Art vs. Artistry

An exploration of the way that our art changes us, and we change our art.

Growing up, art was just something that we did. Our teachers or parents would hand us some crayons, or paints, or even some chalk and a sidewalk, and we would just go. My paretns were a lot like that with music; I attended my first rehearsals in the womb and never looked back. Children’s choir, handbell choir, youth band and orchestra, jazz band, you name it, I was a part of it.

It got to be that music became just another one of those things I did. It was like eating or sleeping or breathing, it felt necessary. I didn’t always love it, much like exercise, but I always knew it was good for me. I would use rehearsal times to polish technique, enjoy goofing around with friends, or begin to sort out the budding utterances of feeling that swelled within my chest.

I remember the day I first became purposeful about music. It was the day my band teacher asked our marching band if anyone was interested in playing the oboe. I was primarily a clarinet player at the time, rising up the ranks of freshman band and slotted to be our principle clarinetist that year. So, needless to say, it was confusing for everyone involved when I volunteered. I stopped clarinet lessons, started oboe lessons, and committed to what was then to be four years of new experiences and hard work which would turn into a ten year career including a stint at the professional stage. I went to college as an oboe/English horn primary, even finished out my bachelor’s degree that way. It was an incredible ride. I was able to make music with members of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra as a hired player, play background for amazing folks like Sarah McLachlan and Zachary Levi, and experience a whole world of chamber fun with a graduate quintet called Arctic Five from Norway and Sweden.

Through all this time, however, there was something missing. I was being purposeful about music, I was developing as an artist and as a craftsperson, and yet I couldn’t help feeling like there was something I’d missed. Enter stage right the little kid in me who loved to sing, whose grandmother had them stand in the doctor’s office and serenade everyone with “God Bless America” by Kate Smith and who loved with every inch of their being to make people feel something when they sang. The same kid who was one of two freshman to make the musical their first year out, a fully-staged production of Godspell with a small cast, and the same person who went to college for oboe because they were made to believe that they didn’t have the voice to ‘make it’.

I had my first real voice lesson my junior year of college. I’d had small trial lessons at summer camp years before that, but nothing serious. It was here that I found my love for opera, and my proclivity for classical singing. I was still able to develop as a multi-genre artist, but it was like a whole new world had opened its doors for me.

I tried to do both for a while, I really did. I’d spent enough time with the oboe that I had a hard time letting go of it. But, after a rigorous season of graduate performance program auditions on both oboe and voice, I knew I couldn’t keep it up and still get to the level that I’d hoped to someday. I’d begun having health issues, and I just couldn’t care for myself in the way that I needed while I was still serving two masters.

So I made the difficult decision to stop playing the oboe, and I set out to follow my dreams as a singer in San Francisco. I drove cross-country with my mom and all of my stuff, feeling with every inch that I was getting closer to where I was supposed to be. Four weeks later, and I had been to the hospital twice, first for inhaled fumes as a result of poor construction ventilation and second for symptoms of a heart attack/stroke due to a musculoskeletal condition called torticollis. Many long weeks of trial and tribulation later, I was back home, essentially disabled, my dreams feeling further away than ever. Thus began a long period of recovery that has spanned nearly four years, and still continues today.

I was amazed, though, throughout the entirety of this process, that the unwavering vision of my dream to sing remained. I never knew how I would make it happen, only that I would if I was meant to. I fought my way through the rest of a graduate degree, enduring social changes, vocal inconsistencies, and an ever-changing, though improving, set of health circumstances. I have had few prouder moments in my life than when they asked those who had overcome physical or mental illness to be present at graduation to stand. Standing and recognizing, even just for myself, how much I’d overcome was an incredibly surreal moment.

It’s this time in particular that gave rise to the topic of this post. I spent so long only making art, without focusing at all on artistry. And then I spent these early injury-ridden years largely unable to make my art, during which I focused on my artistry. Now that I’m largely well and headed into the world of professional voice, I can’t help but ask myself- what balance of these two will this next chapter hold? It could be said that artistry is largely about ego, about putting energy into yourself so that you can ‘show off’ more, or perform more knowledgeably. But even I can’t define artistry without making reference to the creation of art.

There is ego inherent in art, to be sure. To express oneself so clearly and loudly that it becomes a spectacle, sonic or otherwise, for an audience to look upon, requires a daring balance of ego and self-worth. To practice the art of expressing oneself for the betterment of one’s standing within the eyes of the audience might perhaps be considered more purely egoic, a more art-based motivation being the logical and more humble counterpart. And yet it is our individual humanity that gives our art its je ne sais qua.

I don’t mean to sound pedantic, or to get too bogged down in the nitty gritty of the issue, but I must ask the question: if my reflection in a mirror is solely based on my eyes’ perception of light as it reflects off of me and returns to their receptors, could you find a similar reflection of me in all of the music that I’ve made? And, if you could, would the act of improving one’s artistry in fact just be the process of making that reflection clearer, or does the very act of learning to express yourself make you a better human at your core, which is then just reflected in the music you make? I don’t pretend to know the answer, but all the same I must keep asking the question.

The answer, I’d hoped, would tell me when to stop making music for public consumption. That when the music I was making was music that I needed, rather than something I thought someone else would need, that I should keep my music to myself. But just thinking about it, I think tailoring our tastes to the whims of an imagined audience is what causes us to lose our artistic identity in the first place, and that it is important to make the music that you need as well. Maybe someone out there, somewhere, feels the same way, and your music will help them process the pieces of life that they struggle with or celebrate the accomplishments that they have trouble voicing.

When all is said and done, I am brought back to a conclusion a lot like those that I come to more and more frequently the older I get: make art, or don’t. Practice your artistry, or don’t. Ultimately the only person who can decide what of that is valuable is you. And yet, do your best not to forget that everyone else will decide that they have an opinion too.