Want

“It sounds like you just didn’t want to do it.” My teacher, Daniel Ching, said this after I hemmed and hawed over flaking out last minute on two local orchestra auditions. I felt guilty (I still feel guilty): I should have taken those auditions. When they were posted, I was excited to get to work on the excerpts and somehow that feeling didn’t sustain me for longer than a few days. I chased my motivation down several rabbit holes and ended up renovating my left hand technique instead, moving my left thumb closer to its resting position in the center of my hand instead of next to my first finger. A more worthy goal, perhaps? Maybe, maybe not; it was just what I wanted to do most.

We do what we want to do, us humans, often in spite of dire consequences. We have affairs, eat things we know they shouldn’t, spend time compulsively checking Facebook when we have auditions we should be preparing for, proceed to not take said audition. Usually there’s shame afterward, masturbatory self-flagellating about our lack of discipline, focus, ambition. And yet, there’s a payoff to being stuck: I didn’t have to take two auditions I wasn’t passionate about and besides, auditioning kind of sucks. Each of of the “shoulds” that I’ve tortured myself with periodically, (should be auditioning, should be going on dates, should be exercising) have good reasons not to go through with them (auditioning can be expensive and the rejection feels swift and arbitrary, people can be awful and their rejection feels swift and arbitrary, the gym is far away and I’d have to put on pants). Accepting and surrendering to these rationalizations feels safe, calming, relaxing, avoidant; I didn’t have to do the thing that I didn’t really want to do.

It’s illogical to want to move out of our comfort zones. Our brains can rationalize any behavior, good or bad, as long as there’s a payoff. It’s illogical to want to move forward. In order to do these ambitious projects, in many ways logic has to be cast aside. Should we then justify decisions as “Well, it’s what I wanted to do the most”?

My “logic brain” shuts down much of my ambitious thinking as impractical. Maybe it’s self-doubt masquerading as logic (If that’s the case, woof, more therapy). Whatever’s the root of it, eventually it analyzes it enough for it to become unreasonable. I’ve had to virtually disregard it as a factor in my decision making and instead think, “What would I regret?” This odd emotional sea that I often feel adrift in has been a consistently better cue for growth and change than my rational, educated brain.

I sometimes get paralyzed by these contradictions of my own ambition and motivation. I recently caught up with a friend and told her about a goal of mine to give an unaccompanied recital, an hour of repertoire alone, Turner+Violin. She’s a wonderful friend; she said, “Yes!!! Absolutely!!! Of course!!!” and then “What’s stopping you??” I dove into my reasons why not: it’s hard, I want to take orchestra auditions (do I really want to take orchestra auditions?), I need a long time to learn all this repertoire, it’s hard…..

“I would never go on a second date with someone I couldn’t see myself marrying.” A friend told me this over coffee a decade ago and it rattled my brain ever since.
My least favorite thing about going on dates is listening to a stranger explain why they’ve resigned themselves to certain realities about their lives. The loneliest I’ve ever felt has been sitting across from someone telling me why they couldn’t possibly do the one thing they want to do most, then realizing there’s about a hundred things (Travel! Take that audition! Try that new restaurant! Learn that new piece!) that I talk myself out of doing everyday. Why don’t we do those things? What is it? What’s the reason we tell ourselves no?

Money is a good reason to talk yourself out of doing things you want to do. I recently made a rule for myself re: auditioning. “Turner, you can’t take an audition until you’ve paid off the one before it!” I like this rule!!! It promotes habits about spending that I value and if only our country could follow my example and stop racking up debt!!! Well, I broke that rule at the first opportunity that presented itself.

“To what extent do you recommend your students take out loans and accumulate debt to support their education and musical careers in a competitive profession that suffers from having clear career paths?” I asked this question years ago in a guest artist master class and brought the room to a screeching halt.

There are consequences to breaking rules, especially the ones you invent for yourself. There are the ones in my audition preparation that I obsess about (tempo, intonation, rhythmic integrity) and the obvious consequences of not following those rules in that setting. There the technical regimens my students make for themselves, the consequence of spending lesson time on it until it’s correct. A drop in credit score, more fastidious spending, not spending money on liquor and coffee, for one.

And yet, I don’t regret breaking that rule I made for myself. The two auditions went an enormous way toward pointing my work in the direction demanded of me. I solved a million tiny things about myself and my work and replaced them with even more. It was absolutely worth the invest in my potential. The problem with marrying your rules is that you eventually divorce them and realize how arbitrary they were in the first place. You marry someone you had a terrible first date with, you win an audition you didn’t think you would, you gamble on your potential and win. We have to want something enough to choose in spite of logic or a rule we’ve made in order to mitigate risk and control the chaos inherent to our artistic spirit.