To quote Gordon Gekko from the 1987 Oliver Stone movie, Wall Street: “The richest one percent of this country owns half our country’s wealth, five trillion dollars. One third of that comes from hard work, two thirds comes from inheritance, interest on interest accumulating to widows and idiot sons and what I do, stock and real estate speculation. It’s bullshit. You got 90 percent of the American public out there with little or no net worth. I create nothing. I own. We make the rules, pal. The news, war, peace, famine, upheaval, the price per paper clip. We pick that rabbit out of the hat while everybody sits out there wondering how the hell we did it. Now you’re not naive enough to think we’re living in a democracy, are you buddy? It’s the free market. And you’re a part of it. You’ve got that killer instinct. Stick around, pal, I’ve still got a lot to teach you.”
The numbers may have changed over the last 22 years, but the sentiment and plutocracy is still the same. Unfortunately, it is this same prevailing mindset that has left our country in its current state of affairs, and as a product of our culture we have all absorbed this information from film, television, the printed word and the 24 hour news shows. We are subtly and not so subtly inundated with the desire and need to be rich.
Last year, when my daughter shipped off to college, she asked me what she should study. I asked her what she wanted to do, and she replied, “Make a lot of money.” I told her that if her goal is to make a lot of money she should concentrate her studies on banking or business, and, for the first time in many years, she actually took my advice and majored in economics and business. Now in her second year of college, she tells me that she hates both the study of economics and business and has declared a major in English. She’s aware that getting a degree in English is not necessarily taking her on the fast track to her imagined pot of gold, but reading, writing and critical analysis are tasks she enjoys and does well. As a result, there is one happier coed in this world.
Of course, there are certain concerned relatives that have questioned her decision to switch her major to English, a study that they liken to a Philosophy major. These liberal art majors make for a nice intellectual stimulus, but they have no real practical career applications. Since my daughter does not aspire to a career in teaching, these concerned relatives fear that her college education is just money wasted on four years of school with no foreseeable return in the future. These same relatives are unable to see past what they know. and for them, the study of business, medicine, science and law lead to careers one can bank on to make “real money.”
Years ago, upon learning what I do for a living, one of these “professional” relatives expressed his amazement that there is such a large subculture of people that are able to making a living in the field of audio. He never asked me what I earn, but I doubt that he would have thought my salary was “A living.” C’est la vie. As I recall, he was one of the first of many penthouse leapers when the current economy tanked. It’s bad news, but there was no scandal, no wrongdoing and no criminal activity attached to his swan dive. He just had no reason to live with all his money gone.
The good news is that in this time of financial crises, I personally didn’t lose a dime, and I can still scale high cliffs without ever feeling a compulsion to dash myself on the rocks below. The bad news is that I never really had much money to begin with, and now it seems that I have even less. Boo hoo! Everyone is feeling the pinch in this time of pecuniary uncertainty, and I am not exempt from suffering the same economic woes as everyone else. I do see, though, a difference between me and such people as my gravity challenged relatives in as much as those who have centered their whole focus and passion on making money are a lot less happy than those who have focused their attention on doing something they love to do.
OK. I do not think that just because someone might be a starving artist in pursuit of a dream that they are happier than the hedge fund manager making millions of dollars, but in an ideal world, there should be some sort of middle ground. Our country’s ideology is based around a Declaration of Independence that most famously exclaims, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” As with most declarations, the further one gets from the original pronouncement, the less one remembers the spirit and motivation behind the decree. As more people rally around the proclamation, different interpretations are presented and accepted until over time the edict loses the character of its original meaning and takes on a different connotation.
Be that as it may, I don’t intend to address the ills of our society at large, or lament about how rampant greed has brought us to our knees. I do not profess that money is evil. I like money and enjoy making it as well as spending it, but the current financial situation has made me think about the varied and dissimilar interpretations of “The pursuit of happiness.” For example, most of the people I know in the field of audio joined the ranks so that they could indulge their passion for music with the hope of banging out a living at the same time. One might start as a studio intern or a club engineer and move on to being a traveling engineer with a band or owning his or her own audio company; regardless of our good fortune, or lack thereof, along the way life comes at us with all its variety and revelation. We have families, obligations, and changes of heart while gigs come and go, and in the pursuit of happiness, it is our job to maintain a balance between chasing dreams and cold hard cash.
There are always sacrifices to be made, and sometimes we construct the cause while other times the reason is manufactured for us. As we grow, we reach different levels of competence and appreciation for what we do, how we do it and what it is worth for us to do. In the best of times the road gig that once looked so glamorous doesn’t seem so appealing once you have a family at home. The money, though good, is not enough to compensate for time away from home and family. You may still enjoy mixing a show, but the 15-hour day just to mix for 40 minutes does not seem worth it anymore.
In the worst of times, when our choices are limited, we may have to suck it up and work for less than we like, but keep in mind that while gobs of money may ease the pain, it will never improve a job you don’t like or make a situation more satisfying. There is nothing wrong with owning a piece of the American dream, but before you sell your soul and become one of those touring curmudgeons making large alimony payments and hating everything, try to remember your own pursuit of happiness and why you decided to get into the business in the first place. Keep in mind that the money one makes should merely be the by-product of your talent and love of your job, and not the passion in itself.
