Author: mirain

A musician’s ego trap

A musician’s ego trap

Our egos are shaped during early childhood. During the early stages, we build our inner worlds through interactions with our environment and our immediate family members. Over time this inner world develops into an intricate model of reality that are projected onto our environment through the filters of our ego. Our ego is our identity and it influences how we relate to and interact with other people and our environment. As egocentric individuals, we perceive the ego to be our true nature.

Coming to terms with my own ego has been humbling as well as mortifying. As an independent artist and musician in the early stages of my career, I have been faced with some of my deepest fears and core beliefs. I have also come to realize the wounds of my own ego and the driving force behind what often motivates me.

As many studies have shown, most musicians are highly sensitive people. For some, it stems from a difficult background that shaped them into highly sensitive beings with a desperate need to escape the harshness of reality through music which is the only means of truly expressing the complex emotions and sensations they are experiencing every day. According to studies, many performers are highly sensitive people with contradicting extroverted stage personalities.

For me, this is my story. I grew up in a hostile environment which made me highly sensitive to the emotions and behaviour of other people. I’m always on alert and experience my environment as intense and overwhelming. Sounds are loud and sometimes even unbearable. Light can be intrusive. Strangers seem overwhelming and threatening. I long for silence and solitude. Nature is my sanctuary.

Throughout my childhood and early adult years, I was the scapegoat in my family. This has shaped me into an ideal target for bullies. Playing the piano and learning about music was the only thing that was non-threatening. Music was a world where I could be playful and have total control of the outcome. I could connect and express my emotions without being scolded. It was an escape from pain, confusion and disappointment. I would remind myself that even though I was being bullied, at least I have a skill, something no one can take away from me. This was fuel for my wounded ego and I became arrogant and even more egotistical.

As a child, I would blatantly and overtly express my egotistical confidence. This has led to numerous disappointments and reality checks. As an adult, I’ve learned to internalize these arrogant expressions into shameful thought patterns which has manifested into constant inner conflict. Shame has become my most prominent lens through which I perceive others and my environments which has lead to self-sabotaging patterns.

For a musician with a wounded ego, every gig is crucial, every person you meet is a potential opportunity. You measure your worthiness as a musician to every like and follow on social media, the number in your audience, feedback and criticism, and every rejection. You are constantly in battle with your own fears and inner voice saying you are not good enough, you will never make it, and you are kidding yourself. Instead of writing music or creating art from a place of inspiration and creativity, motivation is driven by fear. When you see other musicians thriving and being supported by their followers you are motivated by jealousy. After every milestone, you fear not being able to top what you have already done. You constantly fear failure and the emptiness after you have failed and lost your identity as an artist.

My worthiness as a person was built on a belief that having a talent or a skill is the only thing that makes life worth living. Fortunately, I have had experienced failure and losing everything I have worked hard for when I decided to move to Taiwan and start over. When I realized my worst fear had come true, that I am a failed artist and musician, I also came to realize that I am worthy without my talents and skills. At the bottom of that ego pit, I discovered my true self, a silent and observing self that has always been there. This self is accepting, loving, kind and has a deep knowing that I am whole and connected. I discovered that creativity and inspiration are an abundant source we can choose to tap into. We are all inherently creative beings.

With the help of numerous catalystic events and a few informative psychedelic experiences, I have become more connected to my inner stillness. At the same time, I have been exposed to my egoistic ways and how I am constantly comparing myself to others. My ego is either placing others on a pedestal while putting itself down, or arrogantly putting itself on a pedestal by judgmentally comparing it to others. The latter happens more frequently. In other words, my ego inflates itself whenever it feels deflated and threatened.

I have also become aware of the fragility of my own ego as a musician. I have realized that my own self-doubt, performance anxiety, jealousy, stage fright, disappointments, placing my worth in the hands of my followers and audience is all part of my wounded ego. It is not sustainable. It is a brittle foundation to build a career on. It is not worth it. It’s a path that leads deeper into ego-centrism and breeds narcissism, ultimately causing more pain.

My message to you is: there is a place for the ego. A healthy and strong ego can be a powerful tool on the journey of personal development. It’s a useful tool that can be used to interact with society and find your unique contribution as an artist. The key is to stay humble and always question your own beliefs and fears, reflect on your own reactions towards your environment and others, as well as your motivations and driving force behind the decisions you make. I have also come to realize my purpose. My purpose is not to be a musician or an artist, my purpose is to get to know myself and become aware of my twisted and frail perception of reality that I have created and accepted as truth.

Performance anxiety and post-production depression

With every performance comes a circus full of untamed monkeys and a tiger with anger issues. Performance anxiety and post-production depression is a thing! As an independent artist (and musician), organizing shows and exhibitions are fucking exhausting. Nonetheless, I have found that being a performer is the most effective tool for self-actualization. For me, at least.

For a performance to realize, it takes hours of rehearsal, self-doubt, and procrastination. Not even to mention nightmares about disastrous shows caused by performance anxiety, copious amounts of Bach’s Rock Rose remedy to manage stage fright followed by emptiness and depression. However, that brief moment on stage is golden! After a few deep breaths and several shaky notes, everything makes sense again. I feel a sense of purpose, connection and a flow of energy between me and the audience that can only be described with one word, i.e. otherworldly.

With this being said, I learn something new about myself with every milestone I reach. Taking an idea and following it through until the end (or deciding not to follow it through) is an opportunity to grow. Following your dreams no matter how bizarre they might be, going against popular demand, and pushing yourself beyond your limits and beliefs are a means to go deeper within yourself, understanding what it means to be human and what your purpose is.

I’ve learned that “going with the flow” doesn’t mean rainbows and sunshine. It means flowing with the natural rhythm of the universe. What goes up must come down. The deeper the roots go, the higher the tree grows. It is impossible to keep grinding and pushing upward towards our perceived ideas of success without falling back down flat on our backs. Going with the flow means to accept that expansion comes with retraction.

As an artist and performer, I’ve learned to hold space for the fears and anxieties that come with every decision and action I need to take to move forward. The fears that keep us from moving forward are there to teach us something about ourselves. It takes vulnerability and courage to move through them. I’ve learned to slow down after every performance and accomplishment to reflect and most importantly, to integrate what I have learned.

I’ve learned to hold space for exhaustion, emptiness, and fears after every performance. I take time for self-care, my home and the “mundane adult-things” in life as well as my loved ones as those are the people and things supporting me on my journey to self-actualization. I’ve also come to terms with my own distorted ideas about what it means to be successful.

The reason I’ve written this blog post is to give you a message. My message to you is: you are OK! You are exactly where you need to be. We don’t need to keep grinding ourselves to accomplish our goals to prove our worthiness. Instead of asking yourself: “Am I doing okay?”, rather ask: “What do I need to do in order to be the best me and serve humanity?”

Artist-musician: Collecting images for piano compositions.

A playful exhibition at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum made me contemplate my process as an artist-musician. The exhibition titled “Collections and so on” is an interactive installation which invites viewers to participate and contribute to the outcome of the exhibition. Viewers can interact with the exhibition through assembling a number of personal belongings on an allocated surface. A picture can then be taken by pressing a huge red button mounted into the counter top. Once the image is processed, your collection forms part of a series of images projected on a screen during the exhibition.

The items assembled for my “collection” included most of the gadgets I use to gather source material when I go hiking and explore in nature. My collection include; a notebook and pen, a smartphone (which I used to take the image), a mini tripod (not included is a selfie stick I can mount on top of the mini tripod and a clip-on wide angle lens for smartphones), a USB cable and adapter, a 5000 power bank with an extra USB cable, a USB for extra storage and a set of headphones.

Over the years, I have learned to constructively deal with intense emotions by immersing myself in nature. The combination of exercise and beautiful natural surroundings create a space where I can easily work through these emotions. In the process, I project my emotional state onto the landscape. To make sense of these emotions, I make connections between my emotional state and natural elements or phenomena in nature through associations and metaphors.

Nature invigorates me. The natural flow in nature always reminds me to stay in the moment. I seek wisdom and comfort in nature. Trees grounded steady while swaying in the wind, teaches me about the ambiguity of personal growth. Water flowing gracefully sometimes viciously, teaches me about the flow of equanimity. Seasonal changes, life and death, light and dark, all represents the binary nature of being human. Opposites intrigue me.

I try to capture natural elements or phenomena in nature through video and photographic images. The gadgets I use are easy to manage when I go hiking and fit comfortably in my small backpack. Even though a sufficient outdoor camera will provide better quality, I prefer using my smartphone at the moment. Images and videos are spontaneously captured as I actively yet mindfully explore nature. I try to capture my surroundings as close as possible to how I perceive it when I make mental and emotional connections.

The visuals represent elements or phenomena in nature that correlates with my inner state and emotions. Besides making mental associations, emotions are being translated through music on the piano. Through a combination of video and piano compositions emotions are conveyed. As a performer, I am interested in the “transmission” of emotions between images and music as well as the “exchange” of meaning between live performance and an audience.

The “gadgets” in the photograph above (with the title ‘processing’) represent processes which begin with an emotional state. The emotions are then made comprehensible through a cognitive process. The mental association are processed through music composition and performance. Essentially, it is about making the inner world transparent. It is about turning the inner towards the outside, bringing the inner chaos to the surface and rearranging in into a comprehensible whole.

For me, these processes are never concluded. It will always be in process, in-between, moving back and forth, stuck between performer and audience. Perhaps this “in-between processing” is the correlation between opposites. It is never the one or the other; it is always the one becoming the other.

[embedyt] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Be6ncrn2Zwc[/embedyt]

Why I am not an artist anymore.

A few months ago I gave up on the notion of being an artist (or musician). The reason why I want to share my decision of letting go of the label “artist” is to open a discussion on what it means to be an artist. Maybe you have had similar experiences and I invite you to share your thoughts.

I studied art with the idea of becoming a professional artist. As many of you know, it is extremely difficult to be a self-sustainable artist in a socio-economic driven society. After I completed a Master’s degree, I was employed at a private school as an art and music teacher. I decided to become a teacher with the hope that I could become financially independent and pursue my career as a practicing artist-musician.

After a few years, I realised that my productivity and creativity were subsiding. I felt depleted and visionless. My energy, time and money were being sucked into this teaching job. I became a battery plugged into the system as some narcissistic asshole were gaining all the benefits. In the meanwhile, my dreams were being flushed down a toilet. Desperately clinging to the last strand of hope, I knew I had to make a drastic change.

A friend of mine mentioned teaching TEFL in Asia. The salary and working hours seemed reasonable as I would be able to work, save money, pay off outstanding debt and have enough free time to create art. Besides, the challenge of living in a foreign country seemed to be the ideal opportunity to break from stagnation and grow as an artist. After some hefty contemplation, I decided to take the plunge.

As I didn’t know how long this foreign endeavour would last and I needed the financial backing, I sold and gave away most of my belongings. Surprisingly, it wasn’t hard to let go of my generous accumulation of stuff. I sold all of my homeware, furniture, plants, equipment, tools and even my piano. I kept all of my books (which I am not ready to let go of yet), some art materials, my laptop, clothes and a small box with sentimental items. Getting rid of all these things felt liberating and promising.

After the huge transition and initial culture shock, I felt terribly anxious. I still wasn’t making art or writing music. In fact, I had no studio, tools or musical instruments. Even worse, I was detached from the art community and connections I had in my home country. I was paranoid that I might be sabotaging my career and that my worst fear would realise. I was afraid of becoming a failed artist.

Within this uncertainty I found stillness. I asked myself: Why is the idea of “making it” so important to me? Why do I feel worthless as an artist if I am not “selling” or being recognized by others as a “good” artist? Why do I connect my worthiness to success? It was then that I realised that all these ideas are only attachments. These ideas are created by a society of what we think things should be. Fuck it. If these ideas make me anxious and paranoid, then fuck it. Fuck the institutions, fuck the organisations and fuck the system. Fuck the definitions and fuck the labels. Within this uncertainty, I realised possibility and a potential to reinvent myself.

The making of art didn’t vanish completely. For the last year, I have been drawing mandalas almost every day. I discovered mandalas a few years ago when I did research on projects for my private students I had at the time. Eventually, mandalas became a means for me through which I could centre myself when anxiety, frustration, and self-doubt took hold of me. It is through the making of mandalas that I began to understand the potential and power of creativity. I began to understand that we create from our soul and that we are all creative beings. I don’t need to label myself as an artist or musician to be able to create. I don’t need accomplishment or recognition to be an artist. I am not an artist, I make art. I am essentially a creative being and I need to learn how to create for myself without judgement and the need for acknowledgement.

On this journey of reinvention, I have learned that the reason why most of my creative endeavours haven’t flourished is because it sprouted from weak and unnourished soil. It grew out of fear and were being sustained by negative energy. If I want to develop a creative practice that is self-sustaining, it should be built on a strong foundation. I should be grounded from within. I have to trust the source of energy that inspires creativity, I have to trust myself.