Back to the Grindstone

Well, my two-week affair with Brahms is now over, and it's back to the mop and bucket for the rest of the summer. It was fun while it lasted.

I realized in my time at Mimir that I have spent my four years at BYU pretty uninspired, at least musically speaking. Not that I was the best player there--I wasn't--but the majority of those that were better than me (this is going to sound overly critical, so forgive me) still left me wanting more. There were very very few (in fact, I can only think of one) whose playing I found utterly convincing and inspiring. Again, it's not that I didn't look up to other musicians at BYU, because there were lots of people who did lots and lots of things better than me--it's just that there wasn't really anyone that I wanted to model myself after. Incidentally, even the soloists who came through I found to be largely uninspiring. Sure, they had chops, but I didn't feel like they were connecting with the music, or that they were making any attempt at all to connect to me.

In listening to the Mimir faculty in their concerts, I found the inspiration I'd been missing. It was glorifying to hear music played so beautifully--with impeccable technique and heartfelt expression. I want to be THAT. There's a whole other plane of musicianship that I can tap into. I feel as though my progress at BYU was only within a limited plane, but there's so much more that I (or anyone) can achieve. I think I'd forgotten that.

I have come to believe that we all have this desire to be great. Call it ambition, call it aspiration, call it what you will, but each of us wants to be something meaningful to the world. Somehow music has the ability to bring out the greatness in otherwise very ordinary people. We become a part of something bigger than just ourselves--something as big as the human experience. And it means something! It matters.

We become uncomfortable with ourselves when we are not living up to the greatness that we desire. I think that deep down inside, we all truly believe that we ARE already great, which is why it bothers us so much when we feel we are falling short of the mark. The greater we think we are, the more it irks us to be anything less than A+. Some of us have managed to build a career around fraudulent mediocrity, but we are left wondering what might have been IF we'd lived up to our potential. We could have been great. It eats us up.

It's like that quote (that I just found is not by Nelson Mandela, but instead Marianne Williamson, an American spiritual activist):

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond imagination. It is our light more than our darkness which scares us. We ask ourselves – who are we to be brilliant, beautiful, talented, and fabulous. But honestly, who are you to not be so?

"You are a child of God, small games do not work in this world. For those around us to feel peace, it is not example to make ourselves small. We were born to express the glory of god that lives in us. It is not in some of us, it is in all of us. While we allow our light to shine, we unconsciously give permission for others to do the same. When we liberate ourselves from our own fears, simply our presence may liberate others."

I want to give you permission to live out the greatness that you and I both know is inside of you.