A Susurration In Your Inner Heart - WRITING 101 DAY 43

Just a thought. 

You may be out there. You may be a creative, or you may be doing something for your job. Maybe you are involved in a project in another area of your life. Whatever it is you are doing, there are certain expectations. This is normal. Expectations are a part of how we bring out the excellence in ourselves and how we rise to the highest level. We can build on the work of the pioneers of the past, by learning from their successes and going on from there. Expectations, standards, processes, these are not bad things, not evils that must be avoided.

I imagine a musician in the studio. She has her musical instruments. She has trained for a long time to understand how to make the sounds she wants to happen, when she wants them. She has spent long hours mastering her craft. And now, here, in this moment, she is making the music that she wants to record and share with the world. She wants to be heard, be seen, be known. She wants to create something. 

She strikes the first chord, and it rings out strong and clear. A rapid succession of them follow. They are all laid down, stored away on magnetic tape or magnetic memory, analog or digital, old school or modern. She begins an accompaniment on another instrument, filling in harmonies and overtones. all of it recorded, saved for all time. Maybe she needs to adjust the rhythm, or add some more. Maybe a bass line has to groove, or a brass instrument needs to solo. It all depends. It is all part of the song she is singing, the music she is writing, the vision she is casting. She knows the genre, the chord progressions, the traditions, the sounds. She knows the greats that she is emulating, the callbacks and echoes, the throughline that shines through her music. She is accomplished and knows what she is doing.

But then, tragedy strikes. Well, maybe not tragedy. Maybe just discordance. In the midst of the symphony a sudden cacophony rings out. That shouldn't sound that way. That instrument, that chord, that note, that moment, it is wrong. The beat is off, the harmony is twisted, the vocal off-key. All her training, all those hours, all her knowledge, every fiber of her being calls out. THIS IS WRONG. It is NOT THE WAY IT IS DONE. The experts in the booth are looking at her. They are speaking into the mic. Let's go back and try again. The hired help is staring her down. Where is she going to go? At what measure will they need to start over. She stands there, and calculates what must be done to fix it. She has come this far, and it is no big deal. It is simply a mistake. Mistakes happen. Mistakes are a natural part of things. A mistake means nothing more than that you are on a journey, and you haven't given up. She knows this, and she knows that she needs only to move on. One more step, one more breath, one more bite at the apple. Just one more and she can complete her masterpiece.

But then, a little voice starts whispering in the back of her head. She recognizes it, and has learned to listen to what it has to say. The voice isn't clear, more like an inkling, a notion, often vaguely perceived. It has taken some time for her to learn to pay attention to it. She has to pause and concentrate. She has to think.

So she thinks. What is this voice saying? What is this whisper from her inner heart? What is it that she has seen, but doesn't know she has seen yet? She makes everyone wait. Everyone standing. Everyone looking. Everyone assuming that something is wrong, that she's lost her nerve, that she has taken on more than she can handle. Well, maybe they are thinking that or maybe she's just afraid they are, but either way, she is going to make them wait until she figures this out.

And then she starts to hear it. The susurration becomes a rustling. The rustling become a murmuring. The murmuring becomes faint words. The words provide a moment of clarity and a challenge. The challenge is to stop and choose. Here and now is a choice. The voice tells her she is at a crossroads. She can fix the error. She knows how and it is no big deal, it is ok. She has great things to say, great songs to sing, she needs to share and she can, she will. All she has to do is to head back down the road she was on. But, there is a choice. Because this error, this mistake, this discordant note is not a tragedy, it is an opportunity. The processes she has learned, the teachers she has listened to, the forbears on whose shoulders she stands, these all say that this is not the way to go. And she should not go down that path if she wants to make what needed to be made. But, this choice. If she chooses that note, that beat, that off-key harmony, that error, if she follows it, allows it to become a part of the piece, hunts down where it lives and adds it to what she is making, she will find something new. It may be something that hasn't existed in a long while, something that is not part of the expectations, the process, the ways things are, the way things have been, the ways things should be.

This choice, to build on the past or pioneer a new way, it is not a sure thing. It is more likely to fail, more likely to waste her time, more likely to end up with something unusable, unlistenable, unwanted. There is a reason the teachers taught the way they taught. Different isn't better by default. Being a pioneer means heading down a lot of paths that lead to nowhere. The choice is not an easy one, and it is very risky. It could mean losing everything she has worked for, everything she has dreamed of, all the reasons that have brought her to right here right now.

So she chooses, and it doesn't matter which one she does. She breaks the superposition and chooses a state. On the one hand, she creates a masterpiece. It is loved by millions. She is hailed as a master of her craft. On the other, she creates a new style of music. It is challenging and misunderstood by many. She is hailed as a founder of a new genre. There is no right or wrong choice here, there is just a choice.

Everything we love now, was once a mistake of the established order. Every order exists to uphold the quality of what we love. Order should not be broken for the sake of being broken, or we will lose the beauty that it protects. Order should not be maintained for the sake of being maintained, or we will lose the beauty that it withholds.

Whatever it is you are doing, there are certain expectations. And the wondrous thing is...you have a choice.