Non-maximizing

Acrylic on canvas - Morgann Davis

As a very young musician, I made the most of the resources I had. They were limited. We lived somewhere rural, and my first flute teacher was my elementary school band director who played the euphonium. By the time I got a “real” flute teacher in middle school I was so hooked on the flute it felt like it had grown in size to occupy the majority of my field of vision.

I worked hard. By tenth grade I knew I wanted to major in music (what that would actually amount to I couldn’t have told you, but my mind was made up). I got another teacher. I worked harder. I knew I was behind, but I was doing the best I could. I got used to trying really hard for slim-chance things. When I was successful at something it felt like a sign that the hard work was working and some day I would not be behind.

By the time I went to college it was familiar to feel like my peers were in a different universe. They could name pieces of orchestral music by title and composer after hearing just a few bars (I still hadn’t played in an orchestra yet). They had been in youth symphonies, summer intensives, arts high schools, and already understood so much music theory. I had a distinct sense that my “regular” life put me in a significant deficit.

That was over two decades ago and even with tremendous amounts of hard work, the voice in my head that tells me I am behind remains. Over time it replaced my rural background and sorry technique with the fact that I didn’t go to a conservatory, play in summer orchestra festivals during college, or run the audition circuit for orchestra jobs. Not only are you behind, the voice says, you’re obviously not a very serious musician, either.

My history isn’t meant to be the subject here, but I think it paints an accurate picture of one version of the many, many ways we can feel inadequate as musicians. If our lifestyle and background aren’t “correct” or typical for a musician, we won’t succeed. We can infer the toll that this takes on our lives as working musicians. We certainly wouldn’t want anyone to know that we’re living a regular life or they won’t take us seriously.

After I finished school I started exploring doctoral programs. But then I started working. Teaching, and gigging. (Didn’t these people get the memo that I was behind??) Perhaps most importantly, I was learning. I became aware that my skills were still improving, and my growth hadn’t plateaued. As long as I could masquerade as a capable musician, keep the flute in full focus, and keep improving, it started to seem less logical to uproot my life and head back to school.

In the background, I was living close to family (something I figured would never happen if I was chasing the job the way serious musicians must). I loved where I was located, and then I met my husband. As we bought our first house I felt a sense of satisfaction and fear - I was thrilled at the unexpected surprise of homeownership and partnership, but I wasn’t moving for the job anymore, or at least any time soon, and my days of masquerading as a capable musician were surely numbered.

As I continued working, growing my skills and professional network, I was also growing a rich personal life. Admittedly, I was not great at it after years of prioritizing work, and the flute specifically. Deep down I was always wondering how much career I was sacrificing by not going out for auditions, getting a doctorate, or following potential work or degrees from place to place.

Was I releasing the possibility of the career I always wanted in exchange for some semblance of a real life? If I was, was it worth it? Would that real life be as fulfilling as my (still slightly undefined) career aspirations promised to be?

…

Perhaps it’s precisely because I’m living it, but I’ve come to believe that having a real life isn’t the setback. It’s the advantage. Maybe things do take longer, or you have to release some abstract goal, but there’s no way for us to know how long a different path would take or where it would lead and anyway you are the only one who experiences your inner world, so shouldn’t it make you happy?

This is a harder question to answer than it might seem - being a musician is often very difficult and lonely to begin with. Deciding to do things the way you want without any regard for the “correct” path can make it feel like we’re on an even more remote island. It’s reasonable to assume that this is why we chase after the next audition, degree, or external marker of value so intensely. Although we might actually want those things, it wouldn’t hurt to stop a little more often along the way to ask ourselves why.

Very gradually and with great effort, even as I leaned into my personal life, I started to find a degree of traditional “success” over time - i.e. achievements that are recognizable as such when you read my bio. My love of interior decorating, voracious reading habits, and hard earned cooking skills don’t make the cut as recognizable success. Coaching myself into a stronger sense of confidence after a debilitating bout of performance anxiety also did not make the bio, although it certainly did have something to do with said “success.”

At the same time that the exterior started taking shape for those who took the time to look (which is never as many people as we’d like to think), I found myself wrangling with the question of whether the flute remained the most important thing in my life. It had very gradually started to shift out of the role of the most important part of my life to being the most important part of my work. Was that because I had finally gained a few steps on being behind and owning my musicianship? Or, was it a realization that what I had been striving for might not actually be the most appropriate north star for the direction of my life?

Being a musician is fulfilling work that gives tremendous richness and meaning to my life and, hopefully, the lives of others. It’s work that makes me feel incredibly fortunate because I spend my days diving subterranean deep into creative ideas and techniques. Work that allows me to filter beauty back into a very complicated world. But…

It’s work that is still work.

If the flute was to be relegated to my work life and fully occupy my field of vision there and only there would that mean I was less of a musician? Would it make a certain higher level of artistry unachievable? Was it even possible to categorize life this way?

I know I’m not the only musician who has felt guilt over asking questions like this. A desire to broaden interests, develop hobbies, take time off from an instrument, or nurture another area of life can stir up an endless supply of existential questions.

This happens because the narrative persists: what will other people think if I don’t eat and breathe my creative career? If I am creative in other ways? If I enjoy relaxing or I love music that isn’t the type I play? If I have a job outside of music? If I have a happy home life and choose not to take certain jobs simply because I don’t want to?

…

A musician that I admire once told me that it’s what you do outside the practice room that matters. I was in college, and at the time that advice was like a balm for my worries. I didn’t have a strong musical voice yet, and I lacked a depth of knowledge to make truly profound choices about my playing or “message.” I relied heavily on my teachers and wondered if I always would.

I took this amazing, virtuosic, and successful musician’s advice and wrapped it around the fact that I didn’t feel music filled my life the way it had to if I was going to be a serious classical musician. I insulated myself in it. I was sure that I wasn’t living, breathing, oozing music at all times the way I was supposed to, even though I was immersed in it almost 24/7, and I comforted myself with this new directive. 

Looking back, I can see it differently. More clearly, in a way I was too young and naive for when the conversation first happened. On this side of all the time that has passed since then I can make out the ways the things I have seen and experienced have seeped into my playing and teaching. The way I can coat my teaching with advice, perspective, and even protection for my students around the difficulties I experienced in and out of music. My desire to lay the potential paths and pitfalls out more clearly for them.

I can’t tell you when I began to understand the way the texture of a fabric or painting can become a part of how I play, and how a feeling can be imbued into a sound, only that I couldn’t do it when I was young and I can now.

These are the parts of being a musician that are indescribable to someone who isn’t, or to my very young, very green musical self. We need both the technique to execute these sophisticated musical devices and the life perspective to even consider applying them. They are the elements that make music so incredibly powerful, but they aren’t the elements of our career that pay the bills.

Or are they? Would I find quantifiable success without these skills? If I did, to what extent?

They are the musical intricacies that envelop my entire brain before a big performance. They include infusing every note with just the right emotion or image, the exact feeling of nailing a big technical lick that is so important because mapping the physical action is what makes the technique repeatable (ask an athlete), and the depth of knowing that comes from the sheer number of pieces you play over multiple degrees or decades. These are also the all-consuming details that sometimes keep me up during the night or occasionally distract me when I am teaching, having conversations, or driving.

They can be hard to balance with the realities of every day life. But if you’ve always had a “regular” life and not an artist’s (what does a real artist’s life look like?), maybe it gives you the upper hand here? Or if, like me, you’ve always had that plain, regular life, do you need work harder to establish the cadence of intense focus within the rest of your existence?

To be so focused and detailed requires a certain amount of solitude and dedicated time. It also counts on family and friends who are giving, forgiving, and understanding that to be creative is to be not aloof, but sometimes preoccupied.

When I have a whole day to practice at home my husband might wonder why I didn’t tackle much else even though practicing consumes, on average, three to four hours at most (The reason? My brain ends up too busy or cluttered.), and why I am so very eager to talk and socialize at the end of the day when everyone else is shutting down and my brain is finally releasing some of the precarious scaffolding of organizing musical ideas, physical feelings and actions, and creativity.

As I type out this experience of preparing myself for performances, it sounds a bit dramatic. Is every musician’s brain really this full? Honestly, I believe so. Just like each human is unique in appearance and background, I think the way we process the music we make is unique. Your brain might not be full to the brim with mapped sensations and colors of a piece like mine is, but it might be full of tuning tendencies, an invented plot line of the piece, and the details of the other parts happening alongside yours.

What we all require to make meaningful music is as different as what we require to make meaningful lives.

Understanding our personal needs in life and music opens the doors to true success, meaning success defined on our own terms. It’s really the only way we can truthfully define success. What do we require in preparation and in the moment of performance to feel we are meeting our potential as a musician? What do we want our every day life to look like when we wake up in the morning and when we go to bed at night? If we don’t like what we see and experience when we wake up each day, it will be hard to find the space (mental or physical) to grow our skills and musicianship to meet our maximum creativity.

I don’t think anyone ever said it to me explicitly (although I believe many people often do say this to each other and their students in both subtle and blunt ways), but it was implied throughout my education by what I observed that having a regular life, second job, or hobbies would hold you back. That anything with the potential to distract you should be avoided at all costs. It’s important to acknowledge this damaging stigma - that being a parent, a public school or private studio teacher (or holding any “normal” job), or prioritizing your personal life weakens your abilities and validity as an artist.

It’s hard enough to believe that we are worthy creatives - our inspiration from outstanding artists often presents an unbelievably high standard - without facing the implication that doing banal, everyday, unrelated or fulfilling but uncreative tasks will undercut all of your hard work and aspirations.

Logically, and even scientifically, we understand that it’s a fact that we can’t be “on” all the time. Time away from demanding work allows our brains to continue building important neural connections that can’t be solidified while we work. Doing tasks that are unrelated to our creative endeavors only enhances this solidification, and the same goes for getting good rest and exercise, but that doesn’t change the tremendous amount of guilt that can become ever-present when set our instrument aside. Not to mention that nagging feeling that every time we aren’t practicing, someone else is. How on earth could having a happy marriage (a time-heavy, demanding endeavor in its own right), children, a second job that pays the bills, relaxing in the evenings and watching Netflix with our partner, or any kind of enjoyable hobby that requires hours of our time not doom our careers?

But having a real life isn’t the setback. It’s the advantage. In all of the direct or subliminal messaging we receive about building a life in music, or any art form, we’re taught that creativity should be all-consuming, and that balance is unattainable. It might be important to get clear on balance, which is a little bit of a myth in any type of work and has a lot to do with our personality type. We would be better off to replace balance with boundaries, which are challenging but also easier to define and obtain. Balance represents a sort of utopia of creative time and a happy life, but boundaries make space for the realities of life which is demanding at every twist and turn.

It will take time to figure out our priorities and sort out the noise, and to set boundaries around what we want instead of what we are told to want. If you’ve set aside your desire to own a home to focus on your art, it might feel like a monumental challenge to accept that home ownership is more important to you than not having a second job. You may have believed that a happy marriage and children lays outside the demanding schedule of your work but feel committed to creating connection in your life and decide to commit to finding a way to have both career and strong relationships. Following, or even finding, our own messaging and not the world’s is work.

Maybe things will take longer, or you will release something you previously believed you wanted. You might even realize that you need to set aside the things in the examples above because you want your art to take center stage. In the end, you are the only one who experiences your inner world, so shouldn’t it make you happy? It takes much more time than we think to feel comfortable in art and in life, and if we wait for someone to give us permission it will take more time than we have.

Maybe it’s so hard for creatives to self validate because of how complicated receiving validation of our work is.

…

It’s a relatively modern concept to hone in so pointedly on only one skill or priority. It’s also cultural the we are encouraged to choose early on which one direction we want to move our life in to the detriment of other skills we might have. In his book The Antidote, Oliver Burkeman sights a study done by anthropologist Gregory Bateson on everyday life in villages in Bali. Bateson’s findings suggested that the social and functional success of these communities was, in large part, due to their cultural practices of balancing skills and priorities that he described as “non-maximizing.” The first time I read about it, I went back and read the paragraph again because it created so much subconscious friction with my own perception of success and fulfillment, harkening straight back to the way the flute became the central pillar of my life.

As an example, the Balinese in the villages that Bateson visited would balance frugality with spending so as not to amass wealth that damaged their social goals or created too much competition. The objective was not to avoid planning for the future, accumulating wealth, or developing skills, but to balance the all-or-nothing danger of becoming too attached to a singular version of the future.

Burkeman uses a quote from Chris Kayes in the book that also caused me to stop and re-read. In the famous, deadly climbing expedition on Mt. Everest in 1996 all of the mountaineers who died at the top of the mountain had, in fact, successfully reached their goal of ascending to the summit of Everest.

As I stopped to consider the Balinese villages and summit ascending climbers, I penciled into the margin of my book: “Why musicians are so unhappy.”

For musicians, the goal of ascending Everest is always dangling in front of us. If we win another audition, record another album, or gain more recognition (insert your own personal Everest summit here) we will finally reach satisfaction. But by focusing on these things at the expense of all others, do we really achieve what we’re looking for at the summit? What are the unintended consequences of living our lives this way, and is it necessary? Is it leaving us all scattered across half-climbed creative mountains?

We believe that we can’t balance our artistry with the normalcy of life. It’s inferred that we can’t. For centuries we have watched tortured and un-tortured artists leave the world behind because it’s the only way they can make art. Van Gogh moved sporadically and aimlessly, searching for the ideal situation (always somewhere else) in which to finally paint a masterpiece. Other artists leave society behind for isolating locations like deserts and mountains to work unbothered and alone. Musicians, both classical and otherwise, are tortured by the desire of expressing the perfect emotion. When these creatives achieve their goals, we believe it is because they were isolated, disciplined, and hyper-focused.

But what if we’re focused on the wrong markers of success and genius? Creativity is challenging, but perhaps we’ve been led to believe it demands a holy devotion simple as a crutch for the difficulty it presents?

What if we’ve been focused on the wrong things all along? Can we be both an expert and a person who is happy and satisfied in their life? If we stopped staring at the summit of Mt. Everest through binoculars that blind us from the rest of the climb, would we find a multitude of meaningful and satisfying corners of life that had been previously outside our view?

…

These observations don’t remedy my sense that my musicianship may never be good enough or that I will spend my life ascending toward the insurmountable summit of my creativity. Is that fear so hard to let go of because the messaging I’ve received for my whole creative life is so strong or because it’s true?

How much of my (or anyone’s) creative angst is self-inflicted? How can I possibly be happy with my B-List career of moderate reach? But it remains true that at one time I can hold both the knowledge that I can make a meaningful difference in my students’ lives and the sense that my impact is meager.

Is it enough to do the very best I can in lessons that reach only one student at a time and performances that remain far off the radar of many listeners? It brings me back to setting boundaries for my approach to creativity - who am I trying to reach? What validation does my music need, and can I provide it for myself? Would it feel like enough if I managed to receive the stamp of approval of every classical musician everywhere?

Maybe any creative endeavor, when undertaken as a primary source of expression and work, would leave this strange sense of inadequacy. When I paint something for my house or create something that no one else will get to have opinions about, I don’t have these feelings about inadequacy. Maybe the decision to make our creative skills our work dooms us from the start. Like an artistic Schrödinger’s cat, the skill doesn’t exist until someone opens the box to see it, at which point it can be labeled, quantified and qualified, deemed valuable or not.

As soon as we perceive we have been seen or know that someone sees us, everything changes.

…

What if we decided to focus on our interior life? Would it take away (at least to some extent) the variable of being seen in the action of our work. I don’t mean this in a life coach, magical thinking kind of way. Simply, what if we set Everest aside for a while? What would happen if we could focus on both the quality of our work and the quality of our life based sheerly on our own perspective. Based on what we know and have experienced. Based on our own priorities. Would it force us to trust our understanding? Could we learn to dig deeper into the recesses of our memory, both in the mind and felt senses, and confirm what we know to be true because we’ve lived it?

Self-acceptance and self-validation are not the same thing. What would it take to build both?

I often find myself wondering if it’s even possible in our modern, connected (voyeuristic?) culture to stop thinking about how others perceive us anymore. Even before social media we had a sense of who, what, and how we wanted to be in the world. My memory is that dreaming up how we wanted to be in the world was much more insulated back then, but maybe that’s a manipulated memory? Perhaps we’ve always been influenced and I just want to remember it differently. I certainly wasn’t without the influence of my family, teachers, and peers, although that was different from current influence in so many ways (most notably that when I went home from school, unless I had a lesson or saw a friend, I didn’t have to fight to keep my attention away from what other people I didn’t know and would never meet were doing or from what they might think of what I was doing if we ever met).

Could it actually make us better artists to prioritize feeling at home in ourselves? Could we remove external validation from our art and have it still retain its value? Artists have been thinking for a long time about self-valuing. There is a quote from Italian film director Federico Fellini that says “all art is autobiographical, the pearl is the oyster’s autobiography.” French critic Roland Barthes is known for his argument in the essay The Death of the Author that all meaning in a work of art should be determined by the consumer.

Both of these men had these sentiments before the internet gave us all the option of broadcasting what we were thinking, who influenced us, and exactly what we meant by each of our actions. Did we listen to ourselves better and balance input from others more deftly when we couldn’t explain ourselves so much?

…

We are inspired by the masters. We watch them closely, hoping to glean little bits we can steal for ourselves or a trade secret that will make us prolific. We believe that our art must be both masterful and based on mastery. But what inspires the masters? They eat breakfast like we do, buy clothing and hate the way it looks on them, get caught in the rain without an umbrella, go out to the store only to find that they forgot their list or have a flat tire. Is it just the way they interpret the events of their lives that is masterful?

What if mastery is actually based on nothing but a the glorious mundanity of life?

Maybe the only difference between us and the masters is not their creative skills but their ability to see the glory of burning another piece of toast in the toaster. Can they see their ability to shout the mundane from the rooftops as the unique expertise it really is?

It’s probably safe to assume that for all the explaining and over-explaining we do, we simply can’t force the opinions that others will have of us or our work. What we can do is explore whether that matters by focusing on creating both work and life that feels closest to our true selves. Whatever that looks like is up to you.

Our perception of the life we can live is what creates our lives, and a willingness to prioritize what feels valuable and satisfying to us is both practical and necessary; an earnest type of genius that ushers us onto the main stage of our own life.