Portrait Of A Guitarist As An Artist

I have been a freelance guitarist for over 30 years. Being in a reflective mood lately, I would like to share with you my thoughts on what it is like to be a guitarist, as an artist.

Steve Vai once stated in a seminar, “If you are questioning to be a guitarist for a living, then you are in the wrong business”.  It is the guitar that picks us and is not a choice the artist has.

What a lot of people might not realize, is how difficult it is to live life so authentically in todays society.

First of all, creative production can be a struggle and even be a dark place, until one is able to release the music that is within.  Sometimes anxiety can really take hold of an artist until that musical idea breaks through.  This is not a 9 to 5 job, it is a total way of being.  It flies in the face of convention and people have difficulty categorizing us, resulting in sheer indifference, even hostility.

My creative efforts can be easy or exhausting.  These days it leans toward the later because I am striving towards being anything but cliché or cookie-cutter.  Either way, creating music is not so much a choice for me, rather it is something I have to do, in order to be whole and quite frankly, to be well.

The positive side of pouring ones soul out into the world is experiencing the joy of all types of feelings and emotions; maybe even a magnified joy.  Creative production is a magical even miraculous activity and I live in constant gratitude of where all these melodies come from.

But in the end, it is not a fairy-tale existence, like the pop media might leave you to believe.  An artist has a life-time of work to create and the balance to produce and still make a living to feed a family is a tenuous one at best.

Next time I am asked for advice for someone’s musical career choices, I might lead them to this article.  If they read it and feel this is for them, then great!  If they would rather stick their thumb in their eye, then a  9 to 5 job is out there for them somewhere.

But if they are baffled by the challenge, the commitment, the discipline, then I hope they find that deep spot within themselves to be who they truly are.

If my reflection can inspire just one person in this world, then we are closer to living in a better place, because ultimately life is about sharing our vunerabilty with one another.

My life as a guitarist may not be glamourous but in the end if I have challenged you to think outside of your box, or created emotions through the sharing of my music, then that is an aspect of success I can truly live with.

Stephen Zurakowsky

Artistic Director