Friday, March 21, 2025
Everyone loves success, but it seems fishy. Is victory mine? When I perform, for example, I want so badly for it to go well – all the right notes and rhythms, and I want something musically passionate and satisfying; but so many times it turns out differently.
Success, failure, process, etc. None of it seems like “mine.” So much of it takes on a mind of its own. Being “process oriented” pisses me off at times. I want results sometimes. But they seem to flop, and on occasion they fly and beat my expectations. I seem to be unable to make anything fly, and I seem to not be able to control whether it crashes and burns, even when there is burning passion. It’s fishy. But I still keep doing it. I seem to not be able to help myself.
Fred Swann, a famous organist, often said before a performance, “I don’t know why I do this to myself.” If the results are out of my hands, so is everything else, even figuring out why I “keep doing this to myself.” If it’s about the journey, that’s boring always. Again, it’s fishy. Why does the universe keep repeating itself in a multitude of incarnations? Are 8 billion people not enough and trillions upon trillions of stars and galaxies not enough?
It seems totally unjustified to continue practicing music, writing on this blog every day, and trying to get good results. It seems totally unreasonable to do anything, even if it’s just “process oriented.” We keep circling back. What are we extracting from all of this repetition? What more is there? Are we repeating for repeating’s sake? Sometimes I’m process oriented and other times I want results. Why do I keep moving around and doing this to myself? It wiggles right out of my hands. It’s even fishy to call it “fishy.”