Living in the 'No': What it Takes to be a Professional Artist
August 08 2010

What does it take to be a professional artist?

Technique? Practice? Vision? Talent?

From technique, practice, vision, and talent sprouts only the artist, not the professional.

The question remains: What does it take to be a professional artist?

Persistence. Ambition. Love of the art. Indifference to wealth. An ascetic lifestyle. And especially: a roaring tolerance for rejection.

The Pianobabbler recently saw Every Little Step. Moving. Entertatining. Gripping. Saturated with talent.

This documentary follows the auditions for the 2006 revival of the 1976 Broadway musical A Chorus Line. From thousands of supplicants, the producers had to extract seventeen.

Each role demanded Olympian singing, acting and, most emphatically, dancing. Add to the the stamina needed to perform every night. Inhuman.

Each artist believed they had what it took. Each one had devoted precious time and industrial energy in preparing. They knew the odds. They probably would not get the role.

Yet they came. If called back, they returned. They persisted. The ones who succeeded blazed with artistry. So did many of the unsuccessful. One in particular lost out for having too much talent, which drove his ego to take over the stage when he ought to have been sharing it.

The no's more than yes's underscored the difficulties of working in the arts. They went home crying, dejected, humiliated, diminished, uncertain, insecure, bewildered, and in failure. Yet, they all spoke of continuing. Of going to the next audition.

Rejection. Every artist must develop a high tolerance to it. Would there were some vaccine. Inject once, endure forever.

Alas, only repeated doses of rejection breeds the tolerance artists need. Along with the bedrock belief in, and enjoyment of, one's art.

The Pianobabbler loves what he does. He tried to give every note he plays meaning. If the music moves you, I am gratified. If it doesn't, I thank you for your ears, and I move on.

One more thing: every artist must read, and periodically reread Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet. A particle accelerator atomizing the primal matter of being an artist.

And now the Pianobabbler returns to enjoy and curse his life as a professional artist.

The Pianobabbler has babbled.

The Pianobabbler is a RonDavisMusic production. The Pianobabbler's blog posts appear weekly at pianobabber.com. Please remember to leave your comments and thoughts below. Subscribe to the RSS feed. And subscribe to RonDavisNews by clicking on the link, above right. And follow us on Twitter.

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