the sandpit

6/05/24, 'inherent goodness'

I said this to a student recently -

“Just play in the sandpit”.

I keep coming back to this metaphor, lately.

The more I teach, the more I realise that the struggle of ‘breaking the rules’ is surface level, hiding something deeper. Struggling to break the rules is more of a symptom. At the root exists as an intense fear of judgement. If we follow set rules, we will get it ‘right’, right? But in art, there is no ‘right’, there is only expression and self-discovery.

I said, “I can teach you technical exercises, but this is not a technical issue. This a mind issue. Somewhere in your past, you were judged harshly, and now you are terrified of making mistakes.”

My student said he was struggling with playing in the sandpit to watch each particle float away, never able to recreate the same sandcastle again. He said he was struggling with capturing and recreating songs. At first, I told him to buy a ‘dictaphone’, or use his iPhone. I said I love recording jams to pick them apart later, thinking, ‘what worked? which bit do I like?’.

Then, in a lightbulb moment, I asked him, “why do you need it to be the same every time?”.

I used to love rules, even though I didn’t really know any. I made up rules for myself, as rules ‘ruled’ my life. I only knew the world through the lens of limitations. It’s only after jamming with a band for ten years that I truly understand the magic of mistakes.

I also spoke to my student about ‘flow state’. My Mum taught me about this. Named by the psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi in 1970, flow state is the process of being totally immersed in whatever it is your doing. Can you be in a flow state if you worry about mistakes?

I told my student that in order to achieve ‘flow state’, maybe the music has to be unre-creatable.

I told him to 'catch the thoughts’. When we’re afraid to do something, a million thoughts will flood into our minds, little trojan horses that we think are there to help us, are going to prepare us, but inside the horses lie…self-sabotage. Why?

Because we are afraid to fail, so we don’t even want to begin.

I always say now, in every lesson, “there is no judgement in this room”. From all my training, I just don’t think fear is a useful motivator. Fear only ever stopped me from practicing.

You have to have compassion for yourself and understand why you want to learn something. If it’s to impress other people, you’ll eventually fail.

If it’s to play in a sandpit, you’re set for life.

I wrote a song about seeing someone I was initially afraid of as their child-self in a sandpit before Christmas, begging them to be a child again, and play. The song itself makes me bawl my eyes out, even though I believe this person has now ‘split’ on me.

“Splitting is a type of black-and-white thinking. It causes a person to perceive others — or even themselves — as all good or all bad. These perceptions may shift rapidly. People engage in splitting because they have conflicting emotions about something or someone they find difficult to manage or intolerable.”

And in response to that person’s harsh judgement? Very recently, in this past week, I’ve been reading about ‘inherent goodness’ and the idea that your self-worth is held within. I read on Lisa Olivera’s substack:

Your truest essence — the core of who you truly are — arrived with you on the day you were born and has never been eroded, erased, or damaged. It may feel hidden at times, but it is always there, in the very center of you, close enough to reach again at any time.

As difficult as it is, I need to remember that my self-worth wasn’t tangled up in this person, or anyone, ever. I have inherent worth, no matter who else believes that or not. Inherent worth is something that belongs to you, something nobody else ever has the right to take away.

Talking about playing in the sandpit, here’s a jam that came out of a studio session I’m obsessed with:

Songwriter’s Circle was a lovely, wholesome night:

Next one is on the 29th May.

Started recording my solo album :)

<3