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Re: Liking/Disliking your own music
Bravo, Rick. Thank you for this post !
On Jan 8, 2012, at 2:40 PM, Rick Walker wrote:
> 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
>
>