I had an unusual experience this weekend. I was browsing the Internet and was seeing posts about this racoon girl getting gold in skating. She had a visual style and attitude that was impossible to ignore so I got sucked in reading the post comments. Gushing praise about how you could tell she just loves what she was doing. Stories about how she quit because it wasn’t fun and started again just for fun and not for competition. And more and more comments about how you could see it in her routine.
I’m not a sports person, and figure skating is even further down the list than other accessible sports. It always seems clinical and kind of robotic to me. Regardless, I watched the clip that won her the gold. I guess it really was evident. Maybe I was prepped by all the comments, but it did strike me differently than other skating displays. And then the two pieces came together for me – she’s doing it because she enjoys it.
Now to make it all about me. Wait a minute, is this guy going to compare himself to an Olympic gold medalist? Hold on now. It’s not like that.
I’ve been slowly working on a new album of music in-between my constant acquisition of new gear. It’s been harder this time around for a couple of reasons. I’ve had long-standing doubts about my writing. I could easily build up a list of criticisms: Too many major chords, always the same 1/4/5 chord progression, same old 8th note rhythm, it’s the same song over and over. So I’d been struggling trying to do something different. The recent piece I had worked on that tried to be different with darker voicing and stranger key changes made me sad. Was this going to be some slow, boring morose album? I didn’t want that.
But after watching that skate routine and reading comments and full opinion articles about how her outlook and attitude is a lesson on how to approach difficult situations, I sat down and knocked out two of the most joyous tunes I’ve done in a very long time. It was a similar feeling to when I completed the first track on my previous album and declared that it was going to be a great year.
The songs? 1000% in my tried and true style. And the important thing is, so what? It’s what I do. And I’m not doing it for someone else. I’m not saying I’m a gold medal player or writer. Lots of people can and do do it better than me. But what I’m saying is, I am the best at doing what is my signature style and it might be difficult for others to duplicate. Sure, they could with effort, but I just did it effortlessly. And the final product is that I am fulfilled listening to them.
There will be opportunities to experiment and try other styles and stretch my abilities, but what I had been doing was shutting off my natural style in order to do something different. it’s like, I need to run fast, but my legs go slow, so I should remove my legs because they only go slow – obviously that’s where the problem is.
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