(Excerpt from a new book by Paul Boehnke)
What seems like a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away I was a classical musician. As a harpsichordist, organist and conductor I lived most of my life playing music from three to four hundreds years ago. The job required mastery of that style of music and deep knowledge of its history. It required mastery of my instrument and, especially as a conductor, mastery of working with others. I had seventeen years of formal training before becoming professional. During the subsequent thirty years I played and taught for a living, the education never stopped. It was a great experience and one I was honored and grateful to have.
Performing on stage is an interesting experience. It’s one that puts you literally in the spotlight. It asks you to be technically outstanding, eminently prepared, and emotionally vulnerable (in public) — all at the same time. And all this needed to be in place at exactly the right time. It didn’t matter if I’d had a bad day, was feeling ill or just didn’t feel like making music at the moment. The music needed specific things from me at specific times. The audience came expecting a stellar performance and it was my job to provide that stellar performance on demand, regardless of whether it was only once or night after night. I needed particular skills to do all that.
Walk through a music school and you’ll hear all sorts of instruments and all sorts of music emanating from one small practice room after another. There’s an intensity in the air. Musicians are focused on solving all sorts of problems: how to successfully play this particular combination of notes, how to produce just the right tone, how to play notes fast, how to sustain their breath (or their bow stroke) during a long phrase and most importantly, how to do all these things predictably and on demand. Listening as you walk down the hall, you can hear skills developing.
Playing an instrument is a complicated affair. There’s the physical aspect of teaching your body to do what needs to be done and then to get those actions to become automatic. That’s why musicians practice scales so much. Playing them in a piece of music needs to be completely automatic so you can pay attention to other things. Then in order for music to make sense to a listener, rhythm needs to be extremely precise, even more so if you’re playing with others. Just these things take years to master. Then there’s the emotional aspect. Figuring out what the music is expressing on an emotional level and how to communicate that through the instrument and then to do that at just the right moment, well that’s a whole other level of complication. Doing all this successfully requires an enormous amount of conscious thought and an equal amount of deep and timeless presence, two things which can feel in direct opposition to each other. Basically, as a musician I had to get my mind, emotions and body to think, feel and do what I needed them to, when I needed them to do it. Skills I learned along the way.
Being an artist, however, is about much more than mastering the tools and techniques of one’s art. It’s about becoming a master of oneself. Regardless of how good one’s technique is, it’s our hidden fears, beliefs, motivations and resistance that get in the way of truly artful expression. Uncovering these is the real work of an artist. For me, that was the most satisfying part of living and working as an artist. It’s the part that taught me the most and helped me become more and more who I am. It’s also what I loved helping my students with. Watching as they peeled back layer after layer of psychological beliefs was like watching a flower bloom. They gradually became more and more of who they truly were. Plus, the freedom they gained from clearing out those inner impediments, cleared out all sorts of roadblocks in their technique. It’s a profoundly moving thing to witness.
As with most people though, I had some hidden beliefs and fears that either continued to remain hidden or refused to let go of me. They were deeply ingrained patterns of thought, feeling and behavior that I’d lived with seemingly my whole life. Even when I discovered these patterns, there seemed to be some other worldly force that kept them in place. Breaking those habits began to feel impossible. I knew something need to be left behind if I was to create a better life for myself.
What needed to be left behind were all the messages the voice in my head had been telling me. The messages that said I wasn’t acceptable, that kept me living small by telling me I’m not really qualified or sufficiently skilled. Messages of shame and messages that said I wasn’t truly lovable. I needed that voice to tell me things that supported and encouraged me. I needed new messages.
Then I remembered an experience I’d had years earlier. As a music student in college, I was learning a piece of music that was pretty difficult. There was one tiny 4-measure section of the piece which was particularly difficult. After spending forty minutes on just that tiny section, it definitely became easier to play. But the most interesting thing is that while I was practicing those notes, I was thinking about something else going on in my life at that time. Something that had nothing to do with the music.
Fast forward five years and when I played that piece again and got to that small section, the thoughts I’d had while practicing came screaming back to my mind. I was shocked. Those thoughts were five years old. They had nothing to do with my life now. Why was I thinking them again?
I realized I’d practiced those thoughts along with those notes. Clearly, if I could learn to practice more helpful thoughts while I rehearsed, I could produce more powerful performances and shorten the learning process to boot. And that’s what I did. I learned to get my mind, emotions and body to think, feel and do what I needed them to, when I needed them to do it. That’s when it hit me. I had been using all sorts of tools to get my thoughts to support my music making. Why not use those same tools to turn that voice in my head from a critic to a cheerleader?
It was that realization that catalyzed my journey toward living truly authentically and it gave me concrete tools I could use to find my way through the fog to a new future.
© 2021, Paul Boehnke. All rights reserved.
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