On Quitting, part 2
learning how to move on
In the last installment, I talked about the moment in which I realized I didn't want to be a harpist anymore; that is, a harpist's harpist. If you're a harpist, you know exactly what I'm talking about. If you're not, this AI-generated image is what I had in mind:
I'd have a field day psychoanalyzing all the data points that went into creating this image, but I'll save that for another day (or you can read some of my early thoughts about harp and gender here 🥹). Nevertheless, the “harpist's harpist” refers to a specific disciplinary mindset—the perpetuation of a certain metanarrative, if you will—amongst professional harpists that I've found unsustainable, rigid, and frankly, boring. And it's not just amongst classical harpists; it's in the (classical) music industry, and it's definitely in music academia.
The problem with the disciplinary mindset is that it's inherently tied to scarcity mindset, which in turn creates a whole host of deeply unhealthy behaviors and beliefs. For example, the intense focus on mastery and specialization inevitably creates this notion that there has to be a GOAT. Unfortunately, superlatives are never inclusive.
My long/complicated experiences in the competition circuit taught me a long time ago that winning didn't actually mean you were the best. You were just the one whose performance the judges could agree on liking the most that day. Of course, that validation gives a huge confidence boost (less so a career boost…contrary to popular belief, winning a competition doesn't automatically translate into a successful career. Who knew. 🙄). The reality is that everyone at that festival, competition, or audition is already incredibly talented, but the message you get is that if you don't win the prize or the position, you're not actually talented enough and you just gotta work harder next time. That's the fucking meritocracy bullshit that classical music institutions have been preaching for a long time, despite nepotism (and all the confirmation biases that come with that) being one of their primary life sources. But! I'll stop complaining now and move on.
The point of this installment was to talk about how to quit those disciplinary/scarcity mindsets and shift to focus on finding what nourishes you. Or, to paraphrase something my friend Eunbi said: it's important to figure out what is the career you want, rather than the career you've been taught to want. Of course, there are a lot of practical implications to that statement—actually making money to support yourself, for example—but I think one's fundamental mindset sets the tone for how one goes about managing the practical stuff. In a capitalistic society, money has become such a hyperobject that we've reduced life to its monetary value. At the end of the day, currency is just one form of a means of exchange, and I'm a firm believer that it's possible for other forms to exist, or for there to be ways of providing the things we need to not feel disenfranchised (e.g., shelter, food, healthcare, etc.) without pulling out the figurative and literal wallet. But that's also its own topic for a different week.
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In January, I asked my entrepreneurship class, “What drives you?” I wanted to know what motivates them, and along those lines, what they are passionate about. Entrepreneurship literature valorizes passion, mainly because it's a sneaky way of convincing you to work all the time out of passion for whatever you're doing. However, articulating passion is important since it speaks to what one cares about and what one values. “What drives you?” is an externally facing question because it asks you to think about how you want to move about the world. It helps you consider what you're propelling yourself toward.
Here is an honest list of what drives me:
Being a good teacher and mentor to my students (which in reality is really intertwined with their accomplishments)
Having a successful performing career, i.e., being able to book enough solo/chamber concerts and get paid (well) for them, and building my reputation as a performer
Improving my own playing and challenging myself to learn new rep or take on difficult projects
Coming up with unique research/performance concepts that I can turn into writing or concert projects
The usual stuff: awards, grants, promotions, good press
Frankly, doing all these things is exhausting, and more so when I do them for the wrong reasons (e.g., filling my tenure portfolio, because I didn't know how to say no). It's interesting that “what drives you?” tends to yield task-oriented answers, which I suppose is helpful in providing structure for action. Strange, too, is that the idea of propelling yourself through the world is really about doing more and more specific things; your vision become more tunneled the more you hone in on your goal.
I have found myself closing myself off to radical possibilities of being and living the more focused I am on these driving career goals. For example, as I worry about how to build my performing career, I start obsessing with numbers: how many concerts I'm booking, how many people are attending, and how many contacts I know who might be interested in booking me. Perhaps it's simply that I lose perspective the more I think about implementation, but the consequences are important. In forgetting why I even want to perform—where to find the joy—each concert starts to feel like a gig that I just want to get over with. Over time, I start to value each performance based on whether it's propelling me somewhere, and then I suddenly feel like I've hit a wall.
That's when I know I need to move on and do something different(ly).
When I ask myself the other question—”What feeds you?”—I'm thinking about the things, the qualities, and the values that make me appreciate being alive. As someone who struggled with chronic depression in my teens and early twenties, figuring out how to appreciate being alive was an actual existential imperative. While it feels less dramatic now, I have to constantly remind myself all the time of why I am doing what I do, even when those actions don't lead to anything.
So, what have I discovered is nourishing?
Playing the harp just for the hell of it, e.g., just listening and experimenting with sound
Reading books that inspire lots of ideas, however impractical or idealistic, and giving myself space to develop those ideas
Having eminently serious and eminently silly conversations with friends
Meeting people who care deeply about creating better, safer spaces for young artists to thrive
Discovering awesome new music and/or making awesome music with kindred spirits
Watching my students develop confidence in their harp playing
Little things: fresh cut flowers, photos of my cats, a sunny day, insightful comments from my class
Specifically for those of us (e.g., musicians) who often combine business and pleasure, I'm not a fan of using leisure to repress toxic work culture (DeBord: “Work is only justified by leisure time”) in lieu of addressing what exactly is toxic about work. The point in these nourishing activities, whether they are 100% leisurely or work-adjacent, is that they intervene on aspects of our work/work mindset that have become unsustainable.
They're meant to be reassuring and to encourage playful discovery; oftentimes, those discoveries then change the trajectory—the drive—of my work. These activities (including writing this newsletter) also tend to be static encounters with ambiguous outcomes, but I focus on enjoying the process and thinking about what I've learned throughout it. I've had to learn that ambiguity is a really good thing, even when it is frustrating and gut-wrenching. When approached thoughtfully, it can lead to some of the most beautiful, profound moments in life.
Let me know what nourishes you in the comments section!
Hugs and kisses,
Noël
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And now for The Corner of Wondrous and Powerful
Listening: I'm on an amapiano kick right now and in love with “Lengoma” by DJ SBU & Zahara:
I've also been shamelessly listening to Usher's new album ("Good Good” is a GREAT song), and I have to point out that “Kissing Strangers” is exactly the kind of manufactured pop brilliance I am here for:
How did we go from strangers kissing to kissing strangers?
IMO, there's an entire narrative present in just the antimetabole “strangers kissing to kissing strangers,” but Patrick didn't get it, so maybe it's just me. 😔
Reading: I'm still finishing Joanna Russ's The Female Man and laughing aloud at the funny dry bits, like this one:
I know that somewhere, just to give me the lie, lives a beautiful (got to be beautiful), intellectual, gracious, cultivated, charming woman who has eight children, bakes her own bread, cakes, and pies, takes care of her own house, does her own cooking, brings up her own children, holds down a demanding nine-to-five job at the top decision-making level in a man's field, and is adored by her equally successful husband because although a hard-driving business executive with eye of eagle, heart of lion, tongue of adder, and muscles of gorilla (she looks just like Kirk Douglas), she comes home at night, slips into a filmy negligée and a wig, and turns instanter into a Playboy dimwit.
Watching: Patrick and I recently watched The City of Sadness, directed by Hou Hsiao-Hsien. I haven't studied Taiwanese history in depth, but I'm now very curious to learn more about the White Terror (the aftermath of which my parents would have experienced before they immigrate to the US in the 1980s).