I could kill for a bit of fresh Ti Guan Yin, you know? Well.... maybe not kill... its namesake might frown on that one....
I could rehouse a lonely squirrel for a bit of fresh Ti Guan Yin, you know?
I'm alright for biscuits at the moment. My friend might like some nuts though.
I play Double Bass.
Orchestra has stalled at the moment. I found it a little frustrating because I was the only Bassist there for good stretches at a time, and it had been a long time since I last played. Though I could do it to a degree, what I really needed was a bit of focus from a teacher or somebody else to bounce off. I wasn't getting that and it was frustrating. I stuck it out for a couple more months and then threw in the towel for a bit. However, there's promise of jamming Double Bass and Drums with somebody I know for a bit of enthusiastic nonsense, which should be good. Enthusiastic nonsense is a very valuable thing in my book.
You're talking about piano and singing.... now there's a very interesting thing there about learning creative subjects. It shouldn't really be any harder as an adult than learning call-handling or form-processing but the way we are conditioned to learn at the moment, it is. That all comes from an irrational fear of failure. One that kids don't have until school drills it into them.
Failure is good. It shows the limits of your experience and highlights where the really important work can be done. Attacking a subject full-on and then knitting it together from all the bits I can't get has always been a much more effective way of working for me than starting with a small base and then adding bricks, layer by layer on top of it until all I know is all that I'm comfortable with.
There's a favourite TED talk of mine that kind of tackles this here. There's another great one here that I only found the other day when it was posted on Liminal Nation.
I think there's something important and developmental in anything that you are terrified of. Being a natural introvert, reclaiming, owning and expressing personal creativity has becoming massively important to me over the past while, and identifying, understanding and overcoming that fear is a huge part of that. The singing thing has always been a HUGE fear of mine since I was wee. Something I've always admired, but never thought I'd be able to do. It was never just a singing thing though, it was any sort of performance. Anything that doesn't involve typing up in a quiet room and hitting Post Reply, or sitting over a desk, pen in hand, and turning out a finished result at some point down the line, inviting peer review only when it's finished and done and out the way and approved beforehand by me.
I had an invitation last Halloween to do it, which, though the thought of it scared the living shit out of me, I did. I'm really glad I did, because it was confirmation for me that the limits I put on myself are bullshit really. The biggest thing about it, particularly on the night, was knowing that I was locked into it and then having to cut away anything going through my head that was going to get in the way of actually doing it. That was, exclusively, anything to do with what I was projecting five minutes or five seconds into the future, or what I was dredging up from five months or five years in the past and wasn't about the exact moment I was in. That was something I had to learn, but I reckon it would be different for you as you have a bit more background in performance. Really, there should be a lot there that's relatable then, and a lot that you can use to help you overcome the fear of singing.
I've just finished a comic about different forms of creativity, and how I relate to them, but I'm not sure I'm allowed to post it online yet.
Mmmmmm....
I'll take another cup if there's one going. Anyone else? |
