Where I Stand

With the mail was indeed a letter from the TTC, saying that yes, I did clear the bar to get a Subway Musicians' license for next year.

I didn't clear the bar by much.

It's funny how things turn out. You envision so many endings to the stories, answers to the questions...and sometimes the universe winks at you (as it did when last year my license number was 63 and the orientation session was October 4th) and sometimes it laughs at you.

Because I was ambivalent about continuing to sing on the subways, I thought it possible that I simply wouldn't get in...that the audition process would present an unlikely but unmistakable sign that I'm simply not meant to do this anymore. On the other hand, I felt pretty confident about my audition this year. Now that I "knew what I was doing" I felt sure that if I got in, I'd get in by a pretty wide margin...that my "ranking" would reflect all the fabulous learning I'd done over the past year, the personal growth, the improvement as a musician and performer, the new songs written during the experiene, and so on.

All of that would, I thought, count for something.

And of course, it does. It counts for me. It counts in my inner life and my personal journey, which is completely separate from my public career, in whatever form it takes.

That's a lesson I want to believe I've learned. In fact, it was a lesson I tried to learn over and over on the subway this year: the quality of my work and the value of my contribution cannot be measured simplistically in material and predictable ways. I must continue to stand up and sing even when it appears it's having no effect.

Even though I've spent most of the past year re-evaluating rankings and status--re-defining what I thought of as "success" in music--I was initially disappointed to discover that in the competition to get a subway musician's licence this year, I hadn't done as well as I had in last year's auditions.

After all this, have I really learned anything at all? Haven't I learned that rankings don't matter, and that art defies competitions? Maybe the fact that I was irked by the numbers shows me that I still have a lot to learn in this area...I'm still hung up on winning something and getting somewhere, instead of being content where I am.