My friend, Nadia, posted this on Facebook today. They are not my words, but I feel as though I could have written them. She gave me permission to share…
“I was a music major for five years, three spent planning to go on and get my masters and PhD in performance, to eventually teach my instrument at university.
I was miserable.
I couldn’t understand how something you were supposed to do simply for the love of it could make me want to cry and hide. That I would have done anything to avoid going onstage, and sadly accepted it as the price for playing my instrument. I tried to understand what music was, thinking about the ideals of emotions, communications and art… And what that could or should mean to an audience, or a performer. I felt like I was missing very fundamental pieces of a simple puzzle.
I tried harder to find the pieces; tried harder to do it “right”. Eventually I got so I could dope myself into a state of self hypnosis and play the prescripted notes with precision and accuracy; but I felt nothing as I did, and none of the joy that I had expected to feel when I had finally performed “well”. I decided that the notes I was playing was not music, and was not art… And in a way was an abomination.
I went to an Amanda Palmer concert a week ago; I was reminded again that music should be a way of bringing people together, of sharing moments and thoughts better left half veiled. And I was reminded, to stop acting like art is hard… To stop thinking that art isn’t pouring from your soul, breaking from your chest to be released and propelled into the world. That we are created from the expression of love and passion, and there is little in our lives that does not revolve around both.
Get out of your skin. Dance. Sing. Forget that you have a body; remember that you are alive.”