Meet Moushumi Ghose | Multi-Passionate Musician and Sex Therapist

We had the good fortune of connecting with Moushumi Ghose and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Moushumi, what’s one piece of conventional advice that you disagree with?
As a creative person and a business owner, I have often grappled with some of the life and career advice that was given to me or suggested to me. I’m gonna talk about two contradictory pieces of advice that kind of are two sides of the same coin that many artists, musicians, writers, etc recieve about pursuing their craft.

The first piece of advice I was given, and that many of us hear is this idea that you have to pick one career. The underlying advice here is do one thing. You go to college. You pick ONE major. You’re expected to graduate from college and practice the ONE thing you graduated for. Do ONE thing only. If you do one thing, you can do it well. Simplifiy is the message! If only it were that simple!

The second piece of advice is the starving artist trope, which is based off this first piece of advice. Which is that in order to make it as an artist/writer/musician, you needed to completely submerge yourself in your art.
You must starve to become successful. You do what you need to do until you become successful. If that means you live under a bridge in a cardboard box, you do that…..for your art.

I disagree with both of these concepts which are generally the flip sides of the same coin. Do one thing. Do it till you die.

I tried to follow this method several times in my life. I love the idea of giving it all up for your art. I have many musician and artist friends who did/do this. I watched them with envy in my 20s and 30s and even my 40s. I thought they were so lucky to just be able to focus on one thing. They didn’t care how broke they were (and many were) but it was all made better by the fact that they were doing their art and only their art. I was envious.

I also needed money to live. And because I loved doing numerous things and felt I had numerous goals in my life, I made a decision to get a degree and do the work that I loved making money doing it, so I could also create art. I chose something that would guarantee me a steady income. I became a licensed therapist. This work always aligned with me. As a social justice advocate, and a human rights advocate, as a queer person and a non white person, doing social services for many years of my life, prior to going to college, it was just who I was. It also seemed like a path that wasn’t going to have me stuck in front of a computer all day crunching numbers, nor sitting in corporate conference rooms all day.

Maybe this was the message that I recieved growing up in a round about convulated sort of way. My south Asian parents really wanted me to get an education and after school I was always enrolled in some sort of activity. Whether it was learning to play classical piano, learning ballet and dance, participating in brownies, learning to play tennis or swimming, I was always involved in several extracurricular activities. I stayed busy. I wasn’t allowed to sit around and watch TV and I was born in the 70s so this was before the time of video games. My parents definitely wanted me to go to college and get a good job, too, and that also meant getting a good job that you said stay at for a long time, which falls into the trope I mentioned, but they also helped to make me a very well-rounded person: arts, sports, and social activities. So why wouldn’t I replicate that as an adult?

I did. I was also surrounded by artists when I was in college in San Francisco. I knew that artists struggled to make a living. I also knew that in order to make it are you needed to have income. Sure art can generate income, but you need to have some sort of income first. My parents weren’t in support of me becoming a full-time musician. They wanted me to become a full-time professional doing some thing a little bit more stable. So I went into psychology. To me, psychology was creative.

There were several times that I felt that if I could just focus on being an artist, life would be so much simpler. I fell for the story I’d been sold. That I should just focus on one thing. So. I would quit my work as a therapist (I closed my practice in 2014 for 3 years) and I would just dedicate all of my time to writing music. During those times, not only was money tight, but I had to take meaningless jobs to make ends meet. That sucked and I was bored. I wasn’t fulfilled just doing one thing of music. I wanted to do more, things that were meaningful to me.
So, I always came back to my work as a sex therapist, and educator.

As a sex therapist, I have written several books, I have made several films and videos that hope to provide information about healhty sexuality. I am also a business owner.

I still continue to play music and write songs.

Most importanly however, is all of the things that I do inform each other. I couldn’t be a sex therapist without my music, I couldn’t make films if I wasn’t a sex therapist, everything informs everything.

It wasn’t until many years later that I really realized my work as a sex therapist, and business owner provided me with the balance and creativity to continue to write music, and make music videos.
Those old tropes were harmful to me.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
My story continues to evolve. I’m not done creating art by any means!

I am first a writer. I am always writing. Everyday. It all starts with daily journaling. I’ve been doing that for almost 30 years. And the second thing that I do is write poetry. Poems just come out of me and they really help me when I’m feeling down or frustrated. From that poetry I have been able to cultivate songs.

I wasn’t always a songwriter. For many years, I was just a classically trained piano player who also happened to write poems, phrases and words. I couldn’t play guitar, I couldn’t write a song, nor a melody to save my life, even though I had always really wanted to though. I was gifted my first acoustic guitar at 19, and some lessons. I thought it would be easy but piano and guitar are very different. I heard electric guitar was more forgiving. I bought my first electric guitar and practice amp at 23. I also bought an electric keyboard. I decided I would just start playing in bands and go for it. So I started auditioning for bands. I had very little luck in those early days, as I was completely unprepared. I had no songs ready I just want to play. Over time, eventually, I began meeting other fellow creatvies who had a similar vision and desire. It wasn’t until I moved to LA however that my music life really took off. I met a lot of creatives and finally with some folks, formed a band that played shows all over LA, recorded music and really helped me hone my playing and my songwriting.

Here’s the thing: the more i did it, the more I honed my style and got better! I have continued to play music both solo and in bands. One big lesson I keep learning is that the art of collaboration is a delicate one. Keep writing. Keep playing. Believe in your craft and you will find your way.

Today I am writing songs and playing guitar in a project called The Depressionistas, a project that formed during the pandemic. We just debuted our first singles and video and our first EP is due out this year.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
Los Angeles will always be like home to me. I moved there at 26 and lived there for 22 years. I also lived in San Francisco, New York and Portland.

Places come and go and LA is constantly developing but some of my favorite things to do are:

1) Drive to the Santa Monica beach early on a Saturday morning in the summertime. Like 7AM. Park on Main St. Grab a coffee and go and sit on the beach. If you do this in Malibu, just a few miles north on the PCH you can can watch the surfers. But you have to go early and on a weekend before people are awake and traffic gets crazy.

2) Chinatown. I’ll drive there alone and just spend a few hours by myself, perusing the little markets and walking around.

3)The Desert. Whether its camping in Angeles Forest or getting an Airbnb in Joshua Tree, I find that getting out of the city and submerging myself in the magnificence of the vast desert is really healing.

4) Akbar. It’s a little dive bar in Silverlake on Sunset Blvd. Grab a drink, and immerse yourself in queer culture for a night.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
I have so many wonderful people in my life, personally, creatively and professionally and in many cases these friendships overlap. From my music and artist community I have a close knit group of friends who support my musical and songwriting endeavours, keep me inspired to keep writing and playing.
I have a large professional community of sex therapists, sex educators and psychotherapist community in Los Angeles that I have, and have become close friends with over the many years working as a sex therapist.
I have to also mention all the staff that work at my practice at Los Angeles Sex Therapy, who are a huge support for me from my admin team to my staff therapists, helping me to bring our joint vision of sexual freedom and pleasure liberatiion to life – and the students in my sex coach certification program who entrust me to be their guide on their sex coaching journey by enrolling.
Plus, my executive teammates and marketing master mind team who keep me focused and inspired.
And, my family of course- my parents, my partner, our cats!!
Thank you all!!

Website: www.thedepressionistas.com

Instagram: instagram.com/thedepressionistas

Twitter: twitter.com/thedepresshies

Facebook: facebook.com/thedepressionistas

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheDepressionistas

Other: You can listen to the latest music from The Depressionistas at https://open.spotify.com/artist/2rBpbArFckub3TxjBGTRwz?si=2NdXTOhzQja9D1Ni8cHJig Buy or Download at thedepressionistas.bandcamp.com

Image Credits
Band photos photo credit: JoZie Di Maria Other photos shot by: Jarrod Kenney