The Island Hopper: Pursing their passions

I have this theory about creativity: I think we are all born with it — that it's human nature to observe and reinterpret our world with art of some form, whether it's painting, dance, photography or even something like home décor or gardening.

For most of us, the artistic tendencies we experienced as children that had us making forts out of refrigerator boxes or sofa cushions, creating a whole world out of clothespins with rudimentary faces drawn on them, or sketching pictures in mud or sand that were as ephemeral as the next rain or wave, get "taught" out of us. It's pie-in-the-sky behavior, childish things best left behind as we become adult, with adults' concerns, worries and goals.

I think that's why most of us sublimate our artistic proclivities and pursue safer, more practical ventures. In college, I abandoned acting for several years to focus on getting a "useful" degree, at my mom's behest, so I wouldn't starve as an adult.

But often the creative impulse can't be denied — it bursts to the surface like a buoy held too long underwater, no matter how hard we try to suppress it. For me, I floated from a major in business to hospitality to liberal arts, finally settling happily into an English degree when I realized I had inadvertently accumulated enough credits to receive it without consciously trying to, simply by taking the courses that appealed to me. (Subvert one creative desire and another surfaces, it seems.)

I wax philosophical this week after speaking with a few of the area musicians for what was to have been a column about how they stick it out in Southwest Florida during the sleepy off-season months.

Instead, I found myself talking to people who had pursued their first love, their dream, the driving urge to create that they could not ignore — despite difficulties, challenges and every reason why they should give it up and do something practical.

Ryan Darling, former front man for Total Groove and now head of his own blues trio, is a mild-mannered Internet banking officer by day. The members of hot country band Fakahatchee, despite their band's 16-year life, all have regular day jobs, fitting in music gigs nearly every weekend.

Duncan Wheeler, the popular regular entertainer at the Snook Inn, began there as a bartender; the same career launched Chris Purtee, the area's best-known Elvis impersonator. Bill Koetting — BK to friends and fans — plays upright bass with his band, the WildFlowers, only part-time, running his own audio/visual company by day.

Andy Wahlberg has been one of the area's longest-lived and busiest musicians in the area since 1972, when, as a 19-year-old, he got his first professional gig at Mr. Pizza in Naples. These days, he has such a following and reputation that he keeps steady gigs year-round, but even he has spent many a summer doing home renovations and real estate to keep the bill payers satisfied.

Rod MacKenzie, that affable guitar-playing Scot found most often at Bimini's and the Capri Fish House, procured a degree in chemical engineering before chucking it to pursue music. Even so, he's had odd jobs ranging from restaurant work to sea wall restoration.

"The first thing you have to learn as a professional musician is that on occasion, you're going to have to be washing dishes," MacKenzie says. "It can be taken as a rule of thumb.""

Being an artist is an uncertain existence. It's fraught with potential pitfalls, sudden loss of work, no vacation pay, no benefits, no workers' comp generally and absolutely no security. It makes you wonder why anyone in their right mind would willingly subject themselves to that kind of shifting sand in their lives.

"Love," MacKenzie replies succinctly. "I can't imagine doing anything else — it's inconceivable to me."

I remember when I got my first professional theater job, at a beautiful old playhouse in Atlanta. I kept telling anyone who would listen to me, "I can't believe they are paying me to do something I would do for free!"

And that, to me, is the draw. Try talking to the people you know in the traditional workforce about their relative job satisfaction. I know too many folks who struggle out of bed and into the office every day to earn the luxury of doing what they really love in the evenings and on weekends.

Artists, though they may not be sure when-or-if the next meal is coming; though they may have to pay for the privilege of freeing their creative souls by doing occasional "grunt work"; though they may never even achieve anything greater than playing in a local bar or doing community theater or showing their drawings and photos at a neighborhood gallery, are among the few people who get to do what they love, hopefully make enough of a living at it to get by and, best of all, reach other people with their vision of the world.

It's a trade-off that doesn't sound like too much of a sacrifice, if you think about it.

"It's all I want to do until I shuffle off my mortal coil," waxes Rod MacKenzie poetically. But even he has a practical side in giving advice to up-and-coming professional musicians: "Learn Margaritaville."