Margo Drakos: The Age of Relevance – Lessons from a world away
In this post, Margo Drakos argues that musicians, like scientists and entrepreneurs, are the “inventors and innovators who will bring us into the future.” As a cellist turned tech entrepreneur, she certainly lives that truth and we’re looking forward to hearing her thoughts on “creativity” at our live event in San Francisco, this Saturday, March 17. Register today for our free Talking About Creativity event with Margo Drakos.
“The souls of people, on their way to Earth, pass through a room full of lights; each takes a taper — often only a spark — to guide it in the dim country of this world. But some souls, by rare fortune, are detained longer — have time to grasp a handful of tapers, which they weave into a torch. These are the torch-bearers of humanity — its poets, seers, and saints, who lead and lift the race out of darkness, toward the light. They are the law-givers, the light-bringers, way-showers, and truth-tellers, and without them humanity would lose its way in the dark.” – Plato
Last spring and a world away this quote was read in mourning. Their numbers depleted by two, a group of journalists in Misrata, Libya gathered to eulogize a friend of mine, Chris Hondros, an world-renown photo-journalist, and his colleague, Tim Hetherington, director of award-winning Afghan war documentary Restrepo and conflict-photographer. Chris was incredibly passionate about classical music and it was the bridge that first connected us. As I transitioned from my career as a cellist into the technology space, I learned from Chris that our connection was more fundamental. Journalists, photographers, sculptors, musicians, entrepreneurs, inventors, and everyone who endeavors to interpret the humanity of which we are part, to preserve it, to share it, to move it forward, these, are the light-bringers, way-showers, and truth-tellers. We must embrace this role, not with hubris but with humility and realize that our accomplishments are not the reward for our dedication. Rather, our dedication is the price paid, and it is only a pittance, for the enormous privilege of “having been detained longer”- so that we might weave a torch.
Musicians, no less than historians, are stewards of our culture and our history – charged with preserving and interpreting the past. Music is a constant evolving culmination of the rich repository of human culture over the past hundreds of years. This is a deep brew – blending a vast number of societies and languages, and the composer’s intentions with one’s own voice, most often in tandem with others, to form a single, unique, interdependent expression.
Musicians, no less than journalists, are charged with bearing witness to the present and cataloguing and interpreting it for future generations. Our local and global communities need the arts, to process the world around, interpret it, share it with society, and make it personal, and thus relevant. Our tradition desires active participants and not passive observers in our society at large.
Musicians, no less than scientists and entrepreneurs, are inventors and innovators who will bring us into the future.
A career in the arts, be it as an orchestral musician, composer, teacher, booking agent, recording engineer, executive director, or any other capacity, is to dedicate one’s self to this set of ideals: Steward, Witness, Innovator. Just as doctors, lawyers, or engineers hue to and are bound by professional codes – so too are we as part of the artistic community. And in my mind to be a professional in the performing arts is defined less by the remuneration one receives for their craft than by the fealty to which they adhere to the noble underpinnings of our profession. Our world with its unprecedented rate of change will not be kind to those that do not recognize and balance the responsibilities of being a steward, witness and innovator.
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