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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
> 
>