Losing my identity

One aspect of our change to cycle tourers that I hadn’t anticipated grappling with is my loss of identity. I wouldn’t want to overstate this as it’s not as if I was world renowned or bothered by my status prior to leaving but I was part of a small-ish crew of folk making novel musical instruments, resulting in unusual sounds and live performances. As some of you will know, I even became a ‘doctor of experimental mechanical musical instruments’ in the time prior to packing up and pedalling off. I was part of a community. We shared tips and tricks, and even an in-joke or three. They were (are) my people.

“So, what do you do?”, has long been a dreaded question of mine. One I find boring too as what it really means is ‘So, what do you do for work?’, whereas I’m normally most interested in what people do when they are not working. I also found it hard to answer without sounding pretentious, or without it leading me down a descriptive cul-de-sac.

“So, what do you do?”

“I’m an artist.”

”Oh, what do you paint?”

”I’m a musician.”

”Oh, what sort of music?”

”Experimental music. I design and make new musical instruments which I perform with.”

”Ah. What sort? Guitars? Violins? Ukuleles?”

”Mainly unusual mechanical musical instruments.”

”Right? Oh, yeah, like the marble machine guy?”

[Mildly sulking tone] “Yeah, that sort of thing…”

The situation isn’t getting any better as we travel about. People soon find out that we are on a long tour and that we pretty much only own what they can see before them, and then there’s no further questioning about “So, what do you do?” because now they know we don’t work.

This only really bothers me in two ways. Firstly, I was (and still am) really passionate about what I ‘did’. I like to share my passion with others but I’d prefer not to force the topic on any unsuspecting passersby. Secondly, I had planned to seek out others with a similar passion whilst travelling. Maybe I could volunteer my time in their workshop, or document their work, or collaborate on a recording etc. That’s The Dream. So far, I’ve never really got to that point in discussion with people we have met. I recently actively asked someone whether they knew anyone locally doing such stuff. It was a ‘no’ but they also gave me one or two leads. I think I’m going to have to try harder to initiate these discussions from now on if I want any hope of sharing my passion and getting a bit of my identity back.

As ever, any suggestions are welcome. I partly want to build a pedal-powered instrument to attach to our bikes but I think Beck may have something to say about that…