Fame or Famine

Living with a performance artist is not easy; just ask me. Then ask my husband. Then ask my mother, and my father-in-law’s girlfriend and his ex wife. Then my father and his wife and my husband’s grandmother. There are so many of us in my extended family who do some version of performance art, and all of us are delightful and intense and interesting and intelligent and very, very difficult to live with.

If being a performing artist takes a sort of manic, suicidal zeal and intensity then living with one takes infinite patience and understanding, and an appreciation for the art that must necessarily approach the appreciation level of the artist.

A few years ago I met a woman online who’s fiance had recently thrown himself headfirst into choral singing. Not in a casual, “Hey! What a fun Saturday night!” kind of way, but the kind of way that involved incessant humming and a need to constantly rehearse and study the craft. She told me that she felt as though she were competing with music. That the music was his mistress and was taking all his attention. I replied to her that if she really felt that way, she had no business marrying that man. No business at all.Art is not something transient. If you are an artist it never leaves you. Even crazy I, who haven’t set foot on a stage in seven years, even I am still an actor. It takes very little to bring out the inner love of performing. It takes nothing at all. It often shames me, when I’ve been convinced that I’ve given up the monkey and let the need to perform go, how quickly and voraciously I will clamp down on opportunity to do anything involving the theatre: Like a pit bull with a lame rat that’s unexpectedly appeared in front of its face.

To an artist, the art is not something they choose, like a mistress, it’s something they require, like a second limb. People who are amateurs or who do it for a pastime, those people can choose to stop. The folks out there that have the genetic disposition and intensity necessary to make it a successfully career are so enmeshed in it that to deny their art is to deny them in universitas.

My husband plays the trombone and he does not play casually or lightly, ever. He practices for nearly four hours a day whenever he can. He listens to music, the old stuff and new stuff, transposes, transcribes, discusses, teaches and deconstructs the jazz medium and all aspects of the trombone. It’s not a mistress or a choice, it’s part of him. The trombone sits at the table with us, and lies in with us on Saturday mornings. Jazz is always in the air around him and exists when things are quiet or hectic. It’s not a casual acquaintance. It’s as part of him as if it were a limb, or a child. He couldn’t give it up if he tried, and I would never be such an idiot, or so selfish as to ask him.

Consider: What would you say to a person who was complaining because their spouse wouldn’t have their arm amputated? “I love him but if only he’d get rid of that left hand of his and settle down!” It’s just as crazy to suggest that a performer stop performing. It’s insane. I’ve been there and felt the fever and it never stops and it’s sunken into the bones and lives in the genetic material there. It festers in the gut and lives like a skin over the brain.

Andy and I got lucky. We met and fell in love and I found that I enjoy the supportive role. That I think his art is as breathtaking as he does, and that I appreciate that work must be taken as it comes, in spite of holidays or anniversaries. I know that rehearsal time is vital, hours of it. I know what it means to step on the stage and throw your soul out there and hope someone understands you, and the thrill of success when it works. When it all clicks and makes sense. And how personally it hurts when you throw your soul out there and nobody gets it or cares. My husband fills our lives with music. That comes at a cost of some security and some wealth and some personal attention, but it’s a cost I’m willing to pay. It’s worth it. Our lives are beautiful, and they are beautiful thanks to him.

So embrace your love and their art. You don’t have to understand it, but you must respect it and it is imperative in every way that you understand what you are getting in to before you consent to being there for them forever. And if you are the artist, we are out there. Those people who think that what you do is important and spectacular. Don’t settle for someone who treats your dreams like a jealous lover. You get enough rejection of the soul, don’t settle for it in your own home.

And honey, I will be there for you forever, and I will love you forever, and oh, how I love the jazz, but seven trombones is quite enough. xoxoxo, love, me.

1 Comment