I. This Isn’t a Eulogy

I met the first one at a backyard show in Echo Park. Summer of smog and sweat and sour tallboys. She was tuning her guitar between sets, fingers raw from fingerpicking through the last song of the last set of the last tour she’d ever do. Her name doesn’t matter. Call her L.

She quit music the next day.

No farewell post. No dramatic merch drop. Just a silent delete of her Bandcamp and a voicemail to her drummer: “It’s not me anymore. I’m done pretending.”

I didn’t get it then. I do now.

Because no one tells you that leaving music — quitting — can be as artistic, as punk, as violently pure as the music itself. And no one wants to hear that sometimes, the most musical thing you can do is walk away before the song is finished.

II. The Glory Myth Will Eat You Alive

We grew up on the myth of staying in the fight. Stick it out. Eat the shit gigs, the van breakdowns, the soul-crushing feedback loops. Eventually, the Big Break comes — like lightning through a crusty DI box.

But here's the hard truth: for most musicians, there is no moment. Just a blur of almosts, maybe-laters, and posts that don’t land. And slowly, the thing that once lit you up becomes a leash. A brand. A grave.

I’ve seen it: the thirty-something synth genius who works sixty hours at an AV job to fund his “next EP.” The cellist in Berlin who hasn’t felt anything on stage in three years but keeps saying yes to tours because “it might lead somewhere.” The shoegaze duo who broke up but still plays reunion shows for rent.

They’re not musicians anymore. They’re actors playing musicians.

So when someone quits for real — slams the door, ghosts the label, sells the pedals — it’s jarring. It feels like blasphemy. But maybe it’s just integrity.

III. The Quiet Revolutions You Don’t See on Instagram

I tracked down a few of these “quitters.” (That word feels wrong. These people didn’t quit music — they escaped it.)

Jules, a Brooklyn noise artist who now runs a tea shop in Vermont. She told me:

“I realized I was performing grief for other people. My whole set was built around pain I didn’t feel anymore. But the audience still needed it. So I left.”

Arnav, a session bassist in Mumbai, deleted his entire online presence after being told by a manager to “look more like a bassist.” His response?

“What does that even mean? I’m not auditioning for a lifestyle.”

Nina, once a Pitchfork darling, now scores silent films at tiny arthouse theaters. She’s never been happier.

These aren’t failures. These are evolutions that don’t fit into the Spotify bio.

And none of them regret leaving. What they regret is how long they stayed.

IV. Quitting Isn’t Losing — It’s Composing an Ending

Musicians are obsessed with crescendo. With climax. With never stopping the loop.

But in classical composition, silence is as important as sound. The rest is part of the music. The same applies to careers. Maybe even more so.

To stop isn’t weakness. It’s authorship.

The courage to say, “This no longer serves the person I am becoming” — that’s art. That’s knowing your story well enough to give it an honest ending. A coda, not a collapse.

And sure, some come back. They make weird ambient tapes in the woods or produce other people’s records under fake names. But the return is different. It's clean. It’s no longer about chasing the high. It’s about reclaiming the why.

V. Anatomy of a Quitting

There is no set ritual. No clean fadeout. Sometimes it happens in a motel off the highway, gear in the trunk, money gone. Other times it’s a slow ache, a creative eczema that spreads until every note itches.

Some burn it all down. Others disappear slowly, ghosting the scene like a signal dying mid-transmission. And some stay physically, but mentally leave the room years before the last gig.

A bassist I once toured with in Texas spent an entire year miming his parts. Bass unplugged. Nobody noticed. That, he told me later, was when he knew it was over.

This isn’t rare. It’s rampant. But we cover it up with hustle posts and gear porn and behind-the-scenes reels that scream “I still care” when what they mean is “I can’t stop.”

VI. Final Chorus (But Not the End)

I’m sitting here writing this on a half-broken MIDI controller, headphones duct-taped to hell, and I know I’m not done yet. But I’m close. I feel the end forming in the distance — not like a threat, but like a landing.

And if it comes, I’ll let it.

Because maybe the most beautiful thing you can do with your art is know when to close the door. No curtain call. No viral TikTok finale. Just the last note hanging in the room. Unresolved. Honest.

Like L said that night in Echo Park before unplugging her guitar for the final time:

“It’s still music, even when you stop playing.”

And maybe that’s the whole point.