Thinking

[unbound_spirit]

-My younger cousin Jonny starts his Master's degree in Astro Physics this fall at Cambridge University!  Maybe he'll get to attend some Hawking lectures!  Maybe I'll have to go visit him.

-Last Saturday I was hanging out in Chelsea with a friend of mine from college and some of her friends from MIT.  They all work in the stock market or in these high-pressure finance jobs.  And after work and on weekends they spend their time getting drunk at places that resemble college bars.  One of them got on my case about not drinking.  He was like, "If you were one of my friends from work or something, and I knew you didn't drink, I would never invite you to come hang out with me," as if that would be such a horrible thing.  As if I should want to spend my free time hanging out with drunk guys in pseudo-college bars, which are environments I never cared for, even back in college.  Um, no, sorry, I actually have a life.

That also got me thinking about somthing someone on here posted from Donald Trump, and how he said one secret to success is doing a job that you never want to take a vacation from.  My career as a musician is a job I never want to take a vacation from.  I don't feel the need to get drunk and escape from life.  Well, okay, I do sometimes, but for other reasons, not work related.  I never want to retire.  I'm always thinking about work because I love it.  I'm an artist and I always have an inclination to do art. 

-I'm lining up a lot of auditions...

Comments

[kvschwartz.livejournal.com]

"If you were one of my friends from work or something, and I knew you didn't drink, I would never invite you to come hang out with me."

Wow, that was so sweet of him.


Congrats on the auditions. :D

[kvschwartz.livejournal.com]

Congrats to your cousin, too! Astro physics is so cool. (See also: icon.)

[jhsc22.livejournal.com]

Your "friend" sounds like an idiot. Actually, thank you for that story. It gives me a whole new insight into why the majority of my graduate department spends their nights getting drunk. And why now, as we are graduating, they have no prospects, and I am going into a fully-funded PhD program. There must be a correlation...

[solar-diablo.livejournal.com]

Drinkers, especially power drinkers, often get defensive around people who don't imbibe. It seems to be an unwritten law somewhere. I've found that if I'm out with friends who are drinking and I don't feel like it, I'll order one glass of wine or beer, and sip at it the entire time we're there, with ice water as my main beverage. I might get razzed now and then for being a lightweight, but having the drink in front of me tends to ward off the defensive reactions.

[mechanyx.livejournal.com]

That's why Kokoschka is my hero. He made a living drinking!

[george-marie.livejournal.com]

There has always been something unhealthy to me about drinking to get away from what one does for a living. It suggests that the person would rather be somewhere else doing something else and that their job is just seething their life with emotional havoc.

My belief is consistent with the writings of Schopenhauer. The world is suffering and art is humanity's way of creating a world the way we want it to be. We artists are priviliged because we get to live that perfect (nothing is perfect, but i think that imperfection sometimes implies a state of perfection)world every day.

We as artists also subscribe to an ideal advocated by Kierkegaard. He advocated that faith should be the one ideal that everyone lives for. While I disagree somwhat with that assertion, I very much like the idea of dedicating one's life to something that is so much bigger and better than themselves.

So yeah! Kudos to all that you are doing and what your cousin is doing. Yup:).

[pinkstiletto510.livejournal.com]

i'm glad to know that youre not into that whole drinking to get drunk thing either.... i am one of the only 4 kids in my Performance class of 25 that hasnt gone out and gotten drunk...many of them like to do this after shows even when they have matinees in the morning...drives me insane. I really dont care if they do it on their own time but when I have to act with them while they're all hung-over...yeah not fun