Weekly Soul. Week 13 - Voice
Today's meditation from Weekly Soul: Fifty-two Meditations on Meaningful, Joyful, and Peaceful Living by Dr. Frederic Craigie.
-13-
Sometimes you have to play a long time to be able to
play like yourself.
Miles Davis
I am a self-taught fiddle player. I think
of myself as “intermediate.” If you know traditional American music and heard
me play Whiskey Before Breakfast, you’d
probably at least recognize the tune, but you would not steer me in the
direction of a recording contract.
After many years of trying to find my own
way, I decided to take some lessons. Perhaps learning some of the foundational
aspects of fiddle playing—how to position and hold the instrument, how to grasp
and move the bow—would help me take it to the next level. I knew I didn’t want
violin lessons (yes, with some minor modifications: the “violin” and “fiddle”
are the same instrument, but the approach to music is worlds apart), and I
found a teacher who is a lover of old-time music and performer on fiddle and banjo.
While he has indeed given me some tips on mechanical issues, his main message
has been to relax and allow the music to come. Rather than approach music
note-by-note and try to make it sound like somebody else’s recording, first
hear the music as I want it to be, as it resonates with me, and relax into
allowing that music to come forth. I point out what a Zen approach this is, and
he smiles. Thich Nhat Hanh meets Alison Krauss! You still would not steer me
toward a recording contract, but at least the rendition of Whiskey Before Breakfast is now mine.
Making music brings me joy, but it is a
sidelight in the larger picture of how I occupy myself. Musical notes on a
foundation of spirit is an avocation; my vocation, on the same foundation of
spirit, involves words.
Similar to musicians, speakers, and
writers often talk about the evolution of their own Voice. I certainly see this
in myself. My early speaking was stiff and formal and my early writing, in the
places where psychologists write, faithfully adhered to writing standards but
was not very inspiring. “Commenting on earlier meta-analytic reviews, Smith and
Jones (1989) asserted that (blah blah blah)…” My early writing made for good
bedtime reading for people who had a hard time falling asleep.
I don’t believe I am now destined to win
any literary awards, but I do take great pride in having developed a clearer
and richer sense of who I am as a speaker and writer. I think of the way in
which I use words as a conversation with somebody else. How would I speak with
someone—with kindness, thoughtfulness, respect, compassion—one-on-one in my
office? I try to hold this idea in mind and speak in the same way, and write in
the same way. You will see, even in this reflection, elements of an informal
style that I hope you experience as a conversation with you. First person. Contractions.
Incomplete sentences. Ellipses. Stories. Humor—not Jay Leno, gentle and often
understated—but humor.
I gave a copy of my first book, several
years ago, to a colleague whom I had not at that point met in person. When we
finally got together, he commented that he came away from reading the book with
a sense that he knew me. High praise.
What does it mean to you to “play like
yourself?” How do you see yourself moving toward recognizing a unique voice
that you can share with the world?
Might your voice come to life in artistic
expression—your unique pottery, your unique cooking, your unique décor and
landscaping? Might your unique voice come to life in how you move in your
workplace and community as an advocate for the underserved or as an advocate
for outside-the-box that no one else has thought about? Or might your unique
voice come to life in how you relate to other people with kindness, with
directness, with humor or with countless other qualities that together form a
picture of who you are?
Recognize that the journey of being who
you are… becoming who you are… is a journey of recognizing your unique voice and coming to play like yourself.
Reflection
- How would someone who knows
you put into words what makes you uniquely yourself? This question, by the
way, would make for a good exercise: ask someone you trust, “I’ve been
reading this book and let me ask you a question; there’s this quotation
from Miles Davis…”
- How do you think you are
coming more to “play like yourself?” What does this mean to you, now?
- Notice times in the coming
week when what you say or do represents your own unique voice.
Author
Miles
Davis (1926-1991)
was an American jazz trumpeter, composer ,and band leader. He grew up in a
relatively affluent African-American family in East St. Louis, the son of a
music teacher and dentist. He was given his first trumpet by a patient of his
father’s, who also introduced him to the instrument and to the beginning
elements of style of play. Davis made his way to Julliard but dropped out to
perform full-time in the lively jazz scene in Harlem in the 1940s. During a 6-decade
career, he was noted for his continuing, pioneering stylistic innovations,
collaborating with and finding inspiration from many of the leading
improvisational musicians of the times, from his early mentor Charlie Parker to
more contemporary artists such as James Brown, Sly & The Family Stone, and
Jimi Hendrix. Davis led a turbulent personal life, challenged by drug
addiction, suffering failed relationships, and developing what his biographical
site calls “a seething streetwise exterior that later earned him the title,
Prince of Darkness.” Much of his work is iconic in the world of jazz, notably
the 1950 Birth of the Cool and the
1970 Bitches Brew. Davis won eight
Grammy awards along with widespread public recognition, including an honorary
Doctor of Music degree from the New England Conservatory of Music in 1986.
The quotation is reported both as “play
like yourself” and “sound like yourself.” I suspect that Davis phrased the idea
both ways multiple times.
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