After years of swearing that I hated musicals and would never get into them I saw two musicals that changed my mind. The second movie I ever bought was the second musical I saw that I really liked, Singin' in the Rain. The first musical I saw that persuaded me that musicals were actually works of art and not extravagant exercises in the supremely annoying, however, was Fiddler on the Roof. Tevya managed to encapsulate this with his famous line, "On the other hand ... ." Just as Tevya was persuaded for a time there is no "on the other hand" I had that perspective about musicals. Tevya spent much of the time attempting to balance the pros and cons of decisions based on what he knew was in the good book. In the same way many guitarists I have known swear by the necessity of being taught by a teacher.
... On the other hand, for as many times as I have heard "Find a teacher" there is the other side of things, that music is an art the pursuit of which depends on you more than on who is or isn't your teacher. It is true that without a teacher or a mentor you will not get very far in an art; while it is true that art in even its most solitary forms retains a social and communal element; and it is true that a bad teacher can dissuade you from continuing in an art while a good teacher can spur you on. It is also, nevertheless, true that if you're going to perservere in an art that you will do so because you love the process regardless of whether or not you're getting any significant positive feedback from either friends or family or teachers.
The place of perserverance despite a lack of, if you will, human resources to rely on is admittedly where you have to be at once you've passed the two or three years of thinking it would be really cool to work on something, that phase in which it could simply be a phase where you have convinced yourself this is what you want to do when it isn't. One of the signs that you are seriously interested in pursuing something is that argument and opposition energizes you. I don't mean some conviction of your greatness in the face of opposition, I mean the belief that you being a nobody and sucking at what you do isn't an obstacle but the ground upon which you realize you can improve. I had mentors who were willing to tell me that I had immense talent but that my talent was raw and unformed. Discouragement is in the eye and ear of the beholder.
On the other hand, flagging interest is, too, and it helps to be honest about how committed and interested you really are in something. I went through a phase where I was sure I wanted to be in the visual arts. I outgrew that phase not only because my interest flagged but also because a catastrophic problem with one of my eyes persuaded me that I needed to shift my attention to another art form that would depend on eyes I might lose later in life. I went through a phase where I was sure I wanted to be into poetry and literature and I knew of blind writers but ultimately playing with the conceptual nuts and bolts as well as actual projects in music interested me more than, say, playing with terza rima, villanelle, and free verse.
Everyone has an artistic impulse but some direct that impulse toward being homemakers, husbands, wives, parents, entrepreneurs, welders, mechanics, electricians, politicians, and pastors rather than being artists of a more official kind. Remember that you are an artist at something whether or not you consider yourself an artist at anything. The usefulness of teachers is that they can help you discover where your artistry lies. Contrary to what some people may have told you you actually cannot discover that on your own or merely within yourself. You won't keep doing it for money, you won't keep doing it for glory, you won't do it for a sultan's approval, you will do it because it is your pleasure. And your mother mated with a scorpion, right? ;)
No comments:
Post a Comment