More you might like
From Natalie Wynn’s “ContraPoints Live” YouTube channel:
Playing the piano was the first thing I ever put my whole heart into. When I was a teenager, being a musician was my identity. I was one of the best in my school district, and I got used to being told how amazing I was. So I went to college for music in Boston, where, suddenly, I wasn’t the best anymore. Not even close. There were 13 year olds who were better than me. I got discouraged, and dropped out after two years.
It was around that time I got interested in philosophy (“intellectual” often being the persona adopted by people who have failed at everything else). Though I eventually found success as a video essayist, for the last twelve years I’ve been haunted by that original sense of failure. The formative ego-wound. It’s why I’m captivated by characters like Squidward and Salieri, “the patron saint of mediocrities.” I hate the part of me that they remind me of.
If you try to bury the ugly parts of your mind, they end up directing your life from beyond your awareness. So like Jung says, it’s best to remain on speaking terms with your own shadow.
I’ve been playing the piano again lately. It’s one of the few things that I love so unironically I struggle to even talk about it. The word “amateur” originally meant “lover,” a person who does something out of passion, not professionally. So despite its current sneering connotations, I think being an amateur is good, actually. You don’t have to be “the best” at something for it to be worth doing.
But I do still struggle to play in front of other people, or to record myself. I’m much better at listening to music than I am at playing it, and I always hear the defects, everything that could be improved. I try to see the upside—recognizing the possibility for improvement gives you a reason get out of bed. What if one day I sat down at the piano and played perfectly? What then? What were there be left to to do? Just die I guess, like Nina in Black Swan.
Anyway here’s some music by Erik Satie, a relatably drink-sodden and all-around not-perfect person, who still managed to write some languidly beautiful music.
Death’s in the world and it’s gone viral,
Everybody’s talkin’ bout a new revival,
But when it’s a question of love and survival:
Bourbon, Bluegrass, and the Bible.
Think
Open your eyes to the wonderful nature of the procedings.
Open your eyes to the wonderful nature of life.
Close your eyes to the hatred of the city.
Close your eyes to the violence taking lives.
Give the citizens the life that they need,
give them all until they are pleased.
Give and give away your life,
give until left with nothing but vibes.
This mind is destroyed, this mind cannot think.
This mind ponders, but ponders not.
Everything unthinkable.
Their minds are jolly, full of finks.
Their minds anger, but angers not.
Nothing unthinkable.
Does any of this make sense?
___
Jakarta, 2004-5-28. Originally published at my old blog.