The Composer's Solitude

Being a composer for media is a dream job for many aspiring young musicians. The prospect of writing music to visuals, potentially being able to work with live musicians and creatively expressing oneself through music and even being paid for that seems very tempting. 

As I mentioned several times already, it is hard to express the feeling that you have when you stand in front of 90 musicians who bring your music to life for the first time. Of course that is not the only way to enjoy that job. There are of course also composers who enjoy digging deep into shaping a specific sound or texture in their studio to accompany the visuals in a unique and thought provoking way or many more forms of how this job can be creatively fullfilling.

But of course, everybody who is serious about this career path should also be aware of the many downsides of the job. Long hours, bad payment, annoying clients, toxic work relationships etc. are just a few of the things that you might be confronted with.

However today, I want to talk about something that is rarely spoken about but that at least for me is one of the biggest downsides of the job.

The profession of being a composer is incredibly lonely. As the work process is mostly internalized and the actual work rarely ever collaborative, it is not uncommon to not have any social interaction between setting foot in your studio in the morning and going to bed in the evening. With large projects that have a huge workload and tough deadlines, this scenario can extend to several weeks or even months without interruption.

Most composers I know are quite introvert and cherish the possibility of working alone on their own terms and I am no exception to that. I really enjoy fiddling around on things without needing to interact with other people and generally don't need a lot of social interaction. But the truth is that most composers would also agree that they need a certain degree of social interaction with only rare cases of people who are absolutely fine without any interaction at all.

And this is where the actual problem begins. If as a composer you want to have social interaction, you need to be proactive. The job itself will only rarely allow you to create new friendships and social media interaction might not really cut it most of the time. The problem with being mainly introvert is that you usually don't tend to actively pursue a social life as it simply doesn't go along with your nature. So as a composer, you are often caught in the cycle of not having the opportunity of meeting people (as you would in a "normal" job) and not feeling comfortable to actively instigate social contacts.

When you are not in a relationship or don't have a family, this might become even more extreme sometimes involuntarily isolating yourself from the outside for extended periods of time.

It took me a few years in this job to realize that in spite of my nature, I need to become active with friendships and social interactions in order to maintain a social life and remain mentally healthy. It took a while to get used to the fact that I needed to be more active in keeping social contacts alive than "average people" who naturally interact with more people during their daily job, commute etc. Realizing this and following through with it however has really put me at a way more content and healthy state than the years that I spent only focussing on the job. I still don't need a lot of social interaction but I thoroughly enjoy the time that I spend with my friends and have made it a regular and essential part of my calendar.

There are of course other ways that have proven to work. Quite a few composers work in a team or at least duo or have a studio space in a facility that brings people together (like everybody having their own "room" but sharing a kitchen, community room etc. where you meet each other). There is however the potential downside that this interaction remains work related and all you talk about is work related so even then it might need some extra effort to transfer these interactions into a more personal context. Also, even in a team work, the actual work that needs to be done very often is being done in isolation as it is incredibly tricky to channel the creativity of several people in the same room at the same time focussing on the same problem.

Of course, these phenomenons are not a problem of composers only but more or less every freelancer working alone (from home) is in a similar situation. You simply need to be cut out for a job that happens in solitude most of the time. And while at first this doesn't seem like a big thing, doing this for several years might actually have an impact on your personality and wellbeing.

The intresting aspect is that at first I thought that it was just a personal issue I was having and other composers would have many friends and social interaction that happen to just be present in their life all the time but after opening up about this issue to colleagues, many of them agree that they feel this to be a quite big problem for them as well. However as far as I know this issue is rarely ever discussed in the composer's community.

One more thing that I need to address here is that it of course also needs friends and social contacts that understand the specifics of your job and don't get frustrated if you disappear from the grid for a while due to heavy deadlines. In general however, I feel that if your work  permanently doesn't allow to make time for social interaction, you might be doing something wrong and should question your work life balance as this definitely isn't healthy in the long run.