Author | Xenia Hanusiak
Translated by | Ziqi
Review | Lemona
Source | Neuro reality (ID: neureality)
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Effort is the soundtrack of our lives. Psychologists, philosophers, and behavioral scientists may seem to have different approaches, but they all use the same routine to coax us into trying: for achievement, for wealth, for happiness. Our actions must be fast and slow, focusing on the overall situation while paying attention to details; we must remain calm and nervous; we must eat more, eat less, dance more, and sleep more; we must never be satisfied, and we must be satisfied with the status quo; we must practice for ten thousand hours, or we must not practice at all; we must think deeply, develop habits, use intuition, and simply live Buddhist life and return to the original heart.
Who doesn't want to have the perfect lifestyle? But every once in a while, as we pursue every ambition, there will be a rebellious voice shouting: Enough! Can't we stop succeeding? Can't stop striving for excellence? The answer is yes, but to do that, we have to embrace our amateurs.
I recently learned how to really enjoy my hobbies while listening to a record, and I've been practicing this new way ever since. The record recorded etudes by the American minimalist composer Philip Glass and was performed by simone Dinnerstein, a pianist also from the United States. Their performances inspired me to jump straight off the couch and I couldn't help but put my fingers on the piano for the deep poetry that moved me in the performance. Etudes are a form of composition that specifically tests the skills of musicians, so Glass set out to write these 20 etudes with a clear purpose of perfecting his piano skills. Thus, Grass actually composed the music from the perspective of an amateur.
- Cyril Rolando -
The way I learn music is through hours of hard practice. Throughout my childhood, I practiced scales and etudes desperately every morning. Every week in class, I anxiously waited for the teacher's affirmation of the tick or the reprimand of the black cross. I don't have any happy memories and haven't experienced any sense of engagement or accomplishment. I only remember two mindsets at the time: did I succeed or fail? If my teacher (and myself) had realized at the time that I was just an amateur, my life of suffering might have ended sooner.
In the kingdom of music, amateurs who cannot recognize their own standards generally only invite humiliation. Consider Florence Foster Jenkins, the eccentric American soprano and socialite who aspired to be an opera singer — a character played vividly by Meryl Streep in Stephen Frears' 2016 biopic.
In 1944, the 76-year-old, five-tone amateur booked Carnegie Hall in New York, sang the grandest aria of all the repertoire— the kind that only the most experienced singers would dare to sing — and, unsurprisingly, received disastrous reviews. A month later, she died of a sudden illness, but she had achieved her ambitions. Those ambitions may be beyond her talents, but how to measure success is not the point. If you've seen Streep's big smile in the film, you can clearly receive the message that Foster Jenkins experienced far more personal pleasure (as an amateur singer) than the public inflicted on her (such as humiliating her for being unskilled). However, the "amateur" among artists and celebrities is still a concept of modernity.
Although the distinction between the so-called dilettante and the professional is archaic, it was not until the 18th century that the term "amateur" began to be widely used in the English language. In The Republic, volume III, Plato's discussion of music education hints at the existence of amateurs in addition to professionals. For Aristotle, the height of performance skill was to the point where even students could appreciate it—nothing more. If only this ancient wisdom could be passed on to Foster Jenkins.
Amateurs have always had a place in society. C.P. E Bach (son of J.S. Bach) explicitly excluded the professionals from his 1779 sonata für Kenner und Liebhaber (Connoisseur and Enthusiast). In the Victorian era, playing the piano was an achievement unique to women, that is, as a "family art", playing the piano allowed them to marry better. The first english reference to the concept of amateur appeared in the Universal Dictionary of Arts, Sciences and Literature and was defined as "a recently popular imported word that indicates that someone understands, loves, or practices elegant sculpture or architecture without regard to monetary gain."
More than a century later, the French theorist and philosopher Roland Barthes argued in a similar way:
Amateurs participate in painting, music, sports, science, not for mastery or competition... He mastered these superficial skills without any purpose: directly defined (results) skills in music, painting, etc...
However, Barthes not only defined the amateur, but also personified the character. After his death, in His 1981 book The Grain of the Voice, we learned from his interviews that Barthes, a student, practiced J. S. Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier to help him recover from tuberculosis. His autobiography, Roland Barthes, also writes that he records his piano practice every day to strengthen his memory. Barthes practiced a few pieces, but in his list of "favorite things", he listed Handel, the Canadian pianist Glenn Gould, the piano, all the Romantic music, and the overly cold beer and the Three Marx Brothers*. If Barthes can lead us back to the concept of amateurs, then we should also re-understand the role of practice—not to try to be the best, but to achieve the sense of accomplishment that comes with practice, regardless of success or failure.
*Translator's Note
The Marx Brothers, a famous 20th-century Hollywood comedy star group that included Groucho, Harpo and Chico Marx.
The key to hobby art is to know your abilities and be aware of the limits of what we pursue. As amateurs, once we stop pursuing goals, we can focus on the psychology of optimal experience. Journalist Ariel Gore associates it with happiness:
When we perform an activity, when we find the balance between its challenge and our ability to execute it, feel that the rhythm of the work itself is in sync with our pulse, and know that the matter makes sense, we can enter a state of total concentration. This is happiness.
Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi elaborated on the psychology of optimal experience in theory of flow, and his major books on it include Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience.
Amateurs don't intend to play four-part fugues off-the-beaten-track, nor do they intend to appear at Carnegie Hall like Foster Jenkins—they get an immersive experience and a sense of accomplishment by focusing entirely on the music at hand. This experience can help us understand the preciousness of time and the importance of deliberate concentration.
Our daily lives have placed too much emphasis on competition, ambition and deadlines. Therefore these pressures should not be repeated in our hedonistic lives. The pleasure you get from your hobbies allows you to discover beauty from simplicity – by setting smaller goals and finding aesthetics in them, as well as the wonder of the touch and the release of the keys, as well as the emotions contained in the sound. Focusing on, actively enjoying (and indulging in) music (although this may happen only once in a few bars) or playing a piece of music that really takes us to our own spiritual world, we can open up pleasant conversations. As Daniel Levitin writes in Order: The Organized Mind:
In the flow state, you are fully engrossed, fully engaged, and focused all your attention on a limited area of perception. Action and consciousness will merge. Thus, despite the inability to master Chopin's waltz, a sense of accomplishment still prevails.
Being the master of an inner amateur does not require sacrificing one's inner desire to play difficult music. It simply means that you will be the guardian and narrator of your own struggles.
For many amateur musicians, the critical patterns and hierarchical relationships between teachers and students are devastating. Students begin to become disconnected from the music itself, and even more with themselves. Here, I am reminded of Joni Mitchell's experience with piano lessons. In an article in The New York Times, Lindsay Zoladz recalled Mitchell's words: "I play for my piano teacher... She used a ruler to twitch my wrist as I played from auditory memory... She said, 'You can pop up just by looking at the scores written by the masters, so why play by ear?' The young Mitchell (Joan Anderson at the time) replied, "Well, the masters also had to play those pieces by ear before they could make those pieces." That was her last piano lesson.
I came to realize that on any given day, the time I spent practicing the piano might be the only private time I could have. The practice made me more aware that I was alone with myself and was mastering the experience. I was able to engage and be active in the experience, no longer passively, but actively involved myself. Then, all of a sudden, I realize that I'm not alone at all. The piano became my other half.
The exercise brings a sense of intimacy, a mindful moment where we can cut and paste it into our daily lives. Once we realize that the practice is not the end result, our ego disappears and we can therefore experience it with full immersion. Chiksenmiha describes this state as an autotelic (purposeful) experience in itself. The word is derived from the Greek words "autos" (self) and "telos" (target). Therefore, our inner amateurs are self-directed. As Aristotle reminded us, amateur musicians define their own goals and pleasures (rather than being led by the nose by universal high standards).
Perhaps it's time to revise the adage that "practice makes perfect" — in recent years, Malcolm Gladwell, in The Outliers: The Story of Success, argues that a hundred thousand hours of practice will guarantee you mastery in almost any field. But what if we reversed the conditions according to the amateur's cognition and began to practice in a fearless, spontaneous, engaged, and lively way of expression? It doesn't mean we abandon standards and repetitions, but just relieves us of the anxiety of quantifying the results of our exercises. In such moments, we can communicate with the lyrical self.
However, you may not have the same experience of playing the piano as I do. Your area of interest may be baking, weaving, painting or graffiti. In any case, it gives you a captivating enjoyment with a supreme aesthetic experience: the rustling of a brush on paper, or the gentle rhythm of kneading and dough. The mindfulness and awareness you gain in these moments is likely to increase your sense of accomplishment a thousandfold. The destructive emotions of success or failure will slip away, and the word "practice" will be replaced by "happy.".
Ever since I rekindled the "love fire" between me and the piano and dug into my inner amateur, I found a quiet room of my own. My piano became a silent witness. Thinking of Ada, the mute heroine in Jane Campion's film Piano (1993), and the determination and redemption that the piano brings to her, perhaps, the piano has even become my voice.
This article is from the WeChat public account "Neural Reality", welcome to pay attention.
Editor: Aero
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