Not Me or Living Life as a Counterfeit

I came across a passage this morning in Seth Godin’s The Icarus Deception about three ways artists engage with their audience. The first way, is that they really don’t. They make their art and aren’t concerned about a connection. The second way is for the artist to consider her work incomplete unless he makes a genuine connection with the work she produces and the audience that gets it.

The third, and perhaps most tragic way, is for the artist to be more concerned about meeting the cries of the market instead of creating art. "Some [artists] will eagerly listen to every criticism and work to water down the art to pander to the largest possible audience. For this person, market share means more than art does. And so we see old Elvis become a Las Vegas parody and old Judy Garland hit bottom onstage." (Godin, 202)

In my previous post I wrote about how my work experience ended with an emotional crisis. It has been difficult to put into words or find a story that mirrors how I was feeling. After all, I did have a job that paid me well with really good benefits. I was doing work that I was good at and was heralded as being Mr. Excel and the IT guy within the department. I could meet almost any technical challenge that was sent my way. Yet, I was bored out of my mind and becoming increasingly disillusioned.

I should have been happy. But I wasn’t.

As I’ve worked through the emotional crisis that nearly took my life, I have come to strongly believe that the source of my problem was that I was living in disharmony with my inner self. For many people, that is not a big deal. I have had a number of trusted associates confide in me that they were seldom satisfied or fulfilled in their jobs. They were good at what they did but they, too, were disillusioned by the way in which they had to do it. But, they persevered in order to provide for their families. 

As the days, months and years slipped by in the work I was doing I kept telling myself that I needed to set aside the angst I was feeling with regards to my work. After all, I had a family to provide for and a mortgage to pay. (Is it any coincidence that mortgage is Latin for death (mort) pledge (gage) ;-) ? )

So I kept my head down and plugged on, and like many of my coworkers, worked for the weekend and an early retirement twenty+ years away.

In an age when positive thinking is heralded as the cure for everything from depression to cancer, I tried swallowing the proverbial happy pill and kept on a perpetual happy face. Until I couldn’t muster the strength to do that any longer.

(In an ironic twist of fate,  when I returned from my leave for whooping cough I was written up, in part, for not smiling enough. Part of the ensuing employment probation was that I would maintain a cheerful demeanor. In the accounting department…. Really?)

I had worked my life for a paycheck regularly advancing up the corporate ladder in order to get a bigger and bigger paycheck.

The irony being that I have since discovered that money isn’t very important to me. Yet in an arena in which salary is valued more highly than job satisfaction and self fulfillment, it was the measuring stick by which I evaluated whether or not I was being successful. As there are always others making more money, I didn’t feel I was being hugely successful on that front either. 

Yet, if everybody else seems to be able to navigate life working a job that didn’t provide a lot of fulfillment, why is that I had such a crisis? I should have been able to brush it off and move on. Right?

I couldn’t, though. Even the thought of going back to that type of life, even with all its security, ties my stomach in knots. 

How do I reconcile my experience with everybody around me who continue to plod along? 

A light went on when I came across the short passage in Godin’s book. Did I encounter the same dilemma that Elvis encountered along his trajectory from the hills of Tennessee to the stages of Las Vegas?

In Las Vegas, Elvis was at what would have seemed to the casual bystander the height of his career. He was making $100,000 a week, and given a $6,000 daily credit in the casino—but he didn’t play nodding to his Southern Baptist upbringing.

He was bringing in enough money to buy Rolexes, Cadillacs and houses for numerous friends. His shows changed the city from a mafia-controlled environment to that of big business.

Yet, he was miserable. 

Elvis had just ended a ten-year engagement with Hollywood where he was making up to three movies a year. But he felt no sense of artistry. The King of Rock and Roll had been brought to feel like a singing monkey on display to perform but not free to be himself. 

He said of Hollywood, “I was bored with movies, bored with the people, and bored with my life. I felt I’d sold my soul to the Devil.”

Heading to Las Vegas, he thought he had found a new lease on life. “I look on today as the day I get back to doing the work that God put me on Earth to do.”

But then like a sow returning to the mire, Elvis signed a seven-year contract where he would be doing two shows a night, for four weeks, twice a year.

The money was good. The fame was good. And he was a popular man among the ladies. But, he was miserable. 

Trying to find solace in that which doesn’t satisfy, he filled himself with food (needing to get a new rhinestone suit each time he performed), drugs, and lavishing generous gifts on family and friends. 

The popular singer Tom Jones recalled, “He loved being Elvis Presley, There was no doubt about that. He loved it when he was great and who could blame him? But then I think he started to dislike himself. He lost his desire to be Elvis Presley.”

Lost his desire to be Elvis Presley. Or more accurately, lost his desire to be the counterfeit Elvis that Hollywood and Las Vegas propped up.

Although, Elvis’ story is much more sensational than mine. I can relate to living a counterfeit life. Prior to my emotional crisis, I had been living the life I was “supposed” to live. Go to college, graduate school, get a good job, make good money, pay the mortgage, provide for the family and churn out work. Day after day after day.

Elvis lost the will to continue on because he had given up his mastery. He had lost the dream and the artistry of creating something new and vital. He stopped being who he was and accepted his role as a forfeit. 

And, ultimately, he paid the price.

While Elvis did exhibit artistry and mastery early in his career, I had never felt that I had found my own voice. Instead I had pursued the life that was held up as the ideal. And I, too, pursued and tried to stay true to that illusion. Until I couldn’t any longer.

Since that day of crisis, I have been on a crusade, a pilgrimage to find my own artistry and mastery. I am still very much on the path, but I feel as if I am entering a native land that I left long ago.