Creativity Quote by Melissa Auf der Maur

There is a quiet defiance in that phrasing: not "I play music", but "I've made a life and career". Auf der Maur is staking a claim in a culture that loves to treat musicianship as either a glamorous accident or a hobby that got out of hand. The sentence sounds plain because it has to do administrative work. It turns art into infrastructure: rent paid, tours booked, songs finished, reputation managed. "Professional" isn’t a brag here so much as a boundary line, a way of insisting that creativity can be labor without losing its soul.

The specific intent is credentialing, but not in the resume sense. It’s a corrective to the way women in rock, especially those orbiting bigger mythology (Hole, Smashing Pumpkins), get framed as muses, girlfriends, side characters, or interchangeable bass players. By foregrounding the career, she emphasizes continuity and agency: the long-game reality of building a body of work, not just surviving a scene.

The subtext is also about legitimacy in an industry where "authenticity" gets weaponized. Calling yourself a professional musician can sound calculating to audiences trained to distrust polish. Auf der Maur flips that: professionalism becomes proof of commitment, of having endured the unsexy parts of the job. Context matters too: coming from the alt-rock ecosystem of the late 90s and early 2000s, when gatekeeping and mythmaking were rampant, the line reads like a calm rebuttal to being reduced. It’s a statement of authorship without theatrics, which is often the most persuasive kind.