It's too early to say this, I know. The year hasn't ended yet. But last night I felt that I am getting close to an end of a season. Well, I have one more festival to do by the end of the year, and afterwards it will probably be a long winter for me.
I am aware that I have been writing about taking a break so many times, but it's not easy to do. Many times I said to my best friends that I will stop for a while and have a nice, responsibility-free life like normal people, and the things they always say is: "Can you really?" Well, I guess not. But as much as I hate to stop, there is a season for everything, and I believe next year would be a season for me to come up with new strategies and plans, because things are not looking good at the moment.
My utmost concern is that I'm losing audience. When I started promoting classical music, everyone was so sick of crappy concerts and I came with a barrage of super-cool musicians, so it was very easy to win crowds. I used to be able to get 200 people at the one-and-only concert hall in Bandung. However, from year to year, I got less and less. It's frustrating. I know that the number of people who love classical music in the city has been increasing over the past 5 years, and the quality of music appreciation, especially for live performances, rises. But at the same time I'm also missing a lot of faces. Back then concerts by foreign musicians were always well-attended, now people don't seem to give a damn. The most disappointing thing was that those who stop going to concerts are actually musicians or music teachers. (That shows how much people here love their profession, huh?)
People have their reasons and excuses for not going to concerts. And for each and every one of them, I have a solution. But I don't want to become those freakish sales people who annoy people. I want people to come to concerts like someone who goes for a first date. You dress up nicely, get a little excited, ready to be surprised, and open to all possibilities. And you have to want to go through the troubles of driving through traffic jam or finding a parking space. And I know that if people are not as passionate as I am about going to concerts, the smallest obstruction will eventually keep them at home.
I always know that promoting classical music in my country is no walk in the park. But all struggles will make sense only if I have audience, because I always think of myself as an agent who serves public and artists. What I do basically is to bring their needs in a place called concert halls, facilitate an exchange so everybody goes home happy. Now I have row of musicians who want to come and got a lot to offer, but no one is buying here. It's not making any sense for me to continue. Of course, I can bring classical music to some privileged people, but this is too expensive, and lately, my financial life suffers because of it.
As much as I love what I do, I have to know when to stop and take a step back. Maybe I have to create a void, and make people crave for fantastic live-music, let their hunger grow to humongous proportions so they'll take anything at all. It is also possible that this is not going to happen at all and live performances just die here. Maybe, just maybe, some people just don't deserve that much trouble, and they could grow old and die listening to CDs. But it would be interesting to sit back and watch. Mariah Carey once quit smoking and she got her three octaves back. Maybe if I quit, too, I'll get three hundred people back. And when they're back, I'll burn my bridges.
