To follow your dream or play it safe?

Our contributor Maria Corley, makes (I think) a passable living in music as a concert pianist and teacher. Now her 16-year-old daughter Kiana harbors dreams of becoming a famous singer like the TV contestants who leap from obscurity to stardom by dazzling judges on "The Voice." Maria's quandary: Should she encourage her daughter's fantasies or squelch them? (See "The fallacy of "'The Voice'.")

Maria's conclusion: Encourage Kiana to pursue her dream, but make sure she has a backup plan.

I'm a parent who's been there and done that, so allow me three observations.

What if?

1. This isn't an either/or deal. Throughout her school years and even into college, my younger daughter was bound and determined for a career on the stage. She possessed multiple talents— actress, pianist, tap dancer, director. In high school she worked with a New York casting director and won second prize in a national scholastic playwriting contest.

Nevertheless, virtually all of our friends and relatives urged us to discourage her. The odds against her dream scenario, they said, were overwhelming— and that being the case, why not spare her the aggravation and heartbreak, not to mention the huge ensuing psychotherapy bills?

My wife and I, virtually alone, disagreed. She's got to chase her dream, we felt. If the dream turns out to be untenable, she'll get it out of her system. But if she never even tries, she'll be wondering "What if?" for the rest of her life.

(My daughter did ultimately make a career in show business— not on stage, but as a TV writer, and only after several unexpected career detours. You can't know what life will offer you unless you take the first step.)

Backing into dance

2. Plan B isn't merely an alternative to Plan A— it's a critical element to the success of Plan A. Single-minded artists and entertainers tend to be boring and self-absorbed people, and it shows in their work. That's why you see so many movies and plays about making movies and plays— because many entertainers and writers don't know anything else.

As a college student, Riccardo Muti majored in philosophy, not music— a choice that has enriched his work as one of the world's greatest orchestral and operatic conductors. The poet Wallace Stevens and the composer Charles Ives both pursued day jobs as insurance executives. Bernard Jacobson, former music critic of the Chicago Daily News and program annotator for the Philadelphia Orchestra (and occasional BSR contributor), studied philosophy, history and classics at Oxford and never took a musicology course in his life. (Check his C.V. here.)

Or consider the unlikely career path of Merrill Brockway, who presented many of the 20th Century's greatest dancers and choreographers on the Public Broadcasting series "Dance in America."

Brockway, who died earlier this month at age 90, began studying piano when he was seven. In the Army during World War II, he served as a driver for a chaplain and provided music for the chaplain's services. He subsequently earned a master's degree in musicology, but after realizing he would never be a professional classical pianist, in 1953 he took a job moving scenery at WCAU-TV, the CBS affiliate in Philadelphia.

Within a year the station made him director of its educational and children's programs. But dance remained far off his radar screen until a Columbia classmate took him to see Martha Graham. "I saw a tiny lady dancing a solo," Brockway recalled in his 2010 memoir, Surprise Was My Teacher. "She grabbed my gut, swung it around, tossed it in the air, slammed it to the ground, then tenderly picked it up and cradled it. I would be, forever, Martha Graham's disciple."

Graham, in turn, was attracted to Brockway by his expertise in TV, which she and other choreographers saw as a way to reach larger audiences. "Dance in America" had its premiere in 1976, when Brockway was 53. The rest is history.

As the British physician and essayist Havelock Ellis put it, "The by-product is sometimes more valuable than the product."

Tripped up by ego

3. Winning is overrated. Talent contests like "The Voice" and "American Idol" package themselves as all-or-nothing affairs with one winner and many losers. It's a format designed for maximum drama but bears no application in the real world. (Van Cliburn's youthful triumph at the Tchaikovsky Competition turned out to be the high point of his career.)

I'll give the final word to Jack Farber, the chairman of CSS Industries, whose memoirs I edited a few years ago. Farber, who describes himself deprecatingly as a "corporate garbage man," spent more than 40 years acquiring dead or dying companies, repairing them and selling them for a profit. It's unglamorous work, which explains why you probably never heard of Farber or CSS.

Some of the companies Farber took over were run by egomaniacs guided by the philosophy that "If you're not Number One in your field, it's not worth doing." Farber's rejoinder:

"This wasn't my philosophy, to put it mildly. I hate to lose, but my aspirations don't require me to be Number One. As I had observed even as an adolescent, it's simply not possible to be the best at everything you do; the world has plenty of room for Number Two or Three, or even Ten— or even people who come in last, if they're trying. This "'Number One' rhetoric may work at pep rallies and sales conferences— to fire up a team to win a game or reach a revenue goal— but any effort to remain Number One over the long term is to me a futile waste of energy that could better be put to other uses."

So, yes, follow your dream. If you expose it to reality, reality may pleasantly surprise you. But you'll never know unless you try.♦


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