Re: Why SHOULDN'T musicians be paid?

[Daryl Shawn <highhorse@mhorse.com>]

We all need to hire Paul to do our plumbing - we get the "useful" and 
"necessary" tasks done and support music at the same time...!

Daryl Shawn
www.swanwelder.com
www.chinapaintingmusic.com
>> If you want a decent chance of getting people to pay you a working 
>> wage for something you do 8+ hours a day, consider doing something 
>> really useful--like plumbing.
>
> I found this to be a very interesting statement; does that mean that 
> you don't consider what you do as a musician to be useful?
>
> It just happens that what I do for a living is plumbing, and I work in 
> maintenance at a hospital. So I do consider my plumbing work to be of 
> importance, like last week when I repaired a leak that had just 
> flooded out an operating room. And yet I would say that I've made a 
> greater contribution to the world through my music than I'll ever do 
> with my plumbing work. Last year I had someone come to me with a story 
> that they had just come through one of the worst years of their life. 
> She said "whenever I felt I couldn't go on anymore, I listened to your 
> music and it helped me through" Now that's pretty useful stuff..... 
> and I'll bet there's plenty of stories like that from various people 
> on this list who have created incredible music that has touched 
> peoples lives. I'm glad there's folks like Rick that are still out 
> there and able to make some sort of living, it gives me hope that our 
> society will some day value its artists enough to support them instead 
> of just tolerating them.
>
> Oh and by the way, I only make $25.00 an hour as a plumber, which does 
> require a 5 yr apprenticeship, a license that has to be renewed every 
> few years and lots of additional training and seminars to keep up with 
> the current changes to the codes and equipment.
>
> Paul Haslem
> Ontario, Canada
> www.dulcify.ca
>