Today was one of the strangest days I’ve ever had. It started out fairly normal- got up a little earlier than usual, no big deal, got to school early for a scale jury, passed, as expected. Rehearsed a little with a quartet for a student composer’s piece. Then I had my lesson. And through the lesson (which was one of the hardest I’ve had) and talking afterwards, I finally understood a lot of things. Or, a few really important things that affect a lot of things. Either way, I learned a lot.
Long story short, my recital is in less than a week, some stuff isn’t really ready that should have been.
My teacher is wonderful. She’s a wonderful violist, teacher, and person. She really cares about teaching. And she’s probably the hardest worker I know. We talked about a lot of things, the specifics of which aren’t important to this post, except for this.: You have to believe you can do it.
You have to believe you can do it.
Wow.
YOU have to believe YOU can do it.
Ok you probably get the point. But I didn’t. Not yet, at least.
Then I had rehearsal with my regular quartet. I sort of pushed these thoughts out of my mind for the time being and learned some other great things, like how wonderful apple cider yogurt is and how cute ultrasound pictures are.
When that ended I stayed to practice. And this is where the major weirdness comes in. I’d fiddled around (metaphorically, haha) for a while, still trying to process everything. I sat down to practice a passage we’d worked on at my lesson. I was pretty interested in working on it the way we had in my lesson. Breaking it down and all. Stuff I should know how to do, but seem to forget every week. But I decided to try something different this time. You have to believe you can do it.
Sounds easy, right? Just say to yourself, “hey you can do it!.” I looked at the passage I was working on. For some reason I decided I needed to say it out loud: “I can play this passage in tune, at this tempo…etc.” So I tried.
It didn’t work.
You know how when you’re on the verge of tears and you get choked up and just can’t make a sound? No matter how hard you try? Well, that happened to me then.
I tried a few more times with no success. So I fiddled around for like 5 more minutes and tried again. Somehow, I got the words out.
And it wasn’t like some amazing aha! moment. But it wasn’t nothing, either. It was incredibly overwhelming. Maybe like looking at yourself in the mirror and saying I like who I am. (I’ve never really needed to do that, but it seems like a thing people do in movies or whatever.)
So I got to work on the passage, always declaring my intentions aloud before working on anything. And you know what?
It was slow. It was challenging. But it was also fascinating. I focused like I never had before. I made baby-step goals. I did this for about two hours until my chamber coaching.
I don’t think I’ve practiced two hours straight in a long time. Well, not a focused two hours.
And I finally know why. After months, years maybe, of agonizing over why it’s so hard for me to focus and practice, I realized it. I didn’t believe I could do it. So what was the point? Sure, I’d go through the motions and hope something good would come out of my instrument. But it was just hope, not based in reality. Not to say that hope is a bad thing. But I think blind hope is. Somewhere along the way, I had lost all faith in myself. And looking back, so many things make sense.
Something my teacher has told me several times is that I play much better in quartet than I do in my solo pieces. And I finally realized why that is. When you are with others that believe in you, it can lift you up enough to get going. Couple that with the pressure to get it right because you’re in a group and you’ve got the recipe for success: belief that you can do it with the will and obligation to perform successfully.
But faith from others can’t last forever. And when I’m out of the situation it’s back to plain ol’ me.
This semester I’ve been trying to figure out what’s wrong. Trying to explain my apathy and depression. Now I realize, of course I’ve been depressed! How could I be in a field in which I don’t even believe I can succeed and not be depressed?
I had another good practice session tonight. And you know what? My recital isn’t going to be perfect. But I’m also not stressing as much. Somehow all of this has helped me live in the moment. Focus on what I’m doing now. Small goals.
With an eye on the prize, you only have one eye on the task at hand.
So what I learned today is this: success takes strength of will. Strength of will takes faith. You can’t really do it until you believe you can do it. But doubters like me see the obvious paradox.
Do I know where I’ll go from here? No. Do I know how my recital/life will go? No. but I do understand something now that I never did before. And that is a leap of faith.
