Dear Wary!

Dear Wary,

I want to be a musician but I am afraid that I don't have it in me. I want to play an instrument and sing and create music and perform it. I don't really care about fame. I want to admire myself for being a more realized person, and I want to enjoy the company of artists, and until I am one I would be nothing but a fake, or worse yet, labeled a groupie. I am plagued with the existential anxiety that my life has been pointless thus far, and I see music as a way to create meaning and connection with my own humanity.

But when I listen to interviews with musicians, or hear their music, I am struck with the sense that they were born for it, that creating music runs in their veins, and that it's a way of life for them as much as eating or sleeping. Can someone become an artist after many, many years of not being musical, indeed after a life spent idling in conformity? Is a love for it and a dedication to working toward being musical every day really enough? Could someone like me really join the ranks of artists?

I Dream of My Ideal Self, in Vancouver

Dear Ideal Self,

Truthfully, I think you're setting your sights a little low here.

While creating music might "run in the veins" of some of the weak-willed milquetoast American musicians you might sometimes run across, let's face it. You're Canadian, heir to a savage race that conquered an entire continent. One which swept like a Mongolian horde across plains, mighty rivers and even mightier mountains, killing and burning and raping everything in its path. Do you think it's for you to worry your manliness about learning to play some flimsy guitar (much in the way the women fumble with the lutes in the tents)?

No.

Like Russell Crowe himself said in Gladiator, it is time to grab your destiny. By this time next year, I want you to be up in the North Woods, hunting grizzlies clad only in a loincloth and strangling them with your bare hands (and playing the guitar at the same time, if that is Your wish.)