if they hit someone on the street below); The only person who defines the value and success of your art is you.