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Doublereed Archive - Posting 000038.txt from 2005/01
From: Keith Sklower <sklower@-----.EDU>
Subj: Re: [DR-L] Why do musicians hate themselves??
Date: Sun, 9 Jan 2005 19:49:16 -0500
>my roommate came to me almost in tears telling me he ruined
>the whole performance, that he wanted to quit the clarinet, etc.
>was shocked to realize I had NEVER heard anything positive from
>him after a performance.
>He actually shuns praise... it makes him feel uncomfortable.
>Why do we do this to ourselves??
>Isn't making music supposed to be a joyful thing?
>Striving for perfection is a good thing, but at what
>point does it become destructive?
I wish I had more time to respond to this.
First, I can think of two other examples of musicians with this very
problem, and I think the problem is more widespread than people admit.
A former teacher of mine, a student of Marc Lifshey said Lifshey absolutely
hated to hear recordings of himself, and when offered the opportunity
to record the Bach Double violin concerto with Isaac Stern turned it down,
thinking he (Lifshey) wasn't good enough.
There's another double reed player, still active, who would be mortified
if the identity were known, playing in a musical group whose recordings
are aired all over the country, who checked themselves into a psychiatric
hospital after for mental exhaustion after recording a very beloved work.
My guess is that what's going on is that it's a question of self-identity;
having been given the vision to conceive of an interpretation, having
spent enormous amount of energy and time to be able to render the vision
in real life, being able to do any part of it exactly as intended, and
then not being able to accomplish the entire sum of it "when it counted",
would leave such people to believe that they had failed at what mattered
most to them (in a very intimate and sacred way).
(In the case of the unnamed double reed player, a widely respect teacher
hypothesized it was also a case of the person's father being especially
demanding, thus compounding the feelings of failure).
I think its easier for those of us less gifted to accept that what
we strive for is, in fact, unreachable, that we should be content
to do the best we can.
And now the question becomes how to get our more innately talented
and motivated colleagues to accept, in an emotional way rather than
a merely intellectual way, that it *IS* enough merely to touch
other people's souls, and move them, even if they didn't manage to
bring into being all of their vision of what should have been.
Simply discounting the feelings of the highly motivated is not
going to work.
Enlisting some black humor, it reminds me of an old joke:
"How many therapists does it take to change a light bulb?"
"Only one, but the light bulb really needs to want to change!"
Helping a person to discover or notice their own self-destructive
behavior (in a very loving and supportive way), is not easy to do,
but might provide an initail impetus for change.
I wish them well!
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