What if Bob Dylan never left Minnesota?
Welcome to the ArtsBound Newsletter. Every Tuesday, I share three thoughts or insights meant to help performing arts students and young professionals flourish in their life and career. Today we’re taking a closer look at leaving 1) as a way of protecting your personal energy; 2) as a way of connecting with your artistic tribe; and 3) through a personal example.
- 3.5-minute read -
(NOTE: I started ArtsBound because I believe the world would be a better place with more people living their true calling. If you know a student or young professional who is searching for their niche in the performing arts world, consider forwarding this email to them. If this email was forwarded to you, you can sign up to receive my newsletter every Tuesday. It's free.)
1. Leaving an energy-draining environment.
This is a follow-up from last week, when I wrote about how our personality types (archetypal patterns) can be out of alignment with our environment and therefore drain our energy.
I ended up writing two companion articles. Last week I shared the article, “10 Personality Types of Musicians, Theatre Artists, and Dancers: Which Are You?”.
Last week, we looked at the importance of leaving an energy-draining environment, but I realized another article was needed to flesh out the whole idea. If you’d like a deeper dive, you can read “5 Ways to Leave an Energy-Draining Environment at Work or School”.
The basic premise is this:
If you recognize that your environment is making it hard for you to be you, leaving that environment is a must. But you can do so to a variety of different degrees of severity:
Find another way of expressing your personal energy.
Ask for an alternative assignment.
Practice saying “No”.
Take a journey.
Quit.
For more details on each of these, read the FULL ARTICLE.
2. Leaving to find your artistic tribe.
Bob Dylan grew up as Robert Zimmerman in northern Minnesota - a place he describes in a 2017 interview as cold, gloomy, and “hardscrabble”. He was destined for a different world, something he acknowledges in In No Direction Home, the 2005 documentary about Dylan’s early life career. Regarding his home state, Dylan describes a sentiment of being born in the wrong life - a distinct sense of not belonging.
After high school Dylan, enrolled at University of Minnesota but dropped out and moved to New York. It was here, playing clubs in Greenwich Village that he honed his craft as a songwriter and performer. It was his move to New York that also led to him meeting Joan Baez and John Hammond, the producer who would sign him to Columbia Records, among others who profoundly shaped his career.
He had met his ‘tribe’.
I realize that asking, “What if Dylan never left MN?” may seem like an arbitrary exercise, but you probably get the underlying idea - Bobby Zimmerman wouldn’t have become the Bob Dylan we know today if he hadn’t left MN and met his tribe. But he couldn’t have known when he left all that awaited him in NYC - all he knew was he didn’t belong anymore, and he took the leap.
Have you found your artistic tribe (or are you in the process of doing so)? Are you due to “leave” in one of the ways listed above? If you did leave, what might you be destined to discover?
3. Journeying.
Lots of people use the phrase ‘the journey’ to describe life as an always-evolving experience. I think we do well to do so. Even though I talk about things like destiny and true calling, I don’t think we are ever “arrived” or done with moving forward in life.
That said, this ubiquitous phrase is so prominent in our language that we are less aware of the classic, archetypal understanding of the Journey.
A few weeks ago, in a newsletter about fear, I told a personal story about choosing not to follow my friend’s suggestion of eating wild shellfish for fear of getting sick… then finding out that we actually could have died if we did!
My experience on that beach was just a part of a cross-country journey I took to get myself unstuck from a variety of energy-draining places - both internal and external.
The trip was transformational for me, and ten years later, I still view it as the single most important coming-of-age experience that prepared me for all that followed - marriage, parenthood, and serving others through my work.
It wasn’t until I left my job as a public school music teacher - a very different, but equally significant ‘leaving’ - that I understood that these experiences fit the archetypal story of the Hero’s Journey with uncanny accuracy.
I have become an advocate for all young people undergoing their own Hero’s Journey. I believe there is something hardwired into our existence that requires this process - leaving the village, being tried in the wilderness, and returning transformed - for us to become the people we were meant to be and offer our highest potential to our communities.
If you’ve experienced your own Journey, share it with the young people in your life. When they seem ready themselves, encourage them to go (I don’t know if I would have packed up my car and headed to the Pacific, had it not been for my mom’s encouragement and blessing).
The Hero’s Journey is a major step in becoming more self-knowing and self-reflective. The world needs more self-knowing and self-reflective individuals, and our young people need our support and encouragement as they become those individuals.
See you next week!
Lee
PS - I started ArtsBound because I believe the world would be a better place with more people living their true calling. If you know a student or young professional who is searching for their niche in the performing arts world, consider forwarding this email to them. If this email was forwarded to you, you can sign up to receive my newsletter every Tuesday. It's free.