PEOPLE are often perplexed at what I really do. Some know me purely as a musician – cue the usual stereotypical debauched lives that rock n’ roller or musicians live – while some know me purely as an academic or lecturer, notably my students who generationally often think that their teachers or lecturers do not have lives to live outside of the classroom.

These people are also equally perplexed when they realise that I live both lives concurrently and are left even more perplexed when they find out that I am not formally trained in music, that I teach and head a filmmaking degree programme at Sunway University, and belt out my lyrics and banter with such gusto and nonchalance.

If you really trace back the history of, say popular music, you will come to realise that a lot of great artists are never trained in music – they make music.

Likewise, to use a more everyday and mundane example, your favourite char kuey teow stall uncle: do you think he majored in char kuey teow from a local culinary diploma or degree programme?

This oversimplification in association areas of study with professional expertise is something I enjoy debunking with my students (and sometimes colleagues) because, as most people fail to see the wood for the trees due to the supposed norms we associate with “professions” and “industries”.

It is a middle-class conundrum, a conundrum of choices, of shopping around.

Fact of the matter is that “professions” and “industries” are recent manmade creations that emerged out of the industrial revolution.

I insist on my self-made maxim: to play Devil’s Advocate, that “you are not your job”.

This stance flies in the face of most high school students who have been conditioned and made to believe that their academic achievements correlate directly with their available skills to make them useful work-ready citizens.

Again, I repeat, I use this stance to challenge norms and conventions that societies impose on us in hope that one will arrive at some self-realisation and that some form of self-actualisation may eventually emerge.

The pandemic has taught us that no profession or expertise is safe or certain.

Working in higher education, I often receive valid questions from parents enquiring: “Got job, ah?” when they realise that their child is interested in filmmaking or music instead of engineering, accounting or law.

My reply is often: “Got! Jobs are always there.” The root of the question really is whether it is a worthy return of investment (ROI) for the parent’s part in funding their child’s three to four years of private higher education.

What industrialisation has given us as a society is a promise of some certainty of income, which hopefully will lead to a better life and social mobility for the next generation of your bloodline.

As a result, we have become picky and even judgmental with others who do not fit into the norms and expectations with which we have been inculcated.

Hence, there will always be generational conflict when it comes to understanding youths – and that is also expected, if elders can stop pointing their bony fingers at the young.

There are jobs that never existed 20 years ago and there will be more in the future.

A higher education is not only about specialisation of a certain field (it gets narrower and narrower higher up the higher education ladder) but also equipping students with interdisciplinary and soft skills that will enable them to be more than just organic versions of robots that specialise in one task.

A higher education should create a nuanced individual – both skill-wise and spiritually.

I use “spiritual” because the spiritual transcends organised religions and the bureaucracy that further deviates it from the original tenets and becomes ideological (Malaysia and “Malayness” is a good case study on this).

So back to the question: “what do you do?”

If I’m asked that question by a stranger or parent, I just say: “I do many things” because human beings are capable of doing many different things and being equally adept at all.

We culturally focus on one thing or field because, well, it pays. Whether we are content or happy with that one thing or field, is wholly another question.

Just ask any eldest child of a family company, who is expected from birth to take over the family business.

When you look closer at yourself, the realisation that your are already presently interdisciplinary may also emerge: we are more than a sum of our parts since we are also a son, daughter, mother, father, wife, husband, son-in-law, daughter-in-law etc.

While these aren’t professions, they are imbued with very specific social and cultural skills that some may feel is cumbersome, others see them as skills to enable them to get what they want.

I always believe in leveraging what you have in the present, be it a talent, network, or even a seemingly disadvantageous circumstance.

It is at the root of human civilisation and endeavours to harness available resources and the environment. We’re so good at it that it’s led to the environmental mess we are now in globally.

This is where the 1% of the global ruling class is ahead of the game. Conspiracy theorists are wont to say that they even rigged the game, which is not too far from the truth.

So, discard all these empty talk about “specialisation” and “industry” for a moment and try to think of them as ideological constructs by the 1% who control the global wealth, and stop worshiping CEOs and magnates.

To be stuck in such an ideological construct is what impedes individuals to think of themselves as interdisciplinary beings and constantly barrage themselves that “we are not good enough”.

One instead should ask the question: “Good enough for who?” – May 27, 2022.

* Azmyl Yunor is a touring underground recording artiste, and an academic in media and cultural studies. He has published articles on pop culture, subcultures and Malaysian cultural politics. He adheres to the three-chords-and-the-truth school of songwriting, and Woody Guthrie’s maxim “All you can write is what you see”. He is @azmyl on Twitter.

* This is the opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insight. Article may be edited for brevity and clarity.