Something Intimidating

Avenue of Schloss Kammer Park by Gustav Klimt

I’m practicing for something intimidating.

Except, it’s totally doable.

The individual parts that need to be learned, polished, perfected, nuanced…they are all playable. Many of them I’ve performed before under pressure. Some of those performances secured other employment for me because they went well. Some of those performances also set off a series of catastrophic mental consequences (that, predictably and annoyingly, all made me stronger in the long run even though they stunk in the moment).

I know the context of the music, the character, the demands it places on me, the places it points out my weaknesses, and the way it plays into my strengths. I know that with the right amount and type of practice that all of what I need to learn is playable.

So it’s totally doable. Except, it’s totally intimidating.

The walking contradiction of any performance art is that we grow skills that were at some point unfathomable to us, master the intricacies of the art, understand its ins and outs, and make it a part of ourselves mentally and physically, and yet…if we’re seeking, if we’re stretching…there always seems to be another intimidating milestone out there, even if it’s a self-assigned milestone.

But if we’ve mastered the skill, why can’t we confidently walk into any situation? There are so many reasons: previous experiences, an intimidating audience or colleague, a job on the line, someone we want to impress, the pressure of perfectionism and living up to our own standards or expectations.

Looking back over that list of reasons, they’re all in the past or future. Or, they’re completely made up - assumptions about what others think of us, or what they might think of us (in a way, predicting the future again). These insidious little thoughts, ideas, feelings, and perceptions lodge themselves in our work without ever announcing their arrival and become a sneaky, indelible part of the fabric of how we work.

It took me years to realize that these little morsels of past and future had taken up residence with me. Once I did realize they were there, it proved even more difficult to root them out and untangle them from the present, the real task at hand.

Some of the music I have been playing or performing recently is music I learned in high school and undergrad. Music that I worked so hard to play back then while all my bad habits and undeveloped skills came along for the ride and dug their heels into the way the music went. Without fail, there is evidence of these embedded issues when I come back to this music and, even now, those pesky old ways of doing things are right there waiting. The past.

As I’ve been preparing for this upcoming intimidating thing, I find myself wondering things that are both distracting and completely not useful in practice. Like, if the well-planned breath I just took that worked was a fluke. Each time it works I question it, even though I planned it and executed. The wondering nags at me. Sure enough, when I finally have a chance to play that passage in front of someone, my mind immediately snaps to, what if I don’t have enough air this time? instead of the plan of attack that has worked every time so far.

As I run out of air I realize, oh, the future.

Before I started practicing for the intimidating thing, I felt a wave of optimism. I understand the process of preparing for things better than ever. I am capable of playing this music. I even love it. I deeply cherish the process.

Ah, a fleeting moment of the present.

Once I started practicing though, all the hidden, tangled feelings, thoughts, and actions of the past and future started to interrupt my practice. They filled my working hours with nagging thoughts that drug me off course into unproductive practice habits and distraction.

(For what it’s worth, I’m picturing some tiny, fuzzy, almost cute, un-intimidating and yet very annoying cartoon monsters with buggy eyes dangling off of my music stand as I write this - maybe it would help to quiet the past and future a bit if I pictured the same when I practiced?)

What is most fascinating to me about this process or experience is that I have an ability to step back and gain perspective on all of this that I didn’t have when I was younger. I can see the wild rollercoaster of my thoughts, these little fuzzy monsters past and future riding along. I know exactly where I become engrossed in a mindset that is not useful. These are my idiosyncrasies. For someone other than me, it might be the physicality of playing that presents this rollercoaster (thankfully, I’ve dealt with most of those monsters), or it might be the anxiety that accompanies the idea of playing in front of others. It just so happens that my breeding ground for the past and future is in my mind.

It turns out that practicing, at least at this point in my musical journey, is not so much about playing the flute as it is about managing the mind. (I think this was always true, but buried under the mountain of skills I needed to fix or tend to). Keeping it fed, rested, and clear. Training it to focus on the future in a useful way (what is coming next in the music, where are we headed?), and on the present in the depth of feeling, character, and the incredible experience of creating just the right sound for where we are. Preparing the mind to face any of those reasons that we like to indulge the past and future and re-focus on the present is a full time job.

I am amazed that after all these years my mind is the piece that doesn’t want to fall in line with everything else. Except that when I think about it a little further, nothing else really falls in line without a little wrangling either, it’s just that most things wrangle easier than the stubborn brain.

I am reminded as I work though, and maybe I am also reminding you (could that be the point of this whole rambling story about intimidating things?), that your mind is wrangle-able. That, in fact, practicing a musical instrument and preparing for a performance, especially one you find totally intimidating, is going to be as much or more a mental feat as a physical one. That if you take many steps back during the process for perspective, do your best to work with the mind instead of against it, and create a plan for how you would like to move forward (that you will undoubtedly change many times), your brain may not do exactly what you would like, but it will do more of what you would like.

Should you want to embark on facing your fuzzy, annoying monsters, there are a multitude of tools for doing so, no matter the little monsters’ proclivities. Taking the steps to become aware of them might be overwhelming, but it will provide you with plenty of material to work with.

Totally intimidating, but doable.

If you stick with it, you may find that those past and future monsters become easier and easier to pick out and brush aside. That your ability to re-focus in a skillful way grows nicely with a little encouragement. If you get comfy with it in practice, it may even accompany you into the totally intimidating but doable performance situation.

Because, and here’s the really mind-bending thing about the mind, even with a lot of practice identifying and wrangling and re-focusing, your mind may still choose to do things in performance you don’t like. Those little monsters might still be there to distract you with a thought - about the future, the outcome of this particular performance, whether you played it better yesterday - and you might take a breath you know won’t satisfy the phrase, or you may fumble a difficult group of notes a bit when you become aware of their presence.

But the beauty of it? You can choose, just then, in the thick of the experience, to re-focus. Especially if you have been practicing spotting those fuzzy past and future monsters and re-focusing, you can brush off those little pests and set the brain back on track in the character of the music, in the indulgence of the sound, in the service of whatever it is you need to express in exactly this present moment.

Totally intimidating, and totally doable.