There is a long period of time I spent cultivating something that I rarely engage in these days: breakdancing and playing music. From fifth grade to early college days I dedicated myself to the art of breakdancing. I loved the ability to move my body in this wickedly cool way, and this feeling of progression that I got was amazing. I wasn’t able to do a move, but then I’m able to after a lot of reps!
I stopped breakdancing because there were some moves I really wanted to do but I couldn’t because of my weight. I tried to lose weight in so many different ways, including binge eating and purging, but I couldn’t be as lean as a professional breakdancer.
Around the time I stopped breakdancing, I started playing music. I learned how to play the guitar in high school but it was just a nice skill to have; something clicked in me and I started pursuing music a bit more seriously. I played in bands and started getting a mentor in music production to produce some pop music.
I loved playing music. Music was this refuge for me when my life was so depressing and desolate. But the more I loved playing music, the more I wanted to make my own music. Here’s where the biggest problem came in: I couldn’t bear to listen to what I created. It all sounded so basic and bland.
And here’s the thing I just couldn’t understand. Music theory makes so much sense to my logical brain, and analyzing how a song’s songwriting process fits like an exact puzzle was such a satisfying experience.
But what about songs that defied theory? For example, the Radiohead song Creep starts with a crazy paradox: the chord goes from G - B - C - Cm. There is no scale where this makes sense and I’m sitting here thinking, what the fuck?
How can a song contain both the major and minor chords of the same root? Since this sounds so cool, I tried to incorporate it into my own songs but when I did it, it just sounded like a cacophonous pile of poop.
Couldn’t I just stick to simple songwriting using pentatonic notes and blues chords? At the time I was so prideful and for some reason thought I was better than those basic concepts. So not only was I too good for the basics, I was also too bad for the rule breaking methods.
Did I even have the patience and discipline to work on technique? No, I got frustrated by the fact that I couldn’t do sweep picks or clean tremolo pickings. Now that I’m thinking back, what the fuck did I like? I think I liked working on the things I could do to make it sound a bit better, or have something slightly beyond my reach so I can work towards them.
In this music-obsessed era where I literally dreamt of making music, I read this book by the bassist Victor Wooten: 'The Music Lesson: A Spiritual Search for Growth Through Music'. This is an excellent spiritual book I’d recommend to anyone, and there’s a particular passage here that speaks of the exact topic I was frustrated with.
When you play a lot of music, especially on a single note instrument like the bass, there are moments of mistouch that lead you to play the “wrong” note. But no matter what the “wrong” note is, depending on how you progress with that note it can become the right note. When you provide enough context, there is no such thing as a wrong note. Here he is, explaining it in action:
I thought this was a cool idea but I lacked the patience and discipline I have now to pursue music deeper. I stopped playing and I sold my instruments when I got fired from work. I even stopped listening to music and many years later, here I am.
It’s been around 600 days since I started my practice of Buddhism. Now I have the patience, focus, and the stamina required of me to do a lot of things in life. And in this state I randomly came across this channel on YouTube called OpenStudioJazz, where they teach you how to play jazz.
This video is a simple explanation of how you can transition from C major to F major. The crazy thing is, it’s such a simple repetitive pattern of going from one chord to another but there are almost infinite ways to achieve the goal.
Some transitions sound pleasant and expected because they’ve been used frequently in popular music but other transitions sound AWFUL at first in isolation. Then this magical next step happens and suddenly it doesn’t sound so awful. That’s the power of contextualization in action. Having so many examples of this in one video really helped me understand the concept.
I gave up on my dream because I was too good for it and I didn’t have the patience to wait for me to catch up to my own delusional grandeur. What about you? Do you have dreams you gave up on, or are in the verge of giving up on?
My realization after all these years is that the love and passion for one thing and the suffering that comes from self-loathing of not being your ideal state today are separate things. Don’t let your dreams die because of your ideas about yourself.