the mirror i find in music
When I was a little boy, my parents took me to piano lessons. I remember hating them. We played scales, practiced repetitive keyboard exercises, and learned how to read music. I think I only lasted a few weeks in those classes, but their effect on me lasted almost a decade.
For the rest of my childhood and teenage years, I sincerely believed that I was not a musical person. I just assumed learning theory was the only approach to making music, so I saw it as boring and hard. This belief led me to decline many other musical opportunities. I never participated in optional music classes at school, didn’t even think about joining a band, and I went on with my life.
In my teens, I started to hear music that powerfully moved me. I’d never had such deep emotional connections to specific artists before. I don’t know where it came from, but I was so inspired that I bought a guitar and started messing around with digital audio tools. To my complete surprise, it came very naturally to me. I was almost immediately improvising and trying to figure out my favourite songs.
Music is now a major part of my life, but the belief that I wasn’t a musical person lasted almost a decade. It was just a story, and it was based on very limited information. Looking back, it was a good microcosm for my teenage years in general. I was getting all kinds of stories from media, school, and my parents, and I was accepting them without question. I was following them blindly. Ideas about how to be a man, what success means, how I should spend my time, how to approach life, and even politics and philosophy. As it turns out, the limiting story I held about my musical ability was part of a larger pattern in my life at the time.
Since then, my experiences with music have continued to mirror my experiences with life. When I hit 20, I was bored with the path laid out for me and I wanted more. I wrote songs, dropped out of school, did a bit of recording and touring. But the entire experiment turned out to be a wrestling match with my ego. The contemplative, creative search for truth in music kept getting tripped up by a rebellious, selfish, and pleasure-seeking ego. Turns out, that was exactly what I was facing in my education and relationships, too.
In my late 20s, it became really hard to even pick up my instrument. All the bands I’d played in had fizzled out. I performed a string of solo shows as a songwriter but they always felt kind of lonely. I wasn’t really sure what I wanted out of music, and true to this mirror metaphor, I wasn’t really sure what I wanted out of life either. When I’d pick up an instrument, I wasn’t sure what to play anymore. Should I rehash old material? Write new songs? Learn covers? Should I set up my home studio and record? Should I try to put together a new band and go back on tour? The whole process was just kind of frustrating. I was lost.
Once, I was sure I wasn’t a musical person. Years later, I was recording and performing. And then in the next chapter of life, there was no room for music anymore. I kept at it, but it didn’t feel like there was a purpose to it anymore. So there was always a tinge of isolation when I played and wrote alone in my room. The reality was that I forgot how to play. Not literally. My hands could still form chords and all. But I forgot how to just pick up my instrument and play it without the expectations or ideas or plans or fantasies. I couldn’t enjoy it without some kind of external validation anymore. Every riff became a project. But that’s life isn’t it? It’s easy to get so wrapped up in hopes, dreams and expectations that we forget how to just enjoy life. At this point, I knew all those oversimplified stories about life were hollow, but I didn’t know how to stop believing them.
I’m writing this because, lately, music is somehow being resurrected in my heart and hands. I’ve never really stopped, but these days I’m rediscovering the joy of playing music just for the beautiful gift that it is. It’s that mirror again; as I reconnect with the beauty of simplicity and become more grateful for the little things in life, music is reflecting the same. As I drop the incessant striving for things to be different than they already are, I’m naturally connecting with my instruments in a way I haven’t in years. I’m just playing them. I’m having fun. I’m not trying to demand perfection or productivity. I’m just letting the sound ground me. As I find more purpose in life, I find more purpose in music.
I’m not sure if this is a unique story or not. Is there something in your life you feel the same way about? Something that’s already come to mind as you’ve been reading my story? Something you used to enjoy before you found yourself paralyzed by expectations or ego? Or maybe there’s some pursuit that mirrors the chapters of your life in the same way music mirrors mine? In today’s oversaturated media environment, I suspect a surprising number of us are caught up in stories about being rock stars, unicorn startup founders, social media celebrities, or genius scientists. Sometimes they can be healthy and motivating, but other times they’re paralyzing and demoralizing. I know, I know… it’s kind of horrifying to admit, but vulnerability is strength. Besides, these stories don’t define who you are, they’re simply the cultural currency of our time.
Anyway, after reading this far, you might be wondering what it feels like when I play music now. Well, it helps me catch my ego the same way a mirror helps me catch peanut butter in my beard. It gives me a good look at myself from a new perspective. As my hands and ears explore my instrument, I get a new lens into my mind. I listen to the sound, notice how I approach it, and take stock of my mindset. In a half-hour jam session, I can get a pretty good idea of where my head’s at.
When I like a sound, I try to practice just enjoying it, instead of planning to turn it into a song, a recording, a band or a tour. When that feels easy, I know I’m balanced. When I feel present and grateful, the sound is enough to satisfy me. When I’m stressed and overwhelmed, I find myself unsatisfied by the sound. I strive for something more by overthinking, structuring, and planning things. When my ego struggles to face reality, I struggle to even pick up my instrument without becoming self-critical. And when I notice I haven’t played in a while, it’s a sure sign that I’m getting overwhelmed and losing touch with myself amidst the ups and downs of life.
The place I’m emerging into now is the powerful realization that music itself is the purpose. This renewal is perhaps best captured in a powerful image that arose during a meditation last year. I imagined myself playing an acoustic guitar, but my hands were old and withered. I saw my left hand reach up to form a G chord. My old, brittle fingers were shaking. They no longer had the strength to hold the strings properly against the fretboard. This vision was strangely bittersweet. There is tragedy in imagining the inevitable loss of my musicianship. But there is so much love and beauty in the idea that I might still be playing in the last years of my life. After all the ups and downs, I might still be reaching for the guitar.
I try to remember this image when I feel frustrated with a lack of creative output or when I get wrapped up in my ego, trying way too hard to produce something. The vision of my old, weak hands struggling to play guitar keeps me going when I miss being on stage or feel isolated playing alone. One day I will not be able to play anymore, and that’s enough reason to keep playing. To me, despite everything that music has become in our media-infatuated society, its most beautiful aspect will always be the sound itself.
Apologies to all my neighbours: past, present and future.
Jay Vidyarthi