TAKE the positives from the negative – it’s the self help, pop psychology 21st response to around 20,000 deaths in the UK from a killer virus. Mortality being what it is, and include your own life in that, added to helplessly belonging to a society wide response to a pandemic – you don’t really have a choice. Thinking positively is the one thing you can control – so you may as well try to think positive.
Musicians and entertainers are particularly adapt at appearing upbeat – their living depends on their popularity and people don’t like moaning miseries. That’s simply how it is in 2020. So, if I’ve not got anything useful or funny or emotionally moving to say or play I don’t want to read or hear myself never mind inflict it on someone else. But I have committed my life to trying.
A UK lockdown means isolation in your home, away from family, away from friends, while witnessing the cruel tragedy of a killer virus playing out on a TV screen ending the lives of health workers as well as members of the public by the tens of thousand.
For musicians it means – no more real gigs, no cruise contracts, no holiday resort jobs, no physical guitar lessons and no income. Festivals planned for the summer are cancelled. The pubs are shut. But there are alternatives. One of them being online teaching as a small but significant addition to your income and development as a professional.
When it comes to online teaching I am totally embarrassed to realise I should have been doing this for years and years. The only reason I can do it now is because I’m not hammered down by living in grim surroundings with no income and no resources and the morale of a smacked puppy in its bedsit-basket.
I have space, a table, a garden to keep moving into for sunshine, a washing machine, a kettle, a coffee grinder, an Asus laptop, an expensive guitar (which I bought at least 10 years ago), 2 rabbits to mumble at and a shitload of experience of teaching and playing full time for over 15 years. On top of another 20 years of playing live and writing songs.
If it wasn’t for working on a cruise contract in the Pacific Ocean for over 3 months I would have no idea if any of the effort would every pay off and prove worthwhile. Now I know for certain that it will. Whatever opportunity manifests itself out of the effort.
If it wasn’t for my girlfriend working as a nurse in an NHS hospital oxygen team in the coronavirus pandemic I would be pretty much homeless. I can’t think of anywhere else I have to live. So I am definitely not complaining. Not one bit.
So don’t let me preach that annoying – this is a career angle – and you could be doing this why don’t you. I’m just another human fool on the learning curve bumbling my way through existence and being surprised by its random cruelty and beauty.
I’ve got one online student left over from 15 years of teaching having buggered off to San Francisco and having concentrated on playing in Lancashire pubs for a couple of years. Yesterday he asked me who else I was teaching and I started naming Sergio Ramos and Reginald Bosanquet, while looking down at my imaginery list, before he realised I was joking (he says he’ll get me back).
Today it fully dawned on my dumb brain on its usual game of catch up. I could have, should have, been doing this for years. But you can’t know stuff until you do it for yourself can you? Like working as a musican on a cruise. You don’t know that you’re good enough until you’re on the cruise talking to happy passengers and fellow musicians giving you the great feedback that you hoped for.
Well I would’t know or presume it until I proved it to myself. I have met plenty of wannabe musicians and relatives who enjoy your doubt and make the most of it to big themselves up at your expense, to know not to ask for encouragement but to find it. To see it for yourself. Internalise it.
For years I have wasted my life driving between houses, apologising for myself when I’m being randomly cancelled by half-arsed, spoilt students, cancelling myself when I’ve felt the utter despair of that heady mix of anger, depression and anxiety which comes with poverty and feelings of failure. Living in the high rent, dirt hole money earners for the property owners of Preston and Padiham.
Suddenly here it is.
Online teaching. You don’t need to waste time and petrol driving. You can invoice people with PayPal and never need to go to the bank again with a cheque or bits of cash. It makes your accounts so easy to see and organised. You can teach anyone, anywhere in the world, in your pyjama bottoms if you wanted. You can walk out into the garden between lessons, leave filmed backing tracks on YouTube, refer them to the YouTube tutorials. And you don’t need much space to do it. A room. A table.
It will take time to build up students again and chances are the world will turn again and throw everything out of place but it’s worth pursuing, as well as everything else. You can start building up a stock of lesson plans (again in my case). There are plenty of directions to pursue – beginners/intermediate blues, beginners/intermediate fingerstyle, guitar music theory, famous acoustic popsongs, acoustic songwriting. We can do it.
Best of all, it doesn’t even have to be guitar lessons. There’s a delay on the guitars so you can’t play along with each other on the zoom platform. However it’s perfect for language teaching. So why no start teaching English as a Foreign Language – I have some limited but professional and professionally assessed experience of this too.
What a great way to learn, to expand a business of self employment, to develop your practice and professionalism, to earn a little extra, even to meet people – be it virtually.
And to save time.
Mike
The Music Workers Diary 