Simplicity and courage

One great problem that I have encountered during my studies and my musical life in general is a great lack of courage to do things, to do what I really want, to be who I really am. I tend to be very doubtful and scared of doing things that I don't feel comfortable with. If something doesn't go how I expected from the beginning, I quickly discard it and try to begin something else, maybe because I am afraid of all the amount of work it would take to actually make something good from the initial idea. It is a great problem, but not one without solution, and not one that is impossible to overcome. Now, I realized I have it, and it is time to work to improve it. 

It is a problem that also affects many other aspects of my life, I realize. The music is just a symptom of it. when meeting people, I am generally frightful of boring them, because I feel less than them, I feel not as interesting to them, as if I had nothing good or worthy to offer to them. This is of course not true, but a result of many years of bullying at school and being always regarded as the nerd of the class, who had no social life but just served as a kind of walking encyclopedia that could be consulted in case someone needed help to study for an exam at school or a good grade in a group work. Those times are long gone, I graduated 3 years ago already, but I still have this sensation from those days, the sensation that no one really cares about me, beyond the fact that I can be useful for academic purposes, and that, in social situations, I am boring and uninteresting. This is of course not true, it is just a feeling that I need to overcome, because it also relates to my approach to the process of composition. When I write something, I usually have little faith in it, I don't think of all the possibilities it could have as a musical idea because I never think it is good enough. This leads to me trying to look for more complex ideas that usually don't give good results, or I get lost in them and end up frustrated, not writing anything for weeks and feeling miserable and depressed because I supposedly want to be a composer but I cannot write a single bar of music. 

This is kind of like the composition/personal problem that I have encountered, and I think it is time to work on it.

Although I didn't talk about this directly with my teacher, I think he realized it as well, since he now is insisting that I should write music focusing on very few elements at a time. I like very much this approach, and I think it could be very useful to be more focused in the material I write, to be able to explore the possibilities of very simple ideas and turn them into more interesting music. I think this also applies to myself in a way, because I need to begin to see the potential I have to be sociable, to realize that people actually are interested in what I have to say, in my opinions as well. In the end, it is realizing that everything has value, that I am not less than the rest, that the music I write has the potential to become great music, or at least to express what I want to say. I think it will be a very interesting journey, and definitely one that will bring great things with it.

For now, I leave you with one of my favorite percussion pieces of all:

Edgar Varèse, Ionisation

Soloists from the Ensemble intercontemporain
Students from the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris
Susanna Mälkki, conductor