Making it. Here is probably the most misunderstood term of the entertainment industry – and probably, for many, the most important.  As creative director of an Inspirational music company, I encounter this confusion on one level or another nearly every day.

Many artists are obsessed with the idea of “making it”, but if you were to ask many of them what they meant by this, you would receive a myriad of divergent answers.  It is a term that is pretty much an entertainment industry concept only.  We rarely hear of a chemical engineer, a doctor or a school teacher making it. 

No, it is an invention of the ego driven entertainment industry and probably has a lot to do with another great confusion of our industry – Award Shows.  Don’t get me started on that one.  Actually, for those interested, I already wrote my rant about that one. Read The Grammys.

Making it seems so important to some that the concept ruins their lives, throws them into mad depressions, steals away any success that they might have already attained in the past and engenders a misperception of life and its purpose.

“Making it” becomes so all important that it ends up, for most, unattainable.

And yet, most don’t even know what it means.

I like to ask people what is the “it” part of “making it”?  What is the “it” that you are trying to make?  When pressed, most have no clue, but on they press trying and fretting and basically feeling like failures because they haven’t “made it”.

We have an odd business.  The saying goes, “You’re only as good as your last show.”  If your last show, or song or movie, etc. was a hit, they you’re great, but, of course, if it wasn’t, you’re a failure.

Would you say Julia Roberts has made it?  Most people would, and yet she’s had her share of stinkers.  They all have.  Anybody who is anybody has had to take some bold chances to get up on top of the pedestal for their couple of moments and some of those chances were wrong choices – human choices that just didn’t work out.

Julia is probably going to be pushed up on that pedestal once again with “Eat, Pray, Love” but what about Blood Red (1988), Dying Young (1991), Hook (1991), I Love Trouble (1993), Something to Talk About (1995), and Mary Reilly (1996).  Sorry, Julia.

I guess there were months and months of Julia’s life when she just hadn’t made it.  What a sad life!  What a failure!

Yes, of course I’m being facetious, but along the way, trying to make a point.

In baseball, Hall of Fame hitters fail 70% of the time.  Great stars have long lists of failures.

In my own life, I had a song that was a number one single on the Billboard Pop charts and sold over 2 million records.  It’s not a song that I would place among my 250 best today.  It’s not even a song that I ever need to listen to again in my life, but for a forgotten minute there I had really made it.

What did it really mean to my life?  I’m not going to belittle the importance of the moment, but it doesn’t rank up there in the top 1000 moments for me.  I hardly remember the year, much less the pedestal.  And yet it’s what so many aspire to.

No, for me, “making it” is what I do every day when I compose, when I struggle with the scanning of a lyric, when I craft a harmonic relationship between a cello and a bassoon, when I comp a singer’s takes into a perfect vocal.  That’s when I’m making it.

If I’m working for that Rocky moment on the steps in Philadelphia, I’m cruisin’ for a bruisin’.  That’s a movie moment, not a life moment.  Even when the Yankees A-rod hit 3 homers last week, he didn’t get a hit the next day and struck out twice.

For me, “making it” is the act of creation, not the result of creation.  I’ve been protected all my life from the roller coaster highs and lows of this crazy industry by just this understanding.  If, in my work, I made it right, then I’m successful, I’m triumphant right there in the moment and I find my immediate happiness.

If I fail, then I just go back to work and work until I get it right.  The triumphs are personal and private.  The failures are short-lived because they’re just seen as part of the natural process of creation – taking chances, trying something new, making mistakes, but turning the mistakes into originality.

I like to think I make it every day.  Perhaps the world doesn’t know about it, but that’s where the confusion and the mistakes lie for others.  The real question is what does it matter what the world knows?  That’s the ego’s big concern and that’s what gets most of us in trouble.

The rush of creation is infinitely more profound and satisfying than the rush and roller coaster ride of stardom. Read the post, “On Fame“.

I’ve made it over and over all my life.  I also have just a terrific list of failures.  If you’re interested, I’ll share them both with you, but probably you’re just not that interested.  I don’t blame you.  In fact, your interest in the results of my work would seem like a waste of time for both of us.

I’d be much more interested in your appreciation of the actual work itself rather than the results of that work – the so-called “making it”.

If my work, my thoughts, my melodies, my corner on life touches you – just one of you out there and in some way sparks a thought, inspires a moment, warms the heart, invokes a chuckle, then I’ve “made it”.

That’s enough.

The rest is a world of confusion that I’d rather not be a part of.

For more inspirational music, thoughts and ideas from Peter Link,
please visit Watchfire Music.