If you’re a songwriter and a singer, read on.
What could happen if you don’t give a damn?
Everything or nothing at all. Your choice.
Today is the best day to give yourself the freedom of expression without judgment. Take out the trash first.
Preparation
- If you feel determination and there is anger in it, you are in the wrong place.
- If you feel determination and there is fear in it, you are in the wrong place.
- If you feel determination and that you must prove yourself to somebody or anyone, you are in the wrong place.
Where is the right place?
It is a place of insouciance, but not solely that.
A strong component, insouciance is, and a necessary one, to have true freedom of expression.
How do we get into that state of mind?
You probably won’t experience a transformative and instant change of state, but you might.
If you do not, there are some steps you can take to arrive in this new place of insouciance.
It is a place without worry but is also a place where many positive things can exist including artistry, creativity, imagination, and the unmitigated unbridled highest and best use of your talent.
Being Forceful Is the Wrong Path
Letting go of tendencies and habits are required to be powerfully insouciant.
- You won’t compromise your standards by being insouciant.
- You won’t lower your sense of aesthetics.
- You won’t compromise with your artistic imagination.
- You will more fully express your true self.
The tendencies which have led you down the wrong path are:
- Judging others.
- Judging your artistic works as being bad.
- Judging your artistic works as being good.
- Thinking about who would like or not like your creation and why.
- Seeking perfection.
- Seeking to make a masterpiece.
- Seeking to be better than the rest of the world.
- Comparing your work to the work of others.
A famous compose once told me that “composing music is very lonely work”. You may need to find the joy in the activity of creation. Composers do not typically have critics and judges surrounding them as they work. If you have the essence of any in your mind, write down their names on a little piece of paper and toss it in the trash.
Before beginning a single work, be sure that your mind is prepared.
Set your parameters of standards before beginning.
Look at your work as one of many thousands of works you will do, but not as the only one or the most important one.
Remove perfectionism and take away the permission to judge yourself or your work. You can no longer say that it is bad or good. It is neither. It is a work of art and art has latitudes.
Old bad habits are very creepy.
Old bad habits tend to creep back into your mind or your space.
When one comes around, show it to the door and close and lock the door. It is not allowed anymore.
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You will never be a critic and a great artist, without causing your art to suffer. _____________________________________________________
If you habitually criticize others, you will have the idea that criticizing is a normal thing. This opens some doors that need to be locked.
- You will think that criticism is normal.
- You will think that criticism is good.
- You will think that criticism is a strength.
Analysis Isn’t Criticism
You have your standards and you won’t compromise with them. You know what is “good enough” and you work above that as a habit, but you still must not judge it.
Analysis is not judgement.
Separating analysis and critiquing a work can be tricky at first.
You know there are rules in music theory. You know that the rules in music theory vary from one era to another or from one style to another. It’s not good or bad. It is about style and form and function.
Today is the best day to give yourself the freedom of expression without judgment.
Being insouciant does not mean that you don’t care, it means that you don’t worry.
Worry can be as severe as what we call anxiety. Anxiety is a feeling and may have many emotions attached to it, but it may not be the best place to be when composing music. An exception could be if it were an appropriate emotion within a composition done to evoke anxiety of fear in the listener.
Let go of self-loathing, self-judgment, and the loathing of others and the judgment of others.
Give yourself permission to be, to be yourself, and to do your composing with a clear mind.
Take each project as an experiment and as a learning experience and an opportunity to grow.
If you view writing as a practice, you will give yourself the necessary space to grow and to advance.
Keep the creepy creeps at bay and begin.