The Two Weights

As I’ve mentioned a few times here, I’m learning to play the guitar. I’ve recently hired a teacher, a local musician who’s in a band and who lives conveniently close to my home. He contacted me before our first lesson and said he wanted to listen to some of my songs to get a sense of the stuff I was writing. This put me into a minor panic. I’d forgotten that when I described my musical background, I had mentioned that my main interest was songwriting. I’ve written music for years, but except for the intros, outros, and interludes in my interviews, I rarely share my stuff with other people.

It was obviously time. I sent him some MP3s, and the next day grabbed my acoustic and headed to his place. He was lovely guy, a professional musician, whose tastes were similar to my own. He could already play my songs as if he’d written them himself. He had me play for him, which I did, and of course because someone was sitting there listening to me, it was like I’d forgotten what a guitar was. I studied classical flute for years, but would lose track of the music as I worried about hitting wrong notes. I was back in this mindset, plus there was the issue of my songs. He said he really liked one of them, but he didn’t mention the others. What was wrong with them?

I knew as I said goodbye that I’d keep taking more lessons from him. I liked him very much, yet by the time I got home I was overwhelmed with a crushing despair. My wife asked me what was wrong and I said I didn’t know.

“Do you think it maybe has something to do with taking lessons?”

It took me ten seconds to see that it had everything to do with the lessons. I’d done it, you see: I’d started wondering what someone else thought of me – specifically, of my playing and my songwriting. That I’d written an entire book about how not to do this, how it stands in the way of our inherent creativity, didn’t matter at all. How useful misery can be when it reminds me of what I’d forgotten, that praise and criticism are just two identical weights from which I must disentangle when I feel like I’m drowning.

If you like the ideas and perspectives expressed here, feel free to contact me about individual coaching and group workshops.

William KenowerWriting, Music, Guitars, Criticism, PraiseComment