There’s a musician I follow on Facebook who is driving me nuts, but I don’t know whether what is bugging me about them has more to do with me than them.
I worked with them from time to time back when I was in the film/TV industry, since they worked as both a score composer and session musician. They’ve had a long and far-ranging career in music — period — let alone the Canadian music scene. Their stories (and friends’ stories) are typically epic to read as they drop references to Leonard Cohen and Ray Charles. It’s helped, too, that they were a consummate professional, and rarely overbearing (considering the twin music/TV industry connections I mean this as a compliment).
Despite being an icon and pillar of the Toronto music scene, like everyone, they were affected by COVID last year. The doors closed not just on a handful of gigs (live and recorded), but all of them in one fell swoop. And within a few months they began posting updates decrying the dire situation musicians were in, along with anti-government diatribes. Now, here’s the thing: I don’t blame anyone in their industry — pillar or acolyte — wanting to express their frustration publicly with the lockdown conditions (for anyone reading this outside of Toronto, there hasn’t been live music or theatre performances for over 14 months). I especially understand anyone wanting to criticize our provincial government’s criminal negligence during this time. They’re posts could also be petty, seeming to express more disappointment about they’re lost prospects than, say, the thousands of others out of work, but I told myself: it’s a pandemic, how about we not hold people to too high a standard?
But something bothered me, particularly when the complaining didn’t subside and began to feel like whining. In other words, another Boomer with a swimming pool in their backyard shaking their fist at the sky when inconvenienced. What bothered me was that here was this person, as mentioned, a pillar. This person has a street named after them. Shouldn’t that sort of prestige, I asked myself, not come with any sense of responsibility toward a role of leadership? A sense of indebtedness to those less fortunate in their trade, to the degree they might realize that stomping their shoes on the ground wasn’t just a bad look, it was a missed opportunity for advocacy.
It reminded me of so many people in the film/TV industry who ground their teeth over any missed opportunity, taking like a mortal blow to their ego what people like myself had to endure on a regular basis just to land a gig that paid decently.
This person disappointed me, and I feel that there’s some of my own shit in that. I had few if no role models during those 20 years, and those who came closest could still say or do hurtful things, often because of their inflated sense of importance, or plain ol’ toxic masculinity (which ran from hot and cold taps back then). I don’t write about the industry very often because my relationship with it is bittersweet; there was a shit load of misogyny and general bad behaviour, which makes writing about it that much more difficult.
I would love nothing more than for this person on Facebook to stand taller, to look beyond their four-block radius, to think what might encourage or inspire others, rather than posting things like “TOO MUCH BIG-GOVERNMENT!”. It saddens me when people of a particular generation who were entitled to many more advantages than subsequent generations can’t see beyond their immediate domain. Worse still, when brought down a level or two from their prestige, appearing aggrieved.
