The talented Lisa Carver has an excerpt of her new memoir featured in Nerve today. She writes about her experience working as a prostitute between tours with her band Suckdog.

I get to change my personality five times a night, stepping into other people’s ideals. I can guess — from a man’s greeting, from his clothes, his eyes — who his dream woman is, and I become her. I take on her bearing, her speech, her interests. It’s a lot like my shows, except I don’t have to come up with my own character or new rhymes.

The comparison between prostitution and live musical performance caught my eye. Carver’s book is billed as a post-punk memoir so it is expected that she would tie these elements together. However, I think there is more to the comparison than convenience. While I have had little peeks into various elements of the music industry through the years, one thing I haven’t been is a musician myself. The idea terrifies me as much as it excites me. That means my opinion on this question has to be taken with a grain of salt.

Still, the analogy seems to pan out at least a little bit. It also tells us that even the most innovative/independent performers, commonly assumed to be outside the realm of commercial influence, feel the impetus to sublimate themselves before the audience. Even when money isn’t the driving factor the imperative to please the audience means that the performer (sexual or musical) has to change themselves to meet someone else’s fantasies.