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Re: RE: Liking/Disliking your own music
On 7/22/64 11:59 AM, BC wrote:
.......so now I record everything, and the next morning I
listen to it again. That's when I have a clear idea of whether what I
played
the night before is good, or whether it's a "What on earth was I thinking?"
moment.
In the creative process, there's nothing like walking away completely and
then coming back when it comes to gaining perspective.
I'm glad you mentioned this, Brian.
It reminded me that years ago in the band Tao Chemical, we had
musicians (including myself) who suffered
from a fascistic self critical element in their personalities.
We would be really emotional after a gig, especially if there were
fuckups (and we were rehearsing
5 nights a week, religiously without cease so we were really, really
tight and really, really critical) and arguments
and fights would break out if we talked about things in the heat of the
critical moment.
It just kept happening and it was really, really unpleasant.
Finally in the band, we instituted a rule that stated simply:
"You cannot discuss and critique the night's gig until the next day."
This really worked for us and for the most part I've tried to remember
it (even with regards
to myself doing a solo show) ever since.
****************************
About liking and disliking one's music, I do also have to say that a
couple of things have helped me with my
own extremely self critical attitude towards my playing and the constant
unhappiness I experienced
at one point.
1) I just kept noticing that the audience's perceptions were so vastly
different than my own.
Frequently, things that I thought were disastrous would be viewed by
audience members
as being really excellent. I even began to see that audience members
would actually root for me
if I had technical failures, especially if I didn't visibly freak out on
stage when one was happening
(lol, which just has happened very frequently all of my performing life
with electronics).
I then began observing others with an eye towards this phenomenon (the
loop festival has been a godsend
in this observatory regard) and discovered that it seemed to be universal.
I noticed that a very large percentage of performers (indeed, a very
large percentage of people in our culture)
have low self esteem and don't really perceive themselves or their
performances objectively.
As an audience member, I observed that many artists seemed to steal
their own pleasure from their performances
because they were looking at the proceedings with 'shit colored
spectacles', as it were.
It's much easier said than done to "just take a deep breath, put a
smile on your face and try to have fun." on
stage, but I did see that people who adopted that strategy seemed to
perform better and certainly seemed to be happier.
Of course, not everyone can escape the confines of their
personality. I certainly couldn't, so, at one point
2) I went and did a lot of professional psychological therapy around
how bad I felt about myself.
I learned how the gestalt of my own very unhappy family that I grew up
in had contributed to the way I felt and importantly,
the way I framed the way I felt.
That therapy changed me and I can honestly say, saved my life.
In the group I was in for a few years, there were adults of all ages,
so I got to watch people transform their lives
for the better because they did the very hard work and addressed the
issues of their own unhappiness.
I have to say, everyone that I saw who did the work, got
better........they didn't even necessarily raise their own self esteem
but they all gained valuable tools to help them deal with those feelings
and how to act given that re-framing.
Through all of this I came to a radical change in the way I view
emotions from the way I viewed them until I
was almost middle aged.
I came to believe that we are not our emotions, but rather that our
emotions flow through us.
I began to realize that I might feel devastatingly depressed about a
performance one day and that I might
feel completely and even diametrically different about it the next day
or week. Given that discrepancy
what emotion was I? The answer is I felt one emotion at one point and
another emotion at another point.
I've come to believe that attaching ourselves to our current emotion,
especially if it is a really unpleasant one
ends up insuring that the emotion will stay around for a long time.
People in recovery call it 'white knuckling'.
I can always tell now when I am stuck emotionally........there is always
that 'white knuckling'
aspect to my unhappiness. I've also learned that I get really
narcissistic, the more miserable I feel. It's really helped
me to identify that..........and to purposefully and even knee jerkedly
try to reach out to other human beings
as a way of breaking my own unhappy cycle.
I learned that cliched but for me, effective phrase, "This too, soon
shall pass" and it's helped me a lot.
Do I still want to beat myself up after a particular snafu or unrealized
expectation at a gig..............sure, but
I've learned that I only rob myself of my own pleasure if I hang on to
it for very long.
For now, I try to breathe deep, be gracious if anyone compliments me
(contradicting my own experiences of the performance)
and to NEVER listen to the recording of the gig for a couple of days
afterwards.
rick walker