Everything’s harder when your self-worth is tied to it.
Too much at stake to allow the creative process.
But I also think we all deal with this. I think the subliminals will help over time.
Maybe including more people (at times) might help too, although I personally haven’t really done this for a long time. In college, I’d sometimes meet with a couple of people and play. I also would stay in this one lounge area that had a piano and just play there. That wasn’t very interactive, but there were people walking around.
I’ve been ‘playing around’ since I was a small child. Pretty much as soon as I encountered a piano, I started composing songs on it. But, it was always a hobby. My parents sent me through piano lessons when I was a child. I actually requested it because my older sister’s piano teacher was very cool. But then after about a year, my parents decided to switch us to another teacher more to their liking, and amazingly I learned to dislike many aspects of the process. I didn’t do particularly well with that teacher because the emphasis was on following a curriculum and passing exams and performing. I had no motivation for that but would get through and pass based on pure basic aptitude. It was Trinity College London and by mid-high school Id made it to Grade 6, then stopped.
In the meantime, I continued to love music and to compose minimalist sketches. It was always both enjoyable and frustrating. I knew that I did not have the vocabulary and fluency to compose at the level that I sought. At the same time, it was pursuit of something beautiful and it was meaningful and enjoyable.
I discovered electronic music in the 80s. In New York, there was a radio program called New Sounds with John Schaefer. It was a lifeline.
I was reflecting the other day that the whole time I was growing up I was usually the only person I knew who was into whatever I was into. The important thing is it seemed that way.
I always wanted a synthesizer but in the 80s and 90s they were too expensive for me, so I’d just play pianos and guitars. After the IT revolution, synthesizers suddenly became completely accessible and affordable. $15 downloaded on your iPad. Got my first one in about 2013/2014 and have been making my sketches on iPad since then. I work in NanoStudio.
random jottings. got to go.