On Music and Belonging
written by Ben Shirley, guest author for the Fellows in Their Own Words blog
Tidriks Distance Learning participant and Composing Earth Cohort II Fellow
For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to belong...anywhere. I wanted to know the big secret everyone else seemed to know but me. How do you live, how do you make sense of the seemingly mundane slog through existence? How do you connect with someone? How do you care about anything? For crying out loud, how do you form an honest relationship with another human being? Where was my tribe? What is my identity?
It sounds pathetic, but my earliest memories include acceptance of the fact that I was a proverbial “lost soul” who had nothing in common with anyone or anything.
Enter the green transistor radio.
Music did something for me that no human, sport, activity, or other hobby could do. It made me feel less alone. Sitting on the hill overlooking San Francisco, on account of my dad being stationed in the Bay Area, listening to my little machine, I finally felt less alone. The dull ache of missing my Oma and my home in Berlin subsided.
For hours each day, I actually felt like I belonged. Music made everything else in the world make sense. Music was my stalwart ally, standing beside me in a world that felt foreign and confusing. Music was my partner and indeed my escape from feeling like a perpetual outsider.
I trusted music. So much so that together we made the journey to the City of Stars, confident that the record contract was within my grasp. Music had never let me down, and I knew this would be no different.
Sure, I had to sleep on floors. Of course I didn’t have a dime to my name. But that was just part of the deal. I had to sacrifice but remained confident (or possibly insufferably naive) that since music had never let me down, it wouldn’t let me down in Los Angeles.
In time, my biggest dreams came true. The record label contract was signed, and I’d spend the next decade touring and making records thanks to music. Music brought massive crowds, adoration, a tiny bit more money, friendships with some of the biggest names in rock, but most notably an introduction to escape from my pervasive feeling of not belonging. That escape would ultimately prove a formidable foe.
In time I stabbed music in the back, aligning instead with booze and ultimately heroin. Although alcohol and drugs never made me feel like I had a friend the way music did, they did quiet the feelings of not belonging and not understanding the world.
I chose booze and dope over music, which was both the biggest mistake of my life, and the greatest blessing of my life. I checked into the Midnight Mission homeless shelter in Los Angeles’s Skid Row in 2011, with nothing to my name, and feeling one more time like I didn’t belong.
My well-intentioned counselors tried to guide me towards getting training and education in a “practical” field that would enable me to get a job immediately, and presumably make me a productive member of society. I appreciated their suggestion but knew that choosing anything over music would just lead to more emptiness and bewilderment. I made perhaps the best decision of my life: I chose to return to school for music.
In the decade since re-dedicating my life to studying and writing music, I’ve never looked back. And music has once again been my loyal companion. But this time, I started to feel like I belonged in musical communities. I felt like I belonged in my music classes. I felt kinship with my teachers. I felt a part of a musical tribe.
Then of course, COVID-19 wreaked its seemingly never-ending havoc. The connections I had forged with musical communities seemed to vanish into thin air.
Then came the invite to join the Tidriks Distance Learning Program. I can honestly say that Gabriela’s Distance Learning Program has played an enormous role in keeping me sane and keeping me from feeling like I don’t belong.
It’s quite amazing that through all the styles of writing, performing, and interpretation these masterclasses offered, we all found that common ground of wanting to learn and engage in a new experience. It’s also reassuring that there’s a whole lot of us going through self-doubt and second guessing everything. But perhaps most comforting, is finally seeing that I’m not the only one who has struggled with feeling like we don’t belong. There’s a bunch of people just like me, who experience the same insecurities, and the same confusion about their place in this world. More interestingly, we share the same solution to loneliness---music.
The Distance Learning Program has given me the opportunity to learn about musical genres I never would have explored on my own. From Western harp, bass, Karnatik Indian music, bassoon, countertenor, flute, Latin American string music quartet music, DIY Punk!, and the eye-opening Climate Intelligence and Action for Artists, this program not only kept me connected to a musical community, but allowed me to learn about entirely new musical worlds and communities-all via a computer screen.
It wasn’t that long ago that I felt I had no shot at happiness, or ever feeling like I belonged anywhere. I’m beyond grateful that’s not the case today. Even this miserable pandemic can’t prevent artists from creating, or stop musical communities from forming. The Tidriks Distance Learning Program is proof of that, and I’m deeply grateful for it.
Drawing inspiration from a life lived on the edge, Ben Shirley is a Los Angeles based composer-orchestrator who is known for succeeding against most odds. After spending more than two years as a resident of the Midnight Mission, a homeless shelter on Los Angeles’ notorious Skid Row, Benjamin has emerged a respected composer, orchestrator, and arranger who brings a distinctive perspective, and relentless work ethic to film composition and concert music.
Today, Ben’s classical concert works are commissioned by prominent ensembles with multiple premieres on the horizon which COVID put on hold this past year. He has also scored documentaries and works as an orchestrator for television and film. Orchestration credits include CBS Television: S.W.A.T., Fast and the Furious: Hobbs and Shaw, and Umbrella, an award winning and Oscar® qualified CGI animated short film.
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