Breaking Down The House

I have a habit of burning myself out: what starts out as fun activity to do is quickly turned into something I must do. This is the dynamic of play turning into duty by way of discipline. With discipline as the frame within which all else is placed into context, life slowly loses its joy for me.

I think that ultimately this is because Discipline is a tool, so that basing one's self worth on the extent to which we adhere to it is misguided. I feel like I start building a house and get sucked into hammering nails. Eventually I lose sight of the house I intended to build and think that hammering nails is all that life's about.

It's only a matter of time until the entertainment factor of hammering fades away. Then I'll bang my finger and come to a full stop, wondering what the point of hammering nails for the sake of hammering nails is. The answer, of course, is that there is no point. One existential crisis later, I'll either remember all about the house I intended to build or be inspired by some other purpose.

I think I've found the right mindset to help me avoid this. First off, one's mission needs to be restated. In my case, one of my missions is to create music I love. So all my related activities have to be subsumed into this frame. To help me with this, I've taken the viewpoint that practice is a slow form of the creative process.

Would it have been possible for Picasso to draw without paint? Art has practical considerations that need taking care of. And since art cannot exist independently of these practicalities, it's easier to see how one is part of the other. Naturally one can then argues that every activity - from studying to defecating - has a place on this continuum. What's more, one wouldn't be wrong. However the point here is not to argue the oneness of everything but rather to return practice and discipline into their appropriate spot upon this continuum of activity with artistic expression as its purpose.

Another viewpoint I've adopted in parallel is to recognise that the attempt at creating something is a form of practice. In fact, it is probably the single most important (viz. effective) form of practice. Looking at things this way has taken the pressure off writing and songwriting. It's as if I'm building a house but know that this isn't the house I'll live in - so I'm free to make mistakes, to tear it down and rebuild if I must.

This reduction in pressure, in turn, makes space for playfulness to emerge. I feel free enough to experiment, to make silly mistakes, to accept inadequacies I do not know how to correct at this point in time. And herein lies the benefit of practice, because it is through this process that I will learn to correct deficiencies, to see new ones I hadn't perceived before and to imagine new possibilities previously shrouded by a lack of skill.