4. Music-Mind : Hey Musician: Who Are You?
Naima Coltrane said of her then-husband, the genius saxophonist John Coltrane:
“He’s 90 % Saxophone”
One imagines a mix of admiration and frustration in this statement, perhaps a bit of sadness.
90 % of one thing leaves very little left for anything else.
Musicians tend to identify primarily as Musicians.
Despite the fact that we all occupy a host of roles and identities throughout our lives, some constant and some fleeting, if you ask a musician: “Who are you?”, usually the first thing that comes out is: “a saxophonist/singer/composer/pianist/bassoonist/drummer/…”.
Forget about all of the other possible sources of identity: “human/citizen/spouse/parent/child/subway-rider/nose-picker/chocolate-eater/....
The culture
musicians are
steeped in celebrates single-mindedness
and obsessive commitment.
It can be wonderful to be fully engaged in music. To be obsessed with it. To be deeply in love with it. Music is certainly worthy of this devotion.
It can be wonderful to identity whole-heartedly as a musician … unless (or until) it becomes a problem.
When “Musician” becomes a Problem
I come in contact with many musicians in my practice that have no sense of identity outside of music. This becomes problematic when:
They feel they never really chose to be a musician. They took on the identity of a musician early in life before they were capable of making major life decisions;
The musician-identity is a cage they feel increasingly entrapped in;
They can’t prolong the musician identity any longer, due to a career impediment (loss of work, injury, illness) or another need to step away from profession;
Music eats up too much of their lives, leaving behind a path of destruction in their relationships and crowding other important things out of their lives.
The musician-identity may have formerly been a helpful scaffolding that they could organize their lives around. The musician-identity could have been an enveloping and comforting cape that they could hide underneath. If that identity is endangered, the musician might experience a sense of dread, fear or emptiness:
What is there in me besides a “Musician”?
Who am I without the label “Musician”?
What can I do outside of music?
A fixed attachment to a narrow sense of self can lead to a great deal of suffering.
We hear a lot these days about identity.
A gripping encounter takes place in the film Tár: a thought- and emotion-provoking character study of a fictional conductor Lydia Tár.
There is a scene in which a young Juilliard student states : “As a BIPOC pangender person” he’s not into cis white male composers like Bach. Lydia Tár suggests that identity is a trap: and snaps back: “The narcissism of small differences leads to the most boring conformity”... “You’ve got to sublimate yourself, your ego, and… yes… your identity“.
Zethphan Smith-Gneist and Cate Blanchett in Todd Field’s film Tàr
Lydia Tàr’s rebuke brings up various issues surrounding the concept of self and identity.
What is the Self?
Simone de Beauvoir wrote: "Self-knowledge is not knowledge but a story one tells about oneself." In other words, we all construct a sense of self through a narrative that combines aspects of what we do, what happens to us and how we are perceived by others. This web of constructed stories could be called our identity, self-concept, personality.
The School of Life in London had an interesting way of describing personality :
From a Buddhist philosophical perspective, the idea of an individual self is illusory, as one cannot separate the self from its surroundings.
So, identity is a construction, prone to changes throughout the lifespan, not at all a monolithic and reductive one-word tag?
Whoa!
Thought experiment
Artist Louise Bourgeois:’ work: Cell (You Better Grow Up)
If one grew up in a cell, unable to interact in a meaningful way with the world and without contact to others, would one have a sense of “self” to speak of?
Probably not…
We need experiences and interactions with others in order to develop a sense of self.
Children develop a sense of their identities involving self-understanding, self-definition, and self-control between the ages of 7-11, the same time that many musicians are beginning to develop a sense of themselves as “Musicians”. These two developmental processes can become inextricably intertwined. Our identities can be shaped by the positive and negative experiences we encounter and the feedback we get from those whose opinions matter to us. It’s no wonder that many musicians cannot sense themselves outside of the identity of a musician. They’ve intensively lived into this identity for years, for most during the precious developmental stages of childhood and adolescence.
Widening the scope…
It takes courage and time to widen the scope of self.
It is a worthwhile undertaking, as NO ONE’S self can be reduced to one activity, no matter who lovely that activity might be. We are much more than we could ever describe. One word cannot encapsulate the richness of any given person’s being.
“Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)
”
Maintaining a fixed and narrow sense of self requires a lot of mental and emotional energy to uphold. Think of the physical sensation of grasping onto something, the exertion needed to maintain the grasp, and the resulting exhaustion and discomfort the longer the grasp is held. We, just like everything in our universe, tend towards entropy: disorganization, the disintegration of unifying and fixed structures. Instead of dreading this natural law, why not approach it with a sense of curiosity and wonder?
How one goes about widening the lens is a matter of personal choice. For many, anchoring in the body through somatic practices or meditation brings a groundedness, presence, breadth and a sense of perspective to the narrow confines of a rigid identity structure. For others, it’s going deep into self-exploration.
Let me leave you some words of the great Chilean pianist Claudio Arrau, who encountered a crisis at age 21 and credited psychoanalysis with saving his artistic life. His self-exploration tool of choice, psychoanalysis, may not be appropriate for all, but is one way of diving deep into the self, potentially as insightful as meditation or somatic practices.
(Note: psychoanalysis is a specific form of psychotherapy involving deep explorations of early, foundational experiences. My own work is more closely aligned with Systemic Therapy.)
“FRIENDS AND PUPILS often have heard me say that in my ideal music school, psychoanalysis would he a mandatory part of the general curriculum. That and the art of dancing. Psychoanalysis to teach a young artist the needs and drives of his psyche: to make him come to know himself early rather than late and thus sooner to begin the process of fulfilling himself, which until the end of his life must become his main driving force as a human being and as an artist. Indeed, only insofar as this will be his goal, his conscious or unconscious goal, will he grow as an artist and become worthy of the name….Only the most aware, the most intensely driven by the will to live and the courage to be, ever make it to full light and health.
Others flounder in a perpetual half light of suffering, the mind's real Purgatorio.”
Claudio Arrau