From an Ask Andrew W.K. advice column in the Village Voice:
Reader: “Since I was very young, I've always wanted to be a successful musician. I have practiced and played in many bands and done everything I can to get my music out there, but the dream of making it big just seems to get further away and more impossible. I feel like I should just give up, but I love music so much and want to succeed at it. How can I get there? How can I be a really successful musician?”
Andrew: “This is an excellent question and I'm going to answer it as simply and as directly as I can, with the hopes that it makes the point as clear and as helpful as possible.
The traditional modern concept of success — being the measurement of monetary income as the primary indicator of effort and mastery in a certain field — is essentially a scam, a con, and a lie. To equate success with an amount of money earned, or an amount of fame achieved, is at best an unfortunate miscomprehension of the very nature of success. At worst, it's a malicious distortion.
To truly succeed at something is to devote oneself to what one loves, and to allow that devotion to bring out the best and most admirable qualities one has inside of them, so that in the end, one ultimately succeeds at the only effort that really matters: Becoming a better person than you were.
The musician whose efforts in music only add to the size of their bank account is a really just a business person — a successful banker, and not necessarily a successful musician. If music is the means to an end, and that end is money, than the music might as well be real-estate investment, or commodity trading. Individuals whose primary interest in music is positioning themselves to impress others with their style and wealth may be successful marketers and salesmen, but they're not successful musicians, or even successful human beings. They're just rich.”
Continued after the break
