The Third Culture and Living on Edge

I managed to miss the first anniversary of the blog (3/26) and clearly I have been in absentia for some time. I made a pilgrimage to Cambodia which was eye opening. I was staggered to find such a disciplined people, largely very hopeful and generally very compassionate (95% are Buddhists). There are still landmines everywhere. The jungle is a constant threat both in terms of who lives there and its ability to grab back the land and all the temples. There is not enough money to fix most things and lots of foreign types are in residence as the leadership of the country is somewhat slow to act (new king and parliament, no real war crimes tribunal, too many Khmer Rouge still around). The foreign types can be restoring temples or they can be marrying poor and poorly educated Cambodian women for a fee. Soon they will be able to buy property.

With all that, the country maintains the rice loft of the world, literally the country floods and they get a special third harvest of superior rice. As the price of rice goes sky high, this may cause interesting affluence among a people who revere their land for reasons having nothing to do with interest in affluence. I was profoundly affected by my exposure to Cambodia and Cambodians and have found 2008 to be flooded with questions about happiness, fulfillment and artistic quality of life.

This reminded me of Daniel Kahneman and the aspiration treadmill (are you happier if you aspire to higher things) and lead me to Edge's on-line presence (http://www.edge.org, which is full of interesting thoughts by scientists and art types). This treadmill was a darling idea that he and his team had to abandon, yet it holds appeal.

As an artist on hiatus, off slogging it out in the money-world for awhile, I find that my happiness quotient is always higher when I am working on a new piece or project. Although I find fulfillment in being self-supporting, my work at ye old day job is never enough to sustain and nourish me thoroughly. But as soon as I pull out the vocal instrument, my camera or pencil, brush and paper, I am back on dry land feeling Csíkszentmihályi's famous flow.

Aspiring to create art helps to make me an artist. Producing quality work is another element. Just living an artistic life is not fulfilling. Is it what I expected in my 20's when I first chose to train and work as a singer? In part yes, because I had many mentors and heavy doses of realism helped keep me centered. Am I happy when seeing myself as only a part-time artist? Not as much, but it is a continuum. Performing too much commercial work wasn't great either. But taking a break to earn a different living from full-time performing has had some unexpected permutations. Not the least of which is that it turns out I learned a lot of good business practice managing my own vocal career and someone wants to pay me for that in a different field for awhile. Is it selling out? That will be determined by sticking to the path, getting back to full-time artistic practice in the timeframe I elected to create.