Saturday, January 25, 2025
I know of few musicians who claim no trepidation in public performance. But better music-making is all about the art of abandonment, living on the fine line between fear and excitement.
I’ve learned that good music-making and good life-making are synonymous. To enhance musical experience, one abandons the fear of failure and merges with the oneness of expressiveness. You become the music and your performance is more likely to be ravishing, stunning, and lovely. The more entangled with fear you are, the more likely your performance is to be wooden, stiff, and dull – even if “note perfect.”
I can always smell fear in musical performance. It’s painstaking. Listening to my former students would often amount to a butt-puckering experience. You just wish the student could simply let go and let it flow, but the fear constipates the radiance and mystery.
Is your life a butt-puckering experience? Are you holding back the “wrong notes?” Are you trying to control the outcome, not letting it breathe? I know many musicians that hold back the flow, and we yawn in the audience. I know many people who hold back the effervescence and are square. But what if I make a mistake? The mistake is the tension. Butt-puckering only makes you walk funny. Real living is abandonment. Real living is carefree. Real living is honest and vulnerable.
There is an art to living. If you screw up a Beethoven sonata there is no penalty. What if I die? There is no death penalty. Birth seems like more of a penalty. Death puts you out of your misery. Why not put yourself out there, let it go, and put yourself out of your own misery before death does it for you? Seems like a better, more artful way to live – to live with abandon. Living with your butt puckered seems ridiculous, but that’s essentially what fear is.