I have once again had the opportunity to consort with musicians. This is such a mixed emotional thing for me. I love it. It washes over me like a warm bath, but then afterward I get the chills when the residual droplets evaporate.
Specifically, there's two things I covet about musicians (items to follow). You will notice that I use the word covet, which MW defines as "to wish for earnestly" or "to desire (what belongs to another)". In other words, musicians* inevitably have two things that I lack, but wish I had. So here they are:
1. Creativity - Explaining to you what watching someone make music is like for me would be impossible because it's not like any other feeling. It's miraculous and mysterious, in the truest un-watered down sense. And I don't create anything. My life is productive, functional, reasonably fulfilling, but not creative. The only way I know how to describe it is that I ended up crashing at a house of musicians, and it looks nothing like my apartment. Paintings everywhere, a spoon tied to the wall in a way that makes no sense, but also does. There's something going on in the creative mind that eludes me. I admire it, I wish I had it, but my life somehow ends up being straight lines and centered paintings. Creative people recognize beauty in unusual places because they seem to look at the world in a fundamentally different way, as if anything could be art. As if all the pieces are like Legos that you can put together in a million combinations. I don't see the world that way, as much as I try. It's like knowing there's a version of the world that's 3-D, but you're stuck in two dimensions. I'm missing something. When I look at the pieces, I lack the imagination to deconstruct and reconstruct something new and marvelous, so the world just stays the same. This makes me profoundly sad.
2. Fearlessness or courage - This depends on the musician at hand. Either way, they are doing something truly personal in front of people. Whether they are playing something they created or performing the work of others, it requires putting fear aside and presenting something to the world that is so honest that it takes my breath away. I find myself often incapable of being that honest with my friends, much less an audience of strangers. That level of vulnerability is unimaginably frightening. But musicians don't look afraid. They look like they are having the time of their lives. They are happy, enraptured, overpowered. To be so happy while being so exposed and honest seems like something worth envying.
*As I was writing this, I realized this probably applies to artists in general, but for me, the most salient example is music.
Specifically, there's two things I covet about musicians (items to follow). You will notice that I use the word covet, which MW defines as "to wish for earnestly" or "to desire (what belongs to another)". In other words, musicians* inevitably have two things that I lack, but wish I had. So here they are:
1. Creativity - Explaining to you what watching someone make music is like for me would be impossible because it's not like any other feeling. It's miraculous and mysterious, in the truest un-watered down sense. And I don't create anything. My life is productive, functional, reasonably fulfilling, but not creative. The only way I know how to describe it is that I ended up crashing at a house of musicians, and it looks nothing like my apartment. Paintings everywhere, a spoon tied to the wall in a way that makes no sense, but also does. There's something going on in the creative mind that eludes me. I admire it, I wish I had it, but my life somehow ends up being straight lines and centered paintings. Creative people recognize beauty in unusual places because they seem to look at the world in a fundamentally different way, as if anything could be art. As if all the pieces are like Legos that you can put together in a million combinations. I don't see the world that way, as much as I try. It's like knowing there's a version of the world that's 3-D, but you're stuck in two dimensions. I'm missing something. When I look at the pieces, I lack the imagination to deconstruct and reconstruct something new and marvelous, so the world just stays the same. This makes me profoundly sad.
2. Fearlessness or courage - This depends on the musician at hand. Either way, they are doing something truly personal in front of people. Whether they are playing something they created or performing the work of others, it requires putting fear aside and presenting something to the world that is so honest that it takes my breath away. I find myself often incapable of being that honest with my friends, much less an audience of strangers. That level of vulnerability is unimaginably frightening. But musicians don't look afraid. They look like they are having the time of their lives. They are happy, enraptured, overpowered. To be so happy while being so exposed and honest seems like something worth envying.
*As I was writing this, I realized this probably applies to artists in general, but for me, the most salient example is music.
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