
The Pleasure of Practicing: A Musician’s Account of Overcoming Impostor Syndrome - sexbomb
http://www.brainpickings.org/2015/01/07/glenn-kurtz-practicing/
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gull
A big takeaway:

    
    
      Everyone who gives up a serious childhood dream — of
      becoming an artist, a doctor, an engineer, an athlete —
      lives the rest of their life with a sense of loss, with
      nagging what ifs.

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steeples
This article tells a great story about overcoming certain hangups about one's
ability, but never touches on talent not being matched to an audience. In some
industries it's not what you know, but who you know, and the context. Take for
example that famous experiment with Joshua Bell playing the violin in DC Metro
Station:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UM21gPmkDpI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UM21gPmkDpI)
Nobody even noticed, and having known it was Joshua Bell, they certainly would
have. Practicing all alone with a musical instrument in my bedroom is no more
exaltation than it is a mismatch of talent and audience. If anything my
neighbor will be filing a noise complaint...

~~~
ThomPete
It's not really about audience but about context. There is a reason why
something is music to a whole generation of kids while their parents think it
sounds like noise.

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agumonkey
Last paragraph is nice:

> I sit down to practice the fullness of my doubts and desire, my fantasies
> and flaws. Each day I follow them as far as I can bear it, for now. This is
> what teaches me my limits; this is what enables me to improve. I think it is
> the same with anything you seriously practice, anything you deeply love.

More than work, with time you see it as a journey. You try something and you
see how it goes. Experience just slowly builds a map of that weird space we
call art.

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codeisawesome
> And I struggle to harmonize them, to find my way between them, uncertain
> whether this work is worth it or a waste of my time.

I don't know I think I would say pick something to do in life that, even if
you never achieve that mastery, you never regret a single moment spent doing
it, because it was awesome.

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steeples
One word: Practice time - By Mr Positivity
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlCRfTmBSGs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlCRfTmBSGs)

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mikestew
So if he doesn't get to play Carnegie Hall, he just ups and drops the whole
thing? Yeah, well, welcome to the topsy-turvy world of rock and roll. I'll
admit I only skimmed it, because the opening came across as whiny, but I guess
the gist is that practicing should be taken as a pleasure unto itself. Well,
duh. If you don't like playing your instrument for its own sake, I would guess
you'd never make it as a pro regardless of your skill.

It became evident at an early age that I was not the next Jimmy Page. That
didn't keep me from continuing with the guitar for the next forty years. Oh,
I've been paid for my playing from time to time, but I'd never make a living
at it. Just like the huge numbers of musicians who are far, far better than
I'll ever dream to be: they can't make a living at it, either. It's a tough
business. Oh, you had to go be an editorial assistant? Hey, beats waiting
tables, which is what even more skilled musicians are doing every day in
cities around the world.

There is no danger of anyone paying to hear me play the mandolin I bought this
year, either. Doesn't stop me from playing the hell out of it. I _like_
playing it, knowing I'll never make a dime off doing so. I've not even
concluded that I'll ever be any _good_ at it, let alone paid. But my wife
doesn't mind my playing (that she says, anyway), I like it, so I'll stick with
it.

The imposter syndrome part I never got (I might have skimmed the article, but
I specifically looked for that). How can a musician have imposter syndrome?
Developers, eh, I may not find out for a month or two that they suck (which is
what "imposters" worry about). A musician? Pick up that Fender, knock out
_Crossroads_ for me, we'll find out really quick whether you're any good.

(Feel free to down vote me for mouthing off about an article I barely read, I
probably deserve it. I'll take the hit, but frankly what I read was whiny and
kind of boring/obvious, yet I couldn't let it go without comment.)

~~~
rquantz
This comment was clearly made by someone who has never practiced art or music
at a high level. You are trying to compare your experience as a musician with
someone who has worked toward and dreamed of being one of the best there ever
was since some time in, most likely, early adolescence.

I was among the best in my year on my instrument in the country. I went to one
of the top music schools in the world, and then I moved to New York to keep
studying and start working as a musician. Some time in the middle of the
financial crisis, I got tired of being broke all the time, and of constantly
battling injuries (that's thing you've probably never had to worry about, as
an amateur musician. Your arm is sore? You get to take a few days off!), and
teaching music to the spoiled children of the masters of the universe. I
learned to code and started working as a programmer.

Everyone who has ever been among the best, but didn't quite make it, has to,
at some point, decide they didn't make it, and quit. Once I quit, I barely
touched my instrument for two years. Playing when you're out of practice can
be pretty painful to someone who is highly trained. You've worked for years
toward perfection and then you just have to start accepting... less than that.

Here's another thing that happens when you quit: you have a constant voice in
the back of your mind wondering whether you gave up too easily. You were there
with the best people in the world, and now you watch them take their place
among the leading lights of the art, and you can't stop picturing yourself
among them. It's not whining, it's the painful experience of giving up your
lifelong image of yourself. Being a musician, a top level, professional
musician, dominates your whole identity. Try to imagine this: rather than
finding out at an early age that you're not the next Jimmy Page, you get very
good very quickly at a young age, and people start telling you, hey, you could
be the next Jimmy Page. You work for decades to get good enough, sacrificing
your personal relationships, your childhood, choosing over and over again to
stay in and work instead of doing whatever else you could be doing, and then
at age 30 after years of near misses and barely scraping by, you realize
you're just not the next Jimmy Page. It's not an early realization, it's a
gradual defeat. And it's devastating.

Regarding imposter syndrome, there have been studies of musicians using the
standard "sandwich method" of delivering criticism, in which the criticism is
sandwiched between two compliments. Trained musicians often don't hear or
register the compliments at all. I had this experience with my girlfriend
recently. She played some excerpts for me, I said, "wow you sound great, I
liked X and Y. Here are a few things you should work on." She asked me later
if I thought she was complete shit. I said, "I said you sounded great," and
she said "You did?" She literally had not even heard me say I thought she
sounded great.

Here's another fact about the music world. People are often loath to tell you
that you don't sound good (or don't sound great). Musicians know this, and so
every time someone tells you that performance was great, there's a little part
of you that wonders if you're being lied to. Often you'll get hired by a
contractor to play a gig, and then never get called by them again. Sometimes
that's because they have their regular people and you were just a stand in, or
because they died or moved or whatever. Other times it's because they didn't
like your playing. But they never tell you which one it is. So every time you
don't get called back for a gig, regardless of what the actual reason is,
there's a chance it's because you weren't good enough. Feedback is not
consistent and it is not reliable.

So given those two facts, is it a wonder musicians can suffer from imposter
syndrome? It's not a question of, "people will realize I can't play guitar,"
it's the very fine line between being very very good, and being great.
Regardless of which side of the line you're on, you're always wondering.

Does that clear things up?

~~~
cousin_it
Here's something I've wanted to ask a professional musician for a while. It
seems like most listeners' enjoyment doesn't actually depend much on your
technique, which you've spent years perfecting. Practicing your instrument (or
more general "musicianship") might not even be the main limiting factor for
becoming a sought-after musician, as opposed to things like charisma and
theatrics, or songwriting, or imagination... I don't know. What do you think?

~~~
rquantz
I think of technique in very different terms. Technique is the ability to
execute very precisely what's in your head on your instrument. That ability is
meaningless without all the things you list, especially, I'd say, imagination,
but so too are those things meaningless without technique. You can have all
the imagination in the world, but if you can't execute what's in your head
exactly, that imagination will not be illuminated for the audience.

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marktangotango
So this piece is essentially comments on another piece by this Kurtz guy, and
the commentary is quite banal. Luckily the author seems to thoroughly
reproduce the original piece which really wasn't too bad.

~~~
rquantz
It's a book review. Is that not a valid form of writing to you?

