I would still be performing if I could stand the constant comparison

Hattie shares how comparison has played a large part in why she hasn’t returned to performing

By Hattie Butterworth

Saying that social media makes us compare ourselves to others is like saying that the sky is blue. Instagram is the maelstrom of musical privilege, success, oneupmanship and virtue signalling. LinkedIn is the vicious antithesis of humility.

But I don’t mind LinkedIn. Is it weird, but I genuinely don’t get jealous on there watching other people’s career success. Maybe it’s because I’m now secure in my own as a writer. Music writers don’t exist much on LinkedIn, so there’s not really anyone to directly compare myself to. I’m not like the other girls. And that’s why I stopped performing.

I wanted to feel special and as if I had a voice. Part of the comparison epidemic in classical music is that it’s so hard to believe that you can create an identity or career outside of that darn lineage. My teacher’s teacher was fkin Tortelier. It breeds the same people playing the same concertos in the same way. And I didn’t like being average at it.

I now watch the exciting performing opportunities people get on Instagram and I see how toxic it must be for musicians who feel like they can’t get there. As if those doors are closed to them, maybe because trauma or comparison told them they weren’t good enough. How easy can it be to find creative ideas and people when you believe your art isn’t worth anything?

I moved into writing maybe because I felt free here. Things feel new and there’s no one to make me feel shit about myself. Or is it because I now get to do cool things? I never had the same dream in writing that I had in playing the cello, so I don’t feel as bad that I’m not living it? Everything I achieve with writing feels like the happiest accident.

So maybe it’s really ambition, not comparison that harms musicians. The fatigue of auditioning and rejection and immense vulnerability on stage. And all for what? Watching someone else play better than you, and be more successful, for what looks like half the effort.

I’m sure there are so many musicians that don’t mind it at all. And those who work tirelessly in their 20s to see huge success in their 30s. But my dopamine doesn’t play the long game. Sometimes it reminds me of how poor people are told that money doesn’t make you happy in order to keep them poor. Musicians are told that you should give everything over to music, even if you are miserable.

Of course, there IS joy in being a performer and there IS privilege that you play an instrument to make money. But the precariousness makes comparison rife. You suffer when you compare yourself and breaking free from that means starting again. To create a working life free of comparison probably means becoming your own version of ‘musicians’ and probably means deleting Instagram.